Factor Food Plan

Everyone that has been reading my stuff for years or just knows me in real life, knows that cooking isn't my jam. I've talked about Jenny Craig, which I did for like, I don't know- eight years or something. I just don't like having to go there. Also, as has also been firmly established, I'm a creature of habit and if I like something, I could eat it daily. I had maybe three favorite frozen meals from there- I think it was the meatloaf, the pot stickers, and one other thing. All I can remember is that two out of the three meals were discontinued. A variety of three is not too much to ask for, in my book, but one is just not worth the cost. 

I wrote recently that I was trying BistroMD. While I found it, okay, for some meals, I wasn't blown away, and honestly, there were a couple I had to choke down. I also didn't realize they were going to be frozen. I was looking for something fresh this time. 

BistroMD had interesting choices but you are also supposed to remember to take out what you want to eat the next day and move it from the freezer to the refrigerator. You can put it in the microwave right out of the freezer, but the directions are, for best results, thaw in refrigerator overnight. I forgot almost every time. I don't know if not defrosting it beforehand and heating it from frozen made a difference or not but I can't say I loved any of the food enough to get a second delivery.

On the positive side though, BistroMD has breakfast meals included in your weekly number of orders. I was looking for a meal delivery service that offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner. While lunch and dinner food is one and the same for a lot of people, I also wanted a plan where there was some lighter fare for lunch that feels more like lunch food. For example, Jenny Craig has a macaroni and cheese with vegetables on the side, a loaded baked potato, a baguette with ham and cheese, a panini. I don't want a full chicken marsala meal mid-day. Even though it seems like a Lean Cuisine or whatever, I have a thing about what is breakfast food, lunch food and dinner food. 

I decided that since BistroMD is no obligation, I wanted to try another service instead. I chose Factor home delivery meals next. They are highly rated when I looked up reviews online- not reviews on their site, but I looked up: Best meal delivery service 2022. I got BistroMD and Factor over and over on different review sites.

 Factor's meals come fresh and are kept refrigerated, not frozen. They have a different menu every week so hopefully you like enough on the menu to order however many meals you're getting. I did a Black Friday deal where I got eighteen meals for approximately ninety dollars. However- most of these services, including this one, you have to pay before you pick your meals. I didn't really understand that while they do have some breakfast food, it's not included in your meal order. If you order eighteen meals, that's eighteen meals off the regular menu- which does not include the breakfasts or these add-ons they have. I paid for eighteen meals before I realized this so I was stuck and not sure how I was going to eat eighteen meals in a week. Since BistroMD is frozen, whatever I didn't eat is still in my freezer. 

It was fine though because I figured B and/or E could eat some of the overflow. I got my first delivery about a week after ordering. Each meal comes individually packaged, labeled with what it is, and heats in the microwave in two or three minutes each. The directions say on almost all of them I've had so far is to microwave for two minutes, then add thirty second increments if it isn't hot enough. Personally, I just start at two minutes and thirty seconds because I know my microwave.

I do like more of the food from Factor than I did from BistroMD. I really like their cranberry pecan chicken, sundried tomato chicken fusilli, rosemary pepper pork chop, butternut squash and sage chicken pasta, and a couple of others. I've gotten two boxes so far- the eighteen box and then I switched to six boxes, because I know I'm only going to eat them for dinner. I picked the eighteen for the deal on Black Friday because it was such a good deal and I wanted to be able to try as many meals as I could. OR, if one was horrible, I wanted to be able to swap it out for something else.

If I had to grade BistroMD, I'd give it C. If I had to grade Factor, I'd give it a B. And it's only a B because I personally, have the palate of a first grader. Other people who eat more grown-up food in general might like some of the more interesting choices. I'm looking for more plain food. However, with, Factor, out of all the meals I've tried, I've only thrown one away that, to me, was totally unappetizing. I've gotten twenty-four boxes total, and had to throw two away because they were over the time given to eat them- I never got to them in time. Those two were fish- a shrimp scampi and past dish and a pesto salmon. I'm not eating old fish.

