(no subject)
Fratboy's gone, kids are asleep. I've got a kajillion photos from today to get through but I really need to get this NutriSystem thing wrapped up so let's tackle this one at a time, shall we?
3 cheese pasta with chicken. It's powdered. It's dehydrated ball sweat. It was bad enough when the powdered crap took over breakfasts and lunches but we at least always had dinner to look forward to. This made me want to stab myself in the eye just to eat my own eyeball because surely that would be more tasty than eating this...
This, believe it or not, is supposed to be 'Beef Tacos'. Apparently NutriSystem translates that into 'Meat Jello'. Which is what one looks for in a tasty, nutritious dinner, right?
This would be dinner, which was Meat Jello spooned onto 3 small crisp tortillas. I actually didn't find it as bad as Cyn did because I didn't make this one so I wasn't elbows deep in the meat jello making process. So that left me in a certain amount of comfortable denial.
I still wouldn't call it good though.
Aha! And NutriSystem gets it the frig together again. This is their chicken burger, which unlike their beef burger comes out as somewhat recognizable meat. In that it is not a meat cracker that requires re-hydrating. Of course it does beg the question of exactly what it is since it requires no refrigeration and doesn't quite taste like chicken either. But bunged in a nice toasted WW english muffin with some tomatoes and the permitted tsp of low fat mayo was actually one of the 'good' options.
Though no, I don't know what Cyn has against plates either. I don't usually eat my dinner directly out of the sink but then I'm not Asian so what do I know?
Some sort of Chicken Florentine Fettucine. Whatever. When you put the words 'chicken' and 'fettucine' together it had better involve alfredo, you dig? This did not. It didn't suck HORRIBLY. It wasn't powdered ass gas. But it sure as shit was nowhere near fettucine alfredo and frankly the .99 cent cheapo teevee dinners do a better job of it than this so I pretty much sulked through this entire meal.
Homestyle chicken noodles with gravy. It was like a nice thick chicken stew. Definitely edible, definitely filling.
NutriSystem's version of Steak and Potatoes. See those 2 wedges of potatoes? Yeah, that would be all of them. Underneath all that 'gravy' was about a dozen hunks of mystery meat which didn't taste like steak but didn't taste bad. However I didn't find it particularly filling, maybe because I was exceptionally lazy that day and didn't bother making a veggie side.
Mmmmmmm, thick crust pizza. Now this was GOOD. Of course I'm so starved for good food at this point I would take that with a grain of salt the size of your head. However topped with peppers and broccoli, as soon as I was done I was hunting around for another piece. Not because I was still hungry but because it tasted so good.
Trust me, I'm as shocked as you are.
Oh holy god, this would be their Veggie Fajita. It starts powdered. We all know how well that usually ends up...
Looks pretty good all wrapped up, don't it? DO NOT BE FOOLED. This was by far the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth, not only of all the NutriSystem options but possibly in MY ENTIRE LIFE. I cannot describe for you exactly what it was like to bite into a tortilla filled with human flesh except to say that I promptly spit it into the garbage and spent the rest of the evening so nauseated that I couldn't eat anything else. Ugh. Just thinking about it I may never eat again.
Minestrone soup. It's soup in a cup. Good soup in a cup. But. Still. Just soup in a cup...
So that's pretty much it. I actually have a shitload more cell phone pix but they're shitty and they won't download because Telus is being a GIANT PENIS and really the point of all these pictures and reviews originally was for Cyn and I to keep track of what we liked for when we reordered which we are not doing so I think you get the picture with what you got here. Desperately need more? I'll text you the damned pictures. :p I am out of time for farting around with this post.
So. 4 weeks of NutriSystem = 11 pounds lost. Good results? Hell, yes. But keep in mind I started dieting on my own the week before the NS got here and lost 3 pound that week for a total of 14 pounds down so far, which incidentally, is about the half way mark for the total weight loss I want to achieve. So I could do it myself, which makes NS ridiculously expensive and not that far from cruel and unusual punishment at the end of the day.
I did managed to find a breakfast option that I really enjoy, which is the granola cereal with yogurt. This is what I generally eat for breakfast with or without NS. In the end we managed to find 2, count them only TWO lunch options that were not powdered which is the pasta and been and chicken noodles that were actually tasty. There is also a cheese tortellini deal that had the nastiest, mealiest aftertaste to it. Other than that find yourself some nice cheap powdered soup with a bit of extra protein powder in it and you have NS lunches.
Dinners for the most part were good. When they were bad they were very VERY bad. But I'd say it's about 75% relatively tasty and filling vs 25% evil.
