Diet Food Delivered - Weight Loss Ready Meals

By WLR's Site Manager, Laurence Beeken

Endorsed by celebrities such as Cheryl Baker and Beyonce, what exactly are you getting for your money by having diet foods delivered?  Can you really lose weight with healthy home cooked food delivered to your doorstep?

We’ve taken a look at 8 of the more prominent delivered food diets to see if the modern day meals on wheels can help your weight loss plans.

Read the Advantages & Disadvantages of Diet Food Deliveries

What's the Fuss About?

Diet delivery services arrange for ready-made diet meals to be delivered to your door.  Most of the food delivery programs can be customised, and offer different options for meal delivery depending on your budget, support needs and dietary requirements.

Delivering low fat, calorie counted diet meals to your home is nothing new.  For years ‘Meals on Wheels’ provided nutritious food direct to those not able to make their own dinners.  Now, the readymade meal market is becoming big business.  From Diet Chef to Jenny Craig, weight loss food deliveries are catching on in the UK.

What’s involved when you have diet food delivered?

Basically, your premade weight loss meals are delivered to your door. You simply order your food online or over the phone. The suppliers do the calorie counting, nutrition planning, measuring and preparing for all of the meals, then deliver to your door. Quick and easy to follow, these diet plans are tailored to reduce your calorie intake.

Meals can be already made up for you, gourmet style or supplied in kit form for you to put together and add your own snacks.

Diet Delivery is available from these UK meal suppliers:

• Diet Chef
• Jenny Craig
• Go Lower
• Bodychef
• Nutrichef

plus

• The Pure Package
• My Diet - in a Box
• Wiltshire Farm Foods
  

What are the advantages of having diet food delivered?

• No shopping – diet meals are delivered to your doorstep.
• Convenient, time saving
• Bad choices are taken away. With many of the diet food delivery programs, there is no chance to pick an unhealthy meal option.
• The programmes that offer phone consultations have 1-1 talks that can help you through hard times such as weddings, restaurants, birthdays etc. Some programmes offer phone consultations before you get your diet food delivered. This way you get exactly the right package to achieve your personal goals.
  

And the disadvantages?

• Diet Delivery Programmes are very expensive. First used by celebrities because they were the only people who could afford them!
• Because the weight loss meals are all made for you, you will not learn about healthy foods, portion control and cooking, the skills you need to maintain weight loss for life.
• When you come off the delivered food plans you may pile the weight back on as you have not been educated on how to cook healthy foods.
• The diet delivery food plans are only designed for one person so it is not suited for families.
• No entertaining guests. Designed for one person only, food delivery sites don’t make it easy to entertain friends or family.
• Some of the pre-packed diet meals may be high in sodium.
• It takes away the fun of cooking your own meals.
• With no food diary if you eat something not on the diet plan you have no way of knowing how many extra calories you have eaten.
• On days where you do a lot of exercise you cannot compensate by eating a meal from another day. You may have to just guess if you will need extra and if so how much.

There may be tie-ins for additional discounts.  Higher priced plans tend to provide fresh gourmet style meals, as opposed to the cheaper frozen ready meals.  

In addition to these charges, you may need to buy further food for snacks or top ups.

How much can I expect to lose?

With claims that you could lose anything up to 4lbs a week, what you lose is going to be dependent on your age, activity level, start weight and your calorie allowance.  

Realistically, you should not be aiming to lose more than 2lbs a week over the long term.  Any claims that you can lose more should be viewed with caution.

The plans offer a broad range of foods, with varying price tags and options available depending on your goals. Look at them in greater depth to learn more about each one individually.

The Diet Delivery plans in depth

• Diet Chef
• Jenny Craig
• Go Lower
• Bodychef
• Nutrichef
• The Pure Package
• My Diet - in a box
• Wiltshire Farm Foods