Diary of a Nutrisystem Journey – Week 2

Now that the Turbo Takeoff week is behind me, I’ve ventured into the weekly, ongoing program that will be with me til the end.   Read on to follow my Diary of a Nutrisystem Journey – Week 2.

On week 2 I only lost .5 lbs, so that makes my total for the two weeks 4.4 lbs.  A pretty pitiful loss for week 2 but that’s better than I expected because right after my week of Turbo Takeoff I had to go out of town for 5 days!  More on that later…

What has changed…

The difference between the initial Turbo Takeoff week and the rest of the program is fairly substantial.  As I mentioned in my Week 0 and Week 1 posts, they pick the food for you in the first week.  You get breakfast, then a shake, then lunch, then a Nutricurb bar, then dinner.  The only thing you add to the menu is 4 servings of fresh vegetables a day.  It’s only about 1,025 calories a day that first week.

Starting with week 2, you eat more often, you begin incorporating your own food, you can eat out and you replace the Nutrisystem food with your own food for one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner every week.  That’s why they only supply you with 24 breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks a month.  They want you to incorporate your own food once a week for each meal.  Personally I think that’s a good idea, because eventually you’re going to lose the weight and go on “maintenance” and you need to know how to eat “real” food the right way.  The daily calories from week 2 forward is around 1,200 calories a day.

A typical day…

Before I talk about a typical day, there is some Nutrisystem vernacular you need to know.  A PowerFuel is a lean protein that contains healthy fats.  Examples are deli meats, cheese, eggs, fish and nuts.  They’re 80-120 calories and have at least 5 grams of protein.  The serving size is 1 to 2 oz depending on the food.  Deli turkey, ham, chicken, etc are all 2 oz servings while nuts is 1 oz.  A SmartCarb is 80-120 calories and has 1 or more grams of fiber.  Things like fruit, beans, bread, pasta, corn and peas are examples of SmartCarbs.  The serving size is a half a cup for most beans, peas and corn, a whole piece of fruit or a cup of larger fruits.

So, for women a typical day on Nutristystem consists of:

• Breakfast = a Nutrisystem Breakfast + a PowerFuel
• Morning snack = a PowerFuel
• Lunch = a Nutrisystem Lunch
• Afternoon snack = a PowerFuel and a SmartCarb
• Dinner = a Nutrisystem Dinner
• Evening Snack = a Nutrisystem Snack

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I have found all of the food to be completely edible, but of course I have favorites and then there are those foods I don’t think I’ll order again.

Here’s a hint:   You can change your next order up until they’re getting ready to ship it so as you try all the different foods in your first order and find you don’t particularly care for an item, check to see if that food is in the next order and exchange it for something else.

Nutrisystem on the road…

I went out of town for 5 days last week and that wasn’t easy for a Nutrisystem newbie!  I went to a blogging conference in Salt Lake City and to attempt to stay on track, I brought some of the prepackaged food with me.  I called the hotel ahead of time to see if they could put a microwave in my room.  They were more than happy to accommodate, plus there was already a small refrigerator in the room.

When I got to the hotel, after I unpacked I hit the grocery store and got some fresh veggies and some deli ham.  I figured that could cover my PowerFuels and veggies for the most part.  I used the Nutrisystem savory snacks like popcorn and pretzels for my SmartCarb…though I had already discovered that most of the prepackaged snacks are more than the recommended 80-120 calories for a SmartCarb.  But since most of them were only about 20 calories more than the range, right or wrong I made the executive decision to use them for my SmartCarb while out of town.

The difficulty in traveling while on Nutrisystem is eating restaurant foods…and the difficulty of going to a conference while on Nutrisystem is the temptations!!  There seemed to be sweets everywhere!  I’d be a big liar if I said I resisted temptation every time.  I had a brownie and two cookies over 3 days and they were worth every bite.   🙂

Flex Meals and Numi…

I knew I’d need to join some of the breakfasts, lunches and dinners at the conference but I didn’t attend them all.  I ate some of the meals in my room, using my Nutrisystem meals I’d brought with me.  Most of the conference food was buffet style so on day 1 for breakfast I had scrambled eggs with salsa and a piece of turkey sausage.  When I had a break I went to my room and logged my breakfast in the Nutrisystem Numi app which is the official tracking app for Nutrisystem.  I have to say I am not a fan of logging non-Nutrisystem food in Numi.  They make it difficult for you.  For instance, I typed in that breakfast and for the scrambled eggs it refused to log it as a PowerFuel!  Why not?  It’s an egg!  Eggs are PowerFuels!  I had the same issue with most of the foods I attempted to log, so I stopped logging food in Numi.  It was too frustrating.  I’m only logging my weight loss progress.  So that kind of makes me feel like I’m on my own for those Flex Meals they want you to eat.

They have another app called The Leaf that has recipes and tips and tricks and to be honest I haven’t had time to do much research there so maybe that’s where I’ll find help in tracking Flex Meals.

So now that I’m back in town I will spend some time next week figuring out FlexMeals and SmartCarbs.  I’ll let you know how Week 3 goes!

Happy tinkering,

Susan