Diet.com Review

Compared to a service that delivers the meals specified in your meal plan, already prepared and neatly packaged, Diet.com requires a lot from its users. Not only will you be preparing your own meals, but you’ll also have to do all the necessary grocery shopping and ingredient sourcing that goes with it. If your lifestyle is already too full to find the time for such endeavors, a diet plan that incorporates a meal delivery service is probably a better option.

With a premium Diet.com membership, you’ll get a customized four-week meal plan the contents of which will depend on your initial choice. Diet.com offers 1200 calorie-per-day meal plans as well as 1500 options, with the latter being more suited to men. Diet.com has a range of meal plans designed to cater for everyone from college students to vegetarians as well as those wanting a low-carb or purely pescatarian diet.

Signing up for a basic account with Diet.com requires you to enter a username and password and agree to the terms and conditions of use. You’re then free to access those parts of the site available to basic account holders. Getting a premium account requires a little bit more time, effort, and information, including your address, contact and payment details.

Once you’ve paid your first month’s subscription, you’ll be granted access to the elite world of premium users. First things first, however, you need to complete Diet.com’s in-depth survey to identify both your goals and the best way to achieve them. This quiz starts with basic information about your age, height, and weight, going on to focus on how active you are and what your goals should be in terms of reducing calorie intake or increasing activity levels. On completion of the questionnaire, Diet.com will give you a breakdown of the menu and exercise plans most suited to your needs.

As all Diet.com’s resources are online, you don’t have to place any orders or wait for anything to be delivered. All you need to get started is an internet connection, a little time, and a serious commitment to embracing a new lifestyle and a new you.

Diet.com is highly flexible and customizable, not least because you initially commit to just a four-week plan, after which you can pick and choose from Diet.com’s other meal plans or its extensive online library of recipes. If that sounds too complex, you can also contact Diet.com’s expert dietitian for a more personalized eating regime.

Although Diet.com meal plans are very specific, you don’t have to stick to it religiously to achieve your desired results. For example, on the 1200 calorie vegetarian plan, day one’s breakfast is a combination of oatmeal, egg whites, and fruit. If you wanted to, you could drop the oatmeal and fruit and substitute them with a breakfast veggie patty instead and still come out with roughly the same number of calories (Diet.com’s breakfast is 254 calories and our suggested alternative 220).

The fact that you can add in and take away different aspects of every meal makes the Diet.com meal plans a lot easier to stick to. More regimented diets can become monotonous in no time at all, making it much harder to find the motivation needed to stick to your diet guns.

Similarly, you can adapt your exercise plan according to your needs. If Diet.com recommends you do a 30minute aerobic activity, depending on your weight and fitness levels, you’ll burn between 165 and 250 calories. Therefore, if you regularly cycle to work at an average speed of around 12 mph and your journey takes around half an hour, you’ll already have achieved that calorie burn, making the recommended Diet.com workouts an added extra.

Depending on your former eating and exercise habits, adapting to Diet.com can be a gentle learning curve or a pretty severe one but if you’re honest during the initial quiz, Diet.com will ensure you start at an achievable level, encouraging you further only once you’ve successfully taken your first steps.

If the exercise plans on offer at Diet.com don’t particularly appeal to you, you can always use the Workout Builder tool instead. This handy tool allows you to select specific target areas, like abs or thighs, and then drag and drop suggested exercises into a full workout playlist. Alternatively, you could opt for one of the playlists Diet.com’s fitness experts have put together which is probably the best place to start if you don’t have a lot of prior experience.

Diet.com is extremely flexible which means you can adjust any part of your combined exercise and meal plan to suit your ever-changing needs. This level of customization means the plans stay fresh and

The Diet.com meal plans include two calorie options for each specialized plan so whether you opt for a carb-conscious meal plan or a lactose-free one, you can select to eat either 1200 calories per day or 1500.

Diet.com offers an impressive range of meal plans, giving users the following options:

• Standard
• Vegetarian
• Gluten-Free
• Low Carb
• College
• Nut-Free
• Pescatarian
• Lactose-Free

As the more observant amongst you have no doubt noticed, Diet.com hasn’t embraced the latest diet trends by introducing keto or paleo meal plans, which is a bit of a shame, given their popularity. If you’ve already been getting according to one of these regimes, however, you should be able to adapt, for example, the low carb meal plan enough to maintain your keto diet. It’s not easy, however, and if you’re committed to a paleo, keto or vertical diet, Diet.com isn’t the best option.

Beyond that, Diet.com’s selection of meal plans is broad enough to suit most dieters and you can swap and change between them very easily. The meals have been well thought out and the plans offer a surprising amount of variety, as well as plenty of room to customize them according to your specific needs.

Although Diet.com state that it offers four-week meal plans you’ll only get two weeks’ worth, after which you can either repeat the initial two weeks or stretch your culinary imagination and use the extensive online recipe section for inspiration.

While Diet.com gives detailed recipes and instructions on how to prepare your meals, what the end-product tastes like is entirely dependent on your culinary abilities. Having said that, most of the recipes are so simple that they are easy enough for even the most amateur chef to produce tasty and nutritional results.

