Jenny Craig

Explore Jenny Craig as a potential weight loss solution

Jenny Craig is a popular weight loss program for a lot of people. Though you won’t see Jenny Craig boasting about them, it’s been used by the likes of Mariah Carey, Valerie Bertinelli, Phylicia Rashad, Kirstie Alley, Queen Latifah, and Jason Alexander, all of whom have obtained amazing results.

Jenny Craig takes a different approach to weight loss than other programs. Instead of counting calories and learning an overly complicated point-based system, Jenny Craig keeps it simple with food delivered right to your doorstep. No calculators. No tracking. No guesswork. Eat the meals and move on with your day. It’s the perfect weight loss program if you just want to lose weight without having to learn a thousand rules.

How Jenny Craig Works

Meet Your Coach

After you sign up, you’ll meet with a Jenny Craig coach to discuss your goals and to formulate a plan that works with you and your schedule. You’ll discuss your strengths and weaknesses, ways you can overcome cravings, as well as a realistic exercise plan. Of course, your consultant will also provide you with a diet plan that will get you consistent, healthy results.

You’ll meet with your coach at least once a week from there on. You can do this virtually or at your local Jenny Craig center.

Receive Your Pre-Made Meals

Jenny Craig simplifies your weight loss by providing you with three meals and two snacks every day. These meals can either be mailed directly to your home or you can pick them up at your local Jenny Craig center.

You have well over 100 choices to choose from for your meals. The snacks are pre-packaged, non-refrigerable items, but the entrees are shipped to you frozen and obviously need to be stored in your freezer.

Additionally, Jenny Craig expects you to add fruits, vegetables and dairy items to your meals, as well as a suitable, healthy snack.

Slowly Start Cooking Your Own Meals

After you’ve reached your target weight, Jenny Craig expects you to start cooking and preparing your own meals. At first, you’ll only do this a few days each week and then transition to doing all of your meals.

Your coach will provide you with tasty recipes and will help you with portion control. You can continue to work with your personal Jenny Craig coach as long as you stay a member. Many people choose to do this so they don’t fall back into old habits.

How the Meals Work

The premade Jenny Craig meals help you lose weight by reducing the calories in each meal and controlling the portions. Often times, many people who are overweight eat healthy meals, but have trouble with portion control. Jenny Craig helps by providing you with both.

Generally, each meal provides about 200 to 300 calories, so you’ll want to have a snack to stay at a healthy caloric intake each day. There is such a thing as losing weight too fast! It’s bad for your body in a variety of ways, and the weight will just come right back once you start eating normally again.

Depending on what your body needs, Jenny Craig will tailor a plan based off of your gender, weight, age, and lifestyle. Most people eat anywhere from 1,200 to 2,300 calories each day.

Jenny Craig doesn’t require its members to work out to lose weight. That said, they do recommend it.

When you think about it, Jenny Craig isn’t just a weight loss program. It’s also a lifestyle program. If you’re overweight, weight loss will obviously improve your overall health, but to truly become healthy, you’ll want to start working out regularly.

Working out doesn’t have to mean you’re at the gym, pushing your body past its breaking point, sweating buckets. Jenny Craig just recommends that you engage in 30 minutes of physical activity, five days a week. This could be something as simple as walking around your neighborhood.

Average Weight Loss

The average weight loss with Jenny Craig is about two pounds a week. In the beginning, you may lose more than this, but as the weeks go by things will slow down to 1 to 2 pounds. This is exactly what you want. It’s healthy, and won’t put your body into any crisis mode.

Other weight loss programs that call for a complete change in your diet come with a variety of health risks (sex hormones, thyroid and cardiovascular risks), but, when you get down to it, they’re also simply not realistic when you think long term. Do you really think you can abstain from carbohydrates for the rest of your life? Why would you even want to do that? The problem was never the food but the portion control.

Jenny Craig teaches you healthy moderation so you can eat the food you want but still live a healthy, active life. Your weight loss will probably be about 8 to 10 pounds a month, which will likely have you feeling better almost immediately.

Cost

How much Jenny Craig will cost you depends on your body’s caloric needs. The average person spends about $20 a day for groceries from Jenny Craig, which equates to $140 a week, or $560 a month. But remember, it’s only temporary. Once you get closer to your weight loss goals, you’ll start cooking and preparing your own meals, as well as learn how to manage your portion control.

You’ll also need to pay for your Jenny Craig membership, but membership includes one-on-one consultations. The price of membership varies depending on the time of year, but it hovers around $20. Jenny Craig often offers discounts throughout the year. Typically, it offers 5 days of free food if you purchase a bundle option of 1 to 2 weeks’ worth of groceries.

The cost to ship your food is free, whether it’s shipped to your door or a local Jenny Craig center.

Why Jenny Craig is a Smart Choice

With Jenny Craig you don’t have to worry about portion control or caloric intake. You know that you are eating exactly the right amount of food. You’re not going to spend your time scanning everything at the grocery store, or doing complicated math to see if it’s OK for you to eat something or not. Any possible wrench that could be thrown into your weight loss routine has been removed and shipped across the country. It’s almost impossible to screw up. Plus, the food is shipped for free right to your doorstep.

The one-on-one counseling is also a must-have. With your personal Jenny Craig coach, you’ll learn how to stair-step down from the prepared foods and start living healthy on your own. It’s one thing to lose weight, but it’s another to lose weight for good, which is what Jenny Craig offers.

What You Need to Consider

Jenny Craig is not the cheapest diet plan out there. $20 a day for food for a single person isn’t cheap. If you have a family to support, the cost can easily become too much. However, just keep in mind that the cost is not forever, and that you will consistently lose weight (average 8 pounds a month). With guaranteed success, it’s worth it for many people.

Newly Added: Rapid Results

Rapid Results is a new program with Jenny Craig that takes advantage of your body’s natural circadian rhythm to help you lose weight. Many people are able to lose up to 16 pounds in only four weeks. This program is no joke, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2017.

With Rapid Results, you have set times of eating and resting to follow your body’s predictable metabolic rate. Everyone has peak periods of the day where their body burns through calories more quickly. If you can time how you eat with these peak hours, your body will lose weight a lot more naturally.

Frequently Asked Questions