Week Two: A Nutrisystem Breakfast

I started my journey to drop some excess pounds with Nutrisystem last week and it went well. I didn’t feel particularly hungry, I cheated one night with birthday dinner with my girls, and I still managed to get a good jump start on my weight loss. The first week is the Turbo Takeoff and the program drops you down rather dramatically to a modest 1000 calories/day. I can tell you that’s a lot less than my average daily caloric consumption the week prior. ‘nuf said on that.

This week is really the first “regular” week of the program and there are two keys to success: lots of small meals, and mixing up proteins and carbs every single meal. The regular program includes a late night snack too, which I appreciate: it’s late at night where my snacking habits generally get me into trouble, so a program that doesn’t require me to go cold turkey from 6pm until the next morning is definitely easier to stick with.

The best part about the Nutrisystem program is that there’s a really well designed smartphone app that makes keeping track of everything a breeze. The app’s called NuMi [Android link: NuMi] and you can use it even if you’re not on the Nutrisystem program if you’re curious (though it’s definitely pretty closely tied to the program menus). I thought it would be fun and interesting to show you the process of logging my breakfast this week, so let’s start with the app’s daily intake journal page. Blank, because I haven’t had breakfast yet:

As you can see along the top, the target caloric intake for me is 1500 calories. That’s low because, well, the goal is to lose weight, and the math is easy: eat less calories than your body burns and you’ll lose weight. Eat more and you’ll gain weight.

This morning I’m going to have one of their omelets:

Turkey ham and cheese omelet. The photo looks good, right? 🙂 More importantly, you can see the nutrition info right on the label: 90 calories, 1.5g fat, no sugar and 13g of protein. To log it in the app is a breeze. A tap on the “+” adjacent to “Nutrisystem entree” and it shows a list of possibilities:

The real key is to use the “Scan Barcode” feature on the very bottom, however. In less than a second the UPC barcode on the packaging can be scanned and matched, and before you know it, you’re staring at the nutrition information in the app:

Ready to go? Log it! I’m also going to have a small yogurt to go with it (full disclosure: I spread out my food so I’ll actually have the yogurt about an hour later) and here’s my breakfast, logged:

As you can see, I’ve had 227 of my 1500 calories today, leaving me plenty of space for other meals. A good thing.

Oh, and that omelet? Quickly cooked and what food isn’t improved by a sprinkle of hot sauce?

Looks good, doesn’t it? Tasted good too, and you can see I’m using a standard smart eating trick too: use a smaller plate when you serve your food. There’s actual data to show that it tricks your brain and you feel more satisfied after your meal than if it’s on a huge plate and looks small and lonely. 🙂

So that’s it. Week two and things are chugging along. I like that I can mix things up and come up with interesting combinations too, so a powerfuel snack can be pepperoni, for example, so why not add that to a flatbread pizza to make it more interesting? Or peanut butter + bread as a quick snack?

Disclosure: I have received all of my products from Nutrisystem for review purposes and that my opinions are 100% my own. As is always the case.