The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD
Matthea Rentea MD leads discussions on obesity and chronic weight management. Her guests range from experts in the fields that intersect with obesity and wellness, to individuals successful in their weight journey. She is a Board certified Internal Medicine and Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and founder of the Rentea Metabolic Clinic, a Telehealth clinic for residents of the state of Indiana and Illinois that helps comprehensively with weight management. This podcast is for information and education purposes only. No medical advice is being given. Please talk to your physician for what is right for you.
The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD
Meal Delivery Services: Hype, Fad, or Your Next Lifesaver?
Meal delivery services promise convenience, but do they really make healthy eating and weight management a breeze—or is that just wishful thinking? When I first started this journey, I was totally sold on what I call the “Oprah effect”: the idea that if I had a personal chef prepping every meal, I'd always stay on track and be perfect. Spoiler: it’s not quite that simple.
In this episode, I share my real-life experience with different meal delivery options, how I modify them to fit my own needs, and why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. If you're wondering whether these services are a worthwhile investment or just another passing trend, join me as I break down what really works (and what doesn't) when it comes to meal delivery services.
References
Season 1 of the Premium Podcast: The Obesity Guide: Behind the Curtain
Learn more about The 30/30 Program
Audio Stamps
00:30 - Meal delivery services have risen in popularity over the last few years, but are they worth it?
02:00 - Meal delivery services can be helpful, but the key is finding a flexible system that fits your lifestyle and preferences.
05:48 - No single meal delivery service is perfect, but experimenting and modifying meals to suit your needs can make them a useful tool.
08:40 - Finding the right meal solution means keeping an open mind, adapting products to your needs, and choosing what truly fits your lifestyle and current phase of life.
10:17 - Meal delivery services offer convenience, but success comes from selecting options that align with your tastes, schedule, and long-term habits.
Quotes
“You need to find a system that works for you.”
“These meal delivery services are not just about freshly prepared meals, it's also about having variety.”
“I'm not counting on it to be the only thing that I use.”
“If you're going to go down this road, be willing to try differen
All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.
If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com
Premium Season 1 of The Obesity Guide: Behind the Curtain -Dive into real clinical scenarios, from my personal medication journey to tackling weight loss plateaus, understanding insulin resistance, and overcoming challenges with GLP-1s. Plus, get a 40+ page guide packed with protein charts, weight loss formulas, and more.
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing? I'm really excited today that we are going to talk about our meal delivery services worth this. If you have at all been following things over, gosh, I don't know how many years, maybe like the past five, six, seven years. I feel like when I say meal delivery services, things like Factor, HelloFresh, there was Blue Apron. I don't know. Are they still around? There are so many services where. You either get boxes that have the ingredients or some of them even like Hungry Root, it'll be instead of you having to go to the food store, they have all the different things that you would get at the food store and they're almost doing the shopping for you and then they'll suggest different menu things but you also have a lot of variety. or more the kind of thing that I do like factor where the meals are fresh prepared and you can just poke some holes in the top of it stick it in the microwave or if you're not eating it you can stick in the freezer services like this have just boomed in popularity and there is a service for everything I know I'm a vegetarian and While Factor does offer some vegetarian options, I know ones that I've really liked in the past is Daily Harvest. It's actually, they're also vegan. So, although what I find, they have an amazing amount of fiber and protein, but the calorie count sometimes is not high enough for me. So I'll have to add cottage cheese or add an egg or two. But, the popularity has gone through the roof. And so the question becomes, this is actually something I talk a lot with patients about, is it worth investing in this? Or is this something that, Again, it's a fad, it's a trend, it's something like that. And what's interesting is, when I first started this journey years ago, I thought, well, that's the thing that's holding you back. I want to call it the Oprah effect, where you're like, if I had a chef, if I had someone prepare all my meals, I would always eat on plan and I would be perfect. No. So, I have gone through so many different iterations of this. I have gone to places where they prep the food for you and you can buy different things. I have hired, there was a lady that she was making sort of keto ish type of food, but I would get just Big trays of baked veggies from her and I forget what else I did. I think she maybe made some higher protein enchiladas and I literally, she would customize these things for me. I think at one point I was the only one ordering from her, but I've gone through just so many different versions of this, so many different meal delivery services and here's what I've come to. I've come to that you need to find a system that works for you. So I'm. I will tell you what works for me, but then I know that every patient that I work with and coaching client, they have a different formula and so the fallacy is, if you think that you're going to arrive at, this is it and I found it and we're good, not the way. So again, initially I was trying to have someone else make the food and then I realized I wouldn't like the taste, it would be off that week or, you know, whatever would happen. And. Then I would feel so guilty that this big amount of food was going to waste because no one else was