By Debbie Djordjevic
I've tried out this type of diet before so had an idea as to what to expect and a benchmark to work against. Setting aside a week is always hard when your life revolves around food but I did manage to get through it with only a couple of lapses!
How it works
Diet Chef delivers a hamper full of chef-prepared ready meals for dinner, soups or smoothies for lunch, granola or porridge for breakfast and healthy snacks for those hungry moments. All you need to do is put the meals into a microwave or saucepan to heat. The diet is based on calorie control - the meals add up to an average daily tally of around 1,200 calories, so most people will be burning fat at a rate of 700 calories a day. Care is taken that the meals provided are healthy as well as tasty. There are no artificial colours, no artificial preservatives, no artificial flavourings, no trans-fats and are also low in sodium/salt.
My box arrived the day before I started the diet and everything was neatly packaged into sealed microwavable packets which stored neatly into my fridge. To keep the price down you supplement the provided diet with fruit and either pasta/rice or a vegetable serving at main meal times. The enclosed diet guide was really useful and I have been referring to it since finishing the diet as it contains some really handy advice that I didn't know, like 100g of baked potato contains 136 calories yet 100g of broccoli contains just 24 calories!
The menu
Your weekly delivery contains breakfast, lunch and supper plus an afternoon snack (either oat bakes or fruit & grain snack bars). You add either 40g of pasta or rice to your main evening meal and can add a small piece of fruit to your daily intake too. I opted for soups rather than smoothies at lunchtime. The breakfast granola which came in a variety of flavours including chocolate, pink apple & cinnamon and treacle & pecan was delicious. I could have had porridge to vary my breakfast but I've never been a fan and definitely had enough variety for daily granola not to become too boring.
The lunchtime soups were filling and extremely tasty - I certainly scraped the bowl each time. Favourites were definitely chorizo & bean and spicy beef & tomato. The supper choice was also wide to add variety and to appease even the most fussy of eaters. From beef in black Porter to Thai chicken curry nothing disappointed in terms of flavour and quality.
The positives
The price! Diet Chef has aimed to make this as affordable as possible and have managed to get the price down to £6.97 per day (for Diet Chef 1200). If you subscribe to Pay Monthly you also get a week of free food every month. I also love the ease of use - didn't really have to think much just stick to the provided meals. All food was tasty - even the snacks - which made the whole dieting experience far more enjoyable than usual.
The negatives
I do find adjusting to a much smaller portion is the most difficult thing to do, that's why I always give up after a couple of days. Having a snack or two really helps, but with most meals I felt I could have gone on eating. This is, however, down to my greed rather than unusually or unreasonably sized portions.
Did it work?
It did! I must admit that I had a couple of days when I was out for a meal (which you can do on this diet so long as you are careful) which meant that I didn't lose as much weight as I could have done had I stuck strictly to the menu. However I still managed to lose 4lb in a week without really suffering too much.
Diet Chef costs £38 for a weekly hamper when you buy five weeks supply, which works out at just £5.43 per day. For further details see www.dietchef.co.uk or to order call 0845 094 9796.
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