Review: Jenny Craig Meal Delivery Service (#1 For Weight Loss?)

Chef Crafted, Healthy & 5 Free Days!

Beverly FriedmannMarch 11, 2019Last Updated: July 4, 2019

0 170 4 minutes read

When most of us think about Jenny Craig, we think of meetings, diet plans, and perhaps even restrictive food options that won’t leave us satisfied.

While Jenny Craig is a diet plan geared towards those who want to lose weight and keep it off, you can avoid all of the traditional meetings, consultations, and hassles involved with a typical diet service company and just enjoy the convenience of freshly delivered low calorie meal plans to your door. The only caveat is meeting with a virtual consultant to help guide you through the weight loss process, if desired.

Jenny Craig’s meal delivery subscription plan takes a lot of the guess-work out of calorie and carb counting, dining out, and trying to figure everything out on your own by pre-packaging low-calorie meals tailored to your individual weight loss goals.

It’s different than a traditional meal delivery service (if you decide on this option), with the idea in mind that eventually you can learn to start cooking your own at home meals yourself once you’ve lost half of your desired weight.

But the best part of the plan is it isn’t restrictive at all, with options like desserts, pepperoni pizza, pasta, and even cheeseburgers delivered fresh, chef-crafted, and without the use of any artificial ingredients.

Jenny craig pasta meal dinner option — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

But is it worth the money and actually satisfying? We took a look at some of the plans.

Jenny Craig: How It Works For Weight Loss

Combined with the convenience of Jenny Craig’s meal delivery service subscription plan, you also get to meet with your own personal consultant at least once a week, either in person or virtually.

jenny craig consultants — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Consultants help you create a plan based on your own weight loss goals and needs, work through any setbacks you may be having with diet choices, and help you reach goals at reasonable yet fast rates (depending on how much you need or want to lose).

You then sign up for a Jenny Craig meal plan of your choosing and meal and snack plan. There are over 100 different menu options to choose from, and you get to eat 5 small meals per day plus one snack all of your selection, based on your individual plan option and goal.

The ultimate goal besides convenience to your door and freshly insulated packaging just as you’d receive with any normal meal delivery subscription service is the added benefit of weight loss targets, so this is a perfect option if you are having a tough time losing weight on your own or calorie counting and looking to save on both time and take some of the confusion out of dieting at the same time.

Jenny Craig before and after weight loss plan — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Jenny Craig: Meal Options and Food

Jenny Craig meal menu selections include breakfasts, lunches and dinners, snacks and desserts, and bars, shakes and healthy dressings/condiments.

Breakfast options include cheddar cheese omelets with red bell peppers, cheesy egg and sausage scrambles, apple cinnamon oatmeal, egg, cheese, and sausage turkey burritos, waffles, turkey bacon and egg white sandwiches, and New York style bagels.

There are also low calorie breakfast syrup sides to pick from. While these options all come in at around 200 calories or so, they are actually quite heart, filling and delicious.

Jenny Craig breakfast options — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Lunch and dinner options include cheese ravioli, beef merlot, cheesy beef enchilada bowls, chicken ranch melts, chicken pot pie, chicken tacos, chicken fettuccine alfredo, cheeseburgers, chicken marsala, vodka pizza, three cheese macaroni, turkey burgers, classic cheeseburgers, and even pepperoni pizza.

Deprivation free, these all come in at less than 300 calories each.

Jenny Craig Pizza meal option — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Snacks and desserts include apple crisps, kettle corn, cheese curls, chocolate walnut brownies, chocolate lava cake, cheddar cheese crisps, buttercream cupcakes, peanut butter cookies, lemon cakes, chocolate cheesecake, and ranch snaps.

Similarly, these are all less than 200 calories each.

Jenny Craig desserts lemon bars — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Jenny Craig specialty items include nutrition bars, low calorie dressings that actually taste good (like the creamy herb dressing and fresh balsamic), creamy tomato soup, chocolate and vanilla shakes, green beans lightly drizzled in olive oil and garlic, and cheesy broccoli with cheddar.

Jenny Craig: Pricing Options and Structures

One of the main downsides to the Jenny Craig meal delivery subscription service option, at least in using their website interface to get started with a plan, is they make figuring out pricing structures and plan options a little bit difficult.

With Jenny Craig, you have to pay for a sign-up fee, although they currently are offering limited time only 12 week plans to join for free (plus 5 free days of food), which still seems like a bit of a commitment if you haven’t tried it out yet.

You can sign up through the website or through the Jenny Craig Center (or by calling them or using the online chat service), and the typical sign-up free without enrolling in a special longer term plan is around $100, plus a monthly membership fee of $20.

Food costs, depending on what items you pick (with 5 meals per day and snacks) typically adds up to $150 per week.

So while Jenny Craig’s meal delivery subscription service is definitely on the higher end of the spectrum when it comes to costs, there are some definite added benefits that come along with the service.

Jenny Craig full meal diet plan image — Image Credit: Jenny Craig

Your virtual or in person weekly consultant provides you with weight loss plans, tools, and exercise guides. You’re also given a lot of food in comparison to cost (not considering the membership fees), and the main benefit is really if you are looking for convenience in combination with an easier way to lose weight without having to try to count calories on your own.

It’s definitely less pricey than dining out, still delicious, and saves on a lot of carb and calorie heavy options.

Beverly Friedmann

Editor at My Food Subscriptions | Website

Beverly joined MFS with a diverse breadth of experience in writing and digital marketing. Throughout the years of placing recipes on MFS, I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of “subscription boxes” for the cooking/food market. It was then that I decided to also include my own personal review of these subscriptions on MFS.