Packaged Meals and Clinics - Nutrisystem, Medifast, Jenny Craig, Etc For support and questions about diet meal delivery programs, or weight loss clinics that offer prepackaged meals and products.

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Old 11-18-2006, 04:04 AM   #1  
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Default Fresh delivery reviews

Hey folks!

Does anyone have experience with/revews of fresh diet food delivery services? i think i will take the plunge and carry this expense as a gift to myself for a month or so. i just can't seem to do this weight loss thing on my own and I have a long way to go. but because these plans are expensive i was hoping that someone with first hand knowledge may be able to share their experience?

The services I have found are Nutropia, Zone, Atkins at home.

Thanks in advance.


We can do this!
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Old 11-29-2006, 09:22 AM   #2  
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I came to the same conclusion as you: I simply was not losing weight and couldn't figure out what to do to get things moving. I've been receiving food for about 2 months or so, but I must admit I dont stick to the exact plan.

Here are the diets I've tried:

Diettoyourdoor.com: this is a frozen delivery service that arrives once a week. Even after 5 days of travel, the stuff is surprisingly still frozen. This is my favorite so far. I found the food really pretty good and made of healthy ingredients; not a lot of additives and artificial stuff. The portions are a good filling size, except breakfast, which will leave you starving. This diet really got me focused on portion sizes and on increasing my protein and minimizing my bad carbs. The diet offers a plan with snacks or just the 3 meals. I got the snacks once and then starting ordering the snacks off the internet on my own and just getting the meals. Saves a bit of money. But the snacks they turned me onto are really good, very high in protein and very filling and of course yummy (or I would not be raving). So now, when I feel the urge to binge, I'll eat like 4 snacks. The calories may add up to 400 to 600 calories, but they are really healthy with a lot of protein so I still manage to lose weight.

Slimdown: this is a local fresh delivery service in the NY area. BEWARE BEWARE!!! I did this for 3 days and then cancelled. The food is horrible but what's really amazing is that they still have not refunded my $1,000 (I had to pay for a month upfront). I am now dealing with my credit card company on getting refunded. What slime they are!

Diettogo.com: The food is mediocre; some meals are really tasty but a lot of meals really are not that good. Some of the meals have a lot of additives, so they are in some cases indistinguishable from regular frozen dinners you buy at your grocery store. This plan has a lot more carbs than the other plans, but I must say that I lost weight on this for the one week I stayed on it. Not so highly recommended but not too bad either. Its cheaper than the others and the meals arrive frozen once a week.

Zone: I got the fresh delivery service several years ago (the only other time I've been on a formal diet rather than just trying to maintain). I did lose weight on this but I find the fresh food isn't really that much better than the frozen plans (which I found surprising) and the frozen plans are so much cheaper.

Last week I didn't get any deliveries so I bought some South Beach Diet frozen dinners. I must say that these were surprisingly tasty and made of fairly healthy ingredients (unlike say Stouffers or Swanson, which are completely unhealthy). I highly recommend switching to these when you finish your deliveries; just to keep in the freezer for when you're hungry so you don't eat something unhealthy. The portions are HUGE and they are very low in calories.

What's best about these plans is that you can ACCURATELY calorie count. I enter all the food into Fitday.com and this has enabled me to tweak my diet to the right amount of calories so that I am FINALLY starting to lose regularly. I noticed that I need to eat enough to lose (but of course not too much!), and that on some days I need to supplement these diet plans with some healthy snacks or I'll starve and not lose as much.

Best of luck.

*Claudia*
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Old 12-03-2006, 05:20 AM   #3  
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Healthy2007 I highly recommend eDiets express (http://www.ediets.com/express/). This is the only truly fresh food delivery service that I have found, the rest are freeze-dried/dehydrated/mixes and things like that. The eDiets express programm used to be called FreshCuisine, the food comes vacuum packed and tastes as good as something you would find in a restaurant. I began the program in May and since than have lost 64 pounds, I've been posting my progress on this site during this time. That is 64 pounds in 7 months and I did not even stick to the plan 100%, there were many times where I of course ate meals out at restaurants or functions and while I was on vacation for two weeks I took 5 meals with me but ate the rest of the meals outside. My exercise began as just walking in the evenings for 30 minutes to 1 hour and after I became more fit I moved on to 30 minutes on an elliptical machine.

