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Jenny Craig Review: Online Diet Program |
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| Second place in taste test; one-on-one support designed to establish a healthier overall lifestyle; adding your own fruit, vegetables and dairy is recommended | |
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Jenny Craig differs from the other diet services reviewed on NextAdvisor.com by emphasizing personalized consultations and face-to-face support. While most other meal delivery diet programs focus primarily on the food itself, perhaps also offering various tools and resources to help you reach your diet goals, Jenny Craig places equal focus on food, body and mind.
How Does It Taste? A critical element of any diet plan is how the food tastes, including how satiated you are. After all, if the food tastes unpleasant and you're always hungry it will be awfully hard to stay on track with your diet. Keeping this in mind, we actually ordered the food and had a panel of eight testers sample the meals. Food was rated on taste, and the numerical ratings were averaged for breakfast, lunch, dinner and overall categories. Jenny Craig was rated the second best tasting meal delivery plan, tied with Diet To Go, in our taste tests. You can see the complete results at our meal delivery taste test, and also how Jenny Craig stacked up against other meal delivery plans we tasted. Jenny Craig In-Centre Jenny Craig offers two different approaches to weight loss: Jenny Craig In-Centre or Jenny Craig At Home. If you choose Jenny Craig In-Centre, you will meet privately with a consultant at one of over 650 local Jenny Craig centers for a discussion of your current lifestyle and weight loss goals, as well as an initial weigh-in. Your consultant will work with you to customize the most effective plan to help you reach your goals. Each week, you will return to your local Jenny Craig center to meet with your consultant, who will help motivate you, overcome your challenges and track your progress. You will also pick up your Jenny Cuisine meals at these meetings. You'll purchase a one week supply of meals at a time, with no ongoing obligation. Jenny Craig At Home If you prefer more privacy and convenience, you can choose the Jenny Craig At Home program and speak to your consultant over the phone. With the At Home option, you'll have weekly phone support from your consultant, and your Jenny's Cuisine meals will be shipped to you via FedEx every two or four weeks, depending on your preference. (Note: There is a shipping fee with the At Home program). Meals In addition to the standard 1200-calorie woman's program, Jenny Craig has special programs for men, type 2 diabetics, teens and older adults. Initially, your diet will consist of three Jenny's Cuisine meals and one snack every day, plus your own groceries, such as fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy. You can customize your weekly menus based on your preferences. The meals are shelf stable, so you don't need to worry about refrigerating or freezing them, and they travel well for those on the move. Actual Diet Experience In addition to our independent taste test, we also had an individual dieter follow the Jenny Craig at Home plan for a week at the time of our first taste test where Jenny Craig ranked number one. She thought the food was by far the best tasting of all the meal plans we reviewed. She also felt satiated on the meals, and wasn't hungry once she started following the plan correctly. Because we ordered the "at Home" plan, the food was received by mail. The food arrived packaged, but without much in the way of instruction, and due to scheduling issues she wasn't able to speak with her consultant until part way through the first week. As a result, she didn't know that she was supposed to add her own fresh fruit, dairy and vegetables to the plan and was a little hungry until this bump was ironed out. The take-away here is that you should really synch up with your consultant first thing. They will key you in on your meal plans and how the entire Jenny experience should work, helping you avoid our issue. Support Jenny is known for their strong personal support, and our experience was no different. We participated in the Jenny at Home program, and our consultant had excellent follow-up. If we missed a weekly consult they reached out via the phone to reschedule. The consultants never rush you through a discussion, and are very pleasant to speak with. Whether you participate in an In-Centre or At Home plan, your consultant will help you learn to create your own menus and meals, and you will eventually begin to gradually integrate your own meals into your diet. Your consultant will also help you learn to make healthy choices at restaurants. In addition to your own consultant, you also have access to Jenny's eTools. eTools is an online format for journaling your thoughts, planning your meals and scheduling fitness activities. We found the fitness component to be a helpful way to record your daily activities, but perhaps not as robust as some other sites we've looked at. The meal planning section goes hand in hand with the meals you are shipped, and was a useful, if somewhat complicated tool. For this reason, you should take full advantage of your consultant, especially for the first couple of weeks. They can guide you around eTools and let you know how everything works. By the time you have reached your goal weight, you'll have developed a better relationship with food and learned to plan and prepare your own balanced meals. You can then transition to maintenance support, which will help you sustain your new, healthier lifestyle. You will still have access to online support to help keep you on track. Fitness Jenny Craig consultants will work with you to develop a personalized, staged approach to physical fitness, consisting of a combination of natural, everyday activities, playful activities and planned exercise. Your physical fitness plan will intensify as you work toward your weight loss goals, in order to help you burn more calories. For those who like to track their activities online, Jenny's eTools include a fitness diary. The Activity Planner lets you enter the type and length of your daily exercise, and then it estimates the total calories you burned (based on a 160 pound person). It's a nice way to keep track of past, present and future fitness activities, but it would be helpful to have a more accurate measurement of the amount of calories you burn, instead of one based on a hypothetical 160 pound person. Pricing Because Jenny Craig tailors each meal plan for the individual, there is no specific price list. However, the pricing generally ranges between $81 and $133 per week. At Home participants will need to pay an additional shipping fee. With Jenny Craig, you'll need to provide your own fruit, vegetables and dairy. Based on our purchases, we estimate the cost for these additional foods to be $45-$60 per week. However, as our cost was based on the "city" food prices that exist in San Francisco, your food cost may be significantly less. Bottom Line If you are looking for a comprehensive support system to help you establish a healthier lifestyle overall, Jenny Craig may be perfect for you. The combination of top-rated, good tasting meals and strong support made Jenny our overall Meal Plan diet winner. |
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Service Details:
| Cost: | $15/day (excludes cost of added food) shipping: around $14 |
| Diet Types: | Low-carb-focused meal delivery diet; type 2 diabetic, teen, men, and senior options |
| Support Types: | Phone counseling; in-person consultations; online forums and resources |
| Fitness Tools: |  |
| Taste Test Rating: |  |
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