Weight To Go diet

By Dan Cleeve

How it works

Weight To Go's healthy, low calorie menu has been created by Dr David Ashton, a weight loss and obesity expert and his team with a view to helping you lose weight without having to sacrifice any taste. Meals come in easy to store pouches (a seven-day box of food tucked easily under my desk) with every meal and snack allowed for.

The menu

In many ways Weight To Go is similar programme to established diet brands like SlimFast. Every day begins with a shake, allows you a mid-morning snack of fruit (not provided), soup for lunch, another shake in the afternoon, a hearty evening meal before finishing the day with yet another shake. The soups and evening meals were all very tasty, the shakes less so, but after a just few days the routine becomes very samey.

The positives

It's amazing the time you free up by not having to think about food at all. Meals take just a couple of minutes in the microwave to heat up and they do taste good. The lunchtime soups were hearty and the evening meals - I had stews, a chill, pasta and even a curry in my box - didn't taste like low calorie food at all, surely a good thing.

The negatives

On a seven-day Weight To Go diet you drink 21 shakes. Aside from the obvious monotony, I found this hard work. There are four shake flavours to choose from: strawberry, vanilla, banana or chocolate, but each had the consistency of raw eggs and were hard to get through.

In the diet box you're also provided with two energy bars should you feel a bit low, but I had to tuck into mine in the first two days. During the course of my week's trial, aside from the usual hunger you feel on any diet, I often felt lethargic and struggled to concentrate as usual.

Did it work?

For weight loss you can't fault Weight To Go at all, I lost six pounds in week and have no doubt it would have continued to fall off had I kept at it. There's definitely no complaints as far as taste goes either, the soups were good and the evening meals genuinely tasty. I did find the lack of variety a problem, and shake after shake heavy going. But for me, the biggest problem was my lack of energy. I did seven days on Weight To Go and stuck to it but I often felt tired and distracted - I couldn't guarantee I would've stuck to it for much longer than a week.

Prices start from less than £7 a day. Visit for www.weighttogo.com more information.