Factor isn't overly exotic but there are definitely meals that try too hard. There is a balsamic chicken with butternut squash risotto that seemed like it had a lot of potential. Then I opened it and see Brussels sprouts under the chicken. They've been soaked in balsamic for however long under the chicken like they're eggs being laid. I don't eat Brussels sprouts to begin with but if I did, I wouldn't want them microwaved under chicken. There are directions for a conventional oven but the whole idea of meals like this is quick and convenient and using a conventional oven is not quick OR convenient. A meal like that could've had green beans, carrots, corn- something that isn't ruined in a microwave. I took the sprouts out, threw them away and just heated the chicken and risotto. 

Risotto is difficult for the average person to make. It takes a little skill. I LOVE the idea of having it as a side with these meals but they need to do some perfecting. I'm no foodie, but no one wants mushy risotto. That's not how it's supposed to taste. It was edible, but I wouldn't say it was one of their better attempts. 

I've never eaten any kind of riced cauliflower in place of potato or rice or whatever. But the cauliflower and red pepper mash under the pork chop was great. I had no idea what it was until right now when I just looked up that meal to write about it. Riced cauliflower is one of those things that also takes skill because I've seen it in other brands of packaged meals and it was disgusting. Factor hit the mark with this one. 

When the menu comes out for the next week, you can choose Chef's Choice, which is where they just send you their selections for however many meals are supposed to be in your box. Or, you can choose your own. You always have the choice to pick from any of the meals but they are labeled into categories: Calorie Smart, Keto, Vegan/Vegetarian, Non-Spicy, Non-Dairy, etc. I choose mostly from the Calorie Smart menu but if there isn't enough I'd eat from there, I'll chose a Keto. 

Eighteen meals for ninety dollars was a super deal. I couldn't eat them all - even including B and E, so some went to waste. Now I moved to six meals and my next box is going to cost seventy-one dollars. It's not much far off from price I paid for the eighteen meals that I got on the deal. I think my I'm still getting some kind of discount. I haven't really investigated their pricing system. There is some kind of reward at four boxes and I'm not sure what that means yet. 

There is no obligation, which I like. I can keep going, stop now, skip weeks. I skipped the next week's meals because I didn't like six meals on that menu enough to bother. You can double or triple up on meals- or even order six of the same meal but I didn't want to do that. I don't remember if there was any favorite I had previously that I loved enough to have six days worth. You have until Wednesday of the week to change, skip, or cancel your next week's order. I suggest putting Wednesdays in the calendar to remember whether to keep your order going or not. 

It's just like any meal planning- you have to know what you're doing that week and how to fit the meals into your life. I'm not generally a meal planner. I decide what I want to eat on a daily basis because I don't cook. Most people I know meal plan though, as I see posts in my social media groups or message boards, where people have all their family meals planned out for the whole week. I'm not that person. 

I'm going to keep doing the Factor meals for awhile. If I don't love the vegetable, I can always supplement with my own. If you want a big discount off a box to try it, use my referral code. 

*The photo of the Factor meal at the top of this entry is showing refrigerated on the left and heated up on the right side.

Factor Meals Referral

 

BistroMD Frozen Meal

 

 

Goodbye Old Friends

 Social media is always a double edged sword. Always. I've discussed it before, I'm sure. My memory isn't so great now that I'm pushing fifty (did I really just type that??), but I'm sure I have discussed my feelings on social media. 

When I joined Facebook, it was probably in 2008, whenever it opened from just college students to the general public. It was fun; a novelty. Seeing all the people I wondered about from any and every weird walk of life I've had, was cool. Instead of just wondering, whatever happened to so and so, you could just look them up and get reacquainted.

No one warns you about the gut-punch moments though. You know, when it's someone's birthday and you go to their page to send a wish for another great trip around the sun. Or when a mutual friend posts a photo captioned, HOW AM I JUST FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS NOW??? That's when I'm hit with the nausea-inducing realization that the person in question has passed away. I didn't know.

