Italian Flavours

It's funny how my food cravings tend to run in cycles- am I the only one? I've been finding over the last few days that I am really craving Italian food. Fortunately, Nutrisystem makes it easy to satisfy this craving!

Normally when I am picking a pasta dinner, the Rotini & Meatballs is my go-to. The Penne Bolognese didn't exist in 2010 when I first started Nutrisystem, and so I just ordered what I remembered. Today, I finally gave the Penne a try and really enjoyed it! I think with the meat actually in the sauce instead of being in meatballs, it helps stretch the sauce further over the veggies that I added. Either way- dinner was quick, simple, totally on plan and so filling!

Penne Bolognese with Meat Sauce (Dinner):

1 pkg Nutrisystem Penne Bolognese with Meat Sauce
1/2 cup cottage cheese (optional)
1/2 cup no sodium tomato sauce (up to 35 calories) (optional)
your favourite pasta veggies, diced
Italian seasoning

I started by taking out my mandolin, and chopping up zucchini, cremini mushrooms, onion, and yellow bell pepper. I sautéed them in the tomato sauce until they were softening, and added the Italian seasoning. Then I added the NS Penne, and continued cooking over medium heat until it was warm throughout. Right before I was about to plate it, I added the cottage cheese to give the sauce that rich cheesy flavour.

This meal counts as a Nutrisystem dinner entrée plus veggies. If you choose to use the cottage cheese, it counts as a Powerfuel (and is well worth saving one!). The tomato sauce counts as an extra. If you don't want to use an extra for it, canned crushed tomatoes with no sodium would be free.

Definitely beats my pasta cravings and with a whopping 35g of protein, I know I won't be hungry for a while!

Fairs & Festivals

I know my writing here at Stomach Rumblings comes in peaks and valleys. My health hasn't been great lately, so I haven't been up to posting. I have such a long list of recipes that are Nutrisystem compliant that I want to make and share with you all, and I'll do my best to keep plowing through it!

In case it isn't totally obvious, I love being creative and playing with food. One of the factors that I believe will make you successful on the program is finding ways to have your favourite foods in a healthier way. It's not that we have to decide that some foods are going to be forever forbidden to us; weight loss isn't just a diet phase and then it's over- we then have the harder task of maintaining that loss. It's not realistic to assume you'll never eat French fries or cheesecake again, and if we go back to eating the way we used to, we're going to go back to the size we used to be.

So while it's nice to have the real thing for a treat sometimes, I think that learning to find a way to satisfy the same craving with fewer calories will really help during the maintenance phase- not to mention keeping us happy and satisfied during the weight loss phase!

I love wandering around at local fairs and festivals, but I always feel a little bit of anxiety when I do because every other booth is selling something that smells wonderful. And of course there's nothing wrong with having a treat once in a while, but in my neck of the woods there is a fair nearly every weekend and indulging that often just won't work out for me.

So how can we solve this problem? Why, by finding ways to make a festival treat fit right into our Nutrisystem plan. I saw this delicious breakfast at one of our local fairs and put some time into making a version that tasted just as delicious without the four figure calories. You can either eat it before you go so that you know you've had your treat and you are full, or you can wrap it up and eat it there when you get that craving. It will be a little less crisp, but I don't think the flavour will disappoint at all!

Food Truck Breakfast Waffle (Flex Meals):

1 package Nutrisystem Buttermilk Waffles (or substitute 2 waffles that each meet SmartCarb standards of 80-120 calories and 1 or more grams of fiber)
1 large egg
2 slices of cooked Canadian bacon (or substitute with 1/2 Powerfuel of your preference of ham or turkey bacon)
2 tbsp. shredded cheddar cheese (approximately 14 grams)
2 large slices tomato
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1 1/2 tsp fat free mayonnaise
3/4 tsp sugar free maple syrup
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard (coarse grain is best)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray a baking tray with cooking spray. Lay the waffles out on the baking tray. Whisk together the egg and pepper, and pour evenly over the waffles, filling each cavity.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes or until egg is set.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, mustard, and maple syrup and stir until blended. Set aside.

Top each waffle with a slice of tomato and bacon, and half the cheese. Return to the oven for about 1 minute or until the cheese melts. Drizzle with the maple-mustard mayo and enjoy!

Please note that this recipe makes two servings of one waffle each.

So the breakdown for this is a little more complicated, but stay with me :)  Nutrisystem Dietary Services has said it's fine to use 1 Buttermilk Waffle as a SmartCarb serving, and at 80 calories and 1.5g of fiber, you'll see they fit perfectly into that range. So we have the waffle as our SmartCarb, and then our Powerfuel is the combination of 1/2 egg, 1 slice Canadian bacon, and 1 tbsp. cheddar cheese for a total of 108 calories). The tomato is a free veggie, and the maple mustard mayo comes in at 9 calories so it is a free food.

