I have finished my 3 week review of the Slimfast 321 plan, wooo! For those who want to get down to the nitty gritty; I lost 7 lbs! I am amazed, especially considering I did not follow the plan at weekends, and didn't spend all my free time at the gym! For a more detailed overview of my time of the 321 plan then please read on:
Is it easy?
I actually find the plan really easy to stick to and convenient during the week, I love that there is no preparation and I can just grab a shake or a bar, and some snacks before I run out the door for work. Then in the evenings when I actually have time to enjoy preparing my meal, I take a lot more care over it, ensuring I am sticking to the 600 calorie limit and filling it with good foods.
With the 3 snack allowance I don't often find myself getting hungry, though I have been eating my dinners a lot sooner than I used to. I started off by drinking a milkshake for lunch, it was really easy to make in my flask, or grab a bottle, and take it to work with me. However, I found that it wasn't filling enough for the middle of the day, I have now swapped it with my morning meal bar and it is exactly right, so you may need to find the perfect balance for you.
Where I have been struggling with sticking to the plan is at weekends. My first weekend on the plan I went away for my friends birthday. There wasn't enough order to the days for me to be able to do the plan, so instead I ate normal food but was mindful of staying the set calorie limit(not sure how well I did though). The next weekend I was surprised with a visit from my boyfriend, although I tried a lot harder to stick to the plan I did struggle. After the weekends I found it very easy to just slip back into the diet, and despite my slight over indulgence I have still lost 7lbs in the three weeks.
What is the food like?
For my breakfast I will make myself a shake, these come in a range of flavours (I haven't tried the caramel yet, I want to!) yet I usually gravitate towards the vanilla, chocolate or a mixture of both. They are easiest to make in a shake-able container, as it can take quite a bit of stirring to get rid of all the lumps. They taste just as you would expect a milkshake to taste and there is a decent amount in each tin. The shakes also come on a convenient bottled form, of which you can choose extra flavours, Mocha and Cafe Latte. As I mentioned before these shakes don't fill me up an awful lot, so I prefer to have these for breakfast when I don't have a huge appetite anyway.
Lunch is in the form of a meal bar and when eaten with one of my snacks (you can have 3 a day) it fills me up nicely. There are a nice range of snacks, the standouts for me are definitely the heavenly chocolate delight bar and the bbq tortillas! A snack on the plan can be anything under 100 calories, I love eating frozen grapes and cup-a-soups as well.
What exercise did you do?
My daily commute to and from work works out at about an hours walking, so before even trying I have 1 hour of gentle exercise in my day. In the evenings I would sometimes go for another walk, this could be anything from 15-40 minutes. Occasionally I would do some youtube workouts in my living room or body strength exercises such as squats and sit-ups whilst I was catching up on t.v or videos! I am definitely not the most active person and this is something I am trying to change - moving away from home with my near by gym jam-packed with fun classes has been quite hard! However, I have never had an hour long walking commute so that must be making quite a difference!
Then I guess the biggest question of all; Are you going to stick to it?
YES! - This plans seems to be absolutely perfect for me, there have been many other diet plans and detoxes that I have failed miserably at. Just remember that what works for me, may not work for you and vice versa. I would definitely recommend trying the slimfast 321 plan out though, especially as it is currently a third off in boots!
I realise this post may not cover everything you wanted to know about the plan, I didn't want to ramble on too much. If you have any more questions then feel free to tweet me @emmiegeeblog and I will answer anything you would like to know :)