This JUST happened to me, this week. I'm still reeling from the news. It wasn't the first time and sadly, it probably won't be the last. It's just that this time, it was a tougher pill to swallow for some reason. Probably because it just seems so impossible, so unlikely.

The first person, where I didn't find out until well after her death, was someone I worked with in my early twenties. I hadn't seen any comments from her in awhile so I went to her page and I saw all the condolences. I was sad, but I wasn't surprised. In all the time I'd known her, she had never been in good health. She was so fun and funny but I'd left the area we lived, pre-Facebook, so keeping in touch, especially when my life was super messy and I had a flip phone, wasn't easy. By the time we became Facebook friends, it had been years of being disconnected. 

Another death was someone from college. That one stung, not only because he was only a year older than I am, but we'd had some really great, deep discussions on my Facebook page. I had gotten to know him more through social media, in the years since college, than I'd known him when we were there together. I remember something happening in the news, posting about it, and I wanted to know what he thought. That's when I went to his page and saw that he'd died months prior.

One person was someone I only really connected with for a short time through my Jenny Craig membership. She was someone I hadn't had any contact with, in awhile, but I went to her page and it turned out she'd died, SO young, I think in her early thirties, in her sleep. She was a big help to me when I was on the Jenny Craig program and we'd forged a quick friendship.

Two deaths, where I found out about their passing, months after, have really rocked me. One, passed away in the fall of 2019. He always wished me a happy birthday, sometimes on Facebook, but often on LinkedIn. I always shake my head at those on LinkedIn because I don't know how no one realizes that I barely look at that boring site. He did it, always, somewhere, regardless of where. I just looked and he last sent a birthday wish only a couple of months before he died. 

He was one of my first mentors in the tanning industry. He stayed up with me, like all night, at my first symposium, in York, Pennsylvania, where I was going to be speaking for hundreds of people. I was freaking out, dragged about forty-five sku's with me, that I set up in my room, like it was the stage, and did a version of my talk that I was going to do the next day. All I remember from that night and that talk is "Vitamins A, B, D & botanicals". He listened to me, just talk-talk-talking, probably babbling incoherently, about my extreme fear of public speaking. 

To explain a little backstory- he and I worked for different companies. In other companies, I assume they each had territories. They had relationships with the distributors hosting these giant symposiums, so they went to the same symposiums every year. I was the new kid on the block at the company I worked for, AND I worked remote from NJ. The company I worked for was in Arizona, where I went maybe once a year. I didn't have a specific territory, I didn't even have a specific job. I wasn't a salesperson in a way where I wrote orders. I think I was just sent to visit and speak wherever no one else wanted to go, like wherever it was really cold. I remember trying to pump gas into a rental car, for the first time, in negative eleven degrees, in Wisconsin. I never did get to go to the Cabo event, but that's neither here nor there. 

Anyway, back to my friend. He and I were on the same travel schedule, a lot. Sometimes, I'd get somewhere, not see him, and immediately call to ask, "Where ARE you??". Every now and again, it was someone else from his company, and he was definitely missed. 

I was also one of the few females, most of the time, out of the speakers at the places I ended up. I ended up with a little group of, basically, surrogate brothers, who really took me under their wing and helped me out. With this particular friend, we had something in common, that weirdly, a lot of relatively young people we traveled with didn't. We were single. So we had a lot of dating stories and drama to discuss between us. At one point, I'd thought he'd met his person and I was so happy for him. It didn't end up working out though. He, like me, really wanted that stability and I'd always hoped he'd find happiness. He deserved it. Unfortunately, he was taken way too soon. I miss his smile and his, "lets yak". 

The most recent example though, I can't really explain why this one really gutted me. It was just really shocking. He was another mentor from those tanning days. He was only five years older than I am, but he just gave off the old soul vibe. He was actually the first person I met from the company by which I eventually became employed. 