I had tried Nutrisystem and Medifast and some over the counter meal programs before going on eDiets express and they all failed for me. Nutrisystem is good for some people but the freeze dried food just tasted awful to me and I didn't like how inflexible it was. With eDiets I could choose a diet program that I liked which for me was one that was lighter on carbs because I do well when I eat less carbs. The cost is the same as other programs and in general people sometimes get stick shock looking at the costs of these programs but if you factor in how much less you are going to spend on groceries and restaurant meals the cost may not be much different than what you normally spend.

I recommend eDiets express with absolute conviction as it is the first program that has worked for me and I am finally thin (almost) after years and years of battling a weight problem. The best part is it was not hard at all to go on the program, in fact the meals were great tasting and filling.
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Old 03-02-2007, 08:07 PM   #4  
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Well, Diet To Go and Diet To Your Door offer non-dehydrated, non-freeze-dried food, fresh foods. You can tell it's a chicken breast (not formed patty) and that the veggies are real veggies.

I agree with Mami that the DTYD snacks are really nice. I just ordered the protein cookies, hot cocoa (regular flavor, which is the one I like best), and protein pineapple-orange shake from an online distributor.

I need this now to teach me portions. I'm whack with portions. I eat like a horse. I fill up plates. I have no sense of moderation. To see what they consider a portion of meat, of chicken, of veggies, etc, is sort of like shock therapy.

I'm not wild about ANY of the food delivery programs (This one has too much poultry and I'm gonna get sick of it real soon), but I have to say that the vegetarian one by Diet To Go came closest to pleasing me. The 1600 calorie vegetarian one had some truly satisfying and nice non-meat meals. Their stuffed shells, mac n cheese, feta and bean wraps, tomato veggie casserole, some of the sandwiches, and lentil salads were great. Their alfredo stuff is less successful, the cous cous is horrible, and those tofu chunks are quite icky. The Mirkin Burger, though, was great, once I put it on some whole grain bread (they served it o na white kaiser roll. WHITE!). The breakfast omelettes are okay, actually, and the muffins are tasty, if exceedinly small and non-filling. Don't like those plain bagels. If you get DTG, I suggest you substitute to make sure you get yogurt plus something breakfasts, omelettes, or the truly delicious pancakes (no kidding, they're SUPER). Avoid the bland, dry waffles, unless you like that sort of thing. I'd also avoid their black bean soup unless you like the strong taste of pepper, instead of nice bean flavor. I was born in Cuba and raised on beans, especially red and black, and I appreciate a good bean soup. This one is just strong, strong on pepper to the point of obnoxiousness.

I may go back to the vegetarian Diet to Go later this month and just substitute like mad in lunch/dinner to get the better tasting stuff and omit the icky stuff.

BTW, I would NOT recommend the low-carb or low-fat DTG, unless you really like to eat a lot a lot a lot of chicken and turkey. And that's the reason I probably won't stay much longer with Diet to Your Door. Too much turkey/chicken, not enough vegetarian options. I will say, that for folks who love chicken/turkey and want to go low-carb, this may work well for you.



It's amazing to me that in this day and age of PETA and veganism, that a health/weight loss plan wouldn't have several menus so that at least one was veggie-friendly? Wouldn't that be cheaper and healthier?

Oh, wel.

Mirtika
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Old 03-07-2007, 11:57 PM   #5  
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Thanks so much for the review, Mirtika! I was hoping some one would come along that was familiar with Diet to Go, particularly the vegetarian option. I agree with you on DYTD - you have to love chicken
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Old 03-09-2007, 02:36 AM   #6  
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I'm in this weird thing now where I"ve been alternating. I got the vegetarian DTGo today, and next week I get blue week for Diet To Your Door. I'm trying to decide which to keep.

