I wanted to take a few minutes and discuss what subscription boxes are, and why they are a good option for me.  I decided to use a Q&A format, with an imaginary interviewer.

Are the subscription box companies paying you to write all this?

Nope.  I don’t get any financial remuneration.  I also don’t get free or discounted food.   If you read my posts you’ll see I’m sometimes critical of the service, and I plan to continue being critical when I see a problem.

What’s the basic concept?

Every week I order a box from one of the companies that delivers to my area.  The boxes usually contain recipes and pre-measured ingredients for three meals.  Each meal has two servings, so I get a total of six meals/week.

Which subscription box services do you use?

At present I use Plated, GreenChef, and HomeChef.  I’ve used HelloFresh in the past, and wasn’t totally happy with their customer service, but your experience may be different.  Since there are four companies shipping to my area (Central Texas) I don’t have to settle for lackluster service.

Every Sunday I check each company’s web page to see the week’s vegetarian menu, and I order the one that’s most appealing.  I do have to be vigilant — all the companies (except Plated) auto-schedule weekly boxes for me, so I have to manually go into each website and pause my deliveries.  On Sunday I double-check everything so I don’t accidentally get two boxes.

Wow — that sounds like it could be expensive.

I think it’s a reasonable price for the service provided.  My six servings range from $72/week to $59/week, delivery included.  You could certainly make your own meals for less money, but for a variety of reasons this is a good choice for me. I’m not saving money, but I’m making better choices.

What about the quality?  I don’t feel comfortable with strangers picking my produce.

So far I am extremely happy with the quality of the produce.  Everything has been equal to what I would buy in a grocery store with a good produce department.  As an added bonus I don’t have to worry about waste.  So far the ingredients survive a week in my fridge without too many problems.  I do try to cook anything leafy first since the leafy vegetables get slimed the quickest.

Why are you doing this?

A little background:  I’m 45 years old, weigh over 300 pounds, and have horrible eating habits dating back to childhood.  I love pizza, crackers, popcorn, bread, eggs and nuts.  I’ll eat fruit, but tend to gravitate to the high-sugar fruits, which isn’t good. And I don’t like vegetables much at all, unless they’re hidden in a pizza.  Veggies = gross.

I’ve tried to change my eating habits for about a decade now. I’ve made some strides, but I feel my progress is too slow.  Luckily I haven’t experienced serious health problems.  Statistically, I know this isn’t going to continue, so I need to make radical changes.

Since I’m so out of shape and overweight, I suffer from low energy. I would often go grocery shopping in the evening, and afterward I’d be too tired to cook so I’d drive through McDonald’s and shove an order of fries down my throat.  The fries would slowly equal more pounds, all of which I have to carry around my waist and hips every day.  This makes me even more tired — and demoralized! — so why the hell not eat another order fries?  Does it really matter?

I’m also not a smart grocery shopper.  There was also a lot of waste because I had trouble with meal sequencing, and because sometimes I would buy without remembering to scale the recipe first.  (I live alone, and most recipes have at least 4 servings.)  I was also overly ambitious, so despite knowing I have zero energy I would buy ingredients for several meals each week, most of which would also go to waste.

Picking recipes — oh gods, the hell of picking recipes!  I kept trying to pick things that had ingredients I liked, which didn’t help change my eating habits.  Decision fatigue would set in, and I’d realize the recipes I had chosen weren’t all that healthy anyway.  And it seemed like every recipe I chose required a new $14 bottle of spice or a new cooking implement.  Most of the time I’d toss my plans out the window and order a pizza.

Then the hell of cooking itself.  I’m not a good cook and cooking every day exhausted me.  It also left my kitchen a wreck, and it seems like there were always dirty dishes in the sink, and crap piled (and spilled) all over my counters.

Subscription boxes keep me accountable.  I don’t have as many excuses because the food is right there in the fridge waiting to be cooked.  Since the subscription price is a large part of my food budget, I can’t afford to order a pizza if I think I don’t like the ingredients.

Now I cook three days a week, eat leftovers three days a week and have pizza on Saturdays.  (My goal is to be healthier, not perfect.)  My kitchen gets a “deep clean” on the leftover nights, so chaos is kept at bay.

And best of all, I’m eating scary veggies!  I’m giving up control, and it’s paying back in spades.

Do you plan on using subscription boxes for the rest of your life?

I don’t know.  Right now I’m trying to commit to twenty-four weeks, which will hopefully help me find healthy recipes I enjoy while at the same time helping me lose weight so I’ll have the energy to take better care of myself.  I’m starting to worry I’ll backslide if I stop using subscription boxes.  What if I start ordering pizzas again?  (Note:  Knowing the names of all the drivers at the local Pizza Hut is not a good thing.)