Musings

I went back and read my entire Stomach Rumblings blog, from the beginning. I noticed a few things.

I am really, really proud of myself for staying positive all that time and working so hard. While I did eventually relapse, I lost all that weight and I kept it off for nearly five years. It was a combination of health issues and severe stress that caused me to lose my motivation and stop caring about my body.

I'm proud of my creativity. I worked hard to find different recipes and keep changing things up so that the food wouldn't get bland and boring. I'm proud of my willpower- I see how many times I was challenged by dealing with non NS friendly foods, and I managed to persevere.

One thing that also struck me from the past though, is how much Nutrisystem has changed their plan since the first time I started. They removed the dinner fat serving, which surprises me a little. Fat helps your body process fiber, so I think it was probably helpful. Plus it makes it easier to cook those veggies! Since I am less of a salad eater, it means I have to use my daily extras on oil if that's what I want to do. I assume that is now because they don't have a restriction on how much fat can be in your Powerfuel servings? But it still doesn't quite make sense to me because if someone is choosing lower fat entrees and add ins, they might be eating very little healthy fat.

I mean, look at the difference between the old Flex lunch requirements and the current ones. A Flex lunch now is 1 SmartCarb + 1 Powerfuel, with between 160-240 calories. In 2010, a Flex lunch was 1 Fat serving, 2 Lean Protein serving, 1 Low Glycemic Carbohydrate serving, and 1 Vegetable Serving. A Fat serving was ~50 calories and 5g of fat. A Carb serving was 80-100 calories and ~15g of carbs, and must be low glycemic, and lean protein servings were different from the generic dairy/protein servings. A lean protein serving was approximately 1oz of a lean protein like chicken, shrimp, beef, pork, or fish. So you can see that the meal had about the same calorie content as it does now, but it was more defined as to what it must have in it.

They've also lowered the requirements for a Powerfuel. Back then, dairy/protein servings used to require a minimum of 7g of protein, with the exception of eggs which are so nutritious they let them pass.

Also, dairy/protein servings and carb servings used to have other macros required; it wasn't solely about calories, the amount of protein and the amount of fiber. Dairy/protein servings had a maximum of 5g of fat as well, and carb servings were about 15g of low glycemic carbs.

Yesterday on the Nutrisystem Facebook group, I saw someone post a picture of the nutritional label on a container of potato salad. It had 240 calories per 1/2 cup and 27g of fat, but it had more than 1g of fiber and exactly 5g of protein. Technically, it fits the current requirements for an afternoon snack of one SmartCarb and one Powerfuel. But is it a good choice? I hope you don't even have to ask that! Very little actual nutritional value and loaded with fat with a bare minimum of protein.

I guess Nutrisystem took out the fat servings while they slackened the requirements elsewhere, knowing that people would probably choose fattier foods when they had no restrictions on their macros. Likely the same idea in building in generic SmartCarb servings for people instead of requiring fruit- it makes the plan easier to follow but likely less effective.

The overall calories haven't changed from the program, but certainly the makeup has a little bit. I wonder if they have any results from how quick weight loss used to be ten years ago versus how it is now. When people ask if the frozen foods slow down weight loss, I wonder if it's more because of the changes around the program add ins rather than frozen versus shelf stable.

I also miss the Daily Dose. I noticed that I have linked to it a few times in the past and I wish I'd saved the entire article. I remember thinking that those articles came at just the right time for me. Either I needed to celebrate my success or else refocus or even just see that other people have struggled the way that I was right at that moment.

We all lose weight at different paces, but ultimately we all go through the same struggles, and it really helps to know you're not alone. We've all gone off plan, or stalled, and needed that little push to refocus and get back on track. Hopefully this blog will help you with that the way it helps me!