Love Yourself diet review: Calorie controlled gourmet meals

Eating healthy starts tomorrow, is a promise that many of us regularly make. But what if we told you there's a meal plan service that can help you start that healthy lifestyle? You'd sign up straight away, right? That's exactly what we did when we found out about Love Yourself.

Here at Yours we've tried and tested this freshly prepared diet plan to find out if it really was worth the hype. But, before we get into our honest thoughts, here's some background on Love Yourself.

What is Love Yourself?

Love Yourself freshly prepares and delivers top quality food directly to you. You're in control of this plan - choose the duration from one day up to eight weeks (Monday to Saturday) and tailor your meals to how many calories you need to consume.

Each meal factors in portion control to getting the right amount of carbohydrates, proteins, fat, fibre, vitamins, mineral and water. The food is easy to store, has no mess and takes out the stress of cooking. On top of that, every meal is scannable via MyFitnessPal app to help you keep track of calories and macro-nutrients.

Start your food journey today by choosing from 14 different plans: Balanced Diet, Vegetarian Diet, Dairy-Free Diet, Gluten-Free Diet, Halal Balanced Diet, Halal Performance Diet, Keto Plan, Low Carb Diet, Veti Diet, Mini Diet, Performance Diet, Pescatarian Diet, Platinum Plan and Single Meals.

Where do I sign up for Love Yourself?

Just so you know, while we may receive a commission or other compensation from the links on this page, we never allow this to influence product selections. Why trust us?

What was on the menu?

Here at Yours magazine, we tried and tested the Balanced Diet at 1500 calories and was ready to take on the challenge of eating healthier after consuming too many takeaways over the last year.

Included in the price is breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. Here is what we tried over two days, and our honest thoughts on Love Yourself:

Day one

Breakfast: Mixed grains porridge with pomegranate and pineapple

Morning snack: Spinach and broccoli muffin

Lunch: Khoreshe-fensenjoon with saffron rice

Afternoon snack: Apple and banana slice with yoghurt

Dinner: Teriyaki salmon poke bowl

Day two

Breakfast: Homemade baked beans and turkey with whole meal bread

Morning snack: Tumeri-spiced cauliflower soup with goji berries

Lunch: Korean beef bulgori

Afternoon snack: Dark chocolate and black bean cake with raspberry cream

Dinner: Cumin-spiced lentils and Brussels with chicken

What are the pros?

The best thing about the Love Yourself meal plan? You don't have to think about what to have for dinner. Plus, the longest time cooking for a meal was three minutes in the microwave. This is brilliant for anyone that is always on the go, whether you spend long hours at your job or don’t enjoy cooking, this takes the stress out of it for you.

We love that the food in these meals meets your bodies' nutritional needs – as we've spent more time than ever before inside over the last year, unhealthy eating habits have been a comfort for many.

Investing in a balanced meal plan helps strengthen your immune system and get you back on track to sustaining a healthier lifestyle. Not to mention options for gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, pescatarian, Halal balanced diet and more, which is catered around you.

What are the cons?

Unfortunately, when the Love Yourself box arrived, the porridge leaked and was all over the box. Not only did this mean cleaning up, but it made the labels on the meal boxes hard to read. On top of that, one of the snack boxes contained yoghurt, which didn't travel well, and was inedible.

As the Love Yourself meal plan is only for one person, if you’re a family of four at £25 per person per day (for a one-time purchase) this is a lot more expensive than other food boxes available on the market. That said, you don’t have to prepare the food, so this might be a good option for people living on their own or couples living a very busy lifestyle.

One of the biggest draws of investing in a food box subscription is limiting the amount of food waste that you have from a normal weekly shop. Although you shouldn’t be binning any tasty treats that have gone uneaten, the packaging is only 95 per cent recyclable, it would be even better if it was 100 per cent.

Is it worth the money?

This isn't the cheapest food box on the market by far, but what this service offers is a full food journey. From the gourmet chef and nutritionist preparing your meals to the calories calculator that recommends your daily calorie requirements based on your gender, age, height, weight and daily activity, this has lots of incredible tools to get you eating healthier.

Are we going to switch this out from our weekly shop? Probably not. But if you're trying to eat better, this is a programme to point you in the right direction. Plus, if you get a friend to sign up, they get 20 per cent off and you get £40 off. Now that's worth it!

Would you recommend the Love Yourself diet?

Hate cooking? Struggle to find healthy meals you like? Want to increase your energy levels or strengthen your immune system? If this sounds like you, then the Love Yourself diet could be for you.

Even though there were some packaging issues, we liked that this meal plan contained snacks and had variety. There was also a short expiry date on food, so we would be interested to see how long a five or six-day plan would work out - as we only tested two days, we could not comment on this.

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