Welcome to week 4 of my Jenny Craig trial. I was expecting this to be my last week as I received a hamper containing a month's worth of food but, as I've been introducing a lot more homecooked but healthy food over the past fortnight since I've been on holiday, I have enough Jenny Craig sachets to keep going for another week. I'm back to work next week so I'll be back on the plan properly. I've been tending to have one homemade meal and one Jenny Craig meal each day this week, so I was expecting the weight loss to slow right down, while crossing my fingers that it didn't start going back up. But even when eating my own homecooked food, I've noticed that I'm eating more fruit and vegetables or side salads and instinctively cutting down on the proportion of meat, pasta and rice on the plate, so Jenny Craig obviously helps you get into good food habits even when you're no longer following the plan. You'll have to scroll to the end of the blogpost to find out if I lost any weight this week though!
Right, on the menu this week :
Saturday
breakfast - no, I didn't feel hungry so I didn't have anything but then I got the mid-morning munchies (see? it's never a good idea to skip breakfast !) so I ate a Jenny Craig white chocolate cereal bar.
lunch - salad & diet Coke at McDonald's
dinner - Jenny Craig Bacon & Mushroom Risotto with white wine, grapefruit - yay, almost plain rice for once ! One of the things I miss is eating rice that tastes like rice, rather than being totally swamped by the sauce in the sachets. Very tasty, copious and I never would have believed it was "diet food".
Sunday
breakfast - Jenny Craig chocolate and wholewheat flakes - I decided to not skip breakfast in an attempt to not pig out on a roast dinner at lunch !
lunch - had the same roast dinner as the rest of the family - chicken breast, 2 small roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy - totally stuffed but Sophie made me laugh because she said "your dinner will be as small as Pierre's soon, Mum" ! Maybe the Jenny Craig portion sizes have filtered through to my subconscious ?! I didn't think it was any smaller than usual and certainly didn't feel hungry afterwards !
dinner - Jenny Craig Tomato & Vegetable Pasta - this looked and tasted exactly like my homemade pasta and that is why I think Jenny Craig works so well. You don't feel like you're not eating, as you do with meal replacement shakes, the food doesn't taste like diet food, they just sort your portion sizes out - and as you can see, you still get a very generous serving. This is honestly exactly like one of my homemade dinners, except it came out of a sachet - perfect !
Monday
breakfast - Jenny Craig chocolate and wholewheat flakes
lunch - Jenny Craig Provencal chicken and Durum wheat - now I always eat the tray meals straight out of the plastic dish to save on washing up, but I have seen other bloggers serve these on a dinner plate with a side serving of vegetables and that does make it look more like a home-cooked dish. I was sitting next to Pierre at the table and I'm sure he thought I was eating one of his toddler meals because he kept asking me for a forkful ! Very tasty with big chunks of chicken.
dinner - Jenny Craig Beef Lasagne & salad - check through my previous updates for a photo of this one !
Tuesday
breakfast - no
lunch - 2 small slices of pizza & salad - I invited the girls' friends over for lunch so joined in with the group meal, going heavy on the salad and light on the pizza.
dinner - Jenny Craig Moroccan-style chickpea tagine with ginger, side salad, satsuma, yogurt - I decided to go for one of the vegetarian options to catch up, after the pizza lunch. Very tasty and filling with a lovely rich sauce.
Wednesday
breakfast - no
lunch - Jenny Craig instant potato with peas and carrots, slice of bacon, fried egg, baked beans - the others were eating bacon, eggs, beans and chips (from the Actifry) so I went half and half, replacing the chips with a mash pot. You have to leave them for at least 5 minutes after pouring in the boiling water and stirring but they make a really tasty, creamy mash.
dinner - Mediterranean vegetable tart - a recipe that I blogged about here.
Thursday
breakfast - Jenny Craig yogurt-covered and wholewheat flakes
lunch - Piri Piri tray-baked chicken & mash - another recipe we tried out and blogged about here.
dinner - Jenny Craig beef casserole with black velvet porter and potatoes - very tasty but the beef was a bit disintegrated so it was almost more like chunky mince than actual beef pieces. Very filling though.
Friday
breakfast - Mixed Spiced Muesli (that we made here)
lunch - steak, pasta, green beans
dinner - Jenny Craig Beef meatballs and potatoes in a rich tomato sauce, salad - this made a surprisingly generous plateful and, again, tasted homemade. Slightly bland so I added some spices and a bit of chilli.
Saturday
breakfast - Jenny Craig muesli with raisins and hazelnuts - I haven't had the muesli for a while and still found it quite bland. I said last time I'd try it with yogurt instead of milk but forgot. Chopped apple or other fresh fruit would liven it up a bit too. I saw on the Jenny Craig website that they have breakfast beans too, which look like they'd make a nice change.
lunch - salad & diet coke at McDonalds
dinner - home made vegetable soup (courtesy of Madhouse Daddy Mike)
So ... the big question is, after mixing up Jenny Craig with homecooked food, what happened to my weight this week ? Well, a quick reminder that at the start of my Jenny Craig trial I weighed in at 86.1kg and now I weigh 83.4kg, so that's another 1/2 kg this week. I was watching a programme on TV earlier where there was a girl who wanted to lose weight by going to see a dietician who put her on a highly complicated calorie-controlled diet where she had to weigh everything and told her she should expect to lose 1.5kg per month. Well, Jenny Craig is a whole lot easier, tastier (judging the platefuls of steamed vegetables and plain yogurt that she was eating) and - judging by my experience so far - effective. I did need to add in some good old home-cooked-from-scratch food this week because I was starting to get bored of opening sachets of ready meals at each mealtime, but I'm ready to go back to work next week on the salads for lunch and finishing off the last meals in the cupboard. I'll be keen to see if I lose more weight after a week of exclusively Jenny Craig meals or if my weight loss is slowing down now, as it inevitably will. Verdict this time next week !
**** The 50% discount on a two week programme is still available, which works out at just £38.50 a week/£5.50 a day for all your food and consultations. *****
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You're getting quite a range of food on that diet must help you stick to it.
ReplyDeleteI'd not heard of this before. I knew Rosemary Conley does something similar though. Looks interesting! There's quite a good range. I'm struggling a bit with variety in my diet at the moment :(
ReplyDeleteThe Bacon & Mushroom Risotto with white wine sounds great! The foods you had didn't seem limiting at all. Congrats on losing 1/2 kg this week alone! I have a friend who is on Weight Watchers ... it's interesting seeing her weigh everything. This seems a bit different!
ReplyDeleteIt really is convenient - no weighing, no calorie-counting ... and it's proper food too, just portion-controlled. Although I'm amazed at how generous the portions are, most of the time !
ReplyDelete