Sixteen years ago, daughter Karen and I embarked on a weight loss journey, courtesy of Jenny Craig. Karen had just finished her stellar career as an internationally ranked shot putter, and she needed to relearn how to eat like a non-shot putter. She and my husband Roger conspired to convince me to join her in solidarity. I needed to do something. Like many people, I had gained a lot of weight during the 1990s, reaching an appalling 210 on my 5’9″ frame. I told the Jenny Craig consultants that I wanted to weigh 135, and they asked me politely if that was realistic. I said, yes, I’d done it several times before.
Fast forward eight months, and I had overshot my original goal of 135 lbs to reach 130 lbs. Now the real challenge–maintenance–was about to begin. I had lost that same amount of weight several times previously (I’m a pretty good dieter), but had never been able to hold it for long. Jenny Craig helped me do that. In the ensuing years, I did bounce as high as 153 lbs. (Covid, thank you), but never went higher than that. I did cheat a lot, but on most days, I depended on Jenny meals for convenience and control.
A few months ago, Jenny Craig suddenly shut down with no apparent warning. My center, which was a franchise as opposed to a corporate center, held out for a few more months, but eventually, no more Jenny food was forthcoming. Yes, Nutrisystem did buy aspects of the business, and you can get frozen dinners shipped to you courtesy of Amazon, but we decided to go for it on our own.
My Apple Watch tells me that I use about 1700 calories a day. I think of myself as a reasonably active person (averaging about 8000 steps per day), but I’m also nearly 71 years old, and metabolism does interesting things as we age. I searched online for 1700 calorie “diets,” called diets because most people would lose weight on that. The basic idea is to keep your meals in the 400 calorie or less category, which gives you some wiggle room for snacks.
Daughter Karen had been going to a corporate center, so she needed solutions faster than we did. She explored Lean Cuisine, owned by Nestle. Nestle owned Jenny Craig for a while, and in our opinion, ripped off some of Jenny’s better recipes. Many of the Lean Cuisine items are old favorites from Jenny, albeit with slightly more calories. We’ve stockpiled a set of Lean Cuisine dinner items as a backup. We’re partial to the Swedish meatballs and teriyaki chicken.
Karen has substituted a Kroger breakfast sandwich for her Jenny breakfasts, but after looking at these, I thought I could do something similar from scratch for a lot less money. I use Thomas’ original English muffins and microwave a scrambled egg for a filling (we’re renovating our kitchen, so microwaving it is for now). This ends up being about 220 calories, similar to a Jenny breakfast. I’ve also experimented with Kashi cereals. I’m mostly a hot breakfast person, but Kashi has some nice options. I’m careful to measure out the cereal, so with a banana and milk, this breakfast is a more hearty 300 plus calories. Surprisingly, at least to me, the cereal keeps me from feeling hungry before lunch better than the egg sandwich does.
Lunch used to be a Jenny pizza or baguette sandwich. I’ve substituted a big slice of sourdough bread (110 calories) cut in half and toasted with a slice of real cheese (woo hoo), sliced sandwich meat (50-70 calories), sliced tomato, and greens with some fruit on the side, keeping lunch under 400 calories. It’s been a long time since I’ve had real bread and real cheese, so this is a treat!
The toughest time of the diet day for me has always been the afternoon. I just get this drop in energy around 3 PM. One of the treats I’ve discovered is Goya plantain chips. I love plantains, which husband Roger deep fries for a delicious treat. Well, the deep fry part needs to be an infrequent thing, but the Goya chips are great! You can have 32 (count them) for about 120 calories. Otherwise, I’ll have a yogurt or my most recent fave, a serving of lowfat cottage cheese. For some reason, I’m craving dairy these days. I try to add a fruit in there, too.
I always fix a rather elaborate salad for dinner, because husband Roger will eat this when he’s otherwise “allergic” to green food. We don’t skimp. There is a hard-cooked egg and a quarter avocado in there along with hearts of palm, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, shredded carrot, chopped celery, and mushrooms. We make our own oil and vinegar dressing with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and some spices. I’ve usually gone with a Lean Cuisine entree, but we try to have salmon once or twice a week. A goal is to add more veggies with dinner. We used to do this but have gotten away from it.
I end the day with a counted out serving of cookies and a Swiss Miss cocoa that I make in my Keurig. My intent is to bake my own evening snacks, but without a kitchen right now, that’s a little ambitious.
I’ve learned a few things in my maintenance journey. First of all, as much as I enjoy a nice glass of red wine in the evening, nothing is more likely to get me off track. It’s not just the empty calories, but the effect on willpower. When I drink wine, I want something to go with it, and that’s usually things like nuts and cheese and crackers. All are good in moderation, but I tend to overeat them if I’ve had wine.
The second lesson for me, and this won’t be true for everyone, is that I absolutely with no exceptions have to step on that scale every morning. When I don’t, that’s when the weight goes up. It’s much easier to deal with an extra pound or two–you just cut back until it’s gone again–than to look at five, ten, or more pounds. That’s depressing, and nobody needs that.
Several weeks in, I’m starting to feel a bit more confident in my ability to stay on track. I’m holding steady at my goal weight of 135. I have to admit that I underestimated the psychological lifeline I had with Jenny Craig. I like the ability to just eat and not think about it. Now I’m back to the count, weigh, measure thing. I have never been able to trust my internal signals–a childhood of eating things to make sure children in another part of the world didn’t starve (my parents were clean plate fanatics) ensured that if food is on my plate, it will be eaten, regardless of how I feel. So portion control is king.
I do cheat sporadically. You have to. During our kitchen renovation, Roger and I have been experimenting with some great Instant Pot recipes–shrimp & grits, sweet & sour pork, chili with beans, and Beef Bourguignon. We do this for lunch, which seems to have less of a weight impact than doing it for dinner. Then we have a really light dinner–maybe just the salad. My birthday is coming up, and I fully intend to enjoy the wonderful pumpkin spice cake Roger is plotting, cream cheese frosting and all. But I will be on the scale the next day to make any necessary adjustments.
Just a few final thoughts. My Facebook newsfeed keeps giving me posts about how thin people eat more than fat people. How cruelly misleading is that! I know the difference between what fat me ate compared to what thin me can eat, and it’s huge. All of this feel-good nonsense about BMI being misleading (it is for a very small minority–most of us are not NFL running backs) or the evils of diet culture (reasonable weight loss is not only doable, but surprisingly so, and yes, you can maintain a weight loss) are not doing overweight people any good. One of the ads that really hit home to me was one showing women doing amazing things. The tagline was, “think about what you could accomplish if you weren’t worrying about your weight.” It’s terrific to not be self-conscious about photos and to walk into your closet without worrying whether the outfit you have in mind will fit. Women spend countless dollars and time on hair, makeup, manicures, and clothing, when the most important thing you can do for your health and appearance is to reach and maintain a healthy weight. Honestly, it’s worth every bit of effort and then some.
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