The one drawback with the Diet.com meal plans is that there is no grocery list per se, so you’ll have to manually go through each day’s meals and create your own weekly shopping list. Not only is this time-consuming but it also lends itself to food wastage. Say, for instance, you decide to make rigatoni with creamy tomato sauce, shallots and mushrooms – you only need half a cup of shallots so what are you going to do with the rest of the bunch? This isn’t too much of a problem if you have the imagination to adapt recipes according to the contents of your fridge, but if you’re a newcomer to the kitchen, you could find yourself throwing fresh ingredients away each week.

Diet.com’s range of meal plans is broad but not broad enough and the introduction of a paleo or keto plan would be a welcome addition. It would also be nice to see Diet.com introduce a weekly shopping list for each meal plan or, better still, to join the rest of us in the 21st century and release a mobile app that can consolidate all aspects of its service and improve ease of use.

Diet.com will recommend an exercise plan based on the information provided in the initial quiz. Regardless of whether you’ve never exercised before or are a complete gym rat, Diet.com has an exercise plan designed to help you improve and move on to the next level. Each workout is simple to follow, with clear instructions, images and additional videos showing users how to exercise safely, using the correct form and techniques.

We did notice, however, that many of the workouts are old and outdated. The sample intermediate workout, for example, is dated 2012. While you may think this irrelevant, exercise methods and trends change constantly in accordance with new research. Diet.com’s failure to embrace new fitness methods and techniques is a bit of a drawback, especially with innovations such as HIIT which have been proven to tackle whole-body fat mass more effectively than other forms of exercise.

Once again, Diet.com lets itself down by not offering a mobile app which can be a great fitness tool. With other similar services offering video and audio workouts, simply getting a series of pdf documents is a little disappointing. You’ll also find some of the workouts require equipment such as dumbbells or an exercise ball which isn’t necessarily mentioned when you sign up. Sadly, that means sometimes you can’t complete the exercises in your plan unless you go out and buy those items.

If you want to watch videos demonstrating how to do the exercises given safely and beneficially, you’ll need the latest version of Adobe Flash and you’ll have to navigate away from the exercise plan to access them. This is all rather inconvenient, especially when there are other mobile fitness apps available that do a much better job of both instructing and motivating. Of course, you can always use the workout builder to create a personalized exercise plan that you find more engaging and that tackles your specific problem areas.

You’ll certainly get fitter following the Diet.com exercise plans, but they aren’t the most accessible nor the most imaginative and many users may find them rather boring and repetitive, especially when there are alternatives like Tabata training and dance workouts around.

Each combined meal and exercise plan costs $9.99 per month and includes the full range of weight-loss tools, exercise tips, and meal plans. Users can also join the online community and seek inspiration and motivation from other users. As a Diet.com user, you will also get access to counseling services addressing food-related issues that may be stopping you from reaching your weight-loss target. Eating out guides are also available to help keep you on the straight and narrow even while you’re enjoying a meal out.

Diet.com offers a comprehensive and effective service and is one of the cheapest around. Its standardized pricing makes it easy to compare with other similar services and, for the most part, Diet.com will beat all its rivals in the pricing department. Sadly, the free trial that was once available is no longer, although you can sign up for a free basic plan and at least get a feel for the service before making that all-important financial investment.

If you’re new to the idea of low-calorie eating or are looking to take the first steps to become a healthier you, Diet.com offers highly flexible plans that can be easily slotted into your lifestyle. Simple recipes offer some delicious alternatives to unhealthy take outs although those with little previous cooking experience may find this approach a little daunting. With meal plans designed to accommodate a range of dietary preferences and food intolerances, there’s plenty of choices as well as adaptability. As yet, however, there are no eating plans for those wanting to embark on a keto or paleo diet.

Diet.com’s combined meal and exercise plans are suitable whether you’ve never set foot in a gym, or you spend more time there than at home. One of the biggest drawbacks of the Diet.com approach, however, is the lack of a mobile app that would enable users to consolidate their favorite recipes, track weight loss and fitness. Nevertheless, Diet.com complements its plans with a wide range of weight-loss tools and tracking capabilities, but these can only be accessed via the site’s premium section.

Diet.com is one of the cheapest services of this nature so is a great place to start if you’ve never attempted a plan of this nature and aren’t sure whether or not it’s going to suit your lifestyle. If you have a complete phobia of the kitchen, however, you may need to shell out a few extra dollars for a meal delivery service that will keep your calories on the down-low while stimulating your taste buds.

While Diet.com offers a convenient and cost-effective service, it could do with upgrading its service to include a mobile app and modernizing its exercise plans to offer greater diversity and to stimulate its users with a wider range of workouts.

All in all, Diet.com is one of the best weight loss programs online today. Their tools are super efficient and highly effective, their focused meal plans and exercise routines ensure the maximum level of results in a minimum amount of time, and the entire process is smooth, easy to use, and, well, even a lot of fun! If you are in the market for a diet plan that will really work to get you in shape and stay that way, test drive Diet.com. You won’t be disappointed.