The Jenny Craig diet has been around for years, and is a well balanced, individually focused approach to weight loss dieting and diet meal plans. As our diet plan review explains, the Jenny Craig diet focuses on three main areas: food, body and mind. The plan offers dieters one-to-one counselling, and a wide range of portion-controlled recipes.

Food:

Jenny Craig clients are educated about nutrition, and taught how to create diet meal plans with lots of tasty recipes. They are also taught strategies for eating in restaurants and how to deal with occasional binges on junk food.

Body:

The importance of physical activity and exercise is emphasized. To ensure success the individual's ability is taken into account and an achievable activity plan is agreed upon.

Mind:

The program realizes the importance of attitude in achieving weight loss. It encourages surrounding oneself with supportive people and stresses the importance of positive affirmation as a key element in maintaining long-term motivation.

The weight loss program is largely successful because of the one-to-one counselling with a certified weight loss specialist. These meetings are either face to face, or if the client prefers, over the phone. The meetings act as both motivational sessions and counselling sessions. Critics of the programme have pointed out the "crutch-like effect" of clients forming a dependency on the counsellor, and that once dieters leave the programme and find themselves on their own, bad habits can creep back in. There is also the fact that some dieters become emotionally dependent on the support the programme gives, and may find it stressful making the transition out of the programme, which can lead to a return to bad eating habits.