My husband, Mike, and I moved from NJ to Southwest Florida in September 2006. I currently work for the local county Facilities Dept. and fill my free time with crafts, reading and my experiments in the kitchen.
Last night I just was not in the mood for The Jenny Craig food that was assigned for dinner, so I thought it was a good time to experiment. I ordered 3 chicken tacos in hard shells – No CHEESE and extra salsa from Chipotle. I also had a watermelon mint mojito. How would this affect the scale in the morning??? Up .2 pounds. Totally worth it.
Back on track this morning. I didn’t get a photo because I overslept (darned mojito). breakfast was egg, cheese, and turkey sausage burrito. It was ok.
I had a 1/4 C of mixed nuts at 11am. They were delicious
Today’s lunch is the Chicken Ranch Melt. It is quite tasty. The chicken chunks are good. I’m very picky about my frozen food chicken. I can’t stand rubbery chicken, which is usually in frozen meals. This does not have that. The cheddar ranch spread is nice. All in all, I am happy with today’s food.
Smell/taste: A/A, Serving size: B+, Ease: A+
I’m looking forward to lasagna for dinner tonight.
So, I’m down another half pound. The Jenny Craig app says that is a total of 4.9 pounds since starting on Monday. I started trying to eat healthier on 1/15/22 and have lost a total of 9.5 pounds. So, my portion control and emphasis on vegetables has been working. Yay me!
This morning’s breakfast is a Jenny Craig chocolate muffin. It is supposed to be paired with a Jenny Craig shake but they are not included in the $150+ meals. So I made my own smoothie.
Chocolate muffin
One thing I have noticed is my joint inflammation has improved greatly. This is probably a combination of losing weight and eating less of the foods that cause inflammation. I’m happy.
So, I’m very confused. This morning the Jenny Craig app said that I had lost 4.4 pound. Now it says I’ve lost 6.4 pounds. I’ll take either one.
Today’s food has been good, so far.
Breakfast was the Sunshine Sandwich – an egg white, Canadian bacon, and cheese on an English muffin. Smell/Taste – A, Serving size- B, Ease – A. This was a very tasty sandwich. I had some mixed nuts as a snack between breakfast and lunch. So far, I’ve stayed satisfied.
Lunch was the Margherita Pizza. IT WAS SO SMALL!!! It was very tasty. Smell/Taste: A, Serving size: C, Ease: A. I had this with a cup of lemon and ginger tea.
Stay tuned for my dinner review. I believe it is going to be Beef Stir Fry Bowl, a salad, and a S’mores Bar for dessert.
I can’t wait to weigh myself tomorrow morning! I don’t think I have EVER said that in my life.
I overslept so I’m already messing up this diet. LOL. I was supposed to eat a recharge bar 2 hours before breakfast but couldn’t eat Willkie I was sleeping. Oh well. Here’s breakfast.
Waffles. Please oh please let them not be disgusting. I put them in my toaster and immediately noticed that they smell delicious. If they taste like they smell oh boy I’ll be happy.
The syrup is very thick.
Jenny Craig Classic Waffles with Syrup – 195 calories
While they didn’t taste as good as they smelled, they were not horrible. I would eat them again. You can taste the artificial sweetener in the syrup.
Smell/taste: A+/B, Serving size: B, Ease: A
Jenny Craig Shake- I am supposed to have a Jenny Craig shake with my breakfast. Unfortunately, you have to purchase these separately. So, on top of the $185.56 ($142.64 with coupon) and the supplemental food from the grocery store, you have to purchase shakes from Jenny Craig. They are $3.50 a serving. WOW!
Smell/taste – don’t know. Didn’t come with the food I bought, Serving size – don’t know. Didn’t come with the food I bought, Ease – really easy since I didn’t have the shake mix. Overall score for the Jenny Craig Shake – F-.
The Recharge Bar – you are supposed to eat this two hours before breakfast. I other words, since I get up at 5:30 and have breakfast, I would have to wake up at 3:30 to eat this. Nope, not going to do it. Here are some photos of the bar.