If that seems like too much work to calculate, you can evaluate it as a flex meal and see that it has 196 calories, 8g fat, 14g of carbs, 1.5g fiber, and 14g of protein. It's a perfect flex breakfast entrée, and that means you can still add whatever is required on your Nutrisystem program to complete your meal. On the Women's regular program, that means you still get an extra Powerfuel in addition!

And they call this a diet?

Bar Food

I can't be the only person who loved to go to the bar and eat greasy food with a cold beer, right? But of course, the average bar appetizer has four figures of calories, not to mention more than a day's worth of fat and sodium! So, while it's a nice treat, it wouldn't be a thing to do often.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a delicious, gooey meal, completely guilt free? You can even save your extras and have this on your patio with a light alcoholic beverage if you feel like a splurge! I don't think anyone would guess that this meal is totally on the Nutrisystem program- I still can't believe it is, and I'm eating it right now!

Cactus Cut Potato Nachos (Dinner):

1 pkg Nutrisystem BBQ Seasoned Chicken
1 small white potato
1 oz shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup diced onion
2 tbsp. plain greek yogurt with 1 tsp dry Ranch powder
spices- chipotle pepper, garlic/roasted pepper seasoning, seasoning salt (optional)

This recipe requires a little more prep work than the average dinner, but it is SO worth it. First, slice your potato into extremely thin slices with a mandolin. Put them in a bowl of water and soak them for an hour.

In an hour, come back and pat the potato slices dry with a paper towel. Spray the slices with cooking spray, and sprinkle them with spices to taste. Preheat your air fryer to 400 degrees, and bake the potato slices for 12 minutes or until brown and crispy.

In the meantime, spray a frying pan with a little cooking spray, and cook your onion and bell pepper until they start to soften. Add the package of Nutrisystem BBQ Seasoned Chicken, and continue to cook until all ingredients are heated through and well mixed.

Layer your potato slices on a plate, and top with the chicken and vegetable mixture. Sprinkle the cheese on top, and microwave for 30 seconds or until cheese is melted. Top with the plain greek yogurt and enjoy!

Count this as your Nutrisystem dinner entrée (the potato is the SmartCarb serving that you add to complete the entrée- it does not count as a separate SmartCarb serving), plus a Powerfuel for the cheese, 2 vegetable servings, and an extra for the Greek yogurt dip (or use just 1 tbsp. and call it a free food!).

I'd love to hear some feedback on this one- I think it's going to become one of my new favourite dinners!

Discontinued Items

Just a quick post to remind everyone to check your order. Nutrisystem has just announced that they are discontinuing several items, so if you have these on your order, you will not receive them.

The four items being discontinued are: Golden Pound Cake, Chocolate Cake, Fudge Brownie, and Chicken Fajita Melt.

I enjoyed them all, so I'll be disappointed to see them go, but I hope this means that Nutrisystem will announce some new menu items soon.

If you do not change your order, Nutrisystem has announced that you will receive the following substitutions if they are unable to fill your order:

Golden Pound Cake -> Snickerdoodle Cookie
Chocolate Cake -> Chocolate Chunk Cookie
Fudge Brownie -> Chocolate Brownie Bar
Chicken Fajita Melt -> BBQ Chicken Melt

Will you be sad to see these items go? Are there discontinued items from the past that you miss?

Splurge, But Splurge Smart!

One thing I tell people over and over is that a lifestyle change isn't about deprivation; it's about finding new ways of making things work for you. It's just not realistic to say that you'll never eat your favourite foods ever again! And while of course sometimes it's good to have the real thing, for all those other random cravings, we need a good substitute.

That's one of the reasons I write Stomach Rumblings; to help people find alternatives to their favourite foods that we can make fit into the program! If you have a recipe that you'd like to see featured here, please feel free to email me so we can discuss either a guest post or else I can try and tweak your recipe to make it NS friendly!

I think you might be surprised by how closely some of my recipes can hit a craving- you might even find you like some better than the originals!

When I was a little girl growing up, one of my favourite comfort dishes was French onion soup. I remember my mother pulling the hot dishes out of the oven with cheese cascading down the sides. I thought about what is really in the soup, though, and realized with a few tweaks it could be a great flex lunch on Nutrisystem. It's not quite the same as the way my mother made it, but the flavour is still wonderful and I enjoyed every bite. It's well worth enjoying throughout the year... and having a bowl of my mother's at the holidays :)

I looked up several "diet" recipes for French onion soup and noticed that some of them were caramelizing the onions in water. Call me a purist, but calories or no calories, I think that's a terrible way to bring out flavour! We don't need a whole lot of butter, but we do need at least a little bit. Fortunately, the rest of the soup is so low calorie that it fits in just fine.

