It was six months before my 15 year high school reunion and I absolutely HATED who I saw in the mirror.
My name is Justin and I figured out how to hack the Nutrisystem for Men with a couple of little tips and tricks I’ll share below to skyrocket my success, hijacking the system to supercharge my weight loss and fall back in love with myself all over again.
But let’s start at the beginning before we dig too deep.
I have a beautiful little family (with two super smart little girls) and a wife that loves absolutely every square inch of me – though there’s less of me now than there was before, but we’ll get into that in just a little bit – thinking back to that moment of sheer dread staring in the mirror and wondering how the hell I got to be so unhappy is something I won’t ever forget.
I wasn’t always that big, carrying around more than 40 pounds then I ever had, and to be completely honest it crept up on me in a way I never could have thought possible.
Sure, some of my favorite clothes weren’t fitting as well as they used to.
But I got used to blaming the my inactivity on having small children and while I was willing to admit that I’d put a couple of extra pounds (the dreaded “Dad Bod”). I wasn’t willing to admit that the reason I felt so tired all the time, the reason that my back hurt so much, and the reason that I wasn’t quite as confident going out the way I used to me at a lot more to do with the fact that I didn’t look the way I wanted to and certainly didn’t feel all that healthy, either.
I just never realized just how out of control my weight had become.
Dreading that my high school friends wouldn’t even recognize me when they saw me at the reunion if I showed up like this, even if I wasn’t exactly a stick in high school, I knew I had to do something but had absolutely zero idea of where to start.
I remember specifically calling my sister who had successfully lost nearly 30 pounds in just three months before last summer and practically begged her to tell me the secret. She gave me the old “calories in versus calories out and eat less while moving more” speech, which I’m sure worked perfectly for her but really never worked for me when I had attempted to get healthier after working full-time for 4 years and helping my wife with both of my kids.
Yeah, I’ve been able to lose a couple of pounds here and there but never anything really permanent, and I was looking for something that was going to set me up with the body that I always wanted to end the healthy lifestyle that I deserved once he and for all.
The coworker that had been struggling to lose weight for quite a while had lost more weight in the past 30 days than she ever had in the past three years decided to put me on to her little secret – Nutrisystem!
Right away, I had only about a million questions for my coworker about how Nutrisystem really worked, how much it cost, how tough it was to get started with and how difficult it was to stick with. Thankfully she very patiently took the time to explain the entire system to me (from top to bottom) and really encouraged me to dive right in with both feet.
Not wanting to do the walk of shame through our local department store with a bundle of Nutrisystem boxes under my arm, I decided to order a couple of them directly from the company online – and within three days I had everything I needed for the next 15 days ready to rock and roll at my doorstep.
I purchased 35 day weight loss kits from Nutrisystem and received 15 entrées and five desserts, as well as the promise to drop anywhere between 10 pounds and 20 pounds of weight within the next 15 days.
To say that I was locked and loaded pumped up to take this project on is the understatement of the century!
The first morning I woke up charged and ready to go, and sat down to my regular morning cup of coffee and dove right into the Nutrisystem often and a cup of “Fusion Energy” juice to get me rocking and rolling.
I’ll admit that I was a little bit hungry after this breakfast, but understanding that changes were going to have to be made and sacrifices were obviously going to be necessary to get back to the way I wanted to look before this reunion I pushed on.
Besides, I’d read in the instructions that I could snack on vegetables between my Nutrisystem meals if I was really in a pinch, and a couple of baby carrots later my cravings were kicked to the curb and I was good to go.
Both the first day lunch and the first day dinner entrées or picture-perfect, and I enjoyed a little dessert at the end of the day that I can’t believe I was even allowed to eat on Nutrisystem – accounting for how tasty it really was!
The second, third, and fourth day on Nutrisystem were pretty much a rinse and repeat of day one, but around day five through day seven things got to be a little bit more challenging.
