LighterLife 5:2 Diet - My Experience

I have been trialing the LighterLife Fastpacks as part of a 5:2 diet programme.  Overall my experience has been mostly positive.  I found I lost an average of 2-3 lbs a week if I ate well for the remaining five days of the 5:2 plan and I found that I felt pretty satisfied during the 600 calorie fast days. If I ate a bit too much on the five days I maintained my weight and didn't put any extra on.  It is very easy to follow and is an effortless and fuss free way of ensuring you get all your RDA of nutrients without exceeding the calorie count.

You can take a look at my earlier posts on the LighterLife 5:2 plan and on the LighterLife fastpack food.

I liked how convenient the plan was, you can choose which days you want to fast on and you can even take the Fastpacks with you away from home (kettle and microwave access is needed for some food preparation).  It works well around the family as you can eat together five days a week, making a dieting mum less of an issue for impressionable youngsters.  You can also work around special occasions where food is on the agenda, so you don't have to miss out on any events because you are on a strict inflexible diet.

The only negative I found was that I increasingly found that I missed fresh food. As my five day diet improved, I found the call for 'real food' did too. Don't get me wrong, the food is not at all unpleasant. In fact it is all really well flavoured.  But as a vegetarian much of my regular diet consists of fresh fruit, vegetables, pulses and lentils so the fastpacks are quite different to what I usually eat when I'm on a health kick. But I kept telling myself it was only two days a week and the benefits were clearly evident from the onset.  And so the convenience and reassurance of the programme outweighed this minor negative.

I'm not very keen on shakes as meal replacements if I'm honest.  Although these are quite filling, they just feel like a drink to me - not a meal.  So I was impressed to see LighterLife Fastpacks having the variety and including the meals which gave me the psychological benefit of having something proper to chew on for my dinner.  I was pleased that both the carbonara and bolognese are veggie friendly and tasty.

What the 5:2 diet did really well was give me the discipline that I sometimes lack when it comes to making decisions about eating.  Knowing that I could get by and not be hungry on 600 calories made me reassess my food intake.  This has lead to me being far more pro-active about healthy choices.  I have found the LighterLife Fastpacks to be a good short term solution for a 4-6 week diet that is incredibly easy to manage and which provides all the necessary nutrition. It is good to kickstart a healthy eating regime or to lose a few excess pounds before a special occasion.  It is also a really useful tool for ideal weight maintenance.

One thing I would like to see is a variety Fastpack box available.  At the moment the packs contain four of the same product.  It would be nice to see a day's food with a porridge, a soup, a meal and a bar available to purchase as a unit. That would make it more accessible to anyone wanting to do a one off short term 5:2 programme and try a variety of the foods available.

I thought the spaghetti bolognese was a really good diet meal that I would be tempted to enjoy as a low calorie lunch in its own right.  Also the Toffee bars would make a great everyday, low calorie and nutrient rich snack for when my sweet tooth needs sating.  So these products have potential to find their way into my diet even if I'm not doing the 5:2.

There was only one time that I really struggled which was the week when Freddy was really ill.  I was stressed, hadn't slept for nights and felt lousy.  Restricting calories when feeling like this did not work, leaving me feeling worse and very irritable. Commonsense really tells you that at times like this the diet has to take second place to simply getting yourself through a hard time.

And if I ever have to remind myself why it is important to keep my weight down and eat healthy I just need to look at this before mugshot photo.  I know selfie #2 is a bit blurred but the lack of extra chins is still clearly evident!  The LighterLife Fastpacks were just the kick start I needed after the excesses of Christmas and helped me avoid the comfort eating that often accompanies the miserable January weather.

For more information on LighterLife and the 5:2 Fastpacks go to www.lighterlifefast.com

Fastpacks are available in Superdrug stores and online.