Home Sweet Home / Diet Sweet Diet

Hey guys. We’re back! Thanks to all of you who have commented and read the blog while we were away.

Last week when we were out of town, eating was a pretty interesting experience. Our MO was to try to self-limit our portions Monday through Friday and have our usual S Days on Saturday and Sunday. Of course, we knew it would be challenging — and it was. We were semi-successful (some days more than others). Usually our S Days are not that crazy, really, because we have small stomachs now that can only hold so much food. As last week progressed, I think our tummies adapted and allowed us to eat more. So.

For the most part, though, I’m pretty proud of how I ate last week. Often I will see a vacation as permission to go all out and eat like 10 desserts a day. We did eat some sweets, but it just wasn’t the crazy debauchery it could have been. Still, I know we both gained at least a few pounds last week. I don’t know exactly how much (I did jump on the scale this morning for a spot check but I had all my clothes on and everything), but we’ll see if we can mitigate last week by sticking to the plan this week.

Oh wait, the plan this week is kind of weird! But we’re going to do our best. Here’s the deal. Today through Wednesday we’re eating our Pure Foods Fresh Start 3-day sampler. It all looks fine still so that’s good. (Unfortunately one of Mr. Peanut’s lunches had its seal break and it spilled everywhere — not going to eat that one!) For the rest of the week, we have our remaining eDiets Deliciously Yours food, which we actually put in the freezer in the hopes that it would stay fresh longer. However, I’ve heard that freezing the food really compromises the quality of it (and we don’t really love most of what they sent us anyway). If the DY leftovers just aren’t cutting it, we are supposed to receive our new food on Thursday for our new plans, so we can start with that on Friday. Whew!

Now, moving forward, Mr. Peanut has chosen the 3-Hour Diet, and I’ve decided to stay with PFFS. The main reason we decided on this was breakfast. The 3-Hour Diet plan has two versions; in the cheaper one, you get a muffin every day for breakfast, and in the more expensive one, you get a hot breakfast involving eggs or whatever. PFFS has only one muffin choice; their other breakfasts are cereal, oatmeal, or smoothies, with a couple of egg options. Mr. Peanut freakin’ LOVES the eDiets/PurFoods muffins. They’re kind of his favorite thing in the whole world. As I’ve mentioned here before, while I find the muffins very tasty, they’re not the best breakfast choice for me (I think it’s not enough protein/too much sugar — gives me a headache).

PFFS has a lot fewer choices on the menu than 3HD (though I’ve read that PFFS changes its selections every couple of weeks, which I hope is true!). They have a couple of the same options, but most of the time it’s a whole different meal. I’m not sure how I feel about eating totally different food than Mr. Peanut. I kind of liked us eating the same dinners on eDiets; I think it made me feel more grounded or something. So when the option is available, we’re going to try to have the same dinners. Otherwise, we’ll see how it goes.

Whenever possible, I’m going to try to take photos & give you info about what Mr. Peanut is eating. It’s a little more challenging with him on the blogging front because of the nature of his workdays. You’ll definitely be getting lots of photos and reviews from PFFS stuff from me. The thing to remember is that while there’s some variation in the choices plan-to-plan, eDiets Deliciously Yours, Pure Foods Fresh Start, and 3-Hour Diet are all the same food, so if you’re looking for a particular meal, etc, you can use the search feature to see if we’ve reviewed it.

I have a couple of backlogged photos & reviews to post, plus today’s food. I have to say, I’m really excited to return to business as usual with the blog AND the diet (especially the weight loss part of it!). I’m really happy that by next week I should be back on a regular plan with a functional service. eDiets’ abysmal failure is NOT going to derail me, you guys. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Check back a bit later for photos & reviews!

Last eDiets shipment

Well, I wanted to let you all know we DID receive what should be our final eDiets shipment yesterday. I’m pretty sure we’ve tried all the items in this shipment before, so there won’t be any new reviews (I’ll double check though). Honestly, I wouldn’t have selected most of this stuff again, but since their website was all jacked up and I couldn’t make changes… what can you do.

I’m still worried that our cancellation won’t go through and that we’ll receive a delivery next week when we’re out of town. I haven’t been able to call eDiets to check (assuming I could get through…) because of my raging laryngitis. They did tell me I’d receive a confirmation in 3-5 business days (from last Friday)… so if I don’t hear from them tomorrow, I’ll hopefully have enough voice to call. And yell at them.

Pure Foods Fresh Start sends shipping confirmations!

How refreshing. They sent me an email with a Fed Ex tracking number and everything. eDiets Deliciously Yours NEVER did that — and if they did, I probably wouldn’t have been blindsided by having no food when they skipped my delivery with no communication.

