Big Waste of Time and Energy

Nutrisystem Review

I mentioned in my 6 month diet update that I used used Nutrisystem and figured I’d share my experience.

Why I Picked Nutrisystem

I picked Nutrisystem for two main reasons…

1. The food would be delivered to my home. No shopping. I tended to do fast and ready-made food because I was lazy and it was easy. Nutrisystem would be fast and easy.
2. While they stopped short of an outright recommendation, I had crossed paths with a couple people who had lost weight using it.

The first point was the primary reason I went with a home delivery plan while the second point was why I went with Nutrisystem rather than one of their competitors. Trying to do price comparisons was difficult since they all offer various promotions and plan types.

I went with the lowest cost Nutrisystem plan – Men’s Basic. I also let them pick the foods for the first shipment. That was the only time I let them pick. It was heavy on pasta and stuff with red sauce. The red sauce all tasted the same and had a metallic aftertaste. From that point on I did my own ordering and kept the red sauce stuff to a minimum.

The Food

None of the food was spectacular. I didn’t find anything I would chose over a non-Nutrisystem version of the product. So if I use the term “good” it’s relative to the other Nutrisystem food.

Most of the good food was the junk food. The things they call snacks and deserts. Thin Mint Crisp bars were ordered in considerable quantity as were peppermint cookie patties. The crisp bars were a bit more appetite suppressing so I ordered more of those. Since brownies and chocolate cake gave me a chocolate fix I ordered a fair number of those at first. Since they weren’t all that tasty I lost my craving for chocolate and haven’t needed to find an alternate source.

I found that the more I liked the “real” version of a food the less I liked Nutrisystem’s version. For example, I really like a good carrot cake so ordered several portions from Nutrisystem. It doesn’t taste anything like a good carrot cake. It’s ok I guess, but disappointing.

For breakfast I gravitated toward oatmeal (with fat free milk I provided), scones and various breakfast bars. The pancakes weren’t worth the effort needed to prepare them and clean up afterwards.

There’s lots of pizza varieties to chose from but they don’t cook well in a microwave. They might be better cooked in a toaster oven or regular oven but hardly seemed worth the trouble.

For lunches I ended up going with chicken or tuna salad and meal bars for most meals. The soups are “add water” and not very tasty. The ravioli or pasta was ok for occasional variety but was cursed by that aftertaste.

I didn’t think I’d need to provide so much of my own food. But veggies, fruits and proteins (egg, breads, chicken, etc…) need to be provided. I ended up shopping for these and just eating a mix of reasonable portions. I didn’t have the discipline to actually allocate the portions according to their plan.

Misc Observations

Like other plans of this type they provide counselors along with support through a website. I didn’t use any of it so can’t comment on its quality.

How a company handles cancellations is a big indicator for me. If I’ll need to jump through hoops to cancel they aren’t a customer service oriented company. I did need to call in order to cancel, I couldn’t do it through the website even though I signed up through the website. But at least it wasn’t a painful process. They did ask about why I was leaving and what I thought about the program. No hard sell to stay but it did take about 10 minutes. I did tell them I had been off the program a month and the rep probably saw I delayed my June delivery all the way to the end of July. I did lie a bit and say I was near my goal. In my case price wasn’t a reason I was leaving but as a tip, they did offer a $50 discount if I stayed, sounded like a standard offer. It may be worth calling in to cancel and say price is a reason. I don’t consider their cancellation process as a reason not to join.

While the packing inside the box was fine and I never received damaged items, the box itself was frequently poorly sealed. More than once the UPS driver had to re-tape the box as it had come open. They need to invest in additional tape.

While the final price was always clear at the end of the order process, it was hard to figure out what I’d be paying until I actually went through the order process. Along those lines, their promo offers usually include a minimum number of shipments (mine was 3) and if you cancel before that number of shipments you’ll be retro-actively charged when you cancel.

Prices drop the longer you have auto-delivery. My first three months were approx. $330 each while the last three were approx. $312 each. You can also delay your delivery if needed. For example, rather than cancel I delayed my June deliver to make sure I could diet without Nutrisystem before actually canceling. If I found I needed it then I could have let the order arrive.

Summary

Overall I’m happy with Nutrisystem. It did what I wanted which was to control my portions and get me into the habit of meal preparation. I did lose weight while I was on the plan, but I’m finding it easier to diet without the Nutrisystem food. I’m tired of the food and a lot of it is junk food. I’d rather be selecting my own foods and keep losing weight by tracking calories.

Diet–6 Month Report

As June came to an end I was six months into my diet and down 45 lbs. Not quite the 2 lbs/week loss I was targeting but I’m pleased with the results. I figure now’s a good time to recap what’s worked and what hasn’t, if nothing else it will provide a source of encouragement down the road.

This all started back in November. Yea, I know November is more than six months ago, I’ll get to that. I hadn’t weighed myself recently, but I guessed I was about 100 lbs overweight. Despite the impending holidays being bad for diets I was in the right frame of mind to start a diet.

I never had much luck with diets, usually gaining the weight back once I stopped the diet. My best experience was many, many years ago (pre-millennium) when I just ate healthier and did a lot of walking and bike riding. So in November I looked at what I needed to do with the intent to just eat better.