I talked to Darlene at Diet To YOur Door and did mention that they need really badly to offer more vegetarian options, cause chicken/turkey gets real, real tiresome. She said they are still working on it and hope to have something so vegetarians and vegans can do their plan.

I did order a lot of stuff from MyDietShopz from tasting stuff with Diet To Your Door--protein cookies (choc and vanilla), hot cocoa (with 15 grams of protein per cup), some soups, and a strangely appealing dehydrated sloppy joe. I had that for lunch today, and, although, yeah lots of salt, it actually tasted decently. It's vegetarian (ie soy) and I put it on whole wheat bread. Nice. I also got some of the snacks Diet to Your Door offers from them. So, I was able to substitute bagels (hi protein ones) in my DTYD breakfasts and I asked for only regular cocoa (not the funky mint and amaretto and cinnamon ones.) Their bagels are very nice. The muffins are okay. The cookies I prefer for mid-meal snacks than for breakfast. Or for when I'm having a sweet-tooth attack.

But I wouldn't have found these hi-prot Protidiet et al products without DTYD. I do prefer eating fresh, though, cause it's just better for you than the dehydrated oversalty stuff.

Oh, and the short ribs in the DTG low-carb are really, really, really good. I think I moaned. Only ONE short rib, but tasty. Stay away, gals, from the beef casserole. Hideous meat.

Speaking of meat: DTYD is discontinuing the sirloin steak (it was not so hot), and they'll be introducing some new stuff. Cool.

Still, I'm undecided. I prefer the soups and portions in DTYD, but I like the vegetarian options of DTG . And both have very pleasant people to help you. But DTYD stays in touch better, asking how they can improve it foryou, seeing if you have need of diet advice, etc. That's a nice personal touch. They even called me this week to see how I was doing.


I'm hoping that if I do this for 4 to 6 months, I'll (hopefully) get used to smaller portions and eating protein snacks (I'm so not used to snacking), so I don't eat like a horse. And then I can start making some of this stuff for myself (basically, learn to cook, which I do badly.)

We'll see. I have hope and I ain't giving up yet.

Good luck on whatever plan you choose.

Mir
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Old 03-09-2007, 04:05 AM   #7  
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I tried Diet to Your Door back in November and it did teach me a lot about what to eat to keep myself full, tons of veggies for sides and a little bit of carbs. The best things I had were definitely the stuffed chicken/turkey dishes and the soups. The ingredients seemed pretty healthy overall and I was never hungry... however...
1. As mentioned above, it's a lot of chicken. They give you other things like beef , pork, and fish, but I found the beef and pork a lot of times to just be terrible considering they tasted like they had been boiled in a bag (which they were.. haha). Sometimes the beef was okay though, like in a stir-fry. The pork.. well.. I could never stomach more than a couple of bites. (Disclaimer: I don't really like pork much to begin with unless it's prepared by a gourmet chef or something.)
2. This diet plan was apparently too low-carb for me. I know some people seem to think that if you get terrible headaches it's a good thing because you're detoxing from carbs, but that just wasn't what I was aiming for. It got so bad that one day I binged (and I am NOT a binger) on white bread and pickle sandwiches. How gross. I knew it was the carbs though because immediately after eating a piece of fruit or whatever, my headache disappeared. Which brings me to #3...
3. No raw/fresh fruits or veggies. They don't allow (or at least no where does it say you can have) additions of fruits or raw veggies (salads or whatever) to add to it. They claim that their meal plan is complete and you don't need to supplement it. I never wanted a nectarine so much in my life. The only fruit they give you is two packs of frozen berries to go with oatmeal, which simply isn't enough fruit in a week for me.
4. I had some of the bags burst on me! It was terrible, when I'm paying quite a bit for a meal, I'd expect it not to be ruined because the bag exploded during heating, leaking sauce into the water. At first I thought it was because I was heating it at too high of a temperature, but it still happened after lowering it. Maybe it's just me, though.
5. They serve white carbs??? I still can't figure this out. Sometimes they'll be really good and give you a side of quinoa, and then others (usually with an Asian dish) they'll give you white rice. Who knows. I guess they're trying to appeal to a wide range of people, including those who think anything whole grain is evil tasting.