PFFS also sent me an instant order confirmation when I placed my order, and 3-Hour Diet did the same for Mr. Peanut. His 3HD order isn’t coming for 2 weeks, though, so he hasn’t gotten a delivery notice yet (obviously). Our PFFS 3-day sampler thingy is slated to arrive Friday and I can watch its every move online!

Keep your fingers crossed that we’ll receive our last DY box today, y’all. If not, we’ll have to head back to the store for more Lean Cuisine!

Extremely Disappointed in eDiets

Forgive me for this long rant. We’re usually quite cheerful here at TBM. Not today.

What in the world is going on over at eDiets?! I’m absolutely shocked and appalled at how quickly DY has fallen apart. I’ve never seen a service company crash and burn so quickly. Actually, that’s not true. Noodlebean and I used to subscribe to the VOIP company SunRocket for our phone service. One day, out of the blue, they shut down their service without any warning to the customers. They hung a homemade cardboard sign on the door of their office that said “out of business.” We found out because our phone no longer worked. Awesome, right? I can’t believe that anyone could ever rival that situation in my mind, but eDiets has done it. The official forums are overrun with reports of incorrect food being delivered, rude customer service, corrupt data on the website, and an inability to cancel accounts. There’s been hardly any communication from eDiets to the customers other than to say, if you want to cancel, we understand. And cancel we did. I mean, they literally DID NOT send us our food for next week!!

I’m a pretty easy customer. I’m not that concerned about swapping out meals (though, I do like the option) or utilizing the other aspects of the eDiets website. The only thing that they have to do to keep me happy is to deliver food to my house. I guess that was too much to ask. This whole experience has me very frustrated, not just for myself and Noodlebean, but for all the folks out there who finally take the step to improving their health with a trusted weight loss system (something that’s not easy to do, btw) only to be jerked around by a company who won’t even reply to their customers. If people put their trust in you, especially with something this sensitive, you owe it to them to provide the best service possible, and/or at least be honest with them.

We promoted DY on this site—not officially of course, but we’ve dedicated this blog to it. We’ve given honest reviews about all the food—which have, for the most part, been very favorable. I’m sad that we’re no longer customers. I really enjoyed most of the food, and I’m going to miss it. But this situation is beyond being out of control. I certainly hope that someone is held accountable for this, and new management can come in and pick up the pieces.

Does anyone know what happened? We’re still fairly new to the company. To me, it almost seems like DY was an independent company that was bought by eDiets, who in turn decided to run it into the ground. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s just the feeling I get. They used to have separate websites, different color schemes, all that stuff. Then eDiets decides to bring everything under the main brand, and BOOM. The whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket.

Btw, has anyone else noticed that all of the food in the new packaging has the exact same heating instructions? Peel corner, nuke 1 minute, stir, nuke 30 – 40 seconds. It’s not even individualized anymore. I guess it must have cost them too much money to provide proper instructions for each individual item.

I just can’t say enough how disappointed I am that this experience has gone from being one of the best decisions we’ve made, to a complete disaster. It really makes me sad. I guess that’s all I have to say. Sorry again for the long rant, I just needed to vent. Flame off.

Also, I have to mention…

The (mild, but still) panic I’m feeling about having to discontinue Deliciously Yours and find another service is TOTALLY making me want to stress eat!!! DAMN YOU, eDIETS!!!!

ACK!

Whoa! So, check it out. WE NEVER GOT OUR FOOD FOR THIS WEEK. Noooooo!!!!! I’m so upset; I have been doing so well on eDiets Deliciously Yours meal delivery, and I’ve been losing weight. But, as we’ve mentioned, eDiets decided for some crazy reason to roll out a brand-new website without testing it first or something, and many, many customers have lost data, gotten their meal plans screwed up, etc. The eDiets forums are absolutely abuzz with people complaining to the max — and with good reason.

Usually we get our deliveries on Thursdays, and nothing came yesterday. I thought maybe it would come today, but it never did. So, around 4:30pm, I called FedEx today to see what was going on (their driver didn’t show up to our building today). They had no record of any package going to our address. Hmm.

So I thought oh lordy, I better call DY now and see what’s going on, even though I’ve been reading other people’s horror stories about being on hold for hours, never getting through, etc. I did, however, get through to an actual person this time who seemed equipped to help me. She told me that there was a problem with this week’s shipment and it had to be sent back (??? thanks for not communicating that to me, eDiets Deliciously Yours!). Since I had her on the phone, I also tried to arrange the correct delivery days for upcoming deliveries because Mr. Peanut & I are going out of town the first week in March. But, guess what? She wasn’t able to make that change for us.

The way it worked out, because of our trip, we were going to have to throw a bunch of food away anyway (because of the delivery times, we wouldn’t have time to eat said food until it was already spoiled), so….. I just made an executive decision and cancelled both our accounts.

