The "Before", Briefly

Officially, Scott and I are on Day 10 of our NutriSystem program. Unfortunately, 3 of those 10 days have included social situations that have involved eating. Ultimately, at least 1 meal on each of those 3 days was 'real food'-ruined.

When I do that math, I'm not seeing the value in our investment.

Granted (and a bit of background, since this is my first time to share this), Scott and I spend a fortune on food, for various reasons:

• It's pretty expensive to cook well for only 2 people

• Inexpensive items that are not allowed on our normal day-to-day menu (like salt) require either expensive (and pretty poor tasting) substitutes, or several other (and also expensive) spices used in unique combinations to try and equal the effects of salt on food

• We eat. A lot! Although this is still sort of our downfall (trust me when I say 'healthy appetites'. We are active people, and we love food), we recently discovered a particular combination of foods that allowed us to eat heartily while avoiding the traps of fat content, calorie counts, etc. More on this later...

• We eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. Now, I can't completely speak for other parts of the world, but when you live in Texas, "fresh" produce doesn't stay very "fresh" for very long. This means you are making more frequent trips to the store (gas expense) and having to buy in smaller quantities, which is usually more expensive

• We eat out. A lot! We're frequently on the go, and our schedules are tight (plus there's that 'love for food' thing again) that one of us typically suggests getting something 'on the run' and the other of us typically agrees

NutriSystem is not a 'cheap' program, by any means. Quite frankly, if you're neither comfortable with the idea of, nor in a financial position to be able to spend approximately $300 a month on just YOUR meals, then this is not the program for you.

You also have to add in the expense of the 'sides'... even though NutriSystem offers a full menu of meals, including carbs, veggies, and treats, there are still items you will have to shop for, to incorporate into your daily menu. Vegetables, dairy or protein items and beverages encompass the majority of these items.

Obviously, we've decided this was the way we wanted to go. Scott's done 95% of our cooking for as long as we've been together, so I'm sure this is a welcome reprieve for him! I really like the intense structure built-in to the program; I'm such a 'rules' junkie (major dork, you have no idea!) that I thrive in situations like this. (We tried the 6-week body makeover when we were living in the Virgin Islands and the results were amazing! More on this later, too.)

This is Scott's cupboard in our kitchen (none of the food is frozen or refrigerated, by the way):

This is mine:

Remember, too, that these are how our cupboards look after 10 days of eating (more or less) of these same items.

We have one more food-roadblock in our way (we're going out for my birthday on Tuesday, and it will most likely involve food and beer). BUT--> we have strictly vowed that THAT day will be the last. We're gonna have to buckle down and stick to it to really be able to judge it fairly.

One of our decisions before ordering was that we would eliminate eating out for an indefinite period of time. It's just way too expensive, even if you do stick to the healthy choices and portion sizes.

So, here we go. Day 11 will be forever referred to as Day 1 on our plan. Luckily, we each got a free week's worth of food in our shipments, so we're all set.

More later!



Next post: Our goals (we have very different ones), favorite-foods-so-far, and exercise