Overall, I'd say this is higher quality than Lean Cuisine, for example, but it's still not as great (obviously) as a home cooked meal. I did learn a lot from my experience, but I didn't last for very long (3 weeks I think) because I couldn't stand not being able to choose what I wanted to have for a meal. Sometimes you don't *feel* like eating beef stir-fry for lunch and you just want a sandwich, you know? I will give DTYD props for getting me started on the healthy eating path, though. Though I took a break during the holidays, I don't think I would have gotten back on track without my "weight loss experiment" in November. I guess it got me into the correct mindset, so I'd call it a good thing overall, despite all of my negative feelings... haha.
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Old 03-09-2007, 07:11 PM   #8  
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We have a lot in common in how we feel. I stopped boiling in the bag cause I like d the food better microwaved. I couldn't stand the beef in the bag/boiled, so I micro-ed a bit, then put it in a skillet to brown. That made it much better.

I also add fruit. They only give you 1200 calories in DTYD, so you can safely add 400 of whole grains and fruit and still be in "dieting" caloric range. I have mangoes and oranges and stuff, cause I grew up eating tons of fruit and I can't break that habit. I'm a tropical girl. I gotta have my papaya and pineapple, and I adore raspberries and oranges.

So, I think folks can tailor this.

HOwever, I think you got it right when it's seen as more a teaching/motivation tool. I just can't see eating bagged food long-term. This is an emergency regrouping for me, cause i had tried for a year to get motivated to lose weight and couldn't. HAving food delivered is just a reminder--it's there, it's cooked, it's low cal: EAT IT. And look at what a portion is.

Thanks for posting your experience. I think all the stuff here can help those trying to decide on these plans.

They have very good intentions, but there just isn't enough of the "home-cooked soul" in the food.

I will say that if some Cuban restaurant down here got on the healthy Latino food cantina deal (cantinas are when they cook the food daily and you pick it up and bring it home, or they deliver it to your door), I'd do that. I always found the food really good tasting, and the portions were so big that I could divvy it up and two of us could eat for the low-price of one. It was usually about 10 bucks a day (instead of the 20 or 30 or more of some of these long-distance plans).

I'm thinking that with so many women busy and working and stuff, the future will see local restaurants figuring out how to get that home-delivery business, and we'll at last see fresher, tastier, and healthier food options for those of us who can't cook or need convenience or pre-measuring.

I can hope, right?

MIr
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Old 03-14-2007, 05:20 PM   #9  
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I noticed that I started eating a lot more vegetables after my trial with Diet to your Door. I really enjoyed the vegetables in the dinners. I no longer eat meat, so I can't do them again.

I just received my first shipment of vegetarian Diet to Go. I'm going to photograph the food and write a review of it for the site. If it's really good, I'll keep it up for a while. I'm just at a point in my life where I want the convenience of a diet meal delivery service.
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Old 03-19-2007, 01:45 PM   #10  
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When you get the wrap things or meltovers, it really helps to use a conventional oven instead of a nuker.

With the meltovers, I actually REMOVE the topping, toast the bread until it's non-soggy and crispier, then add the topping and finish heating.

With the wraps/quesadillas, I just bake or toast it altogether until it's browned, but not burned.

If you nuke them: nasty. Toasted: very nice.

I found the cous cous inedible. Bleh. And their alfredo sauce has absolutely no flavor. The eggplant parmesan didn't have a nice consistency.

But the mac n cheese and stuffed shells and ravioli were excellent.

I'm pretty much decided about canceling DTYD. They are terrific, pleasant, and I've found products through them that are really good--the muffins, bagels, cocoa, etc-- but I've reached my tolerance for chicken and may abstain for months. A simple bit of roast chicken from Pollo Tropical or Boston Market is so much better than ANY of their chicken dishes.

I hope you find a lot to enjoy in the DTG veggie menu.

