Nutrisystem and Optavia are both great options if you want to lose weight and develop healthy eating habits, but which is the better diet delivery service? We compared each diet program head-on, and in the end, Nutrisystem won out, but we also love many features of Optavia. How did our results pan out? Here’s a breakdown of how they are compared in several important categories.
Nutrisystem
Pros
- The good reputation that spans decades
- Reasonably priced
- Several good meal plans to choose from
- Free shipping
- Round-the-clock support
Cons
- No fresh foods
- Some dishes taste a bit bland
- Pricey to maintain long term
Optavia
Pros
- Optavia offers tasty light meals and snacks
- The system is designed to help you build a healthy relationship with food
- We love the Optavia app for additional support
Cons
- Can’t purchase single quantities
- Wish there were more options for their Lean & Green meals
- Must subscribe to their premium membership to receive auto shipments.
Menu and Meal Selection
Nutrisystem
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- 48 with Starter Plan
Medifast/Optavia
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- 6 (1 Box)
One thing that makes any weight loss journey easier is having delicious food to eat so that you don’t feel deprived or constantly hungry on your weight loss journey. Both weight loss programs offer pre-packaged meals. Let’s take a look at how they compare.
Nutrisystem’s Menu
The Nutrisystem menu includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. In other words, they have the bases covered. A drop-down menu makes it easy to filter by menu type when choosing your weekly meals. They also have both frozen foods and shelf-stable items.
Nutrisystem’s weight loss program menu features about twenty breakfast options, covering everything from easy grab-and-go breakfast bars and pastries to oatmeal and savory dishes.
Dinner is the largest section of the Nutrisystem menu, with more than forty ready-to-eat meals. There’s no shortage of options to help you lose weight! Expect dishes with a comfort food feel, except they’re all nutritionally designed to meet Nutrisystem’s dietary standards for healthier eating habits. We especially loved the spicy kung pao noodles and the fried garlic-flavored ramen.
Optavia’s Menu
Optavia’s menu is considerably smaller than Nutrisystem’s, but its meal plan offerings are also quite different. Optavia’s menu is made up mostly of what they call Fuelings, which are essentially meal replacements and snacks. They do offer a small selection of Lean & Green meals, which are fully prepared meals that you just need to heat before enjoying.
Menu & Meal Selection Winner – Nutrisystem
Overall, Nutrisystem has vastly more meal choices, which solves the problem of boredom with your pre-packaged foods. Optavia food is good, but Nutrisystem offers more variety, appealing to pickier eaters and those who just don’t want to eat the same thing every day.
Dietary Options
Nutrisystem
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Medifast/Optavia
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Normally, when reviewing a meal delivery service, we like to discuss whether they fit into some of the most popular dietary lifestyles and if they’re good options for people with special dietary considerations. Nutrisystem and Optavia are a bit different in that they are each a weight loss program on their own.
Neither Nutrisystem nor Optavia are low carb, at least in terms of what you’d need for the keto diet or carb cycling. They’re also not paleo-friendly, considering the dairy and grains used in some of the prepared meals from both companies. Neither companies offer Whole30-compliant meals, and it would be a stretch to say that any of them fit within the Mediterranean diet guidelines.
You’ll find gluten, dairy, and other common allergens in many meal options from Optavia and Nutrisystem. The best you can do is look at the ingredients in each dish or snack before ordering to see if it contains any ingredients you want to avoid.
Optavia makes this the easiest of the two by offering filters that allow you to choose meals and Fuelings based on your special diet needs. To Optavia’s credit, they do offer a decent number of Fuelings for select dietary needs, but those with allergies still need to be careful.
With the nature of these diet programs, they do naturally fall in line with heart-healthy and diabetic-friendly diets, at least for the most part. You’ll find plenty of lean protein in dishes like turkey meatball marinara or grilled chicken sandwiches.
Dietary Options Winner
We choose Optavia as the winner here because the health and diet coach that will work with you is better equipped to offer advice beyond just being your personal coach for weight loss. Plus, they have more special dietary options and make it easy for you to filter your preferences.
Weight Loss Success
Nutrisystem was founded in the early 1970s, and they currently have fifty years of success under its belt. Although their weight loss programs have changed over the years, there’s no way that they would still be around if they weren’t producing some serious success in helping their clients reach weight loss goals.
