Diet advice based on real world personal experience!

“Jenny Craig Just Didn’t Work For Me & Unfortunately, 

It Likely Won’t Work for You Either!”

My Jenny Craig Experience

What you’ll find in this open letter is information that will help you better understand the Jenny Craig approach to losing weight and my experience with it. I wish I had this information before I spent my hard earned money on Jenny Craig.  It's my hope that you will find my experiences and my recommendation to be of great value as you evaluate your weight loss options.    

Hi there.

My name is Jessica Seymour. 

At the time I'm writing this, I'm 38 years young and have a fantastic family of 5 including Craig my handsome hubby, and our 3 boys - Conner, Alexander, and Trent.  That's us below in a recent picture.

I've been pretty active and physically fit for most of my life and didn't really have weight issues until I gave birth to our first son Trent just over 5 years ago. A year after giving birth to Trent, I still weighed 173 pounds and I was so embarrassed about how much I weighed that I knew I had to do something about it. 

The extra weight made my sleep fitful, my ankles would swell up, and I would get headaches daily. Unfortunately though, my body had so many aches and pains that I couldn’t find the energy or will power to be more physically active, so I had to focus my efforts on diet. 

My first choice (because they make the food look so good in their ads) was to try the Nutrisystem Meal Plan program but I should have known it wouldn't be that easy.  My Nutrisystem experience proved to be a short lived, eye opening experiment I’ll just call; “Can Guess what you’re eating now?” Read about it here. 

I then joined Jenny Craig, but that turned out to be a huge mistake for a number of reasons which you can read all about further down this page. 

About six months after my Jenny Craig fiasco, I decided to give dieting another shot and signed up for Weight Watchers at the urging of a good friend whose father had seen good results with it. Learn more about my unsuccessful Weight Watchers experience here. 

The good news is that at the time of writing letter, I weigh in at a healthy and happy 128 pounds, I've lost my belly and most of my butt and have maintained this weight within a couple of pounds for over two years now. 

This despite my lack of success with Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem. 

My secret weapon is a comprehensive weight loss program that uses “ Calorie Shifting”, to deliver results But before we get to what is working for me, please take a few minutes to read about my experience with Jenny Craig. 

About Jenny Craig… 

Jenny Craig is a commercial diet center in the mould of Weight Watchers. The fundamentals of the program have not really changed over the years, but they have offered different plans and continue to refresh their marketing. At the time I attended the plan options were called "Jenny TuneUp", "Jenny OnTrack", and "Jenny Rewards". "Jenny TuneU" is a trial membership that runs from 30-60 days and includes one-on-one consultations, planned and personalized Jenny Craig menus, personalized activity and motivational plans, and other weight loss tools. "Jenny OnTrack" is a 6-month plan that includes all the above, plus a personalized profile and weight loss success manuals. "Jenny Rewards" offers up to a year of weight loss and maintenance, including everything provided with "Jenny OnTrack" plus product discounts, weight maintenance support, and increasing discounts for ongoing participation in the program. 

All membership options are offered at the centers or over the phone through their at home "Jenny Direct Program", and require the purchase of Jenny's Cuisine, which averages $11-$15 per day in the US and slightly higher outside the US. Basic program fees start at $6/week.

Therefore, the key to the success of this diet program - similiar to that of other Meal-Plan plans - is ensuring that you can stomach the food and getting through the transitional period where the dieter goes from prepackaged to regular, home prepared meals. That is unless you plan on eating prepackaged foods indefinitely, which is a fine option if that's what works for you. 

My experience with Jenny Craig… 

At my first meeting, I met with a counsellor in a white lab coat and signed a contract that established my goal weight and a target date by which I would hope to achieve it. The goal weight was based purely on my age and bone structure - heavy, average, or light. I must admit that I was a little concerned when I noticed that I was supposed to lose 20 lbs. in eight weeks. I asked about speedy weight-loss, since 1 - 2 lbs. per week is considered to be a healthy, safe rate. The counsellor breezily assured me that by following the purchased food plan, I would safely lose the weight while retaining all nutritional balances, and by participating in their group and individual counselling sessions, I would learn new eating habits that would keep me on the straight and narrow after I went off the purchased food plan. 

