I have been dieting for a few months and lost about a stone from my highest point, so I decided to kick start the weight loss a bit further by trying a meal replacement plan for a few weeks. I was hoping by removing the choice of what to eat, I would move past a bit of a plateau and get to a more comfortable weight before the summer.

I picked up a few of the flavours to try as I know I would not cope well without some variety. The banana flavour was one I picked up. At the time it was on offer at only £3 for a 348g tin, which was 12 meals worth of meal replacements. The price has now gone back up again, to £3.89 for the same tub.

I am mostly at home so it was better value for me to buy the powdered mix like this then add to skimmed milk myself at home, rather than buy pre-mixed cartons. The tub is a waterproof container with a plastic lid. On first use, the tub was sealed with a metal seal. I pulled this up to reveal the contents. This powder being a banana flavour was a yellow colour in appearance. This was a pale yellow. There is a slight scent of banana, but nothing that strong. It is not that tempting to smell it, and not that offputting either. Just a bit bland really.

Making up the drinks is an easy process. I just add 250 ml of milk to a measuring jug, and then add 2 level scoops of the powder into the jug before I mix it up with a fork. I found that this powder was a bit harder to mix than the café latte one that I tried. This meant there were unappealing lumps of unmixed powder in the drink. I ended up just drinking them as I couldn't get them to mix like they should have.

The drink itself wasn't unpleasant. It had a nice thickness to it, and some banana taste. The problem I had with it is that I got really bad indigestion from drinking it. I often get indigestion from eating bananas anyway, but I have never had this problem from drinking banana flavoured milkshakes before.

I also found from following this diet that I ended up rather bloated and constipated. Rather than noticing weight loss, the scales didn't alter due to the side effects, and then I was more bloated than before I started.
Part of this is my body doesn't respond well to changes in what I eat. Although the fibre content of a meal (4.3g in this shake) is similar to what I normally would have at breakfast or lunch, I wasn't getting enough fruit and veg in through the day, and I also just felt permanently hungry.

Personally, I don't think this sort of diet is for me. It is good for a quick fix if you don't get the side effects as each meal is around 200 calories, so if you choose low calorie snacks you can still eat a pretty large meal on the evening and lose weight. However, it is not sustainable for me to drink a sugary sweet drink and then not be able to eat. It did reduce the amount I could eat in one sitting quite quickly, but it wasn't encouraging me to develop better habits.