eating it and it just didn't hit the spot that week. I just didn't like it. And then I realized I wanted variety with time and it's really hard when someone else is making your food to be kind of super diva about it when you're not really having like a skilled home chef coming to the home. And by the way, believe it or not, I have, clinic members that will want a chef and cannot, like, they're so short staffed, some of these agencies, that they can't find a chef to come to their home. Isn't this incredible? You'd think, oh, well, it's like not a problem. If you, if you want to pay someone to come to your house, that's, that's not always the case. So anyway, I digress. But the point is this, I've gone through all these different iterations. And what I personally have learned is that I like variety. I want different tastes. I want different things at different times. I have different seasons of life. So sometimes i'm going through work periods where it's just One thing to the next to the next to the next and I know when these weeks are coming It'll usually be a week or two either before or after a conference and I know okay, maybe Instead of my patients being spread out over however many weeks, we're kind of compressing it down so that I can go to that conference or maybe it's over the summer and we have a week vacation or something like that, right? And so I know during those times I'm going to need meal delivery to help save my life. Seriously, I don't have a fighting chance at it otherwise. So for me, the thing that, that we have stuck with for years in my family, but again, we experimented with all the other services. We really like the factor meals and the reason I like it, we literally, me and my husband, we'll get it. transferred every so many weeks, so we're not getting it every single week, but when I get it there's about either three or four meals that I get depending on how many I like that they're offering for that week to pick from and if I don't eat it within three, four days I'll freeze it. And in fact, I think I have five or six in the freezer right now because I just sometimes I just don't feel like them because you always have to, order well in advance with these places, which is one of the problems that you're, you're not sort of able to say, okay, right now I feel like X, Y, Z. So anyway, I have learned that I love having a backup option. I love having the quote unquote busy option. So for me, I have a few Amy's frozen meals in the freezer and I will have a few factor meals and you know, there's some things in the pantry. So for me. These meal delivery things are not just about fresh prepared meals, it's also about having variety. Like, I'm just not going to make a curry at home, a chickpea curry. I'm not going to do it. But I love having that every so often, and so Factor provides something like that to me, right? But I'm not counting on it to be The only thing that I use and also I'm really modifying these meals a lot. So, one of the things that I'll do, the factor meals can be quite large depending on which ones you get. And again, for the vegetarian ones, I'm just speaking, I'm just telling you how I have to modify things. So the carbohydrate content can be quite high in some of them. Like I'm talking up to 70 grams and that for me personally, that's just a lot of. grams of carbohydrate at one meal and there's not enough protein and fiber to balance it. So what I will do is usually take half of whatever that carbohydrate is in there, kind of break it into two meals and add into it a protein source, whether it be a few eggs, some cottage cheese, or sometimes they're quite spicy and I need to kind of put some Greek yogurt. I need to do something to. Dull that spice down. I for sure am not good at spice. And so that helps me to not only up the protein, get the taste profile the way I want, and factor has just been something that we've stuck with the longest. But my point being this, whatever option you're going for, be open to Maybe not ordering weekly, maybe modifying what comes. So for example, what's nice with those meals, because they're so big, I can share half with my son, half with me, right? So again, you sort of, you know, you create some unit economics out of all of it, right? But again, it's kind of hit or miss. Does he like it or not? And so again, that's another challenge, but that is one way in which I used it. But again, this thought from the past was, well, this is what I'm going to do for lunch and dinner. In fact, I remember, Oh, I forget the name of it. There was some type of vegan meal delivery service and I actually loved the taste of it. And they were like, we're gonna be breakfast, lunch, and dinner for you. And so I was like, oh, this is my answer. And they were actually great. The problem was that they took too many days to ship from the time when they When they said that it wasn't, that it was, you know, being overnighted or whatever they were doing, it would be sometimes like four or five days, it would be completely warm. One time it was completely open, like they, like the containers were, the plastic was off of it, the food was all over and I contacted customer service and they would not refund. It was just a horrible situation. I thought, well, I'm never getting an order from you, right? But the point is I've gone through so many of these different companies until I found one where. Customer service fit, taste profile fit, all those things where I could modify it in a way that I want and that's what's working for us. So be willing to, if you're going to go down this road, to try different things. By the way, the same principle applies whether it's these home meal delivery services. Also trying, for example, if you're trying some of these frozen meal options, there's a lot of either well known companies that are trying to get into this space, quote unquote, the GLP 1 market. I hate that, but it's, it's what they're calling it, right? And they're focusing on products that are higher in protein, higher in fiber. They know what we need. And I'm like, great, let's do it. But you've sometimes got to try a few different products and that's how you know what you like. Can we not give up on things? Can we keep an open mind? Can we use it in a way that's maybe different than exactly how they intended it? And then to look what fits