Food and Taste
You could opt for a "mystery box" where Nutrisystem picks and chooses what to send you but heck if I'm going to do that. I went through the site where there was a decent selection of food to choose from. You must choose 28 per meal (for some reason desert and snacks have the exact same food choices). It's worth noting that you can change what is sent to you at any time up until your order is processed. So for example I adjusted my next shipment based on my taste from my current one. This can be especially useful if you loved a particular food and then got sick of it.
Which leads me to taste. I had difficulty finding out how good or bad the food is with Nutrisystem. Opinions on the topic vary wildly, but here is my 2 cents: "If you compare this food to home-cooking it's horrible. However if you consider the fact that you are eating pre-packaged food it's not half bad...even pretty darn good in some cases".
Speed and Storage
One of my very favorite things about Nutrisystem is the speed. All the food is kept at room temperature until you have to cook it. This means you can pretty much keep the food in the box (which is an amazing space saver) till you want to have at it. I have a bunch of food stashed in my office for any time I want to just eat. Most of the meals that involve cooking can be microwaved for just a minute or so. Because the meals are not very large it's easy to heat up, eat up and go.
Connections and Guidance
Like most every other community, Nutrisystem has a dedicated forum (why oh why can't you follow everyone else's example Bodymedia?). It's fairly detailed, no matter if you're new, your age or heck even your family situation there is a forum in there for you. Also it's interesting to point out that there are chat-rooms member pages, and even your own blog to help chronicle your journey. If that all wasn't enough Nutrisystem provides some pretty robust teaching tools to help you along. None of this matters of course if you don't utilize it. I don't know if previous reviews I've seen just didn't have this function at the time but there have been a number of people saying that Nutrisystem doesn't help you learn portion control. I beg to differ there are quite a few lessons on the subject. The "Core companion" (the name of the guidance section) also goes into what macronutrients to consume and also tries to help you tell the difference between when you are hungry and a craving. The latter is extremely helpful when loosing weight. Most all the lessons are interactive with videos, comments from others and at any time you can speak with a councilor about your issues loosing weight or just for support.APPS
No self respecting service can exist in this day and age without having an app. Nutrisystem has one for iOS and Android. The app isn't bad for recording your food, weight, etc... but all these things can be done with other apps that you're probably already using. If you're not using anything, I probably still wouldn't suggest you use their app simply because there is no connection to outside apps. More on that subject in a later post but for example if you record your weight through a 3rd party like Withings then Nutrisystem will have no idea unless you actually log into their site and put in your weight. Stuff like that is in excusable to me there is no reason why they couldn't just tap into existing APIs speaking as a developer it's trivial at best.The Fine print
If you don't dig to deep you're liable to jump in before realizing that Nutrisystem does not supply all your food for the month. You still have to eat fresh fruits and veggies, it comes with a guide that will walk you through what you need to get from the grocery store. Also another point, there are some muffins for breakfast that are absolutely terrible...unless you heat them up for 10-20 seconds this makes a world of difference, trust me.
Wrap-up
All and all if you can get a good sale on Nutrisystem and you want to not only loose weight but save time preparing meals I say go for it. You're liable to find something you like and at any time you can delay a future shipment by up to 60 days making this an extremely flexible solution financially. They also have a referral system that will save you $30 if you want to try. Send me a message if you want to take advantage of that (it would be nicer if they supplied a link...but all well)
Update: it was pointed out that I didn't mention anything about the effectiveness of the program. My personal belief is that if you utilize the tools and stick with it, this is very effective. I originally wasn't going to post my weight loss since I'm only at the beginning but so far I've lost 8lbs in 27 days. This could have easily been more but here in the US we just had independence day and I gotta say I kinda put my diet on hold in order to eat BBQ >_< and I'm in the middle of recovering from that.
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