Like I said, visiting France was fab, but now, thanks to ten million pain au chocolats, I’m stuck with a mini-muffin top over my jeans. Quelle horreur! And just in time for the summer party circuit nogal. So how do I plan on annorexorising back into my skinnies? With ten thousand hours on my stupid, frikken exercise bike, of course. Well that and with a little help from Celebrity Slim, the best selling diet program in Oz.

Haven’t heard of it? Celebrity Slim program is a meal replacement-based diet that’s now exclusive to Clicks. Their PR company sent me a 7 day starter pack, R417, which I found waiting for me when I returned from France. How serendipitous… 

So, let me give you the run down…

What’s in the kit?
The pretty pink box contains a weeks worth of meal replacement shakes in a variety of delish flavours; chocolate, vanilla, banana, strawberry, caramel (ooh!) and cafe latte (aah!). You also get two soups (roast chicken and garden veg), a shaker, program guide and food diary.

How does it work?
Essentially, you’re to use two sachets, be it soup or shake, a day – one for brekkie and one for lunch. You can also eat a low kilojoule supper (ideas are given in the guide) and enjoy three snacks in between. Ideally, your snacks should be no more than 400 kilojoules a day.

Does it work?
Well it should. I can’t tell you how much weight I’ve lost just yet as I’ve only done it for two days, but I reckon their theory’s pretty sound. All the shakes and soups are in the 880 kilojoule zone, so if you ensure your snacks are each in the 400 zone and your supper’s only 1 500 kiljoules, you can come in at around 4460 kilojoules, which is pretty good for weight loss. (Even more so if you do a minimum of 40 minutes of cardio a minimum of four times a week). I often see diets in women’s mags promising to help you lose your post-Christmas belly and then, when I add up all the kilojoules per day in their plan, I’m shocked to see that they sometimes come in around the 6000, 7000 kilojoule mark. If I had to eat that every day I’d be the size of a friggen Wendy house! So ja, I’m pleased that Celebrity Slim comes in nice and low.

So, what’s it like so far?
I haven’t tried the soups just yet, but the shakes are genuinely delish. Even the vanilla, which I thought would be super boring, was divine. I made it nice and thick by using less water and it tasted like a proper vanilla milkshake and using the shaker ensured it wasn’t lumpy in the least. I also like that, as you get to snack in between, you don’t sit around feeling hungry.

Any gripes?
Not really. I reckon this is pretty sound. If you stick to it and don’t stuff it up by eating high kilojoule snacks and suppers, you will lose weight. I do feel, however, that R19,99 per individual sachet is a bit steep, especially when you consider that you can buy a huge tub of protein shake for around R300 which can give you up to 50 ‘meals’.

In all, I reckon Celebrity Slim is great for someone who wants to drop a dress size, but is clueless when it comes to counting kiloujoules because their  plan makes it much easier to do so. As I’m an obsessive kilojoule counter myself, I can kinda do the same thing without it, but in saying that, using Celebrity Slim is helping me to eat in a much more nutritionally balanced manner. (I’m the type of ‘dieter’ who’ll merrily have a coffee for brekkie and then live on Coke Lite and up to 4500 kilojoules worth of crap like Skittles, Woolie’s kassava chips and Pop Tarts. Despite eating ‘junk’, I don’t pack on the pounds because I keep to a set kilojoule limit. Yay for me. The downside, however, is that I’ll probably die of scurvy… )

Anyway, I’m now Celebrity Slimming which is much healthier, so lets see how I go. Will be sure to give you an update in the next few days.

Love, love

Leigh

P.S. Oh! Celebrity Slim also make really nice meal replacement bars.

I got to taste two of them the other day and they were tres yum. As each contain the same amount of energy as the shake (around 880) you can eat one to replace your brekkie or lunch or have half as a snack. They’re also R19,99 a pop.