For as long as I can remember I’ve struggled to maintain a healthy weight. Nearly ten years ago, I had a realisation that I wasn’t doing myself any favours and through diet and exercise I managed to shift nearly three stone – hurrah! But two pregnancies and the resulting two babies have put paid to that. And, despite my best efforts to get on board with meal plans such as Slimming World or returning to count calories, I find it hard to keep up the motivation. A busy day or a bad night will lead me to reach for the cupboards or overload my plate. I’ll forget to weigh out my meal or get lost in a plan that involves points here, there and everywhere… let’s face it, I’m a lazy dieter born out of the fact that by the time I get to focusing on me, I’ve used all my energy up focusing on the rest of the family! Enter Dietbon – healthy and gourmet diet meals delivered UK.
Who Are Dietbon?
Dietbon describe themselves as the experts in weight control, here to support clients and guide them along their weight loss journey. Dietbon deliver ready-made meals directly to your home, ensuring you have a calorie counted and portion controlled program to follow that will allow you to lose weight without feeling hungry. You’ll be supported throughout by a dietician who’ll work with you on monthly phone calls to help understand what your objectives are and help you achieve them. Simply sign up, order and tuck in! No weighing, cooking or stressing required to set you on the path to a healthier future!
How Does The Dietbon Plan Work?
Dietbon give you the opportunity to pick different plan lengths in order to best suit your weight loss requirements; whether that’s a month or more. There’s even an option to trial a week’s plan in order to see if you like the meals! Whilst everyone’s weight loss will be different, the website gives you guides of how much you can expect to lose on each package – with a month long plan giving you a guide of between 1 and 8 pounds.
For a month’s plan you’ll get 24 days worth of meals. This is because Dietbon work on a 6 days on, 1 day off plan, so that each week you get one ‘free’ or ‘off’ day whereby you’ll source your own meals and learn how to adopt healthy eating habits. This also gives you flexibility to cope with days where you may be out and about or unable to use the Dietbon meals – making it far easier to stay on track! You can change your meals up to 72 hours prior to the delivery arriving and you can choose everything for yourself online. That means choosing 24 breakfasts, 24 lunches, 24 snacks, 24 dinners and 24 puddings! Each meal has 100% natural ingredients .- no additives, preservatives, palm il or GM foods so you can rest easy that you’re giving your body good, honest nutrition.
What Does A Day’s Meal Plan Look Like?
Each day you’ll have a Dietbon provided breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner and pudding and alongside this you’ll need to supplement it with a portion of fresh fruit, two dairy products and a serving of vegetables each day. The plan comes with a guide to your Dietbon products and how to structure your eating which goes a little like this…
You’ll start your day with breakfast which includes a Dietbon breakfast product, a yoghurt (low fat or natural) or a portion of milk and a portion of fresh fruit. The Dietbon breakfast products range from muesli to slices of bread to pancakes and more; all of which are fairly carbohydrate based. By adding a protein and calcium source and a portion of fresh fruit, you’re ensuring you get a well balanced start to the day.
Next is lunch; a Dietbon slimming meal and a Dietbon pudding such as fruit compote or a caramel or chocolate pudding. Mid-afternoon you’ll have a Dietbon snack which ranges from nut selections and cereal bars, through to cakes and shortbread, as well as another yoghurt to help provide you with a long lasting energy and fullness. Finally for dinner you’ll have a Dietbon slimming meal and a portion of raw vegetables.
How Did I Get On With Dietbon?
I signed up for a week long plan in order to see if Dietbon would suit me. To start, I inputted my data on line, selected my meals and gave my contact details so that my dietician would be able to contact me. The products were due to arrive on the Monday so I arranged for our first consultation to be a few days before on my lunch break so that I could get organised and ensure I understood what I needed to do.
Telephone Consultation
As part of the package you get a monthly consultation with your own dietician as well as access to a weekly support group. My phone consultation lasted around 40 minutes and was packed full of information. As someone who’s done lots of diets, I was worried that there may be a little judgment on some of my current eating habits but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. The lady was kind, knowledgeable and took the time to understand what I wanted to get out of it. We talked about how exercise wasn’t necessary but that it could help if I wanted to do it and about longer term shifts such as the impact on sugar-free drinks on my diet. I genuinely enjoyed the conversation so much that it went on for far longer than it should have and yet at no point did I feel rushed! On the call, we also ran through how the plan would work, the benefits of a free day and why there was a need to add dairy and fruit at different points. I came off wishing I had all the products there to get going straight away but I was glad I had some time to get to the shops for all the yoghurts I’d be needing!