Can you believe this???? I’m so bummed! And disappointed. And frustrated. UGH!

We’re going to get the backordered order that we were supposed to receive yesterday still — that will be delivered next Wednesday. My plan is for us to eat Lean Cuisine or something on Monday & Tuesday, then eat the DY food Wednesday through the next Monday, then we go out of town. When we come home, I want to have some other service set up so we can continue our weight loss progress and not be totally derailed by this, which is what I kind of feel like eDiets wants to happen! Well, that’s unfair I guess, but the total lack of concern or care for their customers is so upsetting and disturbing. Sheesh!

Though on the one hand I never want to give them any of my business ever again, the diet really was working, and I was enjoying the service (when I was getting my deliveries). I’m hoping they will improve and we can eventually come back.

I read on the forum that someone switched to a service called Pure Foods Fresh Start. It’s very similar to Deliciously Yours, and in fact, this person was saying that the food is from the same company (indeed, many of the PFFS food items have the same names as DY options). So I’m going to look into that as well as other options to see what we can do in the meantime. (Edited to add… check this out. Someone tried PFFS and blogged about it ThinByMail-style. If you look at her photos you’ll see it’s definitely the same food we’ve been eating — so I think it might be a good choice for us; we’ll see what Mr. Peanut thinks.)

Now, I know you DYers are out there, and I bet at least some of you are feeling my pain. Has anyone else switched services? What are you using now, and do you like it? Also, if you’re going to stay with DY, can you let me know when they fix this crazy website?

I’m so sad, you guys.

eDiets & Deliciously Yours websites are totally messed up!

Apparently the website overhaul they’ve been working on isn’t going all that well. It looks like now we’re supposed to use eDiets.com instead of DeliciouslyYours.com to make changes to menus, review orders, etc, but the data didn’t convey correctly or something and my information is only partially there. I went on the eDiets forums to see if I could get some information, but all I saw were a bunch of posts from other customers (many of whom were very upset) and NO response from anyone at eDiets! I’m so disappointed in this complete lack of attention to customer service. It wouldn’t be that difficult to send an informational email to all the customers to let them know what changes were being made, how to use the new system, or what might not yet be working. Some people on the forums have complained that they’ve been on hold for HOURS with telephone customer service and still haven’t had their concerns addressed.

This sucks. I hope it gets fixed VERY quickly.

Dinner: Italian Lasagna with Malibu Vegetables

This was SO GOOD, you guys. Oh my god! The lasagna is really delicious. The veggies are pretty meh, but the lasagna is amazing. Now, this was the dinner that DY omitted from Mr. Peanut’s first box (they credited him, by the way), so we actually split everything in half along so we could both taste it. And we both loved it!

All You Have to Do is Ask

I’m back on the DY bandwagon. Yesterday, I mentioned that I was concerned about the set calorie system that DY uses and I wondered whether the 1500 calorie diet was enough food for me to survive on. Today, less than 24 hours after putting that same question to the helpful folks at DY, I have an answer. No, it’s not. A very nice nutrition specialist wrote me back and said that I needed to add 3 to 4 more snacks to my day brining my total caloric intake to just around 2000 calories. Sounds good to me. She also gave me a list of foods and portion sizes that fall within the correct amount for the snacks. Yay. Thanks nutrition specialist!! This makes up for the crap lunch today (though the dinner was super duper tasty!!)

Tomorrow’s Menu

I decided I kind of like laying out the menu the night before… helps Mr. Peanut and I get organized so we can pack his lunch for the office. Anyway. Here’s the food for tomorrow:

Breakfast: Raisin Bran and Hardboiled Egg

Lunch: Grilled Chicken & Chickpea-Carrot Slaw over Greens

Dinner: Rio Grande Beef & Bean Burrito with Spanish Rice

Snack: Peanuts & Craisin Mix

Then I have added 3 servings of fruit (cut cantaloupe, apple, and orange) and you see 1 serving of dairy here (some cheddar cheese) and then we’ll also have milk in our cereal.

So I have to tell you, these premade hardboiled eggs are DUBIOUS, y’all. I took out one that looked okay for this photo, but our other one looks disgusting. I’ll take a picture for you tomorrow. And I will be boiling some fresh eggs in the morning! I actually don’t mind doing some prep and cooking of things like veggies and eggs. It’s still pretty brainless (in a good way) since all the menus are all planned out.

Also, the online menu calls this lunch a “mediterranean” salad. We’ll see about that! And the burrito looks and sounds yummy. I’ve been looking forward to that since we got our deliveries.

I made the unfortunate discovery today (as I was pulling all these things out of the fridge for the picture) that DY forgot to give Mr. Peanut one of his dinners for this week. They gave him two of his lunches instead. So, that sucks. He’s emailed them and we’ll see what they say.