in your life. So, for example, for me, I can think of nothing worse. Like, seriously, if you want to prescribe torture to me, you're going to give me a box of raw ingredients with a card on how to go through it, and you're going to make me sit there and chop all the things at night. I'm not saying that once a week now I'm not prepping. You know, a veggie soup with a bunch of things cut up or, I make my Mediterranean salad. There's different things, but that is torture at the end of a 12 hour day to say, and now sit here and start to bake and fry and do all the things. I don't care if the cards included. So for, for us, we were always joking. That's not for us. Like my husband always jokes, if I'm going to order something at a restaurant, it's not going to be a fajita thing where I have to assemble it myself. So I always laugh because I'm like, and that's why I love you, because we just think the same. But anyway, so think about though, does that work for you? Now I have a friend where. She loved ordering that for her family a few years ago. Her kids were in that preteen adolescent phase and it was during the pandemic and they actually learned how to cook that way. So she said it was super easy. They would get their iPad, they could click the little QR code and they would learn how to make things. So that fit their life, right? These kids were learning how to work in the kitchen. It really fit. It's not going to fit my life when I had a newborn a few years ago, so just again, different phase, different time. You need to think about what is it that I'm actually looking for? Try to find those products. And then the biggest thing I also want to throw in there is be open to variety being an option. Again, what I found is maybe once a month, we're getting food out. Maybe every so often it's a frozen meal that I got. at the store. Maybe so often I make a double portion of something and freeze a portion. That's a big thing that I'll do nowadays, just kind of make a double portion. Now, I'm not freezing a million things. I think it tastes disgusting, to be honest, when you have stuff in the freezer for long amounts of time. Has anyone ever on YouTube followed those channels? Am I the only one where the mom will like, meal prep, crockpot, I'm not enjoying the sound of this. It's like a month's worth of crockpot meals that are frozen in bags. And it's supposed to be so easy. And all I think is, I just, I don't want to consume that at some point, but you know what, that's what works in their world. Do I think it's worth it or not? I think it's absolutely worth it. I think the question becomes, is it worth it to you and can you make it work in your world? Can you get through the ingredients in time? If you freeze it, do you end up using it up? Is the service very flexible with you? So again, I can speak just as a customer, both to daily harvest and factor. They are so easy with, you can just delay the week. They have an app and it's really easy to just say no, no, no. To the next few weeks and then to. you know, pick what weeks it happens. They notify you ahead of time. So it's not like they're trying to be sneaky, like, ha ha, your order went in. Now you can't cancel it. They're not kind of in the gotcha game. They've also been very great rarely when there's a mistake, like it doesn't come or something happens. They're really great about, and this is not sponsored by the way, but they're really great about handling anything that happens. So does it work in your world and what's the purpose of it? And then. Can we make that work long term? So I think that's another thing, is like, we have to find a taste profile where you're not just forcing it down. It's like, well, it's convenient, so I'm gonna stick with it. You have to actually like it. If I wasn't liking the taste of these meals, I wouldn't continue to eat them. But I think that allowing for variety It can't be understated enough, and I think that's the problem. There's a, like, not your mama's Tupperware, that was something on the south side, here in Indy where I used to work. It was relatively close. Alright, everyone talked about how good their stuff was. They were never open when I got off of work or on Saturdays when we would come before noon. You know, you have a little baby, you're out in the morning shopping, right? Just like our family. We're not going at 5, you know, at 5 p. m. to get stuff. So I just remember being like, they might be great but they don't fit the needs of our family because they're never open when we can get there. So you need to find options that work for you, taste profiles that work for you, and then don't think that that's going to be the only answer where, now I'm going to have this meal replacement service. All these things are going to be exactly the case. Not going to happen. I hope that this episode was helpful. I'd actually love to hear from you. What have you been trying recently? What have you been liking? Because I get the sense that there's so many new brands nowadays that you, I just can't have tried them all. Obviously I would love to try more of them. I don't, my sister has the blog, sweet fee. com. We'll link to it. It's really great. She's a mom blogger. She talks about her kids and recipes. Really her channel is all about, different cooking. She even has a book, five ingredient Friday, where it's actually, I was the inspiration for this because I was like, Felia, please stop making complicated recipes. I need it to be five ingredients and no more. So she has a good cookbook and you can go through there and it's easy stuff. But the point is she used to. A lot of these companies want you to try their stuff and so I'd get to try it sometimes if she had a free coupon code and I remember some of them I thought, you couldn't pay me to continue to eat this, but I would love to hear what you are really loving because maybe there's one that I haven't tried and also really giving your food store a try. So if you follow me on social, I've definitely made some videos where I've said, Hey, as a physician, you Looking at the kind of things that we're trying to hit in the GLP 1 space, these are the type of options that I would pick. So if you want that, I'll make sure to link the video down below if you want to check that out. But otherwise, have an amazing rest of the week and we'll talk soon.