Diet Chef for Health Professionals

What we offer

Diet Chef is the UK’s largest home delivered diet having helped over 40,000 men and women lose weight successfully. We provide a convenient calorie-controlled solution whilst delivering essential skills and education for weight maintenance.

Who is it for?

Patients with a BMI above 24.9kg/m²

What does it entail?

Three balanced meals per day – breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack. Patients can add their own accompaniments (plenty of fruit, vegetables and extras such as milk to go with their tea or coffee and breakfast) Overall the plan achieves a 700 kcal deficit from total estimated energy expenditures.

Typical day on Diet Chef with additional fruit, vegetables and breads.

Daily nutrition?

Patients can choose their own meals (with over 70 variations) to accommodate any specific tastes, preferences or specific dietary requirements – individual full meal nutritional details including allergy advice is on The Food page.

What support will patients receive?

• We provide a useful guide with helpful advice and extra tips for exercising, eating out, drinks and weight maintenance
• We have fully trained diet advisers available whenever and wherever either over the telephone or via email
• We provide proven support materials known to help weight loss such as food diaries and progress trackers
• Customers receive free lifelong access to online group-support to provide a virtual motivating, supportive environment

Typical day on Diet Chef with additional fruit, vegetables and breads.

How much weight will patients lose?

We help people assess their weight and decide on a realistic healthy target weight – recommending 1-2lbs per week

What evidence is there?

A recent study by the HONEI (Human Obesity, Nutrition, Education and Innovation) project at the University of Hull has shown weight loss to be significantly greater in people using Diet Chef when compared to those following a self-directed plan after 4, 8 and 12 weeks (figure 1).

Figure 1.

In addition Figure 2 shows that significantly more (p = <0.001) of the Diet Chef group (60.7%) achieved a clinically significant and NIHCE (2010) recommended 5% weight loss (as a basis for continuing with pharmacological therapy for obesity) (figure 2).

Figure 2.

Furthermore only 7% of Diet Chef participants withdrew from the study during the 12 weeks compared with 41% in the self-directed group suggesting greater acceptability of Diet Chef (figure 3).

Figure 3.

After the 12 weeks participants were given the option to continue with the trial for a further 12 weeks, with a choice to stay on the same regime or cross over to the alternative arm (provided their BMI was still above 25). Considerably more participants (65%) chose to either remain on, or cross over to the Diet Chef arm and the individuals who crossed over from Diet Chef to the self-directed diet had the highest rate of withdrawal (40%) by the end of the 24 weeks. This again suggests the Diet Chef regime was more acceptable then self-directed dieting.

Of those completing 24 weeks of Diet Chef 47% achieved ≥10% weight loss which was significantly greater than in any other arm of the study (p = 0.044).

Diet Chef also meets all best practice standards following NIHCE guideline 43 (Obesity: guidance on the prevention, identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity in adults and children, clinical guideline 43, London Dec 2006).