Why (I think) Lite n’ Easy worked for me
Without a doubt, the single most important topic to consider in order to be fit is diet. Without a good diet, nothing else is either possible or, if possible, sustainable. As a quote often attributed to Mark Hyman says: “you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet”.
When I started my fitness journey, I didn’t know a whole lot about nutrition. I rarely cooked for myself; ate McDonalds whenever I was passing by and feeling a bit peckish; thought I could eat as much bread as I wanted because bread is a health food that I ate as a child; whenever I went to a cafe, I would order an orange juice to drink with my coffee; I knew there were these things called macronutrients (carbohydrates, fat and protein), but I thought fat was the evil one and carbohydrates were the healthy substitute that you ate so you didn’t eat so much fat. Suffice to say, almost all my ideas about, and practices with, nutrition were quite messed up.
The one thing I was pretty certain about when I started my journey was: more calories is bad, fewer calories is good. That, and if I am going to stick to it for the required duration, whatever I do has to be easy. Enter a product whose name describes itself perfectly: Lite n’ Easy (see disclaimer below).
My sister had previously suggested Lite n’ Easy to me a few years earlier when I was trying to address a hypertension issue that was diagnosed at the same time as my bipolar disorder, and I had used it for 6 weeks or so back then but then gave it up because it felt like too much of a straight jacket, which it was, but that was my fault rather than the product’s fault. I realised I was trying to use it for 3 meals a day, 5 days a week and that simply didn’t fit my lifestyle - if I skipped a home dinner to go out, the dinner would be sitting around in the fridge never to be eaten because by end of the week, next week’s 5 dinners would be in the fridge. At the time, it didn’t really occur to me that I didn’t need to order the dinners every week or, indeed, at all. Simple mistake.
Suffice to say, I was otherwise reasonably happy with the convenience of the product and once I worked out how to fix my dissatisfaction with how I was using the product, there was no longer any reason not to use it.
So, in April 2018, I started to use and still do use 1500 kcal/day Lite n’ Easy Breakfast and Lunches, 5 days a week to set a baseline for my diet and I do my own thing for the other 11 meals a week. This is a solution that has worked very well for me because I previously didn’t cook and so didn’t miss cooking and it provided me with the flexibility to eat out in the evenings and on weekends. I am still using it even though I have achieved my weight goals because it remains very convenient and it is gives me a known base of calories to build on each day. I occasionally switch over to the 1800 kcal/day diet if my weight starts to fall too low in order to avoid further crimping my metabolism. If my weight starts to rise again, I can switch back to 1500 kcal/day
I would certainly recommend Lite n’ Easy to anyone who is looking for an alternative to counting calories as a way of controlling their calorie intake. Just the fact that what you have to eat for each meal is strictly controlled by the contents of the bags containing the meal is a very powerful mechanism, by itself, for controlling appetite - it tells you: “this is all there is” and so there is no browsing the fridge or the pantry for something else to eat. (There may be the occasional raid on future day bags, but that has a self-limiting aspect to it - for then there will be less food on that future day).
I also found that Lite n’ Easy was useful when I was selecting the other 11 meals a week that I ate that did not necessarily come from Lite n’ Easy - the Lite n’ Easy meals acted like an ever present yard-stick by which I could gauge the composition and portion size of those other meals, thereby helping to ensure that I didn’t over eat when consuming those. This worked pretty well, even though most of my other meals came from either a cafe or a pub.
Needless to say, keeping the fridge and pantry clear of other food is reasonably important although I recognise that this presents problems for people who live in a shared household in the case where everyone else is not subjecting themselves to the same regime.
The Lite n’ Easy menu has a fair amount of diversity and each breakfast and lunch has 2 and 3 options (respectively). I found just the act of considering whether to order option A or option B made me feel like I had a choice even if most of the time I chose option A - at least I was picking the option I preferred. When I had previously tried Lite n’ Easy, I stopped in part because I felt the menu did not give enough choice. In fact, the choice was present all along, I just wasn’t exercising it, so I did not feel like I had it. A simple change in behaviour on my part, made me feel much better about the options available to me even though, in reality, nothing had changed except my decision to simply consider the alternative option that had been there from day 1.
The menu is seasonal and repeats 4 weeks per cycle, 3 cycles per season. It contains more diversity than the breakfast and lunch items I would prepare if I was catering (or even buying) for myself. I chose to use the 1500 kcal/day menu because that seemed to be the right balance between my weight loss objectives and being too hungry. There is also a 1200 kcal/day menu which is useful if you know you are going to be eating some heavy evening meals at other times during the week and want to compensate. The 1800 kcal/day meal might be useful while transitioning from weight loss to weight maintenance and/or to give your metabolism a break if has started to slow down because the your calorie deficit has been too aggressive.
Lite n’ Easy was spectacularly successful for me because it completely lives up to its name: it is both light and easy. Lite n’ Easy meals acted both as a controlled source of calories and also acted as a yard-stick to judge everything else I ate. For me, eating it 3 meals a day was too restrictive, but eating it for just breakfast and lunch was just fine - this gave me the core of a balanced diet and enough freedom to eat (responsibly) for the other 11 meals a week. More over it has proved itself to be sustainable over the longer term.
If you want to kick start your fitness journey on the right foot, I’d highly recommend trying it for anyone - there is no long term commitment required - you order what you want, week by week. I’d even consider giving the 3 meal/day experience a go for 1 week or so to understand what restricting yourself to 1500 kcal/day feels like, then revert to the 2 meal/day experience if you get sick of the straight jacket.
This is not to say that Lite n’ Easy is the only way to achieve the same benefits. If I were to attempt to replicate the Lite n’ Easy experience myself, I think I would take the time to design a nutritionally balanced breakfast and lunch menu to a calorie budget (550 kcal/meal) and ensure that the menu had sufficient diversity to keep me from getting bored by the repetition. I’d probably start with recipes in a book like “The Fast 800 Recipe Book”, in which the recipes are both calorie controlled and are biased towards low-carb (which Lite n’ Easy isn’t). I honestly think this would be hard to achieve with the same diversity that Lite n’ Easy delivers, but people more talented than I in the kitchen may beg to differ. Again, following my Lite ‘n Easy experience, I’d only attempt to design breakfast and lunch menus and then leave dinner relatively free to provide a sense of freedom each day.
Disclaimer: Although this may read like a paid promotion for Lite n’ Easy, it really isn’t, I just happen to believe Lite n’ Easy is a company that delivers a product which is exactly as described. The only flow of cash between Lite n’ Easy and me is from me to them - the ~$84/week I still spend on their product.
For full disclosure, Lite n’ Easy' once invited me to a photoshoot where I was treated like the ‘the talent’ for an afternoon. They used the photos and my story on their website. For this, I was given 1 month of order credits as a thank you for my time.