The Food
The box of meals and snacks arrived as arranged and thanks to the way in which they’re packaged, they could go straight into the cupboard rather than having to fill up the fridge – something I was very pleased about as I still had plenty of food in there for the rest of the family! I had a quick sort through and broke mine into two piles of meals based on what I thought were more lunch-based items – my dietician had recommended that the meals richer in carbohydrate were better to eat at lunch so this made more sense. Inside the box I also received an 84 page booklet talking me through the program and offering some recipes and tips for how to follow it and ideas for what to cook after I’d finished, a concept that I rather liked
For my week, I opted for the following Dietbon items:
Breakfast: Pancakes
Snack: Mini lemon cakes
Main Meals: Conchigle pasta with salmon and spinach. Creamy vegetarian carrot and coconut soup. Spicy tomato and beef soup. Mini farfalle pasta with chicken and sundried tomatoes. Chicken tikka massala with rice and quinoa. Mexican meatballs with pasta, vegetables and tomato sauce. Roast chicken fillet with mashed potatoes. Goats cheese pestro stuffed ravioli with tomato and tofu sauce. Marengo veal. Chicken fillet with rice and almond sauce. Salmon with vegetables, grains and a soya sauce. Sauteed pork with diced vegetables and bacon.
Dessert: Chocolate pudding
Drinks: Two packs of detox tea – ‘vitalise me’ and ‘keep calm’
My Experience
I was unsure what to expect in terms of the food given that it didn’t need refrigerating and it’s microwaveable in such a short space of time (just two minutes!). However, I genuinely enjoyed the food – particularly the meatballs with pasta and the spicy tomato and beef soup. The portions weren’t huge but I knew that portion size is always one of my issues with food and I tried using a smaller plate to trick my brain into thinking it was a bigger meal! My dietician also gave some advice about putting bits of a meal to one side if I felt it was too much and I did find this with some of the rice meals – allowing me to roll them over into another meal.
The addition of a portion of fruit and plenty of yoghurt during the day allowed me to add some variety and I’d mix in some salad or very lightly steamed broccoli as my portion of veg. I used my free day over the weekend when we were in the city allowing me to eat in a restaurant with Dave and the kids over lunch and have a light dinner. Throughout I tried to stick to as much water as possible, but allowed myself one other drink a day so that it felt maintainable – for me that was either a Diet Coke or a glass of sugar free squash! This was another thing I learnt from the nutritionalist, to keep things as achievable as possible rather than making me feel like I was being punished and it certainly helped; at no point did I feel like I was missing out!
At the end of the week I weighed myself and found I’d lost 4lbs in weight – but most importantly, I felt like I’d had a very structured week to kick start me on a healthier regime. No worrying about cooking meals or ensuring I had the right ingredients and certainly no excuses for not eating them. It was hard avoiding picking at the meals for the rest of the family or reaching for the chocolate in the evening but I saved my pudding to have in the evening to allow me to feel like I wasn’t missing out. I’m aware that this weight loss is probably higher than I’d normally manage each week because it’s such a significant change to the snacking and portion size that I’d usually have!
Would I Recommend Dietbon?
If you’re looking for a reliable, supportive and easy way to start losing weight then I’d certainly recommend Dietbon. It is expensive, especially if you’re still having to cook and provide meals for others in the family, and that’s probably one of the hardest parts; eating differently! I really enjoyed the meals that I tried, the wide variety of options meant that the plan stayed fresh and varied throughout and would certainly keep me interested over a longer period. My favourite part has to be the communication with a dietician and the support you receive as it really sprung open some thought streams for me around why I eat and what I’m putting in to my body – thoughts that have had a long lasting impact beyond the end of my week programme. Would I do it again? Definitely, even if it’s only on a short term basis to kick start weight loss or check in every now and then. Best of all, it really didn’t feel like a diet!
If you’d like to trial Dietbon then click here to get 15% off (use the code ‘WELCOME’) and 28 days of free morning and night detox tea. Packages available include: 1 month (£76 per week including 15% reduction), 2 months (£67 per week), 3 months (£59 per week) or 4 months (£44 per week) which works out as little as £7 per day for four meals and dietary consultations.
No Comments