Nutrisystem Week 1 Weigh-In

We’ve officially wrapped up our first week on Nutrisystem and weighed in. When we took our weights, the numbers were so good that I wonder if our scale is broken. No, seriously, I think I need to buy a new scale!

Beeb’s Weigh-In:

Starting Weight: 164.5 lbs
Week 1 Weight: 161 lbs

Jai’s Weigh-In:

Starting Weight: 217.5
Week 1 Weigh: 210.5 lbs

Now, as much as we’d like to jump for joy over a 7-pound weight loss, I think it’s too good to be true! At the beginning of last week, Jai weighed himself at the gym and it listed his weight as 2 pounds higher. He kept track of it though the week, and the gym scale seemed to report the same proportional weight loss as our scale, but starting 2 pounds heavier. Of course, a medical grade scale is going to be more accurate than one you use at home, but ours seems to have way more discrepancies than it should, even though I bought it brand new quite recently. We’re going to get a new scale this week so that we can compare and get a number we feel we can rely on.

So after one week on the program, I can say that we’re both feeling really good. We have faithfully stuck to the program, logged our food and activities, and exercised. My physiotherapy involves stretching and resistance exercises targeted to the knees, hips, and ankles, as well as a step-down exercise that really helps rehabilitate the knee function. This is interspersed with a half hour walk every other day. Meanwhile, Jai has been going to the gym and joining me on my walks. Since he hasn’t had the time to go to the gym recently with all the chaos in our lives, he’s easing back into it and going every other day because he likes to do weight training and it’s important to give your muscles a break when you’re first starting out. Once his muscles adjust then he will begin going every day.

The diet itself has been very interesting and eye-opening. The program is basically designed to scatter your calories all through the day, so that you’re eating small portions roughly every 3 hours or so. For someone that’s used to running around on empty all day and eating a lot at night, it’s quite an adjustment. My advice to anyone starting Nutrisystem would be to not panic if you feel hungry or a bit “Off” for the first few days while your body gets used to a totally new eating pattern. It evens out pretty quickly as your body adjusts. One important thing I’ve realized is that it’s critical to just follow the instructions and eat all of the recommended items, even if you’re not hungry at that moment. I’ve found that sometimes I’m not hungry for the morning snack, so I’ll skip it, thinking that I can save on calories since hey, I’m not hungry anyway, right? Wrong! Whenever I do this, I get really hungry in the evening, even if I then eat said morning snack to try and make up for it. The program is really designed to keep your blood sugar levels even all day so that you don’t get crazy hungry, so if you deviate from it, you increase the risk of feeling unsatisfied later. There’s plenty of things you can have for the snacks that aren’t too bulky, so what I do now is have a cup of fat free milk as my morning PowerFuel.

The other interesting thing I’ve learned is that I often don’t notice I’m even hungry until I’m famished, as I get so distracted by work. For example, I got a bad headache the other day, and I wondered out loud if that was a sign I should eat lunch, even though I was not at all hungry. Jai said it perfectly: “Our sense of when we’re actually hungry is obviously broken, since we’re on Nutrisystem in the first place.” He’s so right! When I ate lunch, my headache disappeared immediately. As the week progressed on Nutrisystem, I noticed other “Symptoms” of hunger – if you want to call it that – which I usually don’t pay attention to. I can see that as a result of this in the past, I would wait until I was desperately hungry to actually take that as my cue to stop and eat something. It’s been fascinating to realize a lot of bad habits that I wasn’t even aware of that have affected what and when I eat, and as a result, my weight.

We’ve done great following the program to a “T”. The only areas that need improvement is eating all our required veggies and drinking all the water. I drink coffee and tea by the gallons, so adding in 64oz of additional water is a shock to the system if you try to do it all at once – or at least it was for me, so I’m adding it in more gradually. I can drink one bottle 32 oz a day and am working my way up to the second bottle. And coffee count towards my daily water too so all in all I think I’m doing OK.

My big shortcoming is not eating all my daily 4 add-in veggies. I only bought a bag of carrots to start with, so I’m going to make sure I buy a wider selection so that we can bulk up our intake to where it should be. I was conservative when I bought my initial grocery items as I wasn’t sure how the plan was going to work in practicality and I didn’t want to overbuy produce and have it go bad. Now that I’ve had a week on the program, I have a good sense of what we’ll use and what would be good to add!