At the end of the day I'm happy I lost weight, but confident I could have done it by other means. This was a good reminder of portion control since I think that was primarily my problem. Every time I get pregnant The Hungar overtakes me and I cannot control it for love or money and after the spawn arrives I am too used to just eating too much food. Even when it's good, healthy food if you eat too much of it you will gain weight, period. So thank you to NS for resetting my internal portion control meter. Also a lot of people made a lot of jokes about how no wonder NS works if it's so bad it totally puts you off your food. But you know what, in some ways that is actually quite true. Without food to look forward to every day for my main source of pleasure and reward I had to look for other things. Which I actually have in abundance given the ridiculously fabulous life I have. So it did help to also reset the role food has in my life, which is fuel for my body to keep it going, not the biggest source of pleasure in my life. Mind you I am not about to start inhaling twigs and berries (you see what I did there?) and forgo the pleasures of food for life. Hi, have we met?! However I suppose life is still plenty good without an entire cheesecake or, you know, chocolate and chips every single day.
And for those of you who missed it in the comments when cyka asked, this is what the bod is rocking at the mid way point:
I have a loose idea in my mind of what I want the scale to say when all is said and done, but this is more about what I look like nekkid than anything else. I may look just fine in that dress but there are still several baby-related lumps underneath it that I want to get rid of. And a pair of skinny pants that I will fit into dammit. Plus Cyn and I started this journey just to see what would happen, and what happened is that we were successful at it and we surrounded ourselves with other people who are on this same journey with us. I still can't quite believe people want to write that off as eating disordered and 'herd mentality'. This is possibly one of the most supportive things I've ever experienced in a group of fabulous women and it's sad that people want to shit all over that. So let me state for the record that at no time in the past month have I actually gone hungry, unless I chose to in very rare human-flesh tasting situations. At around 1600 calories I eat more than anyone thinks I should frankly, including Fratboy who was surprised at how much I was losing given how much I'm eating. We are working out, we are eating well and we are focused on being healthy. If you have a problem with that, don't forget to go fuck yourself.
Next up was going to be Weight Watchers, but instead I found The Daily Plate, which is a free website that allows you to do what WW Online does but with actual calories instead of points. So right now I'm not seeing the value in paying for WW. For now I'll just be using that to track my calories and exercise and see where we go from there. If that doesn't work as well for me as NS I may try Atkins or WW proper or who knows? This journey is one step at a time baby and feel free to come along for the journey but if anyone else tries to treat me like a window licking mouf breaver bad, bad things will happen. Don't make me flash my grizzled nasty long pubes at you to make you shut up.
Okay, so I don't actually have grizzled nasty long pubes anymore. I just had to work Down There in here somewhere. All this dieting has been hell on my vagina talk and god forbid I let down her legions of adoring fans...
3 cheese pasta with chicken. It's powdered. It's dehydrated ball sweat. It was bad enough when the powdered crap took over breakfasts and lunches but we at least always had dinner to look forward to. This made me want to stab myself in the eye just to eat my own eyeball because surely that would be more tasty than eating this...
This, believe it or not, is supposed to be 'Beef Tacos'. Apparently NutriSystem translates that into 'Meat Jello'. Which is what one looks for in a tasty, nutritious dinner, right?
This would be dinner, which was Meat Jello spooned onto 3 small crisp tortillas. I actually didn't find it as bad as Cyn did because I didn't make this one so I wasn't elbows deep in the meat jello making process. So that left me in a certain amount of comfortable denial.
I still wouldn't call it good though.
Aha! And NutriSystem gets it the frig together again. This is their chicken burger, which unlike their beef burger comes out as somewhat recognizable meat. In that it is not a meat cracker that requires re-hydrating. Of course it does beg the question of exactly what it is since it requires no refrigeration and doesn't quite taste like chicken either. But bunged in a nice toasted WW english muffin with some tomatoes and the permitted tsp of low fat mayo was actually one of the 'good' options.
Though no, I don't know what Cyn has against plates either. I don't usually eat my dinner directly out of the sink but then I'm not Asian so what do I know?
Some sort of Chicken Florentine Fettucine. Whatever. When you put the words 'chicken' and 'fettucine' together it had better involve alfredo, you dig? This did not. It didn't suck HORRIBLY. It wasn't powdered ass gas. But it sure as shit was nowhere near fettucine alfredo and frankly the .99 cent cheapo teevee dinners do a better job of it than this so I pretty much sulked through this entire meal.
Homestyle chicken noodles with gravy. It was like a nice thick chicken stew. Definitely edible, definitely filling.
NutriSystem's version of Steak and Potatoes. See those 2 wedges of potatoes? Yeah, that would be all of them. Underneath all that 'gravy' was about a dozen hunks of mystery meat which didn't taste like steak but didn't taste bad. However I didn't find it particularly filling, maybe because I was exceptionally lazy that day and didn't bother making a veggie side.
Mmmmmmm, thick crust pizza. Now this was GOOD. Of course I'm so starved for good food at this point I would take that with a grain of salt the size of your head. However topped with peppers and broccoli, as soon as I was done I was hunting around for another piece. Not because I was still hungry but because it tasted so good.