I was twenty-five, at the big Vegas trade show, with my boss at the time, which was also a fluke. I'd had been having a rough time both personally and professionally. I was working at a local tanning salon as the manager, just as a transition, while I figured out my new life. My boss had a fight with his daughter who used to have my position. She would've gone with him, to this Vegas Expo, but he took me instead.

I saw this guy, thought he was cute, and we struck up a quick conversation. I think he invited me inside to a party. I quickly realized we were super different. He introduced me to another guy, and that was that. Cut to about a year and a half later, 9/11, ended up being the strange event that became my entry to working with him, working as sort of a protégé.

In hindsight, I think he would say that he thought of me as an annoying, argumentative, little sister. I was the loud-mouth, super liberal Jewish girl with blue fingernails and he was the conservative, polished, Italian Catholic guy who I felt like just wanted to be contrary. He traveled with me, to get me ready to fly on my own. He also lived in the NY metro area so we both went to events on this side of the country while our counterparts took on the West. 

In later years, after both being out of the industry, we kept in touch on Facebook. One day, I saw a photo of his daughter wearing a camp t-shirt from the same camp E was going to also. I messaged him, confused, asking him whether she somehow goes there. I knew he lived somewhere in NY. He told me his girlfriend was living in NJ and his daughter was going to camp with her children. He called it a "serendipitous coincidence". I told him that if he was ever in Bergen to come visit my store so we could catch up. He said he would. He never did. We both had busy lives and time just passes.

What he did, often, was pose some very controversial questions or statements, on his Facebook page, and I'd thoughtfully but highly spiritedly, respond. The last thing he emailed me was thanking me for taking the time to write. That he realizes my values and opinions are important to me and not just another flippant face booker with no real valid opinions, just insults and insinuations. He said he'd take the time to write back when he could. He never did. 

I'd look at his page from time to time. I liked seeing him happy, seeing photos of his daughter. Also having a child by then, close in age to his, I'd think back to our times in that crazy business and sometimes, it was hard to believe any of it was real. It was a real, strange, trip. We'd discussed religion and politics, deeply. That was the thing though, and I don't know know how we would've faired through the Trump years, as our last email conversation was in 2015, but he was always willing to listen to another side. He might not have agreed, but it never got ugly, which is definitely a rarity these days.

You just always feel like there's more time. You'll reach out when you get a minute. A break. Some extra free time. That time never comes. You put it off and put it off. Then you see someone post an obituary or a tribute, and you feel your stomach drop. Why didn't I just get in touch sooner. Why didn't I say something about a photo they posted. Something...anything?? 

When you find out someone died, months later, via social media, it feels really weird. You scour social media and the internet at large for any explanation because you just can't believe what you're seeing. You're just starting to grieve and the people that knew are already well on their grief journey. You wonder if it's appropriate to reach out to their loved ones to share your condolences and maybe a nice  story or funny memory. It's really hard to process. It's especially hard when the person was young, vibrant, positive. When you just would never expect it to be them in that obituary. 

 I know it can be really hard for families to keep a loved one's social media up after they pass. For some, it's too difficult a reminder. I've had two friends pass, (who I was close to in real life and knew they passed), whose families deactivated their Facebook accounts out of self-preservation. I'll just say that I totally understand, but it's still hard to never be able to see old photos or old conversations etched into history via social media. To me, being able to look back in time like that is priceless. I would give anything to look through those pages and memories.

So, I just want to say some kind of farewell, a Goodbye old friends, to L, C, A, S, and A. You all left a mark on my life that meant something to me. Rest in peace. 

The Female Dr Now and Diet Food

 

I'm a Howard Stern listener - I feel like I have to preface that for those that aren't aware. I've been listening since I was kid because my parents were avid listeners. I stopped here and there when I didn't get a good radio signal in the 90's or my lifestyle didn't mesh with getting up early. Or when I had to had to get up at a ridiculous hour to get into NYC and all I had was an iPod. Since the Covid lock down though, I've become a listen-to-the-whole-show-in-order kind of person. I'm perpetually behind but I'm pretty OCD about listening to the whole show. I listen from my phone and I just pick up where I left off.

