Do healthy food delivery services help you lose weight: personal experience

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Alexandra Tachalova tested four healthy food delivery services and says what she liked, what she didn't, and whether she managed to achieve her main goal - to lose weight.

Eating habits are established from childhood. If you were fed and taught to overeat at a young age, then starting to eat right is not an easy task. It is good that now there are many services for the delivery of ready-made healthy food on the market. In this article I will tell you how I managed to lose weight with their help and compare different nutrition programs.

As a child, I was a full child, then at the age of 18 I stopped eating fatty, sweet and starchy foods and easily lost weight up to 50 kg. But then by the age of 27, due to a sedentary lifestyle and frequent business trips, I gained weight, and at the end of last year the scales showed me 56 kg. Then I realized that I needed to change something, for example, choose a suitable power system and strictly adhere to it. I didn't have the time and opportunity to cook healthy food, so I went to look for companies that deliver ready-made healthy food.

I tested four health food delivery services in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The programs in them are designed for five meals: breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and second dinner.

Now let's take a closer look at each service separately: what we liked, what we didn't like and why.

Eat2Fit

• Where does it work: St. Petersburg.
• Site: eat2fit.ru.

I learned about this service in 2015, when it was obscenely expensive: a trial day cost 4,500 rubles. I really wanted to try it, but food for the price of an airplane wing did not fit into the budget.

In 2017, I gave Eat2Fit a second chance. At that time, the service revised the cost of long-term nutrition programs. An additional argument for choosing in his favor was the fact that all programs are developed by professional nutritionists.

I decided on a trial day and photographed what they brought me.

What we liked:

1. Delicious second breakfast: curd tartlet with hazelnuts and raisins.

2. Beef stroganoff with couscous was great too.

3. Cod with asparagus and napoli sauce was very tender and juicy.

4. In Eat2Fit, tea, chewing gum, wet wipes and bottled water were included with each serving. Other services either did not offer such a bonus, or asked for a surcharge for it.

What did not like:

1. The breakfast porridge looked like a tasteless substance. And in spring rolls with cottage cheese and apple, I practically did not find cottage cheese. Hence the question: where is my source of protein, which is necessary so that when I lose weight I do not lose muscle?

2. Fresh fruit was brought to the afternoon snack. This is very tough, because the appetite increases from thermally unprocessed fruits.

3. Sour fruit drink was waiting for me for lunch, which I poured into the sink. Still, it was worth adding at least a little sugar to it.

In general, I liked the food, but I decided to test other services to compare and find the best one.

Smart food

• Where does it work: St. Petersburg, Moscow, there are branches in other large cities.
• Site: smart-food.su.

A healthy food delivery service originally from Yekaterinburg. The company is originally an IT project and has nothing to do with nutrition, healthy lifestyle and medical approach to nutrition. When she started working in St. Petersburg, I immediately decided to give it a try. To begin with, I took not a correction, but the usual daily nutrition in order to test different programs.

For breakfast they brought an omelet with cheese and tomatoes. In terms of rigidity, it was more like a sole than an omelet - it took a long time to saw it with a knife.

For lunch there was an inedible granola with horribly sour yogurt.

For lunch, it was suggested to taste a salad with baked beets, onions and feta cheese, for the second - eel with teriyaki sauce, and a side dish was stewed rice with vegetables. The first course was thick carrot soup with ricotta. I liked the eel and soup, but the rice turned out to be rather dry, the salad was rather mediocre.

For an afternoon snack, a delicious and satisfying fruit smoothie with ricotta cheese was waiting for me.

The supper seemed strange. A salad with bresaola, pear and pomegranate is not an easy meal at all. In addition, dried meat is a difficult product to digest. But overall I liked the salad.

Eat4Health

• Where does it work: Saint Petersburg - Moscow.
• Site: eat4health.ru.

The company appeared relatively recently on the St. Petersburg market. On the site, she suggests leaving contacts for communication with a nutritionist so that he can help calculate calorie content. But there is no information about who their nutritionist and what education he has, which raises doubts. However, we must pay tribute: in the menu, which was brought along with the daily ration, there was a BJU layout.

In general, Eat4Health reminded of average quality restaurant food, where you will not be fed with sea scallop delights or molecular cuisine, but the serving will be tasty and large. And this always captivates my heart!

