Being the very impulsive person I am, I joined Nutrisystem yesterday without a lot of thought put into the decision! Follow along with me as I share my Diary of a Nutrisystem Journey – Week 0
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March 27
My cousin came to town yesterday and I hadn’t seen him in about a year. He’s 82 pounds lighter than the last time I saw him and when I mentioned how good he looked he told me he started Nutrisystem in August. August! He lost 82 pounds in less than 8 months! That fact alone made me curious enough about Nutrisystem to go onto their website and look around. Here’s the link if I’ve piqued your curiosity yet… https://www.nutrisystem.com/
Back in the mid 80’s I ordered a month of Nutrisystem and I have to be honest…the food was terrible. It was mostly dehydrated food and let me tell you, adding water did nothing to enhance the flavor. But I had to assume that science and pre-packaged food has changed drastically in the last 30 years so I thought maybe I would give it another try.
Weight Watchers has always been my go-to weight loss program and if my head is in the right place, it works very well. But seeing first hand what Nutrisystem did for my cousin, I started justifying in my head why I should try it. My thought was, go on Nutrisystem but on the days where you eat your own food, continue coming up with Weight Watchers recipes that taste great, like my Chicken Fried Rice, Arizona Taco Soup and Chicken and Rice Soup. In all my impulsiveness I decided to try a quicker way to lose weight and when the weight is off, I’ll maintain with Weight Watchers in mind. At least that’s what I’m telling myself at the moment…
Before you join Nutrisystem…
So once I’d made the decision to sign up for the Nutrisystem program, I went onto their website again and signed up, but didn’t order anything yet. I just gave them my email address. I went back on their site awhile later and started looking at all the foods. Some of them actually looked good…like ice cream sandwiches, chocolate ice cream — do you see a theme? But then I made a mistake. I signed up for their “Core” program and I didn’t realize until after I’d selected all the food and placed my order that I didn’t see anything like ice cream on the menu of foods to choose from! That’s because the frozen food isn’t available on the Core program. You have to select the Uniquely Yours program for the good stuff…and of course that costs more. 🙁
So two pieces of advice I would give you before you sign up:
If you’re clicking around on their site, be aware of promo codes. I’m sure they have algorithms that show who is purchasing and who hasn’t yet. I found a promo code for $25 off when I was clicking around. There will be a promo code or a discount somewhere. Don’t pay full price!
And also, if you don’t already have an Ebates account, I definitely recommend signing up for one first. It’s free money! I love my Ebates! And one of the best things about it is you can add the Ebates button to your toolbar and every time you’re on a website linked to Ebates it automatically pops up a window asking you if you want to activate your cash back bonus on this site —would you ever say no? I earned $21.74 for signing up on Nutrisystem. Here’s what it looks like…
This was the net cost…
So if you take into consideration my Ebates rebate and the promo code discount I found, here is what the net cost was to sign up for Nutrisystem.
| 4 Week Auto-Delivery Core program | $298.99 |
| Promo code discount | (25.00) |
| Additional snack pack | 15.99 |
| Packaging | 7.99 |
| Ebates cash back | (21.74) |
| Total | $276.23 |
After I placed the “Core” order and realized I wanted the “Uniquely Yours” program instead, I went back online and switched it. Now going forward my cost will be $351.98. That sounds expensive but when I think about my monthly grocery bill it’s really not.
This is what I’ll receive…
When you sign up, you choose “Custom Menu” or “Favorites Pack”. If you choose Favorites, they will send you a selection of their highest rated meals. I’m way too much of a control freak for that… So I chose Custom Menu where you choose every item of food yourself.
In your first order, you get to choose 18 breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks. As a ‘quick start’ program, they have what they call Turbo 13 so in addition to the meals you choose yourself they send you 6 pre-selected breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks.
After the first order and going forward, you choose 24 of each meal. In fact, as soon as you place your first order you can go in and select the meals for your next order. You don’t have to wait for a certain date.
What’s next…
My first order arrives this Saturday, the day before Easter!! So Monday sounds like a good day to start. I will post a video when I receive my box of goodies so you can see first hand what’s in there, how the program works and what the deal is around eating your own food. And from there I will try to post weekly updates to let you know how things are going.
Happy tinkering,
Susan