Howard loves to talk about the TV show My 600 lb Life and the doctor on the show- Dr Nowzaradan - who is just known to all as Dr Now. One of the Stern staffers, Chris Wilding does an impression of Dr Now- I'd never actually seen the show until last week, but the main idea of the impression is that Dr Now tells the people how they're not doing the work. He tells them very matter of fact how they gained weight, they shouldn't have gained weight, and they're not following directions. 

I just wanted to give a little explanation so you can really imagine my experience with a new doctor recently. I hadn't been going to a regular internist for years because it seemed redundant. I had been going to my gynocologist for everything. He did blood work, meds, sent me for tests. Even for just a regular cold, he'd deal with that too. He would do my yearly physical, order the blood work, go over it, etc, so it seemed weird to go to an internist for essentially the same thing. Plus, we had criminally high insurance premiums for self-employed people, yet, we had a ton of rules as to what doctors were in-network and high co-pays. It was a fifty dollar co-pay to go to the doctor! I didn't want to go to any extra doctors. I have a relationship with my Gynocologist so I didn't want to go anywhere else. 

All these years though, people kept recommending this local female doctor. She hadn't been in-network for me though. Then, B took a new job and we got brandy-new really great health insurance. All of a sudden, this woman doctor was in my network. I was thrilled. Copay cost is like ten or fifteen dollars to go see someone. I started making appointments. I made an appointment with this woman. 

I can say this- she was thorough. I think I was there for over an hour. They did blood work in the office instead of me having to find a Labcorp and make an appointment at a later date. However, I felt like I was talking to Dr Now. She told me that I could lose twenty pounds and I'd still be overweight, but it's okay because I have big bones. I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. 

Have I gained weight? Sure. Oddly, I lost weight in the Covid lockdown. When everyone was baking breads and eating them, or drinking alcohol or whatever they were doing to gain weight, I wasn't eating. I don't know why. I just wasn't. I was no longer in my same routine so it changed my eating habits. Plus, I guess not going to the supermarket helped. If we didn't have it, we just didn't have it in the house. I would've had to prepare food and I don't like to prepare food. 

Somehow though, in the time since we've been let out, I don't know what's happened. I was one of those people who yo-yo dieted, took the Kelly Taylor over-the-counter diet pills in the 80's and 90's, and took prescription diet pills. I probably ruined my metabolism that way, plus it's the mix of my predisposed body and nearing the age of fifty. I was never one of those people who had a fast metabolism, just losing weight easily. I know people like that. People who DO eat but they eat to live, not live to eat, and they are just naturally thin no matter what. 

I also used to go on the treadmill every single morning for anywhere from sixty to ninety minutes. Sometimes I did more. I wasn't always running but by the end of any given day I'd have eighteen thousand to twenty-one thousand steps. 

During the Covid lock down, B and I started walking every night. Our main route is about three and a quarter miles that we finish in about an hour and twenty minutes. I started going on the treadmill less and less because I had work to do and I felt like I was going to be getting the steps in anyway. 

I think I probably started gaining little by little as we were let out back into the wild. We were going back out to restaurants.  I also love sweets. Cake, candy, you name it. I can't say I haven't been eating cake or candy. I just don't think I was eating more of it than usual. I don't know. I wasn't stress eating. It just happens. I seem to have different mirrors than other people. A lot of people look in the mirror and think they look terrible. I look and think I look fine. Then I see a photo and I'm like, wow, what's going on there?? 

I left Female Dr. Now's office in a panic. I literally got in my car and looked up Noom. I have had friends who have used it that they've said it worked for them. It was the first thing that came to mind. Well, actually Jenny Craig came to mind, because I did it for like ten years and was successful. I really liked the food. They moved their location though, where I had to pick up the food, and now it's just REALLY inconvenient. So I joined Noom in the parking lot and then went home to look up food delivery services. 