Rather than just eat less (or exercise more) I knew there were some habits I had to change.

1. I had to break fast food habit. I was hitting fast food joints pretty regularly (McDonald’s, Wendy’s). It should be pretty easy for me to avoid these places. I ate there because I was lazy and like the name says, it was fast.  If I only ate there when I had to I could keep it relatively healthy, but if I ate there regularly I’d slide back to the bad stuff. So best to avoid them all together.
2. The harder habit for me to break would be avoiding the ready-to-eat and packaged foods. I hate grocery shopping, meal planning, and meal preparation so while it wasn’t fast food it wasn’t the healthier stuff either.

So I decided to break these habits in November. Since the holiday’s were approaching and it wouldn’t be the best time for weight loss I didn’t start tracking my weight. The November plan was a disaster. Well, maybe not outright disaster, but it was a failure. I did do more grocery shopping with slightly better food, but it was obvious to me the plan wouldn’t work.

I also added another habit I needed to learn – portion control. For example, if there were three pork chops in a package I’d cook and eat all three. Generally speaking a package of something was a serving size for me.

So in Late November I looked at Nutrisystem and their competitors. The main benefits I expected from these plans were:

1. Food would be delivered. Limited shopping needed.
2. While I wouldn’t break my package = portion habit at least in this case the packages would be a diet sized portion.
3. I wouldn’t have to count, track or plan anything. It would all be done for me. (I was a bit wrong on this)

I wasn’t at all interested in the support or coaching these plans offer, so that wasn’t a factor I considered.

The December Nutrisystem plan wasn’t great but it had potential. I was surprised at how much additional food was needed along with how much nutritional planning was required. There wasn’t any calorie counting, but things like fruits, veggies, and proteins had to be planned for and measured.

But as the new year approached I had come up with a workable plan. I ate the Nutrisystem provided food according to the plan. As for the rest of the stuff I didn’t track it or plan it. I simply shopped for the stuff I liked and ate it with the meals however I wanted as long as I kept portions reasonable and had a good nutritional mix overall.

I realized two more things:

1. I needed to weigh myself and track my weight. That pre-millennium weight loss had bicking and walking to track progress. Improving times were encouragement. That just wasn’t going to be possible this time, so weight would be how I tracked progress.
2. Nutrisystem wasn’t a good long term solution. I ate less but wasn’t learning anything about what or how to eat. So I bought Lose It! For my iPod Touch. Back in November I didn’t want anything that required me to count and track. Now I was diving it.

So on January 1st I began in earnest (but not a new year’s resolution). On January 1st I weighed myself and found that at 297 lbs I was more than 100 pounds overweight. But I set a soft goal of loosing 100 lbs during the year. By “soft goal” I mean I wouldn’t obsess about loosing 2 lbs a week as long as I was loosing weight.

Having lost 45 pounds so far I’m off the 100 lb mark but I’m happy with the results. I went off Nutrisystem in June by delaying the June shipment and have continued to loose weight and stay under my calorie budget most of the time. Today I formally cancelled all future shipments.

What’s Worked for Me

What I found works for me is:
1. I weigh myself every morning. There’s a debate as to which is better, daily weighing or less frequently, like weekly. Neither is wrong. I weigh myself at the same time each day so I’m in the habit, otherwise I’d forget. My weight fluctuates so I don’t obsess if it goes up a bit as long as it’s down for the week. I also don’t cut calories the next day if there’s a slight bump up. I stay on the plan. This has the benefit of keeping me from cheating by not allowing me to “make it up” before the next weigh-in. And I know I’d never make it up, at least not entirely.

2. Lose It! Is a great calorie tracking program. Easy to use and works well. It also tracks other nutritional information. Worthy of a article of it’s own. I thought I would hate and fail with any plan that required tracking. I was wrong. With Lose It1 the tracking is so easy its become second nature. Another plus is being able to plan meals and see where I’ll be at the end of the day. For example, if I’m going out to dinner and I know I’ll want one or two beers I can plan accordingly.

It didn’t take long for me to begin using calories as my primary control mechanism instead of trying to follow the Nutrisystem portions.

3. Even though I’m not even close to being a reasonably good cook I now prepare all meals at home except when I’m eating out socially or for business. No take home. Nutrisystem did help with this since in addition to nuking their food I had to prepare something to go with it. This helped build the meal preparation habit.

4. I read nutrition labels now, not the big letters on the labels that are marketing hype, but the actual nutrition information. At this point I focus on portion size and calories.

I don’t think I’d change anything I did from January on. I don’t think the Nutrisystem plan itself was critical to my success, rather it was just having the food in the house and already portioned out that was critical to help me build the right habits. Any similar plan would have worked. If I had the discipline I could have shopped for the food myself from the beginning since I do that now.

