Getting Back on Track - Jenny Craig and Additional Protein?

I am 9 years post RNY.  Have gained back 50 pounds and am feverishly working to get back on track.  I have joined Jenny Craig and am also supplementing that with protein drinks (Syntrax Nectar, for now).  Working on getting to the exercising thing again - feel pretty bad about myself and pushing myself to get to the point that the only way back on track is eating and exercising right.

Anyone use Jenny Craig to get back on track?  How did you juggle increased protein needs with JC's regular nutrition?  

Any other advice?  I am running scared and intend to beat this beast into the ground.

Thanks.

I tried Jenny when my husband wanted to use it to lose some pounds himself. I found it frustrating personally because they wanted me in a calorie range of around 1700 and that's just too much for me; I was gaining weight. Since they try to share their wisdom with you, they didn't like hearing that i was reducing my calories to 1200 or less, but that's when I saw results. So they force you to buy a full day's set of food, and I ended up with all sorts of extras since it meant skipping one of their meals and replace it for something in lower calories. I ultimately opted to use Weigh****chers where I can selectively buy my meals without sweating a consultant and really only get what I need. However, I still find better results without frozen foods, and instead cooking up lean proteins, eating plain greek yogurts and steaming veggies. 

My personal advice is save your money for the grocery store and a gym membership! High quality protein powders, produce and meats aren't cheap. Jenny Craig is just TV dinners at exorbitant prices. The best thing you can do for yourself is EAT REAL FOOD!

I'm 6 years out with a need to lose 35lbs (30 of those I never lost to begin with) and I've lost 1.5lbs this week just going back to the pouch rules and exercising. I know I did not lose water weight because I see my belly still all pooched out and I didn't start peeing more often than usual. I'm confident, FOR ONCE, this is fat pounds. I believe in a paleo philosophy of diet and exercise and so in a nutshell, that means eating REAL food (and 50% of my calories comes from protein), getting rid of breads and sugar and doing exercise that humans are meant to do. If you love to run, that's great. But humans aren't programmed to run like I see people do on the treadmills at the gym. What the paleo folks call "chronic cardo" I agree with. You run and run or walk yourself to death daily and see no results. I use interval training and weight lifting. More lean muscle mass means a higher metabolism which means more calories burned even while you're sleeping.

I get in 120 grams of protein a day. Without bread and sugar fueling constant hunger and crashes, I have to force myself to eat 3 times a day. I set a goal of 1200 calories a day on non-exercise days and on exercise days, I eat the equivalent of what I burned. So if I burned 300 calories, I eat 1500 that day. And well, that's hard for me to do honestly. I pigged out yesterday and made it 1377 calories according to online food journal. Tomorrow, I will get to eat 100 carbs (as opposed to my usual 50) because my muscles need it! They are exhausted after two hard weight training sessions.

I feel bad and guilty and am kicking myself for allowing myself to trade approximately 5lbs of muscle for 5lbs of fat this winter! But those feelings are USELESS. For me, it was a good motivator when I put on my summer clothes and they were snug. But I won't beat myself up. I will enjoy how it feels to be free of the carb monster and free of being an insulin slave and I will enjoy how exercise makes my body and mind feel. And I will enjoy seeing my success. If I think I need help, I'll get my thyroid and hormones checked. If that's fine, I'll tweak my diet. I've already done that. I found out I cannot tolerate being super low carb and living in ketosis. It was 9 weeks of misery (with no weight loss at all) to figure that out. Upping the carbs, I have energy again AND weight loss. We're all different.

I really think you can do this on your own without gimmick diets. We have a tool we can use anytime we need it.