I can't be responsible for preparing healthy meals. I need someone to do it for me. Jenny Craig worked for me because it was quick and easy. I'm on the go all the time. I need to just throw something in the toaster oven or microwave and move on. I started reading reviews and looking at prices of meals that are delivered to your home. I remembered a million years ago that stars like Jennifer Aniston and such were having meals brought to them and there have been all kinds of services that have come out since. 

What I found with most of the plans is that you have to pay before you pick your food. You can see a sample of the menu if you poke around, but you have to pay, then you put the meals in your cart. I found BistroMD and it was fine. I really liked the breakfasts, but I didn't love everything else. I also didn't realize it would be frozen instead of fresh. There's nothing wrong with frozen but I wanted to see if I could find one that wasn't frozen. 

I found Factor which says the food is refrigerated. I got the eighteen meal plan because it was a really good deal for the first order. The only thing I didn't understand is that breakfast in their plan is considered an add on. So I paid for eighteen meals and none are breakfast. They have a different menu each week so there's always different items. I did have to order doubles of a lot of stuff because I am extremely picky and have the palate of a first grader. A lot of diet food is spicy because I think that's supposed to suppress your appetite or something but I really loathe spicy food. It's not even the taste, but it hurts. I don't want my food to hurt. Also, I like simple. Companies are always trying to make diet food more interesting and I guess more like regular food. So they try to get all exotic. I don't want exotic. 

I didn't get the Factor food yet so I can't say how it tastes. I'm optimistic. It should be here this week sometime, so I'll update once I've eaten a few of the meals. If you use my link for Factor, you get $150 off the cost. My first box with the eighteen meals cost me less than one hundred dollars. I thought that was pretty good. It cost me way more plus membership for Jenny Craig. Neither BistroMD or Factor require any kind of membership and you can cancel at any time. I already skipped my second delivery of Factor because I haven't even gotten the first one.

Of course B got a foot injury, pretty much around the same time I went to the doctor. We haven't been able to walk at all so I am back on the treadmill. It's definitely harder than walking the three miles around town. 

 

Rock Your Socks

 

 Shameless ask time! E's 8th grade class is raising funds for their class trip. As we're trying to get back some semblance of normalcy since Covid, they're getting their 8th grade trip. Since I'm pretty much never getting over all they lost in fifth grade - that was their "end of elementary school" year- which was supposed to be the dessert to the dinner food of the earlier years of elementary school. 

I know I know- people love to say, "at least...." about the fifth graders. As in- at least they weren't eighth graders. At least they weren't seniors. At least they weren't in college. 

 Well, guess what? Those fifth graders lost a lot. Not only did they lose all their fun activities, they lost the last bit of time with their innocence. They lost the ability to socialize on the cusp of puberty. As families, we lost our time to get to celebrate them WITH them. Does it sound dramatic? Maybe. Not to me.

Fifth grade "graduation" is where they're at that age where they're still cool with parents being around. They expect you to be around. By the time they're in eighth grade or seniors, any work you do to celebrate their graduation is about them being with their friends. You work together with other parents for the kids to be with their friends, which is fine, and how it should be, but it's different than the sweetness of celebrating with your fifth grader who has no idea what tornado is going to hit them in middle school. And boy, has it been a tornado. 

Middle school, especially navigating Covid, has been interesting. And hard. Middle school on it's own is difficult. Add in the extra weirdness of Covid and I don't know what to call it. 

As we try to get back to whatever our new normal is, school is trying to give them back their traditions. One is an eighth grade trip. This is their fundraiser- Rock Your Socks (click the link) - One pair will be donated for every pack purchased. Can't beat that- who doesn't need socks?

Rock Your Socks

So please help E's grade reach their goal! It would be much appreciated!!