The Hard Stuff

The hard stuff has been:

1. It was not a surprise that getting and staying on the diet was difficult at first. But once I made it through January it became a habit.
2. Staying under my daily calorie budget has been difficult at times. It’s actually become easier without Nutrisystem since I have more flexibility. While I don’t cut back if I’ve gone over the day before, I do try to pick lower calorie choices in order to stay on track for the week.
3. There have been times where I’ve knowingly gone over my calorie budget because I wanted to feed a craving. The hard part is keeping it a one time thing. For example, summer is here and I really like vanilla ice cream with hot fudge from a local shop. It was a weekly event last summer. This year I stopped once to have a large serving but have avoided going back and haven’t really wanted to (although I make it a point to not drive by the place in my travels).
4. Eating out is a killer. One week I had training and business meetings throughout the week. This meant lunch brought in (pizza & deli sandwiches)and a few dinners out. The dinners are at nice restaurants so I’m not going to order a salad. I try to order smart but I had a steak at the steakhouse and pasta at the Italian restaurant. I was 3500 calories over budget (assuming my estimates were in the ballpark) that week but still managed to lose 1/2 a pound.
5. I overestimate calories if I am estimating. This is usually only needed when I eat out so it’s not very often. I don’t want to think I’m under budget and not lose weight. That would be frustrating. This does make it a little harder to stay within the diet.

Summary

The main reason I’m happy with my progress is I don’t struggle daily (just a few days). For the most part I don’t have to fight cravings even though there’s a lot of foods I like but don’t eat anymore. The stuff that’s replaced it is good.

I need to exercise more, especially now that the weather is good.

So as July 2010 kicks off I’m at 252 pounds. I’m still about 80 pound overweight, although that varies depending on who you ask. I suspect it will get harder keep the pace of weight lose going as I take the weight off. The less I weigh the fewer calories I need to maintain my weight. Lose It! automatically tracks my calorie budget and reduces it gradually as I get lighter.

Raising Taxes = Cutting Costs

I was reading a NY Times article about how lobbyists are fighting the “last big plans to cut healthcare costs” and noticed that one of those “big plans to cut healthcare costs” is actually a tax hike.

The tax on gold-plated insurance plans is the last vestige of most economists’ favorite idea, eliminating the tax exemption for employer plans. The finance bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 a year for an individual or $21,000 for a family.

The white house budget director referred to this tax when he said:

“A key priority now, is to make sure cost containment holds up as we move through the legislative process.”

They call it a tax on “gold-plated insurance plans as if only CEO’s get them. What gets conveniently overlooked is that some companies, such as Zappos, provide excellent health care to all their workers and would be considered “gold-plated”. Some of the labor unions have also negotiated “gold-plated” plans. Although some would prefer to simply exclude those plans from the tax. After all, labor is the democratic base.

Naturally the healthcare and insurance industries don’t mind since it will give them money. What they opposed were the provisions that would allow Medicare to negotiate pricing on prescriptions.

Only in Washington could a tax we pay be considered “cost containment”. If you feel the tax is a good idea at least call it what it is. This is what sends me over the edge in the healthcare “debate”. The politicians talk about controlling costs as if they are trying to lower them. What they really mean is they want to control who pays.

Regulation Stifles Competition

I’ve always been of the opinion that often the primary outcome of government regulation is to stifle competition. Here’s another case that proves the point, brought to us by TechDirt.

Some new taxi cab services sprung up awhile back in Tampa, Florida. They use electric vehicles and don’t charge for the rides. The cabs are wrapped in ads and they only accept tips. The transportation commission licenses (and limits) vehicles for hire but there rides were free so they escaped regulation. Naturally the taxi drivers for hire didn’t like the competition.

But that’s all changed since the transportation commission recently ruled that the free cabs are actually for hire. So they need licenses. Except, but the way, there aren’t any available. So a new, seemingly well liked, transportation system has been shut down due to artificial limits set by government regulation. Luckily, Hillsborough county seems to be alone with it’s roots in the last century and other nearby counties are accepting the electric cabs.

Fellow Senators Clear Dodd In Mortgage Scandal

Dodd’s fellow Senators on the ethics committee of cleared my favorite Senator of breaking the rules. He didn’t do anything they wouldn’t do. They did slap his wrist for using poor judgment in getting caught.

The New York Times article on the topic brings up an interesting point at the end:

Meanwhile, Representative Darrell Issa of California, the senior Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Friday reiterated his call for a subpoena of mortgage records showing which lawmakers participated in the Countrywide V.I.P. program.

The subpoena would potentially cover mortgage records for the oversight committee chairman, Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York, who obtained two Countrywide loans for houses in Florida and Brooklyn. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Mr. Towns has resisted issuing the subpoena.

So, will we learn which of our other lawmakers received special treatment? Maybe those same ones who cleared Dodd? Hey at least now we have a precedent that there’s nothing wrong with being a “Friend of Angelo”.

I still don’t buy it that the Senator would have been a “Friend of Angelo” if he wasn’t a US Senator on a committee regulating the industry Countrywide was in. He was certainly made to feel he was getting special treatment, if he didn’t actually get special treatment it just means he was a sucker.

Why Do People Blindly Trust Technology?

Our eyes are wrong, the GPS is right.

Never Happy

First lawmakers and the public are up in arms about business travel to resort locations. Now they’re pissed off that government agencies are discouraging travel to these resort locations. It’s a different news cycle.

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