Diet delivery services on trial
It’s fair to say that I am pretty hopeless at dieting. There’s nothing really wrong with what I eat anyway, so whenever I want to lose a few pounds, I resent every single thing that I have to cut out and get a tad whiny (“Waah, why should I stop eating bread! It’s not fair!” Etc.) Plus I can’t be bothered to count calories or grams of fat or anything boring like that. I’ve always wanted to give a diet delivery service a try, to see if literally being spoon-fed healthy food would work where other diets had failed, so I decided to give Bodychef a go.
Before my first delivery, I spoke to Bodychef founder Jayne Ritchie to discuss my aims, current weight and eating habits. There are six different diet plans to choose from and she said the Superfoods 7 Day Diet Plan would be best suited to me. This is designed to help you lose weight while still receiving the nutrition you need to stay healthy and features ‘superfoods’ (some old, some new) that have been found to provide amazing health benefits. 1 week costs £96.98 and each day’s food comes to 1200 calories.
You receive two deliveries of all your meals and snacks in a week. My first hamper came on a Monday night and I excitedly unpacked lots of intriguing little plastic boxes and bags and studied the menu that came with it. Dinners ranged from ‘Easy Sweet and Sour Chicken’ to ‘Spinach and Sweet Potato Stew’, while breakfasts included porridge, muesli and fruit salad. There were snacks of dates and pumpkin seeds and nice little touches like ‘honey mint and lime dressing’ to really bring out the flavours of the fruit salad.
Most of these foods make a regular appearance in my day to day diet anyway, so what was interesting for me was learning to adjust portion sizes. It was a real education to learn that I only really need a small amount of rice to make a meal, not the overflowing bowlful I was used to! I discovered a newfound passion for porridge (great with blueberries or dates) and picked up a handy recipe for Cannellini spread. Plus it was fun to line up all the little baggies and snacks for the day – very good for distracting from the sullen feeling I always get when I’m ‘on a diet’.
I just weighed myself and have lost 2 pounds in a week, which might not be much but is enough to feel like it was worthwhile and is a sensible amount of weight to be losing. Presumably if you stuck to the service for longer you’d lose more, and without feeling deprived or having to faff around weighing food and counting calories. All in all, a very worthwhile experience that’s taught me lots about healthy eating and made me feel like I could sustain this in everyday life.