Because I was so crazy about my path and my rice before switching to Nutrisystem my body was used to being flooded with carbohydrates in a way that I didn’t even realize.
Nutrisystem itself isn’t a no carb or low-carb diet in specific, but it definitely restricts the carbohydrates that you’re pumping into your body on account of how easily the body converts them into fat. Putting my body through such a significant carbohydrate restriction right out of the gate gave me the “Nutrisystem Flu”, a pretty common occurrence in people that make the switch to Nutrisystem after picking out on carbs for years and years previously.
I was feeling a little tired, I was feeling a little foggy, and I was definitely tempted to grab a couple of sugary snacks to pick me up through the Nutrisystem Flu. But my husband kept me motivated, kept me encouraged, and those Nutrisystem desserts at the end of the day really did help me fight back those cravings and after a week on the system things started to even out and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there on.
Unbelievably, by the time I stepped on the scale at the end of my first 15 days with Nutrisystem – something that I had avoided doing completely for fear that my lack of progress would ruin my motivation and I’d hop right off the Nutrisystem completely before giving it a fair shake – I have been able to lose 15 pounds – 15 POUNDS – and was more than a third of the way to my six-month weight loss goal in a ridiculously short amount of time!
You can’t even begin to understand how excited I was, and I didn’t even realize that my motivation had an extra here to kick into but boy was I ready to take things to the next level!
On top of losing that extra weight, I’d also realize that my energy levels had started to elevate, too.
I was still drinking coffee throughout the day, but instead of drinking four or 5 cups of coffee to get me through a really tough shift at work I was only drinking 2 cups of coffee a day – once in the morning to “jump start” my day the way I had ever since I started college and once at lunch, just as a course of habit.
Even though I had been cutting back so significantly on my caffeine intake my energy levels increased significantly and I was having a much easier time keeping up with my girls and work. I was having a lot easier time remembering things, was enjoying exercise rather than dreading it, and was generally feeling a lot better than I had in a very long time.
For the next two weeks, my progress on Nutrisystem for Men was pretty steady, but the next time that I jumped on the scale I didn’t see quite as big a swing in my weight loss as I had expected.
My first two weeks had resulted in a weight loss rate of 15 pounds and to be honest I kind of expected the same kind of progress to carry on – at least through the first month.
You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that I had only lost 5 pounds.
I imagine that most of my weight loss in the first 15 days was due to “water weight” being shed, but I’ve been tracking pretty religiously with not only the scale but tape measure and had already lost almost an inch around my waist – which means there was plenty of fat melting from my body, too.
It was only then (after plenty of research into how to supercharge the Nutrisystem results I was looking for) that I discovered that a lot of the food contained within the Nutrisystem had been irradiated.
The radiation, it turns out, is the new way to essentially pasteurize ALL foods that are sold in a processed fashion these days. Major food manufacturers that are producing food on a large scale he radiates pretty much everything, blasting it with particles to destroy Salmonella and E. coli bacteria and any other “bad nasties” that can destroy your health due to food that has spoiled.
The CDC has confirmed that radiation is a safe and effective way to destroy foodborne illness and prevent foodborne diseases, but at the same time research shows (and good old-fashioned common sense would tell you) that a radiation is killing the positive enzymes and probiotics – “good bacteria” that supports healthy digestion and improved overall health and wellness in the body – alongside all of those bad nasties we mentioned above.
Further research showed that there were quite a few people out there that had stumbled upon the same details I had while using Nutrisystem for Men, and that they were “hacking the system” by adding quality probiotics to their daily Nutrisystem meals and enjoying dramatically improved results across the board.
Could Probiotics Really Be the Answer to Unlocking Effortless Weight Loss?
Digging a little bit deeper into everything that probiotics promised, and realizing that maybe not all bacteria was bad bacteria, I’ll admit that I started swimming in research that for the most part went completely and totally over my head and had to click out of more medical journals that had me reeling with more questions than answers then I probably should admit.