We like how Optavia shares weight loss success stories right on their website. These little snippets of stories also let you know that the Optavia diet isn’t just about losing weight but really making the changes that will lead to a healthier lifestyle. Some weight loss success stories mention the positive emotional health benefits beyond seeing a smaller number on the scale.
Optavia’s diet program is designed to get you into a fat-burning state, and the light meals and Fueling they offer to make it more of an easy-to-follow plan that doesn’t solely rely on relentlessly counting calories. How much weight you lose is up to you.
Weight Loss Success Winner
Both Nutrisystem and Optavia have helped people achieve their health goals, including losing weight through meal planning, coaching, and dietary strategies, especially in the initial stages of losing weight. Still, Nutrisystem takes the win. They have a history that spans fifty years and millions of customers. There are a lot of success stories buried there.
Diet Coach
Both Nutrisystem and Optavia diet programs offer support via a personal health coach. With the Nutrisystem program, you don’t have just one personal coach, but an entire team of specially trained weight loss coaches at your disposal, along with community support.
Optavia also offers a dietary and nutritional coach who is there to help guide you through diet plans in the beginning and then offer encouragement, advice, and accountability throughout your journey.
What we really like about Optavia coaching is the level of knowledge and expertise that their coaches offer, along with the accountability and regular check-ins that they require.
Diet Coaching Winner
We like Optavia’s comprehensive support and how their coaches are so committed to keeping you on track right from the beginning. We also really like their level of knowledge and experience, along with their focus on accountability. The fact that Optavia has such a large and growing support community is just an added bonus.
Pricing
Nutrisystem
NUTRISYSTEM PLAN | PRICE PER DAY |
Basic | Starting at $9.99 |
Uniquely Yours | Starting at $12.14 |
Uniquely Yours Max + | Starting at $13.57 |
Partner Plans | Starting at $9.99 |
Optavia
OPTAVIA ESSENTIAL KITS | SERVING PER BOX | PRICE PER MEAL |
Essential Optimal Kit (5 & 1 Plan®) | 119 | $5.99 |
Essential On-The-Go Kit (5 & 1 Plan®) | 119 | $5.99 |
Nutrisystem’s pricing is determined by the plan you choose. Plans are priced per day, and most are calculated based on five days worth of meals. Personal coaching, your diet plan, and meals are all included in Nutrisystem’s pricing.
Optavia’s pricing structure is set up so that the options within their meals and Fueling have their own pricing structure. Rather than spending a certain amount of money and then choosing X number of meals, you choose and pay for just what you want. The coaching and app support is also factored into Optavia’s price.
When you purchase from Optavia, your meals or Feelings come in packs with multiple servings. Most items come packed in boxes of six meals. For instance, if you order one of their Lean & Green meals, you get six servings of that single meal.
Honestly, this pricing structure is reasonable for any weight loss plan. The downside is that if you end up not liking something, you actually lose money unless you decide to just suck it up and consume the remaining portions.
Pricing Winner
There are a few reasons we chose Nutrisystem as the price winner here in our price comparison. First, when you consider that you’re getting an entire day’s worth of meals for the price, Nutrisystem comes out to be a bit cheaper than Optavia in our price comparison.
Customer Service
Nutrisystem
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Optavia
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Optavia offers a premier membership for auto-shipments, which is super convenient if you plan on staying with their diet for any amount of time. If at any point you decide you no longer want the premier membership, it’s easy to cancel. Otherwise, without the premier membership, you just order when you want. There’s no pausing or skipping deliveries to worry about.
From a customer service standpoint, Nutrisystem does a pretty good job. You can pause or skip deliveries by making changes online in your account, or you can talk to a representative directly. If you want to completely cancel your subscription to their meal plans, you do have to make contact with an actual member of their customer service team.
Customer Service Winner
In addition to Nutristyem’s responsive customer service department, they also offer a 14-day money-back guarantee, which isn’t something you see too often with diet delivery services. We’ve found Nutrisystem to be willing to go above and beyond in many cases to satisfy their customers.
Winner
Nutrisystem
In the battle of Nutrisystem Vs. Optavia, we crown Nutrisystem as the winner. We like that they have such a long-standing reputation in the diet delivery service industry, plus they offer a range of programs, health coaches, great success, and wonderful variety, and frozen or non-frozen foods.
Still, this doesn’t mean that Nutrisystem is the better diet delivery service for you. Still, either Nutrisystem or Optavia could have won with their different diets. They each offer healthy meals, coaching support, and so much more. What’s important is that the service you choose works for you to help you achieve your weight loss goals.