Recommendations & Hacks

Updated: 7/30/08

I'm going to try to keep this post updated with recommendations on how to modify, enhance or otherwise make palatable some of the things on the Nutrisystem diet. I'm also going to use it to record the basic of what each food type is calorie and nutritional content-wise, in case anyone totally can't stand (or afford) what Nutrisystem sends and wants to find a basic analog in the real food world without totally throwing their diet out of whack.

Nutrisystem Supplied Food

Breakfast Entrees

• Scrambled Eggs & Sausage - Powered eggs, yum! Can't really taste the sausage. Kind of scary, but actually not as bad tasting as they sound. Could use some sprucing up. I recommend adding some herbs like thyme or rosemary or something to the powdered mix before heating, so it'll be evening distributed throughout the eggs. You could also add hot peppers, green onions, or anything else from your "unlimited" list to add flavor. Too much may make the eggs not cook right, though. Maybe limit pre-cooking additions to herbs and small stuff.
• Scrambled Eggs part 2 - If you're a man and get a "low glycemic" item, try putting your eggs on a slice of bread and using cheese as your dairy.
• Scrambled Eggs part 3 - DO NOT OVER MICROWAVE THEM! Remember eating jello and finding chunks that were harder than the surrounding jello? Over-microwaving these eggs produces disturbingly hard chunks just like the jello. Not very appetizing.
  
• General recommendation on milk for cereal - See note in Dairy section about "Skim Deluxe"
  

Lunch Entrees

• So far, nothing to report. They've all been energy bars so far. Pretty flavorful and nothing you can really do to doctor them.
  

Dinner Entrees

• Any of the pizza entrees - I recommend cooking them in the oven for the crispy crust. The crust and cheese are "subpar" even for cheap pizza, but the sauce is ok. Again, think about adding things from your "unlimited" list or combining your veggie or salad servings with this to spruce it up a bit. Not to mention herbs! Oregano, red pepper flakes, etc.
• Vegetable Fajita - I'm a fan of Mission brand tortillas. Some tortillas are dry and kind of nasty, but these are pretty good. I recommend using their whole wheat tortilla shell for this dinner. Thing is, this dinner won't fit on a single 10" tortilla, so I just put it in a bowel with some jalapenos, green onions, some chili powder and tumeric and some other random spices and sorta scooped with the tortilla. I also added some tomato from my "vegetable serving" and olives from my "fat serving" and corn from my "low glycemic carb serving"
  

Dessert Entrees

• Nacho Crisps - Nasty, seriously. Puffed soy wafers with yellow dust, not so tasty.I don't think there's any fixing/hacking these to make them taste better..unless you put real cheese on them.
  

Free Range Food

Dairy or Protein Serving

• Stonyfield Chocolate Underground Fat Free Yogurt
• Yoplait Light Thick & Creamy Yogurt
• Safeway has something called "Skim Deluxe". It's skim milk, but it doesn't have that weird purple hue that regular skim milk has and actually has some body to it. Definitely nicer to drink straight than regular skim milk.
• There are many varieties of soy burgers out on the market right now. Boca and Morningstar maing some pretty good stuff. I don't remember being too fond of the Gardenburger brand, but I don't remember. One thing to be concious of, some of these contain cheese or other things to boost the flavor. Be aware that "protein serving" should be predominantly protein, so don't go overboard with the less healthy soy burgers. Watch for hidden fats and such.
  

Fruit Serving

• Some companies make little micro juice boxes for kids. They tend to be in the 4oz size the is your "serving" of fruit according to Nutrisystem. Most of these juice boxes should also have no additional sugar and be generally healthy.
• Like most of the free range items, don't forget that you don't necessarily have to eat/drink it in the normal fashion. You can freeze fruit juices or add your favorite fruit juice to some diet ginger ale, or favorite diet lemon-lime soft drink.
• Does wine count as "grape juice"? If so, your 4oz serving of fruit juice could be a 4oz glass (standard serving) of wine. Since you're supposed to keep alcohol to a minimum and you're only allowed three fruit servings during the day, this is semi-self regulating. Maybe keep it to one glass of wine per day as your fruit serving, to try to stay within boundaries better. And no dessert wines!
  