Trust me, I'm as shocked as you are.
Oh holy god, this would be their Veggie Fajita. It starts powdered. We all know how well that usually ends up...
Looks pretty good all wrapped up, don't it? DO NOT BE FOOLED. This was by far the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth, not only of all the NutriSystem options but possibly in MY ENTIRE LIFE. I cannot describe for you exactly what it was like to bite into a tortilla filled with human flesh except to say that I promptly spit it into the garbage and spent the rest of the evening so nauseated that I couldn't eat anything else. Ugh. Just thinking about it I may never eat again.
Minestrone soup. It's soup in a cup. Good soup in a cup. But. Still. Just soup in a cup...
So that's pretty much it. I actually have a shitload more cell phone pix but they're shitty and they won't download because Telus is being a GIANT PENIS and really the point of all these pictures and reviews originally was for Cyn and I to keep track of what we liked for when we reordered which we are not doing so I think you get the picture with what you got here. Desperately need more? I'll text you the damned pictures. :p I am out of time for farting around with this post.
So. 4 weeks of NutriSystem = 11 pounds lost. Good results? Hell, yes. But keep in mind I started dieting on my own the week before the NS got here and lost 3 pound that week for a total of 14 pounds down so far, which incidentally, is about the half way mark for the total weight loss I want to achieve. So I could do it myself, which makes NS ridiculously expensive and not that far from cruel and unusual punishment at the end of the day.
I did managed to find a breakfast option that I really enjoy, which is the granola cereal with yogurt. This is what I generally eat for breakfast with or without NS. In the end we managed to find 2, count them only TWO lunch options that were not powdered which is the pasta and been and chicken noodles that were actually tasty. There is also a cheese tortellini deal that had the nastiest, mealiest aftertaste to it. Other than that find yourself some nice cheap powdered soup with a bit of extra protein powder in it and you have NS lunches.
Dinners for the most part were good. When they were bad they were very VERY bad. But I'd say it's about 75% relatively tasty and filling vs 25% evil.
At the end of the day I'm happy I lost weight, but confident I could have done it by other means. This was a good reminder of portion control since I think that was primarily my problem. Every time I get pregnant The Hungar overtakes me and I cannot control it for love or money and after the spawn arrives I am too used to just eating too much food. Even when it's good, healthy food if you eat too much of it you will gain weight, period. So thank you to NS for resetting my internal portion control meter. Also a lot of people made a lot of jokes about how no wonder NS works if it's so bad it totally puts you off your food. But you know what, in some ways that is actually quite true. Without food to look forward to every day for my main source of pleasure and reward I had to look for other things. Which I actually have in abundance given the ridiculously fabulous life I have. So it did help to also reset the role food has in my life, which is fuel for my body to keep it going, not the biggest source of pleasure in my life. Mind you I am not about to start inhaling twigs and berries (you see what I did there?) and forgo the pleasures of food for life. Hi, have we met?! However I suppose life is still plenty good without an entire cheesecake or, you know, chocolate and chips every single day.
And for those of you who missed it in the comments when cyka asked, this is what the bod is rocking at the mid way point:
I have a loose idea in my mind of what I want the scale to say when all is said and done, but this is more about what I look like nekkid than anything else. I may look just fine in that dress but there are still several baby-related lumps underneath it that I want to get rid of. And a pair of skinny pants that I will fit into dammit. Plus Cyn and I started this journey just to see what would happen, and what happened is that we were successful at it and we surrounded ourselves with other people who are on this same journey with us. I still can't quite believe people want to write that off as eating disordered and 'herd mentality'. This is possibly one of the most supportive things I've ever experienced in a group of fabulous women and it's sad that people want to shit all over that. So let me state for the record that at no time in the past month have I actually gone hungry, unless I chose to in very rare human-flesh tasting situations. At around 1600 calories I eat more than anyone thinks I should frankly, including Fratboy who was surprised at how much I was losing given how much I'm eating. We are working out, we are eating well and we are focused on being healthy. If you have a problem with that, don't forget to go fuck yourself.
Next up was going to be Weight Watchers, but instead I found The Daily Plate, which is a free website that allows you to do what WW Online does but with actual calories instead of points. So right now I'm not seeing the value in paying for WW. For now I'll just be using that to track my calories and exercise and see where we go from there. If that doesn't work as well for me as NS I may try Atkins or WW proper or who knows? This journey is one step at a time baby and feel free to come along for the journey but if anyone else tries to treat me like a window licking mouf breaver bad, bad things will happen. Don't make me flash my grizzled nasty long pubes at you to make you shut up.
Okay, so I don't actually have grizzled nasty long pubes anymore. I just had to work Down There in here somewhere. All this dieting has been hell on my vagina talk and god forbid I let down her legions of adoring fans...