But I continue to push on, wondering if these people who had tried probiotics with Nutrisystem were really onto something special, and figured I had nothing to lose – especially since my rate of weight loss had dropped off a cliff after that first initial surge.
I started poking around to find out what the best to probiotics would be to “feed” the good bacteria in my digestive system.
When I did, I realize that some of my favorite foods were on the list – Greek yogurt, papaya, pineapple, mangoes, and even sauerkraut and kimchi (which I can’t get enough of, but realize some people aren’t all that crazy about)!
Starting off real small, I added a snack of Greek yogurt and a little bit of pineapple juice at the end of the day before I went to bed and committed to making this a part of my Nutrisystem for the next two weeks.
It wasn’t hard at all to do, and at the end of this “Nutrisystem for Men trial” I was stunned to find that I had lost 10 pounds of weight – doubling my rate of weight loss from the two week block of time previously and almost matching my newbie gains when I first kick started the Nutrisystem process in the first place!
These results were enough to kick off a redoubled effort to pack the Nutrisystem with probiotics, find out how to really unlock everything that my biochemistry had to offer to supercharge my weight loss results, and finally turn my body into a fat melting furnace that purged weight from my body on autopilot – all things to the food I was fueling my body with!
I started to eat more cinnamon (the real stuff) by adding it to my daily coffee and started snacking on jalapenos instead of baby carrots when I was feeling hungry. This flooded my body with capsaicin, a powerful probiotic that not only increases digestive efforts and makes them more efficient but also helps to repair muscle and organ cells while elevating our metabolisms at the same time.
Ginger was enjoyed with a cup of tea at the end of every night, not only helping me relax and unwind but also reducing inflammation and improving the bioavailability of all the nutrients I consumed with my Nutrisystem. Digestion was improved, I became a “more regular”, and the weight just started melting off faster than I ever could have expected.
Truth be told, I even tinkered with adding a little bit of baking soda to my daily diet (just a pinch every morning) to even out my body’s pH level – and I feel that really helped me to elevate my weight loss results with Nutrisystem, too!
At the end of the day, I’ll say that Nutrisystem for Men and it’s incredibly simple, straightforward, and (all things considered) ridiculously inexpensive approach to eating healthy got me at least 80% of my weight loss results.
I realize now that my diet was all over the place and anything but healthy, and today I don’t stick completely to the Nutrisystem way of eating but I eat a lot more vegetables, a lot less carbohydrates, and have been able to maintain my ideal body weight for almost 3 full years.
But that other 20% of my weight loss journey simply wouldn’t have been possible without “hacking” the system and adding probiotics into the mix.
I know, because my weight loss stalled out almost completely when I followed the program “as is”. I just wasn’t listening to my body, wasn’t paying attention to my biochemistry, and wasn’t even fully aware of the fact that the Nutrisystem COULD be hacked – and that I could do it without spending a mountain of money or having to do anything really crazy at all in the first place!
It was only after I realized just how much of a neutralizing impact irradiation had on our processed foods, a process necessary to keep us safe but one that leaves even our healthier foods without all of their essential nutrients and “good bacteria” did I figure out how to right the ship and kick my weight loss back into high gear.
Probiotics are a complete and total game changer, and figuring out how to add more of these inexpensive digestive enzymes back into the mix is the easiest way to re-elevate your weight loss results, to melt fat faster without having to put any extra time into the gym (or really any time at all), and how to build the body of your dreams and then keep that fat off once and for all.
I was able to lose those 40 pounds completely, and with a month to spare ahead of that big reunion. That left me plenty of time to start enjoying my new life and share my story with others.
More importantly though, Nutrisystem and probiotics have taught me the importance and the value of taking the food you put into your body very seriously.
I’m in a better position today as a husband and a father to take care of my family as far as the foods they eat on a daily basis are concerned, and I owe it all to hacking Nutrisystem.
I can’t imagine going back to eating the way I used to, digging my own grave with my teeth.
And with my new healthy eating lifestyle, I’ll never have to.