Nutrisystem review 2024: a meal delivery service for weight loss

Written by Lauren Davis, Fortune Recommends Writer

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Our team of dietitians, personal trainers, and industry experts have tested more than 25 meal delivery services including Factor, Trifecta, and CookUnity to find the best options for every lifestyle. When evaluating meal delivery boxes, we considered selection, price, ingredient quality, and sustainability

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Trusted experts

We consulted with Victoria Burgess, Ph.D., CSCS, CISSN, a certified sports nutritionist. The information in this article was fact-checked for accuracy by Kelly Uhler, who has a background in health care.

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If you have a busy schedule and want to save time grocery shopping and planning dinner, a meal delivery service is a convenient way to ship meals to your home. You may have seen singer Marie Osmond in commercials for Nutrisystem and wondered if this program could help you lose weight on top of saving time. 

The Nutrisystem weight loss diet includes frozen prepared meals you can heat in minutes, as well as snacks, protein bars, desserts, and protein shakes. The Nutrisystem website allows you to explore their menus, with nutritional information like carbohydrates, fats, and protein, before making a purchase. This can be very useful if you’re tracking food intake, to be able to select what meals fit your day best based on your goals.The service is marketed to help people “lose up to seven pounds your first seven days,” but we’ll dig into the science to see if that’s safe and sustainable. 

There are many meal delivery options on the market, so read our Nutrisystem review to see if this weight loss program could help you on your journey, at least in the short term.

Medical disclaimer: This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for medical advice. For health advice, contact a licensed healthcare provider.

How does Nutrisystem work? 

Nutrisystem offers breakfast, lunch, snacks, protein shakes, and dinner designed to help subscribers lose weight. The entrees are frozen and only require a few minutes in the microwave to heat. Some meals can be heated in an air fryer or in the oven.

Nutrisystem is marketed as a weight loss program, and it advertises that you could lose up to seven pounds in the first week with its meal plans, although experts agree that the safe amount to lose weight is one pound per week. (1) 

Research demonstrates that a high-protein diet can aid in weight loss, though the amount of protein needed varies per person. (2) On average, you should aim to consume 0.45-0.55 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day to help move the needle on the scale, but still maintain muscle mass along the way. (3) For example, a person who weighs 150 pounds should aim for 68 to 82 grams of protein per day.

While some of Nutrisystem’s meals are high in protein, they are fairly low in calories overall. Let’s look at some examples of meals:

• Breakfast: Turkey sausage and egg muffin (210 calories)
• Lunch: Grilled chicken sandwich (210 calories) 
• Snack: Dark chocolaty sea salt nut square (190 calories)
• Dinner: Broccoli and cheese stuffed chicken breast (210 calories)
• Dessert: Lemon cooler cookie (140 calories)

Given the sample menu above, you’d have eaten 960 calories with 60 grams of protein for the day. This would likely cause weight loss but is below the recommended calorie intake needed to keep your energy levels up, let alone have enough energy to exercise. 

It’s important to know your BMR, or basal metabolic rate, the amount of calories your body burns when it’s at rest. Oftentimes, this could equal around what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends, which is at least 1,600 calories for women and 2,000 calories for men each day to maintain overall health. (4) Therefore, consuming only 960 calories a day would not be sustainable, especially long term. 

Each meal lists nutritional information, including allergens. Although Nutrisystem offers some gluten-free options, it is not certified for people with celiac disease. 