The other thing to note is what you use for your stock. Since here the flavour of the stock will have a huge impact on the flavour of your soup, you need something that is good quality. You can use whatever works best for you, but make sure you like the taste of what you choose. I prefer to make mine the old fashioned way with beef bones, herbs, and veggie scraps, and then just chill and skim it several times until all the fat is removed, but you can use a carton of stock if you have a brand you like.

French Onion Soup (Flex Meals):

8 cups good quality beef stock (20 calories or fewer per cup)
2lb bag of Vidalia onions, peeled and chopped into rings
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. butter
4 slices of sourdough bread or other low glycemic bread (between 80-120 calories and 1g+ of fiber)
4oz low fat Gruyere cheese
thyme, black pepper to taste

Simmer your stock over low heat while you chop the onions. In a deep frying pan, melt the butter. When it's ready, add the onions and cook over medium heat until they start to turn translucent. Turn the heat down to medium low, and stir frequently so the onions don't stick to the pan, for about 30 minutes. Caramelizing onions really brings out the flavour in this dish so it's worth investing the time! If you start to see brown spots, splash just a little of the beef broth into the pan and use it to deglaze the brown bits. Add your thyme and black pepper.

When the onions are nicely browned and reduced in size, add them to your stock pot and turn up the heat to medium. Finely grate the Gruyere cheese. Place the 4 slices of bread onto a baking tray and sprinkle with the cheese. Bake until the cheese is nicely melted.

Portion the soup into four bowls, and place a slice of the toasted bread into each bowl. Serve warm and enjoy!

I like to eat this soup with a bowl of "Caesar" salad so it feels like lunch at a restaurant. I just shred romaine lettuce and use Kraft Light Caesar dressing at 30 calories per tablespoon. I don't really care for croutons anyway, but if you miss them, then just use lighter bread like the Sara Lee Delights for your French Onion soup and toast the second slice to make up your SmartCarb with seasoning and make your own croutons for your salad! It's an easy swap.

The onion soup itself counts as free veggies plus an extra for the butter, the bread is your SmartCarb, and the cheese is your Powerfuel. This makes a deliciously decadent light lunch! It's definitely worth the time investment.

The Most Important Step

If someone asked you what the most important step is when achieving a goal, what would you say? I think that most people's default answer would be the first one. That's when you gear up and decide to make a change, right? Or maybe a few would answer the last one, since that's when you actually achieve your goal. Hold that thought for a few minutes and consider your own response.

So as at least some of you know, I have a chronic illness and some physical health conditions that make it very difficult for me to exercise regularly. Nutrisystem recommends that we all get 30 minutes of activity daily, and that's built into our calorie allotment already (but you do not remove food if you don't exercise- make sure you know that!).

I try to go for a walk at least three times a week if I can, but over the last few weeks it's been difficult to do even that. Today, I woke up and had a little more energy, but it's nearly 30 degrees outside plus humidity- not exactly the best weather for a walk. Then I couldn't find my running shoes. But, I was determined to go out today.

And I did! It wasn't easy and I was exhausted when I made it back home, but every step felt like a tiny victory.

Making that first step to lose weight isn't easy. All of us can let a few pounds creep on over time, but if you've gotten seriously overweight there is nearly always some kind of emotional complication that is making it harder for us to get started at getting healthier. So if you've made that decision to start your weight loss journey, be proud of yourself; don't wait for that last step to decide you should be happy with your accomplishments.

Am I in that camp of thinking the first step is the most important? No. It doesn't matter if you are walking up a gentle slope or if you're starting to climb Mount Everest, if you only take one step and then stop, you will never get anywhere. The first step is a great start- but the most important step? It's always the next one.

Weight loss isn't a finite journey, where we make the decision once and then it's over. If that was true, people would never regain the weight. And with the five year statistics for weight loss at a dismal 5% of dieters actually keeping the weight off, it's important to remember that this choice to get our bodies healthy is a choice we are going to have to make every single day, every single meal. Not that we still can't mindfully enjoy ourselves, but always keeping that ultimate goal in mind so getting right back on the plan after our deviations.

Don't expect yourself to suddenly hate all your old favourite fattening foods, or to jump off that couch and immediately run a marathon. The pounds won't melt off that quickly either, if you're losing weight in a healthy way. But be proud of yourself for every little accomplishment along the way. My walk today is nothing compared to some people's exercise routines; I couldn't jog or run, and I was only out for half an hour. But that's 30 minutes of exercise I wouldn't have had otherwise.

So far today I have walked 5,183 steps, and I'm proud of every single one of them. But the most important step? Always the next one. Keep going- you got this!