One of the huge benefits so far for me has been the ease of establishing such a healthy routine. I’m self-employed, and because I work such long hours, I’d gotten to the point where my days felt indiscernible – all day every day are just spent in my office staring at a monitor, and after a certain point, you just feel like you’re on a conveyor belt. Having Nutrisystem has established a routine morning, noon, and night, which breaks up the day and make me feel a little more like a member of the human race and not a zombie in a suit. 😉 And good habits beget good habits – I’ve been faithfully following my physiotherapy routine, because I know I have to as part of the Nutrisystem program; I’ve had to skip it a LOT in recent months because I was simply too busy. It’s awful, but there have been too many times where I’ve had to choose between my health and being able to make a living. Having this “Force” me to do it has been extremely helpful. For example, I was working late the other night and would have nixed my walk in favor of getting more work done, but I knew it had to happen, so I went and figured I’d get more done when I came home. But when I walked in the door at 11 PM (Told you it was late), I realized how tired I was and that it would be better to finish my work in the morning instead of burning both ends of the candle. Being forced to break up my routine gives me a little more perspective, which I need sometimes.

My other favorite thing about Nutrisystem? NO COOKING. HARDLY ANY DISHES. This is so awesome that it necessitates caps!! 😀

The variety of the foods is amazing. I feel spoilt for choice at every meal, because I can pick from such a huge selection and base my choice on how hungry I feel and what I’m in the mood for. The food is fantastic, so it’s been a real treat! Each meal that you eat is roughly around 200ish calories, so eating the same portion size at each meal is an adjustment if you’re used to getting all your calories at night, but I’ve been getting used to it pretty quickly. If you’re used to not eating and then overstuffing yourself all at once, not feeling painfully full after each meal may actually be an adjustment, too, as it has been for us. I’m grateful to have the chance to undo these bad habits and establish a healthier way of living. I feel like Nutrisystem is a great stepping stone because they take care of all the work for you – you just have to follow the program, so the excuse of “I don’t have time” is gone because it SAVES you so much time. I want to use the coming months as an opportunity to restructure my schedule in such a way that I can continue to take care of my body instead of destroying it by being such a workaholic. I’ve definitely been overwhelmed by a lot of external curveballs that I can’t control, so I anticipate that life will continue to have emergencies and chaos; but it’s so critical that I establish a routine that I can always fall back on, instead of getting swept away with everything that is going on around me. I think that getting back into freezer cooking after I transition off Nutrisystem would be a great way to continue this in the “Real world” after I go on maintenance.

And speaking of real-world situations, you may be wondering how Nutrisystem deals with the inevitability of eating out at some point. On Tuesday night, Jai and I had to go out to dinner as part of a work project. I read through Nutrisystem’s “Dining Out Guide” and made a plan of action before we went. Since we’d planned to go later in the evening, I knew if I skipped my Nutrisystem dinner entree I’d be starving by the time we got there. So instead, I opted to eat my Nutrisystem dinner at the usual time, cutting out my Smartcarb and dessert and then having a small sampling of food at the restaurant. Jai and I split one entree between the two of us and asked for a to-go box right when we ordered. We helped ourselves to a small portion each from that one entree, then put the rest in the to-go box. Jai had wisely called some relatives before we left and let them know we’d be bringing them our leftovers since we’re on Nutrisystem. That way, we wouldn’t let food go to waste OR tempt us in the fridge, and knowing that we had promised them our leftovers in advance helped us resist the temptation to just “Clean our plates, there’s not that much left…”. Once we got home, we input the calories from our meal out. Although there’s no exact calorie listing for this specific restaurant’s dishes, I was able to do a pretty close approximation. Since I had taken a photo of our meal for the project, I actually referenced that when I put in the portion sizes. I wasn’t able to enter the exact measurements so I just had to get it as close as I could. However, I think that taking the time to jot everything down and making a conscious effort to plan ahead and eat modest portions is the approach we’ll need to succeed on Nutrisystem and I think we did a good job of staying on track even when there were potential excuses to overindulge. Take a look at what I ate for our meal out here – seems pretty fair, right?

Another important thing I’ve learned is that if I’m out and about in the afternoon, I need to make sure I take my SmartCarb with me, and I also have to resist the temptation to put off dinner until I’m done running errands. If I wait too long to eat my afternoon and evening meals and snacks, I get ravenous, so I’ve learned the importance of keeping those consistent – which is why I opted to have the dinner out in lieu of my dessert instead of trying to wait and getting super hungry.

It’s been an exciting week getting started on Nutrisystem and we can already see a BIG improvement in our life, from eating healthier and establishing a routine to exercising more, saving lots of time in the kitchen and eating super tasty food. I can’t wait to see where this program will take us – I’m looking ahead to the rest of the year with so much more optimism now, because I know good things are definitely in store and I don’t have to wait until “Someday” when my knees are better/schedule is less crazy/etc. to start losing weight. Despite all the obstacles, I’m getting healthy NOW!

As members of the Nutrisystem Nation Blogger Panel, Jai and I will be receiving the Nutrisystem program free of charge in order to share our honest opinions with you. Always consult with your physician before embarking on any weight loss or exercise program.

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 1-888-853-4689 or by visiting Nutrisystem.com!