Mir
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Old 05-22-2009, 04:30 PM   #11  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Suzanne 3FC View Post
I noticed that I started eating a lot more vegetables after my trial with Diet to your Door. I really enjoyed the vegetables in the dinners. I no longer eat meat, so I can't do them again.

I just received my first shipment of vegetarian Diet to Go. I'm going to photograph the food and write a review of it for the site. If it's really good, I'll keep it up for a while. I'm just at a point in my life where I want the convenience of a diet meal delivery service.
interesting that you completely lost your appetite for meats. Do you mean in general or just as in meat from delivery services.
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Old 06-05-2009, 11:25 AM   #12  
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Hi chinchillables My decision to go veg was not related to the diet meal delivery services, it was just a personal decision. I remained veg for a couple of years, but recently reintroduced seafood back into my diet. I will still avoid land animals, probably for the rest of my life. I found out that Freshology diet meal delivery will customize meal selections, and will allow just seafood and vegetarian meals. I'm expecting my first delivery tomorrow.
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Old 06-05-2009, 04:39 PM   #13  
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I'm enjoying reading these reviews.

I've only done one home delivery plan that rarely gets mentioned here: Pure Foods Fresh Start. http://www.purefoodsfreshstart.com/ I love it and have been on it for 14 months. Have lost 70 pounds on it (for a total of 102). The food is fresh, not even frozen. No need to boil in bags or rehydrate. The meals are very healthy; almost no additives, low glycemic index, whole grains, healthy oils, etc. They offer a lot of vegetarian options as well as meat, poultry, fish. They've got about 3 weeks' worth of menus, which is plenty of variety for me (far more than I would prepare for myself). I go online every week and pick my meals.

Their snacks are very basic -- fruit, nuts, that kind of thing. I actually like this, but others have found them boring. For my evening snack, I usually have a square of dark chocolate (comes with the plan).

The customer service is outstanding, if you talk to them over the phone. Email not so much. It's a small outfit, so you get to know the folks there. They really work with you. I'm having my meals delivered to the cottage in Maine where we'll be vacationing, for example, in a few weeks.

Can't say enough good things about this hidden gem of a plan.

Good luck, whatever you choose!
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Old 06-05-2009, 10:07 PM   #14  
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I have tried only 1 diet delivery program and that is Diet To Go. And the reason I haven't tried any other is because there is no reason to, DTG is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! Best tasting food I have ever had in my life!!!!!!! I feel like I am at a gourmet restaurant 3 times a day when I eat... the food is just delicious, I can't really say anything more than that. I have never once felt like I was eating diet food and to top it off, I have lost 7.9 pounds and feel GREAT!

And to make it even BETTER, it was the cheapest one I found when I looked around.
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Old 06-06-2009, 02:03 AM   #15  
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Thank you all so much for this thread. I tried a local diet delivery program years ago. It was great fresh food that was delivered every few days. The problem was I was not ready to diet and ended up adding to the meals to the point that I was not losing weight and just wasting my money. I had forgotten about these types of programs.

Fast forward to now when I AM seriously dieting. Trouble is now I'm going through a little burn out period. Not tired of dieting and by following SB for many months, my eating style has changed to healthy foods. I am tired of cooking for myself right now and wish I could take a little break.

I know from past experience that I am entering a very dangerous phase and this is where I would fail on past diets. My little break from meal preps would eventually lead to restaurant & takeout meals and we all know what happens when you dine out all the time. Eventually the bread basket wins.

I'm looking at some of the meal delivery plans now. I only want fresh food so that eliminated many of them. Right now I have it narrowed down to PureFoods (thanks Lauren) and Freshology. The Freshology menus are by far superior but it is very pricey and you can't customize your menu at all. PureFoods menus are very similar to how I eat now and they have lots of customizing options (and they are cheaper).

Thanks again for the thread. I'm going to look into taking my little respite from meal prep...a little spa-like vacation for myself for 2-3 weeks. Only this time I am going to do it the right way by eating right. Then I can go back to veggie chopping.
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