NutriSystem Food - Breakfast - NutriCinnamon Squares Cereal

You may be wondering what the heck this is, as this isn't what you get in your Big Brown Box.  It's an old NutriSystem plan entree that you can buy on the cheap from Big Lots.  It's marked for $1, but they have sales that can allow you to get them for $0.25 each.

You may be wondering why I have it as well, and I'll explain.  Every day I'm on NutriSystem, the day starts off just fine and completely on plan.  Then something pops up that requires me to be on the run for the remainder of the day or I simply leave home and walk straight out the door completely forgetting the bag of food I had prepared to keep on plan while on the run.  This means that I sometimes wind up with 18 dinners and 20 desserts untouched and no breakfasts, shakes, or lunches to round out for a complete NutriSystem day, so I buy these to save money over the a'la carte items directly from NutriSystem.

This, like all of the cereals I've tried from them are similar in size.  This is a snack-size bowl.  You are allowed to add milk, but I don't like milk, so I just add a splash; just enough to get it wet. Since I consume alongside my spinach protein shake, it is completely satisfying.

NutriSystem Food - Breakfast - Blueberry Muffin

Here is the packaged blueberry muffin.  The package is pretty big.

Here it is outside of the package:

and here it is inside of a 1 cup measuring cup:

 

Day One on NutriSystem

It was a big decision to spend so much money on dieting, but I wanted a chance at maybe losing a few pounds over the summer compared to eating on the run with the kids home. This plan is expensive; at least for me. I went for it.

The day finally came when I received my first, what the plan members refer to as a, Big Brown Box. I excitedly opened it up and was immediately offended.  There were so many chocolate bars, chocolate in general, & junk food, i.e. cookies, chips, snack mixes, and muffins. It hit me.....not only is this how the world thought I had been eating, but NutriSystem was catering to that mentality as well. I decided to brush it off and go with it. I decided it couldn't hurt to try to lose weight eating all the stuff they thought I already did. At that point, I decided I could care less what anybody thought and, in the spirit of an old hair commercial, "I'm worth it."

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for all the minor details that accompanied this plan, but I figured it out quickly once I opened a tiny little package of instant mashed potatoes and thought "This is lunch?"

What was most surprising was that once I ate the breakfast entree and the shake, and a few hours later, the mid-morning PowerFuel, which was peanut butter out of a tablespoon measure, I suddenly found myself extremely hungry. I was actually starving--something I had never felt before despite not eating all day long prior. Suddenly, I was obsessed with food when I had never given it a thought prior. Ironic I think.

I toughed out the sudden urge I had to snack while giving up my pop simultaneously. By the end of the day I had a raging dull headache. It was relentless to the point I had to get up in the middle of the night and take some pain medications--something I never do--and I can count on my hands how many times I've actually ever had a headache. I wondered if it was from sugar withdrawal, and set out to the NutriSystem community to find out. What I found was nearly 1,000 posts in the blog section regarding this starter headache.

It appears many people suffer with the headache. Some have it for 3 days. Mine only lasted that one day.


Now that I've been on the plan for a few months with periods of being noncompliant when on the run, each and every time I restart, the headache returns the first day. It is resolved with Aleve. I can't say what causes that because it isn't sugar withdrawal. I've monitored what I've eaten during the day or two I've been off plan, and there was no sugar to withdraw from. I wonder if it isn't the preservatives found in this shelf-stable food.

Missing Real Unrehydrated Fresh Foods

I've been on NutriSystem since April 19 and I find that I'm really missing foods like these: I've made these stuffed pablano peppers because I had so many grow in my garden. Not only am I not sure if this fits into my plan at the moment, nobody but probably my husband will even try this dish. Sigh. That would be another item to add the cons list I posted earlier....having to take time out of an already busy day to make a call to talk to one of their counselors. Double le sigh.

NutriSystem Food - Lunch - Italian Style Wedding Soup

The soup is okay. As can be expected, the sodium is low, so this version is a little bland compared to say Campbell's version, but it's definitely edible. There is about 3/4 cupful, which you are to accompany with what they call a PowerFuel. I mostly choose to just eat a lite string cheese stick & sometimes put some of it into the soup.

NutriSystem Food - Snack - Cheese Puffs

This is a bag of NutriSystem Cheese Puffs.  They don't taste like the originals, but they are pretty good to me.  The bag is huge, like most bags of chips, but the contents occupy barely half of it.  This is fine by me considering I never ate these things anyway and only eat them to follow the plan.  Here is how many are inside placed inside a child-size bowl.....

NutriSystem Food - Shake

This is a NutriSystem Vanilla shake blended up with a cupful of baby spinach.  Surprisingly, you cannot taste the baby spinach at all and it's a great way to work in a serving of the numerous vegetable servings the plan calls for throughout a day.

We are supposed to consume one of the shakes daily according to my plan diary.  I mix the baby spinach in with the chocolate-flavored and strawberry-flavored shakes as well. My meal tracker also has this shake listed for consumption with breakfast, so that is what I do, but you can move it to another time of the day.  

I use a Magic Bullet blender, and this is one of the cups it comes with.  You blend right in the cup.  The Bullet whips it up a bit too so that the consistency is more shake-like.  I don't like the shaker that NutriSystem provided.  It was like drinking a thick drink and was like "Eh."