What we liked:

1. There is a lot of food, but the most important thing is that it is not just edible, but really delicious.

2. The cheesecakes were delicious. Of course, not dietary, but the same as in childhood!

3. The udon with shrimps was just a bomb. Everything I love: more pasta, seafood, a lot of oil. Mmm!

4. The pancakes with chocolate turned out to be very good, albeit a little rubbery.

What did not like:

1. Fresh porridge for breakfast. I improved its taste by adding jam from the fridge.

2. The turkey was dry, only ketchup saved it.

As a result, it is a very edible food, which, most likely, has little to do with healthy eating from the point of view of a nutritionist. It is suitable for those who are tired of eating frozen and dumplings and can afford to spend about 60-70 thousand a month on food.

Portion

• Where does it work: St. Petersburg.
• Site: myportion.ru.

I decided to start with business lunches and supplemented them with breakfasts. As I found out later, this format is designed for 2,000 kcal per day, which was contrary to my goal of losing weight. In addition, I ate this food only on weekdays, and on weekends I went to restaurants and did not limit myself.

After a couple of weeks, I realized that this was ineffective, and switched to a full-fledged diet. In the first week, I ate according to a program designed for 1,600 kcal per day, a week later - for 1,400 kcal, and a week later I began to consume 1,200 kcal.

Food expenses per month increased to 80,000 rubles (now 100,000), but I stopped going to restaurants, where I left a substantial part of the budget.

So what did I eat?

For breakfast, most often porridge. Sometimes there were multigrain pancakes or pancakes with curd filling. Also, something proteinaceous was always served with porridge, for example, dishes from eggs or cottage cheese. There was always fresh.

There is always dessert for lunch. Baking happens several times a month, and every time I really look forward to it.

There are always three dishes for lunch: salad, soup, second and drink (fruit drink or compote). Of everything I ate, I liked the pasta and risotto with seafood the most, as well as the chicken and turkey sous vide - very juicy and tasty.

For an afternoon snack, you will find something light made of fruits and cottage cheese, sometimes they bring yogurt desserts or just yogurt.

Dinner usually consists of fish and cooked vegetables. Sometimes there are veal or venison meatballs.

The second dinner is kefir, fermented baked milk or yogurt.

What did not like:

1. Omelettes with fresh vegetables.
2. I never liked celery salads.
3. Meat or fish lasagna. Those who have eaten real lasagna bolognese in Italy will definitely not like this dietary option.
4. Some yoghurt-based desserts are very boring, and you want something different.

After switching to the regime of 1200 kcal per day, I did not notice any special changes and results, although I honestly ate only "Portion". Then I made an appointment with the nutritionist of this service. She, incidentally, praised me for the smooth transition to a reduced calorie content. Because with this approach, my body did not feel the stress of reducing calories, which means that it did not oppose the process of losing weight.

At the appointment with a nutritionist, I learned many other interesting and non-obvious points:

1. There should be an interval of 2, 5–3 hours between meals. And I took a long break (5 hours) between afternoon tea and dinner, because I could not have dinner earlier because of work.
2. The sequence of meals matters. I could eat the most delicious at the beginning of the day, for example, an afternoon snack, or change lunch and dinner in places, and score for a salad, but this cannot be done, even if you maintain the limit of 1,200 kcal per day. The daily diet is thought out in such a way as to trigger fat burning processes in the body exactly in the combination in which it is composed.
3. If you want to eat ahead of time, then drink water first, and if that doesn't help, go in search of healthy food.

Consulting with a nutritionist and following the correct diet yielded results: I lost 3 kg in two months and got into school jeans.

But besides that, I also go in for equestrian sports three times a week. This is not crossfit or cardio training, so let's conventionally consider equestrian sports as a little physical activity, which also played a role.

In the dry residue

If you want to improve your health or lose weight due to proper nutrition, then choose services, the menu of which is developed by a professional nutritionist. Then you will not worry about the calorie content and balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and you will be able to consult a nutritionist who will select the optimal diet for you.

Pay attention to the packaging and delivery of food: if it is brought in in the summer in a package, then some of the ingredients may not live to see your refrigerator. Therefore, I advise you to choose services that deliver portions in a refrigerator bag.

As for the winner, it cannot be here, since it all depends on your taste preferences.