I just cleaned that gigantic mess out of our kitchen pantry, where it had accumulated for several months.
My wife decided to try NutriSystem around November of last year, and for the first couple of months it worked great! She probably lost 20-30 pounds – we’ve got the Beanie Babies with the #s stitched into them around here somewhere to prove it, but the problem was, just like Weight Watchers or any of the others where they sell you food to eat, is that inevitably you eventually realize just how terrible the food actually is, and gradually you start eating less and less of it as you slip in just a bit of regular food here and there, and before you know it you’ve got shelves of this crap with new shipments coming in every 4 weeks that you don’t even have room for anymore!
Seriously, I think our last shipment before she finally put the thing on hold earlier this year probably stayed in the box for a good month and a half while we convinced ourselves that it was still possible to “catch up” and get back on track. I even started eating some of it myself – at least the ones that I could stomach – but that only lasted so long because you can only eat so much of the same packaged, microwavable crap day after day. There are only so many choices that they can give you, and if you end up not liking a sizable number of them, you’re pretty much committing yourself to eating the same thing every. damn. day…
Of course, I don’t have a huge bushel of room to talk because I was trying to lose weight right alongside her doing my own thing and I wasn’t really very successful, either, but it just goes to show you that it’s really willpower that you need to lose weight – not some fad diet or books or a new workout routine. I never really cared for these types of schemes because the question always in the forefront of my own mind was “How am I supposed to switch back to normal foods after eating all of these meticulously-planned meals for month after month???” Sure, they tell you that they’ve got a graduated plan to ease you back into the real world once you’ve hit your target weight, but the truth of the matter is that most people probably never even get to that stage because they slip far before they ever reach their target weight and once they’re reminded what a hamburger not made out of cardboard tastes like, the food starts backing up like a clogged toilet. 🙁
I need to see if there’s a food bank nearby where I can donate all of this crap instead of feeling guilty about throwing two months worth of “food” in the garbage…
Maybe you can give the food to someone needing. If it can store in a pantry.
I’m trying to find a food pantry because even after throwing away the expired and frozen foods, I still have 2.5 garbage bags of food left, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find someplace to drop them that’s open reasonable hours. Wife suggested trying Metropolitan Ministries – any other suggestions?