Recharge bar up close
I am not going to lie, I was looking forward to eating this bar. Macadamia nuts, almonds, and pecans drizzled in honey? Sounds delicious. NOPE! I will not be eating these. I can’t imagine getting up extra early to eat this mealy, flavorless bar. Not going to do it!!!
Smell/taste: F/F-, Serving size: C, Ease: A
LUNCH TIME!
Today’s Jenny Craig lunch is orange chicken. Hopefully it is good.
JC Orange Chicken
Three minutes in the microwave and this delicious little mean was ready. the flavor was great. The chicken was actually very good. Not rubbery at all. I’m supposed to have an additional healthy veggie but I think I will skip it.
Smell/Taste: A/A+, Serving size: C (I’m going to be hungry in about an hour). Ease: B+
Dinner!!!!
Tonight I am having Three Cheese Macaroni with Broccoli with Carrots! Chocolate Chip Cookies for dessert! Looks good. Four and a half minutes in the microwave.
Mac n cheese and veggies: Smell/taste: B/A, Serving size: B, Ease: A
Chocolate Chip Cookies: Smell/taste: B/B, Serving size: B, Ease: A – taste ok but hard, hard cookies.
So, my final conclusion on day 1 is that the food tastes ok but is not worth what they charge for it.
I decided I was going to try 4 weeks on the Jenny Craig diet plan. I saw an ad and thought the coaching plus the set menu each week might help me lose weight. I was always reluctant to try this plan because you had to pay extra to join and also buy their food. The ad I saw said that you just pay for the food now. So, I thought I’d give it a try.
First thing I did was sign up and pay for my first week of food. During the sign up you have to answer a bunch of questions and it tells you which plan would work best for your situation. Of course I was steered toward the most expensive plan – the Max Up plan. 7 days – 3 meals a day plus some snacks. I had a coupon code, so I paid $142.64. Yes, that’s $142.64 AFTER the coupon!!! Regular price would have been $185.56. I placed my order on 3/9/22 and was then told to schedule my first phone consultation with my coach. I was able to get it scheduled for the very next day, after work.
After I paid I was provided with the menu for my first four weeks. Guess what!?!?! It turns out that you don’t get all the required food for the week with that $186 ($143 with the coupon). Nope, you have to provide fresh fruits and veggies, some healthy protein, and Jenny Craig Shakes ($3.89 per serving). Really??? They really got me there, I’ll find out more during the phone consultation in my coach.
So, the consultation call…sigh. My 6:20pm call was a little late. The “coach”, whose name was not understandable, started asking me the same questions that I answered on the computer and was very disappointed to find out that I had already signed up for the plan online. She wanted to know why I asked for a call if I was already signed up. When I told her that I set up the call because the website told me to after I signed up and paid for my food. She suggested 800 calories more for me than the online plan suggested. Great program, huh? She then proceeded to tell me that, since I signed up online for auto ship, I am not allowed to have the phone consultations. Apparently, only people who sign up and order their food through a coach are eligible for the phone consultations. She tried to convince me to cancel the auto ship and have HER order my food for me. I refused. Her response was “That’s too bad.” At this point she quickly finished the phone call and basically said “good luck”.
Needless to say, I’m not happy with the dishonest advertising and the pushy salesperson/coach. I cancelled all future orders with customer service…I hope. I have decided to eat the food according to the menu they provided and post my thoughts here. Stay tuned for Monday 3/14 when I will be posting my review of Week 1, Day 1 on the Jenny Craig Max Up food plan. It should be a hoot!
We were off work last week doing work around the house. In between chores and projects, I spent some time crafting. I am really enjoying crocheting. I’m getting more confident in my skills. I participated in a mystery crochet-along. The parts of the crochet pattern came out every other day. At the end we had a finished product. Here’s some pictures of the crafts I worked on this week.
crocheted bunnybunny buttBunny has a friend that still needs eye and a beakThe finished mystery crochet-alongMy first attempt at chalk paste stenciling
Hopefully I’ll be back to regular posts this week.
This {_______} life 