Years ago, I tried the Jenny Craig program. It may have changed since I was there, but here’s my experience…
First, you have to visit a Jenny Craig center and meet with a personal weight loss coach. The coach measures your weight, talks to you about your goals, etc., then develops a weekly eating plan with you. Your menu for the entire week is laid out – which consists of Jenny Craig prepackaged prepared entrees. Each week, you return to the center to meet with your coach, get weighed, and develop and buy the next week’s menu. Over time, as you lose weight, you are slowly weaned off the prepackaged food. For example, you’ll eat Jenny Craig breakfast and lunches, but get to make your own dinner.
It’s easy. There are no fancy cooking, food shopping, counting calories or other nonsense required. Basically, you don’t even have to think – just follow.
It really works - fast. In the first week, I lost 6.5 lbs. My weight loss coach couldn’t believe it. After that, I lost a steady 2 to 4 lbs. a week (until I quit).
There is support. My weight loss coach was really nice and very helpful. I definitely felt I was supported there.
It’s expensive. All the prepackaged foods cost a lot of money. (but I guess if you’re not buying chips and soda and other junk it evens out price wise)
It’s difficult with family. I found it was very hard to eat my prepackaged meals during family dinners, when everyone else had steak and fries. Plus, if you’re like me, I not only had to watch everyone else eat “real” food, but I had to cook it for them too. Double duty cooking is not fun.
It’s hard to go back to “normal eating” once the program has ended. Though they guide you through a “transition period”, because I had had all my meals prepackaged for me, I found it hard to re-learn portion sizes, healthy cooking strategies, low-cal food choices and so on. Eventually, over time, I gained the weight back because I couldn’t incorporate the Jenny Craig pedagogy into the real world.
Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid diet plan if you need to lose a lot of weight fast (like for a wedding or something).
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