New members were supposed to buy a set of "motivational" tapes at their first visit. My friend had told me that they were pretty elementary and not very helpful to her, but said I could have hers if I wanted them. So I wasn't about to buy another set - they were fairly expensive. The person who signed me up, a perky just-past-teenager who had clearly never had to think about excess weight in her life got quite upset and kept coming back to the issue of the tapes. I kept telling her, politely but firmly, that I WAS NOT going to buy them. After the fourth time she brought up the subject, I told her that the next time, I was going to leave. That worked. 

After that I went in every week to get weighed. I'd meet with a counsellor who would sit down with me and discuss my successes and failures, and my motivation for staying on the program. I'd turn in my menu sheet, on which I had circled my choices of food items for the coming week. I would then go to a group meeting, pay for the food, pick it up, and leave, after making an appointment for the next week.


My Results… 

OK, I'm going along, losing weight gradually, confiding to my counsellor how hard it is to stick to it with such minimal results when cooking for my family is one of my chief pleasures and de-stressors. Then, having lost 10 lbs. of my 20-lb. goal, I hit a wall and no amount of effort budged me off that mark. 

That's when something amazing happened. After the fourth week at the same weight, my counsellor excused herself from the booth and returned with the center manager. This lady fixed me with a steely eye and proceeded to tell me that because I wasn't losing according to schedule, they were going to have to do a "re-evaluation" of my case, which would cost me $99. I pointed out the line on my contract that clearly stated that once the initial fees were paid, there would be no further assessments until I reached my goal. She pointed out that I was beyond my target date, so they needed to "re-assess" me. I pointed out that the date on my contract was a target, not a firm deadline. She said that if I'd been following the program and not cheating, I would have reached my goal by the target date, so the fact that I hadn't obviously meant that I'd been cheating, and if I'd been cheating, the contract was void and they could charge me for this "re-assessment"! I asked her why she thought I'd been cheating. She said she didn't think I'd been cheating - she knew it as an absolute fact. She pointed to a few comments entered by my counsellors during previous meetings, which quoted me as saying that this was a difficult task to accomplish and I was having a hard time sticking with it, especially during the holidays and so, I must have been cheating. She also said I was "failing" because I hadn't bought the motivational tapes. I asked what the "re-assessment" consisted of, since the factors considered at my initial "assessment" consisted of my age and bone structure, and neither of those items had changed significantly. She told me that the "reassessment" consisted of changing the target date! I told her that she could do that for nothing. 

That's when she got really flustered and angry and burst out with the truth: She couldn't afford to have me cluttering up her waiting room each week and not losing weight, because it made the program look bad to the other customers. Most revealing, of all, she said I wasn't losing weight because I was buying the cheaper boil-bags instead of the incredibly expensive frozen meals.

I asked her if I wasn't losing weight because of that, why the two kinds of food were presented as equal in nutrition. She immediately back-pedaled and said they were, but the frozen was "better" for weight-loss. When I asked her what she meant by "better," she totally lost it and said that I was spending 35% less each week on the average than the other customers, and she couldn't afford to have me do that. I told her that I couldn't afford all that frozen food, and no one had ever implied that it was better than any other, or that I had to spend a given amount to remain on the program. 

I also suggested that if Jenny Craig was about buying food rather than losing weight, why hadn't they just said so up front and saved me all this aggravation? 

At that point, practically in tears, she walked out of the room and said she never wanted to see me there again. 

Well I went home to my family and with their support I wrote a letter to corporate headquarters, suggesting that they make their expectations known right up front when people sign up, and that they clarify their policies and train their center managers in customer relations. 

I got a nice letter back from the regional manager, who apologized profusely and asked me to come back with 2 months of free food as a perk. I politely declined the offer and simply reiterated that I only want them to clarify their policies to the customers at the outset, and to adequately train their managers. 

Needless to say, I never went back to Jenny Craig. People tell me that the Jenny Craig program is better now, and I'm sure it is; it certainly couldn't have gotten worse! And I can't say that it was entirely without value to me.  

3 Key Learning’s…

• A big positive is that it works without you needing to radically change your lifestyle.
• It uses a unique but simple approach called Calorie Shifting which teaches you how and when to eat in order to turn your body into a fat burning furnace. 
• It's convenient because you eat real food, that tastes great and that you buy at your local grocery store for reasonable prices. 
• You won't be tempted to cheat because you eat 4-6 times per day, and NEVER feel hungry. 

Please note that I will never rent, share or sell your name to anyone else...ever!
I respect your privacy!