The Accidental NutriSystem Experiment

A few days ago, when I picked up the hub from work, he told me to drive by our old house.  He had to check if a box had arrived for him there.  Sure enough, after talking to the new people who lived there, he came out with a big box to put in the trunk.  I was like WTH?  He launched into the long story of credit card fraud (committed w/his CC by someone else) and monitoring his account only to find a big charge from NutriSystem. 

When he called them to explain what happened and get them to cancel the charge, the box of umpteen meals and snacks had already been sent.  They wouldn't accept returns even though he hadn't even ordered the stuff.  They told him it had already been delivered to our old address and that he could do what he wanted with the food.  Here is the big box after we plunked it down on the living room floor.

Inside the box we found three trays of Nutrisystem food: breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert items, plus a men's results kit. 

The hub shook his head, apparently speechless.
Both kids: "I wanna try some!"
Me: "Mama's got herself a diet!"

True confessions time: I'm a little pudgy.  Ok, a bit more than a little. But not a ton. But not a little.  I'd call it baby fat but my last baby is eight years old.  This pudge could be the baby of the baby fat though.  I've always wanted to try Nutrisystem or something like it--I like the no-brainer aspect of the food being sent to you.  On the other hand, I like to eat food I can afford and, when possible, food that is fresh.

Now, with a big box of Nutrisystem food in the spare room, I've been eating it for two days and I've lost a pound.  I'm never hungry and, while this stuff isn't cruise line food, its not half bad either.  Most of all, what I'm learning about is portion control.  Non-Nutrisystem portions of food are pretty dang big!  A common misnomer about Nutrisystem is that all you eat is the food that is mailed to you. Not true.  You add veggie (and sometimes fruit) portions as well as a dairy/protein portion to each meal.  This is good in that you eat more and, ultimately, feel more satisfied.  Its bad if you're counting on blowing your whole food budget on Nutrisystem food each month since you'll need to buy extra groceries to supplement with.

So, I'll be checking in and charting my Nutrisystem progress every Friday.  It would be great if I also used pics of myself to chart my progress but I've already had a student who has stalked my blog and then used my body pics in a power point for class.  Yes, that happened. Don't laugh.

In the meantime, I'm plotting as to how I can get another month of Nutrisystem food without dropping $300+ on it.  And without stealing my hub's credit card.  Which I did NOT do to get this month's shipment.

And soon I'll detail my what-I'll-do-to-exercise-when-all-of-my-other-exercise-plans-have-failed plan.

I'll just leave you with the exchange my 8 yr old and I had when I let her have a bite of my Nutrisystem fudge brownie dessert:

Her: Ugh, that tastes like magic marker!

Me: How do you know what magic marker tastes like?

Her: That tastes like what magic marker smells like.

Me (to myself): But at least its fudge magic marker . . .  

And, yes, I ate the whole fudge magic marker brownie.