Low Glycemic Carbohydrate Serving (Men's plan)

• Pepperidge Farm 15-Grain Bread - In the search for edible whole wheat breads, I found this one. They have a 9-grain, 12-grain and the 15-grain bread. I can't remember, but I think the other two aren't whole wheat. This one is. Lots of good little nuts and other chunks (that may make this not Nutrisystem-appropriate, actually). It's damn good bread for whole wheat.
  

Vegetable Serving

• Tomatoes - has these great little tomato mixes at our local Safeway. They come with normal red tomatos, but also yellow and these weird dark green ones that are really flavorful.
• Tomatoes part 2 - Look for heirloom tomatoes if you can find them. They tend to be really ugly looking, but really flavorful.
  

Salad or Fruit Serving

• has a mixed greens with herbs plastic box at the local Safeway that's very good even without dressing.
• In general, don't forget your "unlimited" items, especially since they tend to be veggies anyway. I love adding radishes and green onions to my salads.
  

Fat Serving

• Safeway has these little plastic square containers of nuts. They have odd little mix names. Most of them are salted (which is a no-no for the fat serving on the diet), but I found one that isn't. I think it's called Sequoia or something. You'll have to pick around the dried cranberries, though.. unless you can count that toward one of your other items for that meal.

Water

• Water can get kind of boring. I prefer Dasani or Smart Water for their slight mineral taste, which makes it much tastier than regular 'flat' water to me.
• Metromint has a great line of mint and fruit flavored waters. The mint ones are literally just water and mint oil. They even have a Chocolate Mint version (my girlfriend thinks it's made using the "chocolate mint" plant, which has a faint, but not overpowering chocolate flavor). You could probably do the same yourself at home with tap water and some mint essence. We've found Metromint products at Whole Foods, Harry & David and at a nice little local market called David's Natural Market in Gambrills, MD.
  

Tea

• Lots of little tea shops are popping up in this area. Many have online stores you can order from. If you get a good tea, many times you don't need to add sugar. My favorite is Jasmine Tea, which is a scented green tea. It does have caffeine, but the jasmine gives it a nice smell and flavor.
• Celestial Seasonings has many herb teas that taste sweet but contain no calories. Their Wild Berry Zinger tastes like fruit punch.

Coffee

• This might be a tough one for some people. Not everyone likes their coffee black. I'll have to investigate this more.
  

Diet Drinks

• Walmart and I assume, Sam's Club, has "Sam's Choice Clear American" flavored waters. So far, the Key Lime is pretty good. Tastes nothing like proper "key lime" but is vaguely Sprite flavored.
• I've found that Diet Dr Pepper and Diet Slice taste most like their non-diet counterparts.
• Add Diet A&W Root Beer to the list of acceptable diet drinks for people who don't like diet drinks. You can barely taste the artificial sweetener.
  

Alcohol

• You're supposed to limit the amount of alcohol you drink, but if you want a drink, Amstel Light tastes like a real beer and there are many new "light" beers that have more body than light beers of old.

General Tips/Combinations

• If you don't like the taste of something, but are still willing to eat it, try to eat it before you eat other things that may cancel out the flavor. For instance, the eggs aren't too tasty to me, so I might save my fruit or something with real flavor for after I eat the eggs.
• Eggs (breakfast entree) w/ cheese (dairy) on a slide of whole wheat bread (low glycemic)
• Lettuce wraps - Take butterhead/bibb lettuce or iceberg, anything with a firm leaf, and stuff it with other items from your meal, like soy crumbles or a cut up soy burger as your protein serving, or any entree that would normally be put on bread, tortilla or a roll.