Pushing Reset With Jenny Craig

Thank you Jenny Craig for sponsoring this post. -- Get serious about losing weight with Jenny Craig!



I stepped on the scale at a doctors appointment and audibly gasped. I'm sure it wasn't the first time that the nurse heard a patient question the accuracy of the scale. Weight has never really been an issue for me. If anything, I hovered around the lower end of normal. Last February I was involved in a fairly serious car accident. Accident related injuries turned into chronic pain that the doctors couldn't put their finger on. For months I bounced between specialists trying to find the cause of my pain while trying to find my new normal with physical limitations. Before the accident, I was very active. I ran often, did strength training and made it a point to hit the gym five days a week. For months after the accident I was struggling to find a new routine. The medication I was on made me exhausted and one of the side effects was weight gain. It should have been no surprise when that scale showed a weight I had never seen before outside of pregnancy. 
I ignored the number as it crept up. I had frequent doctors appointments and I figured it was the heavy clothes I was wearing as the weather started to turn. Plus, the scale was probably just not calibrated correctly. I mean, it gets used all the time right? Wrong. The third appointment at the third doctor's office in one week confirmed that I had indeed packed on some pounds. I'm not quite sure why I didn't notice. My jeans were tight and rarely could I have them buttoned. Ten pounds, that's how much weight I had gained in just a few months.

Ten pounds really isn't that much, but I'm getting older and my metabolism is slowing down and well, if it was ten pounds in just a few months, what if it was twenty pounds in a year, or fifty pounds in five years. I needed a reset. I needed to re-examine my activity level, figure out my portions and take off those pounds that were slowing me down. I didn't want to mess with any fad diet programs. I needed to get real results that were going to last. If you need a reset too, come see how the first two weeks have been on the Jenny Craig program.

Just after the holidays I met with my new consultant, Sherry at my local Jenny Craig.  Don't worry if you don't live near a center. Jenny Craig Anywhere offers one-on-one support over the phone or through video chats. At my first meeting, we talked about goals and went over the food plan. This is the perfect time to discuss any concerns that you might have. For me, family meal time is important. We are intentional about sitting down to dinner every night and enjoying that time as a family. I wasn't quite sure what that was going to look like if I was on a food program eating different meals than my family. Sherry was quick to address that and gave me a few great tips. I continue cooking my families meals and I make sure that we also have a shared food item {like a fruit or veggie} that we can all enjoy together. I tend to make healthy food choices, I just eat far too much. Portion control is something I needed to tackle. My consultant suggested that after cooking my meals, I should put them on a plate so that I could see portion sizes.

My consultant printed out my meal plan and then she went "shopping" in the Jenny Craig pantry. Jenny Craig has more than 100 premium menu items {that are all surprisingly yummy!}, created by 40 professional chefs. I had my meal plan with each day listed with exactly what I would eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I even had snacks and desserts thrown in too! I came home and cleared out a shelf for the food in my pantry as well as a freezer drawer full of my food for the week.

I have been amazed at the variety of food I have been able to have. This is a glimpse into my breakfast. What you don't see is that this meal also has either yogurt or a chocolate dream shake. So it's plenty of food to help me start my day.

Having never been on a program like this, I was a little worried that I would feel hungry throughout the day. I was cutting my calories in half! Shockingly, this has never been an issue. I feel like I've always had options through what Jenny Craig calls Volumetrics®. Let me explain. Research shows that over the course of a day or two a person will eat roughly the same volume of food. So if you eat your usual amount of food, but with lower-calorie/higher-volume choices, you will eat fewer calories and feel full and be more likely to lose the weight. 
These are just a few of my lunch and dinner meals. I am not one to eat my meals out of a box, so imagine my surprise when these foods from the meal plan end up on my plate. I love that I can add some fresh additions to my meals. Nearly every meal has a section on the back of the box that says "feeling creative". Those offer some fabulous meal ideas that will help your meal feel fresh and personalized. I've also added a few creative touches of my own as well. On the back of the meal plan there is a section called unlimited free foods. The list is long and I make sure my fridge and pantry are full of those items.

I've learned a few things if this is your first time on a program like this. When you chop your veggies or fruit, chop extra so that you can easily grab them and go.

I've thrown together a video of a few of my favorite recipes for you. The Asian veggie mix was a recipe from the back of one of my Jenny Craig meals. It's become one of my favorites since everything in it is on the unlimited free list. I can eat as much of it as I want! I add lemon juice to the fruit salad that I cut up so that the fruit can be eaten over several days and I don't have to spend time chopping everyday. The small diced fruit also makes it easy to measure out your portions. And finally, the frappe is probably one of my favorite parts of the program. It's easy and creates a drink that I can enjoy and sip on all morning long!

I have been really enjoying my reset with Jenny Craig. It was much needed and it feels good to start the year off with a clinically proven and recommended weight-loss program that gives me the structure that I need and the the support that is going to help me learn how to lose the weight and keep it off. I'm hoping that the next time I step on the scale at the doctors office I'm able to do a little happy dance instead of a gasp. I would encourage you to give Jenny Craig a try. If you have just a few pounds to lose like I do or if you have a bigger number to tackle, continue to enjoy the foods you love and join a program that will help you get real results.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.