Special Report on Diet to Go

The history: After Mr. Peanut and I got tired of the lack of variety on Pure Foods Fresh Start and learned that we could pick up Diet to Go in our area, we decided to give them a try. We did the local, low-fat plan.

Diet details: Diet to Go has a bunch of options (described below). The provided food we had ranged from 1000-1300 calories (for my “1200-calorie” plan) and 1450-1650 (for Mr. Peanut’s “1600-calorie” plan). Diet to Go suggests you add 2 glasses of skim milk per day. We added about 3 snacks each per day to get us in the correct calorie range. You can choose which meals you want (breakfast, lunch, dinner, just l&d, just b&l, whatever); it’s very flexible. They do not include snacks with the meals, but some of the meals have a few different components and you can treat them as a snack.

Diet to Go offers 4 weeks of meals that rotate (and while we were on it, they were just about to add a 5th week into the mix). So in terms of substitutions, if it’s Week 1, you can only substitute other items that are offered in Week 1; in Week 2, you can only substitute other items offered in Week 2. In addition to the 5 weekly menus, they also have a substitution menu, which is a list of choices that are always available for subs. Substitutions are easy to communicate to the service via a form on their website or a quick phone call. We only requested substitutions a couple of times, but we experienced no problems whatsoever with that.

Plan options: DTG offers a LOT of different plan options. First of all, in certain areas, you can pick up the food from a pickup location (like a gym or coffee shop), which is what we did, or you can have them deliver the food to you on their local delivery truck. With either of those options, the food is fresh, not frozen. If you’re not in one of those areas, you can get the meals by mail, too. And then they have 3 different diets: traditional low-fat (that’s what we did), vegetarian low-fat, or low-carb. And then you can get 5, 6, or 7 days of food a week and you can get however many meals you want per day. So, it’s kind of crazy! Breakfasts on the low-fat plan include omelets, muffins, scones, and bagels (and breakfast often includes a small container of juice and/or a spread for the baked item, like raspberry preserves to spread on a muffin); lunches are often a sandwich or a pasta salad (often vegetarian); dinner is a hot dish like pasta or chicken or fish.

Favorites: We really loved almost everything, especially the dinners. The red snapper is to die for, and so is the burrito! Also the bistro chicken salad (for lunch) is delicious

Packaging: The meals are packed in individual plastic containers. Most of the breakfast and lunch containers are not microwave-safe. Some of the food is just wrapped in plastic wrap. Everything comes in a big plastic bag. You pick up the food twice a week.

Food review: The food is absolutely delicious and well seasoned, but I do have to question the nutritious-ness of it. There is a LOT of BREAD – and I am not anti-bread, but it just seems really excessive. And the plan is really high in sodium. The portions also seem huge after being on DY and PFFS. I didn’t care for the breakfasts, which usually were too low in protein to keep me going all morning. However, they do use lots of fresh vegetables, which I absolutely adore, and like I said, the food is super, super tasty. Both Mr. Peanut and I kind of don’t trust that the calorie content is actually what they say it is — though we can’t imagine it’s wrong! I have to say, though, this exchange one of our Yahoo group members had with DTG’s dietitian doesn’t really inspire confidence in their ability to calculate nutritional value of anything. At any rate, we have many, many photos and food reviews on the blog. You can use our search function to search for the name of a dish you want to see, or click here to see all posts tagged Diet to Go.

Breakfast examples:
Blueberry Pancakes with Turkey Sausage
Apple Oat Bran Muffin
Ratatouille Omelet

Lunch examples:
Ravioletti Pasta Salad
Tomato Pesto Meltover
Szechuan Turkey Burger
Bistro Chicken Salad

Dinner examples:
Red Snapper Fish
Chicken Pizza
Vegetarian Spaghetti Pie
Chugwater Chili

Support: There is an online forum on DTG’s website, but it’s hard to find and not terribly active.

Customer service: Probably the best of any plan we’ve tried. They were proactive about calling me when there was an issue with my pickup location, which I really appreciated. However, they still managed to send my food to the wrong place after that call!

Effectiveness: Unfortunately, it didn’t work for us. Mr. Peanut and I didn’t lose very much at all on DTG. Our weight loss has been at a standstill since we began the plan.

Why we changed: Ineffective for us.

Bottom line: The local DTG plan is amazingly delicious, and we loved the reduced packaging and the ability to pick up our meals. It’s VERY fresh and tasty. Unfortunately, we didn’t lose any weight on it. I think it would be a great plan for maintenance!

Hope this is helpful. If you’re deciding on meal plans, please check out our report section for our take on each plan we’ve tried!