Freebie Alert!

Hey everyone, don't forget to add the promo code SURPRISE to your auto delivery to get a free cutting board from Nutrisystem! It is valid as long as you have any item added in your a la carte section of your auto delivery- even a free bonus item from Numi! You do not need to add the cutting board to your order, just type in the promo code and it will automatically be added free!

If you are new and trying to decide which plan to purchase and from where, it can be confusing. Nutrisystem has many different plans offering different meals, more or fewer days, with and without shakes. They also offer Advantage, a plan for buying a la carte. You can also buy plans from QVC or Groupon. So how do you know which is the best choice for you?

First of all, I don't recommend the Nutrisystem Advantage plan in most circumstances. First of all, you spend $49.99 up front for six months, and all you get in return is free shipping on anything as well as a minimum 25% discount (unless the promotion they are currently offering is better). While that works if you're planning to have no plan at all and simply order a la carte, you'd have to be spending at least $49.99 on shipping to make it worthwhile, and you always get free shipping on frozen anyway if you order $75 or more. To me, it doesn't seem like a good value. Remember that you can add a la carte items to your auto delivery and always receive free shipping on both shelf stable and frozen foods, as well as a 20% discount off the items. This is the reason why I think the Advantage plan isn't the best purchase.Remember, you don't even need a plan to order a la carte if you don't want to, and you will still be able to use Numi, take advantage of any sales, and get free shipping on $75 or more of frozen food.

I think the best of both worlds is to have an auto delivery order and mostly put your shelf stable items and the items that tend not to be discounted (like the buttermilk waffles, ice cream sandwich, hamburger, and chicken sandwich), and then stock up on frozen when the a la carte sale gets to 50% off. And then of course, use your gift certificates from Costco and save even more! Remember you can delay your auto delivery up to three months every single order, so just because you're flexing and don't need a monthly delivery doesn't mean you necessarily should cancel; you'll have to break down the numbers on what you want to buy and see what works best.

Don't forget that if you are currently paying more than these prices for your program, that you can absolutely cancel with Nutrisystem and sign up again with a different email address as a new customer, and get all the new customer discounts and freebies! Don't pay more than you have to! This program looks expensive up front, but with all the tips and tricks available, you can really get your costs down so that you can put your health first.

The best price currently is:

Basic Women's $199 (shelf stable only, Chef's Choice- they choose your meals)
Basic Men's $239

Core Women's $239 (shelf stable only, you choose your own meals)
Core Men's $269

Uniquely Yours Women's $239 (access to the full menu, both frozen and shelf stable, you choose your own meals)
Uniquely Yours Men's $279

Uniquely Yours Plus Women's $299 (same as the Uniquely Yours program plus 28 servings of shakes, which are regular price $79.99 a la carte)
Uniquely Yours Plus Men's $329

If you are paying more than this price, call Nutrisystem and cancel! Don't let them fob you off with a one time $50 credit because you can save a lot more than that. Why pay more than you have to? Then sign up again using the hidden sales link here to save $60 off the lowest price your first month plus another $54 in free items plus the free 7 days of shakes, then save $50 off your second month, and continue on locked into the lowest price as long as you stay on program.

The only difference in what you are shipped from Nutrisystem between the Men's and the Women's plans, is that men get one additional Nutrisystem snack daily. Women can choose to order this plan if they want the extra NS snacks because it's cost effective, just remember to follow your correct plan on Numi! Men can also choose to order the women's program if they prefer to flex that extra snack daily instead of eating two NS snacks- it's entirely your choice as long as you follow the plan that is correct for you on Numi, since the written materials they send will be for the plan you order. All Nutrisystem snacks count as 1 Powerfuel + 1 SmartCarb (except the sweet and tangy meat stick which is only a Powerfuel), so it's okay to use extra Nutrisystem snacks any time you have to flex those portions, or conversely to flex 1 Powerfuel + 1 SmartCarb when you are told to eat a NS snack.

If you change your plan at any point, then you are no longer price protected. So if you start with Plus and decide you hate the shakes, you may not be eligible for the discounted price for the standard Uniquely Yours Program. I would always recommend starting with the regular plan since they offer you a month of shakes for half price, $39.99 on your first order anyway. Try them and see if you like them- there are often sales where you can purchase them for less a la carte anyway.

So if you stock up on Costco gift cards when they are on sale for $55.99, your first month of Uniquely Yours directly from Nutrisystem will only cost you $103.40! Even when they're not on sale you can still save 20% off. Either way, it's less than ordering through either QVC or Groupon, and you get to choose your food as well as have frozen food, which you can't do unless you order from Nutrisystem.

Feel free to share your money saving tips in the comments!