Jenny Craig Week One

As I previously mentioned I've been doing a two week trial of the Jenny Craig diet. If you've never heard of Jenny Craig before, they are essentially a diet food delivery service. They send you a huge hamper filled with breakfasts, lunches, dinners & snacks that are all super healthy. When you sign up to the programme you receive an initial phone call to set up the service for you. You tell the consultant your height, weight & activity level as well as how much you want to lose. You can also tailor the programme so that you don't receive any food you dislike or would be allergic to. What I think makes Jenny Craig stand out from some of the other diet food delivery services is that each week you receive a phone call from your personal consultant. They keep a record of your weight & measurements, discuss the programme with you & help you plan for meals out.

As well as the food, you get sent a binder filled with lots of information about the plan and worksheets to help with your healthy eating habits, exercise & mindset. It also comes with some set menus so you know exactly what to eat on a certain day. Each day is perfectly balanced so that you get the right amount of protein, fats & carbs. Heres the kind of thing I've been eating in an average day.


Jenny Craig breakfasts are really nice & give me a great burst of energy to start the day with. I was sent a mixture of muesli, porridge & Special K style cereal. This is apple & cinnamon porridge which is simply made by just adding 125ml of boiling water. I found it really delicious. I've just added a blood orange, a Muller Light yoghurt & a huge mug of Dr Stuart's Detox tea.





Lunches tend to be pasta pots, mash potato pots or soups. This is pasta with cream sauce. With most of the meals you're sent from Jenny Craig you have to add some of your own food. At lunch time you always have to add at least one cup of salad. You get sent this small plastic measuring cup and whatever you can fit in there is equal to half a cup. Its really handy for measuring things like cheese to make sure you're not adding too many calories. I like to pile up my plate with salad because I find the lunches to be the least filling of all the meals. I dress my salad with a few sprays of this balsamic dressing. It adds some flavour to the vegetables without the huge amount of calories & the spray pump stops me from completely drowning the salad. The Jenny Craig soups & pasta pots are really nice but I wasn't too keen on the mash pots. Its basically a pot of instant mash with some dried peas & carrots, some of which didn't rehydrate properly meaning I had to eat crunchy peas, eww. Even after adding some cheese, they still tasted pretty rank.



In the afternoon you have a Jenny Craig snack. These include cereal bars, chocolate bars & crisps. I adore the potato bites. They taste really good, especially the Thai chilli flavour. Theres also something called 'free foods' which you can eat all day long if you so wish. Its mainly things like vegetables but you can easily add in a few more snack meals of things like crudités & salsa dip or ratatouille. That way you'll never go hungry whilst still sticking to the diet. I found that I was starting to struggle in the mid afternoon because even after eating one of the packs of crisps I was still hungry & thats when I would cheat with a couple of biscuits or pieces of chocolate. Luckily my consultant suggested that I should fill up on free foods during this time & I've managed to stick to it properly since then.


Dinners have the most variety to them. I've had things like curries, chilli, chicken provencal, beef tortellini & casseroles. This meal was chicken & mash with gravy. I'm so impressed with all the chicken meals, they're full of huge tender chunks of meat. I really enjoyed this one & the chicken provencal. The chicken tikka & rice was lovely too but I'm starting to a bit fed up of curry after having it three times in one week! You have to add at least one cup of cooked vegetables to all of the dinners. I buy those Sainsbury's value bags of carrots & broccoli for 75p because you can just pop them in the microwave & you get a huge portion of veg. The dinners are really filling & taste great.

I did a weigh in on Wednesday morning before having my second consultation and I've lost 2lbs in one week! Thats pretty good for me because I've definitely struggled with getting a loss as I get closer to my target weight. I wasn't really sure if I was following the diet correctly as it seemed like I was constantly eating but it does seem to be working. I've not done a huge amount of exercise but I do walk everywhere whilst pushing a toddler in a huge pram thats normally loaded with shopping bags. I'm really enjoying the diet so far and its obviously working if I've lost 2lbs in a week with literally no effort. It has helped me to learn a lot about my eating habits & how to balance my meals better. I've still got a few more days left so hopefully I can lose two more pounds in that time. I'll be posting a full review of the Jenny Craig diet next week.

If you're interested in joining Jenny Craig they currently have a special offer on where you can get a 50% discount on a two week programme, which works out at just £38.50 a week/£5.50 a day for all your food and consultations. I think thats a great bargain because I can easily spend that on just my lunch every day. You can find out more by calling 0800 088 2048.