Specs

NuMi app

As part of the weight loss program, Nutrisystem has a free app you can download to your iOS or Android device. NuMi offers the following features:

• Meal, calorie, exercise, and water intake tracking
• Water and movement reminders
• Barcode scanning for easier tracking
• Free articles
• Recipes for flex days
• Fitbit connection for step tracking

We’d like to see more emphasis on exercise because weight loss is just a part of overall wellness. Strength or resistance training is important to help you maintain and build muscle and also lose fat mass. (5) Dieting alone can lead to muscle loss if adequate calorie intake (especially protein intake) is not maintained properly. (5)

Coaching

As part of the subscription, you have access to coaches, although they are not registered nutritionists or dietitians. They are people who have successfully lost and maintained their weight loss using the Nutrisystem program. Our tester contacted a coach to ask about losing seven pounds in seven days and the coach said most people lose one to five pounds the first week, without any mention of sustainability. Losing weight too fast increases the risk of developing gallstones, and oftentimes is just water weight, not actual fat mass. (6)

Nutrisystem meal plans

Nutrisystem offers a variety of plans to select from: 

• Women’s Health: Designed to reduce belly fat and minimize symptoms of menopause.
• Men’s Plans: Aimed at burning fat and maintaining lean muscle.
• High Protein: Meals with up to 30 grams of protein.
• Partner Plans: For couples who want to lose weight together.
• Club Advantage: All-access pass to meals and services.

Once you choose your plan, you can either select Chef’s Picks, with meals pre-determined for you, or select your own menu. When filtering for dietary preferences, options include diabetes-friendly, plus exclusions for allergens like tree nuts, dairy, and shellfish, though there’s still a risk of cross-contamination in the fulfillment center. 

You can choose five or seven days’ worth of meals per week before add-ons like protein shakes and shelf-stable snacks. Nutrisystem ships new orders every four weeks. Once you place an order you will receive your box between five and seven business days. You have the choice to automatically renew each month or pay in shipments. 

Before discounts, the price starts at $11.07 per day for individual plans and $9.86 per day for the partner plans, which is far less expensive than other meal delivery services.

Our experience with Nutrisystem

Our tester ordered meals, protein shakes, and desserts, and the Nutrisystem food arrived within four business days of ordering in a sturdy, recyclable box with plenty of ice bags to keep the frozen items cold. Over a week, she tried the vanilla protein shake, a breakfast burrito, pancakes, broccoli- and cheese-stuffed chicken breast, chicken grain bowl, sesame beef and broccoli with brown rice, a hamburger, and a chocolate chip cookie. 

The protein shakes are sweetened with stevia, which is good for those who avoid sugar for health conditions like diabetes because it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels, but our tester found it cloyingly sweet. (7)

Still hungry, she heated the breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, bell pepper, and mozzarella cheese, and that was pretty good; but at only 200 calories, she would need a snack before lunch to curb her hunger. Her favorite dish was broccoli- and cheese-stuffed chicken breast, which she cooked in the oven, but it wasn’t filling enough. The sesame beef and broccoli dish tasted just okay, with 370 calories and 22 grams of protein in total. 

The meals come in microwave-safe packaging, which is quick and convenient, but heating up things like a frozen hamburger in the microwave left our tester taking unsatisfying bites. 

Customer service

Nutrisystem has a seven-day refund policy if you’re not a fan of the service or food. However, you must call 800-727-8046 to cancel—you cannot cancel on the website. The customer service representative our tester spoke to said she’d have to mail back the unopened pantry items to get the full refund, or she’d be charged a $125 cancellation fee. To cancel, you must call customer service to obtain a return authorization number, which Nutrisystem requires when returning food. This was not disclosed during the buying process. 

Who is Nutrisystem best for? 

Nutrisystem is for people on a weight loss journey who want to take fewer trips to the grocery store and eliminate meal planning, prepping, and cooking. The frozen meals are pre-portioned and include all macronutrient information on the packaging, making it easier to count macros and calories if you want to. 

What customers are saying

Nutrisystem has 2,194 reviews on Trustpilot and 36% give the service five stars.

Kathy M., a verified user, is pleased with Nutrisystem after being on the program for a year. 

Some customers have complained about the quality of the food.

“A child couldn’t live on these portions, so you have to cook something anyway to eat with it. I was excited to try the beef burrito for lunch, but it was the size of an egg roll. You can add a protein or a salad with these tiny servings, so again what’s the point?” one customer wrote on Trustpilot.