Meet my new best mate this month, Jenny (Craig) !

 As I told you back at the start of January (here), I was given the opportunity of trialling Jenny Craig for a month. Now, although I jumped at the chance, I admit to also being ever so slightly wary because it's all prepackaged convenience food that goes against everything the MuTu System programme tells you about avoiding ready meals and eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and organic produce, and also the Thinking Slimmer programme that teaches you (subconsciously) to avoid diet food and just eat normally but make sensible food choices. 

However, I couldn't have planned a better time to start the Jenny Craig programme if I'd tried because, as well as having a fluey/cold bug that is leaving me feeling drained with little energy or motivation to cook proper healthy meals from scratch, it's also parent-teacher evening time, which means tomorrow and Thursday I'll be crawling home from work around 9pm and certainly won't want to cook !

Well, I've just received the hamper containing a month's worth of Jenny Craig products and I have to say, there's an awful lot of food ! Two big boxfuls in fact - I've had to rearrange the kitchen cupboards to fit it all in ! You get breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for 28 days, as well as a folder packed with weight loss, weight management and healthy lifestyle guidance, which is very complete. I thought the programme sounded expensive (about £10 a day) but when you see the sheer quantity of food, and factor in the personal phonecall consultations each week, it's actually not bad when you break it all down.

Unpacking the hamper was quite exciting actually, discovering all the different meal options ! There are noodle pots, salad pots and meal trays ...

... lots and lots of meal and soup pouches ...

... porridge and cereal sachets for breakfast, snack bars ...

... and loads of packets of crisp-type snacks.

I purposely didn't look too closely at all the different meal options available because I want to keep an element of excitement and surprise in my next month's menu but I did see some very exciting and exotic-sounding names go by that I am really looking forward to sampling.

I've just eaten my first Jenny Craig dinner in fact and opted for one of the pouches, containing the yummy-sounding Thai Vegetable Curry with Waterchestnuts and Basmati Rice. Now, given that it comes in a pouch, I was expecting this to be a bit sloppy and very light on rice, as many "diet meals" often are, but I was really impressed.

It looks homemade with a generous helping of tooth-tender rice, crispy waterchestnuts (that I'd never tried before and that give some lovely crunch and texture) and the perfect amount of spice to give it a delicious taste and a very slight kick. I really enjoyed eating it, loved the taste and found it really filling, despite only containing 250 calories. It's great to have a healthy meal devised by nutritionists without any complicated calorie counting or weighing at all. I was surprised to see the pouches aren't microwavable, which would have been even more convenient, but it's no hardship putting it on a plate before warming it up.

I'll be keeping you updated over the next month but so far, I have to say I'm really impressed.

for more information : http://www.jennycraig.co.uk

Other reviews you may be interested in :

New Year's Resolution Part 3 : Jenny Craig 

Easy Bean One Pot Meal review 

Tasty Little Numbers calorie-controlled snacks review