January of 2006, I decided to try the NutriSystem Diet. It’s simple enough, choose a month’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners from their list of foods and then wait for the boxes to appear at your door.

The food is fairly tasty — though not gourmet — and certainly simple. Depending upon the meals, they can be heated in the microwave, prepared with boiling water, or eaten as is. Breakfast and lunch bars can be eaten anywhere. Add some protein, fresh vegetables, fruit, and/or dairy to make the meals complete following the daily planner/journal.

I tried to stick with the meal plan but eating most dinners out created a big backlog of NutriSystem meals, primarily dinners, and each successive month’s worth of meals delivered to my door produced an even greater backlog. After five months and ten pounds lost, I cancelled my NutriSystem subscription.

Those ten pounds were all I lost during 2006 even though my goal was to lose 43 pounds. So, when 2007 started, I began dieting in earnest again, this time trying to do modest meals, similar to how I ate when I lost 35 pounds on the Weight Watchers Diet a few years ago.

I had success with Weight Watchers because I went to the weekly weigh-ins and a good friend and I had our own competition as to which of us would lose the most weight each week. Once I reached my goal and stopped going to the weekly weigh-ins the weight slowly came back, until I weighed more than when I started. My friend’s weight returned also.

So why not return to what worked? Why not go back to those Weight Watchers meetings? My objection to their program isn’t the counting of points or keeping track of all the foods eaten in a day. My objection is having to attend their weekly meetings. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life weighing in once a week at their meetings in order to maintain the weight level I want.

To keep myself motivated this time, I added a “visual” to my recordkeeping. Two 5-gallon glass jars, one was the Weight To Lose jar with 33 yellow balls (the pounds I wanted to lose), one the Weight Lost jar. For each pound lost, I planned to transfer a yellow ball from the WTL jar to the WL jar. If I gained a pound back, the ball was taken out of the WL jar.

By the middle of May I had transferred eight balls to the WL jar, with two or three in constant transition between the jars. It was during another gain, and three balls out, that I decided to give NutriSystem another try.

I’m starting on week three. After this morning’s weigh-in, all eight balls are back in the WL jar. If I can stick with just eating the NutriSystem meals, and adding a little exercise into the mix, more balls will be joining them.

But, the problem I had with NutriSystem the last time is still the problem I have this time: we eat out a lot. And my diet shouldn’t define my husband’s eating habits or meals. So I’m eating my NutriSystem breakfasts and lunches during the week, and taking breakfast bars with me on the weekends. “Are you sure that’s all you want to eat?” is the predictable question from every waitress at every restaurant after I order a small orange juice and black coffee.

Dinners continue to be the problem because I just don’t want to take a food bar into a nice restaurant and eat it while my husband has a tasty meal. I enjoy food! I enjoy seafood, sushi, vegetables of all kinds, and salads. Since breads, cream sauces, and pastas aren’t my favorite foods, it’s easy to give them a pass and I can eat dinner without destroying my diet even if I don’t lose weight as quickly.

The NutriSystem dinners are piling up again. At some point I will have to postpone my next order long enough to use the extras for breakfast and lunch. Not the best solution, but maybe the best one for my situation.