HelloFresh is a fantastic meal kit delivery service that creates the opportunity to have incredible mid-week meals every night. They provide farm-fresh, ethically sourced ingredients along with clear and simple recipe cards that make cooking simple. HelloFresh came top of our most recent meal kit survey beating their competitors on most metrics. This article will discuss whether HelloFresh can be used for weight loss along with other alternatives that might be available in your area. Here’s an overview of my findings:
No, HelloFresh is not specifically designed for weight loss and is aimed primarily at making weeknight dinners easy to cook. However, by counting calories and managing your overall diet, HelloFresh can be used as part of a weight loss plan.
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What should you be eating to lose weight?
Losing weight is a complicated and difficult path for many, with plenty of pitfalls and ‘gurus’ who sell the latest weight loss craze. I personally track my weight very closely and regularly adjust my lifestyle to match my target weight goals, based on scientific research where possible.
The simple equation that I use to lose weight is Calories IN less than Calories BURNED. This means that you’re taking in less energy then you’re using up every day. Over time the body adjusts to this and uses fat stores to make up for the calorific gap ultimately allowing you to lose weight. Whilst this is massively oversimplified, it does point to the critical message that lowering calorie intake is the most effective way to lose weight.
To work out how many calories you need is an inexact science, however you can get a ballpark by using a simple calorie calculator. Personally, I know that I need 2,100 calories a day to lose weight consistently. Many readers of this blog will need even less than that. For example, the average female requires 1,500 calories to lose 1lb each week and the average male requires 2,000 calories to lose the same amount.
So, when we question if HelloFresh is a good tool for losing weight, it’s really asking whether eating HelloFresh dinners can allow you to eat the right amount of calories each. To answer this properly, we need to have a look at what HelloFresh offers.
What does HelloFresh offer?
HelloFresh over multiple different box types (Classic, Vegetarian & Family) but for today I’m going to focus on their primary offering which is the Classic Box. This come with either 3, 4 or 5 recipes and serves 2 or 4 people.
I’ve already researched the healthiest meal kit provider in Australia before on my blog, so I have a baseline for how many calories are in a standard HelloFresh meal. I found that HelloFresh was generally high in total calories with meals ranging between 700 and 900 calories. There are also ‘balanced‘ meals that tend to be around 600 calories per serving.
There’s a small frustration with HelloFresh that they list their calorie content in the form of KiloJoules (energy). This is a perfectly accurate way of listing calories however it’s not as accessible to most consumers. In order to work out calories, the rough calculation is that it’s 25% of the KiloJoules.
On a more positive note, all recipes do come with accurate and detailed nutrition values that allow you to assess whether the meal is something you’re comfortable having in your diet.
Can I lose weight on HelloFresh?
Now we’re familiar with the two factors that influence weight loss, it’s possible to make a judgement on whether it’s possible to lose weight on HelloFresh:
- The average female needs 1500 calories to lose weight, whilst the average male requires 2000 calories.
- We need to calculate our individual requirements using a calorie calculator.
- HelloFresh have standard meals that vary between 700 and 900 calories.
We can immediately see that 900 calories is a significant amount of your daily required calorie intake (60% for the average female!) so you’d need to be exceptionally careful with your breakfast and lunch to allow yourself a high-calorie HelloFresh dinner.
However, if you were to carefully select your meals each week and plan out your other meals each day, it’s clear that HelloFresh CAN be used as part of an overall balanced diet. At the moment, HelloFresh do not offer any breakfast or lunch kits so you would need to shop for and prepare those meals yourself.
Top tips for weight loss with HelloFresh
If you want to continue your weight loss journey with HelloFresh, I have a couple of hints & tips that might help you out:
- Choose Your Meals Carefully – When selecting your meals, it’s possible to check exactly what the nutritional value is per serving. This means you can avoid picking high-calorie meals and therefore reduce that temptation.
- Save Ingredients – If you have a meal that involves pasta or rice, it’s possible to only use half a portion of those ingredients to significantly reduce the carbohydrate content of those meals. You’re then able to use those ingredients in a meal at a later date.
- Split Portions – As I’m normally cooking for myself, I became a master at cooking everything and then reheating it the next day. This tactic can help weight loss as well because you can split a 2-portion meal into 3 different portions and therefore cut your calorie intake significantly. This would also save you money as you can buy less meals!
- Plan Other Meals – There’s little point in controlling your calories at dinner if your other meals aren’t supporting your goals. Make sure you plan out what you’re eating for breakfast and lunch as well to ensure your total diet is working towards your weight loss goals. To help with this, you may be interested in some of the weight loss service alternatives below.
Weight loss alternatives to HelloFresh
There are lots of weight loss services available in Australia, so I want to recommend 2 of the more highly rated services for you:
- Lite n Easy – In contrast to HelloFresh, Lite n Easy serve pre-prepared meals that just need to be cooked in the microwave for a few minutes. This makes choosing and cooking your dinner as easy as possible. They also offer plans that include every meal of the day so you have a complete diet plan ready to go from day 1.
- GoodnessMe Box – If your a regular ‘snacker’ like I am, GoodnessMe is absolutely revolutionary. They send a discovery box every week that includes health food products along with information about how to improve your overall health. They’ve already introduced me to numerous health snack alternatives that get me away from unhealthy chocolate bars/crisps.
I cover these and more in depth in my article about the best food boxes to help you lose weight.
HelloFresh Discount Offer
Food Box Mate readers can take advantage of a special discount! Simply click on the link below and the discount is all yours.
We use hello fresh. I’m also using noom for weight loss. There is a contradiction between. Noom and hello fresh. For example there pork and green stir- fry. Helo fresh says 790 calories and nom says 1500 calories. Which is right.
Hi Richard!
I think Noom is a fantastic program to help guide you towards running a calorie deficit for long-term consistent weight loss. I wish you all the best on your journey!
With regards to your example on the Pork Stir-Fry, I can’t be sure but it sounds like Noom is giving you the calories for 2 portions? Most HelloFresh portions are around 800 calories and I definitely would expect a Pork Stir Fry to be around that range (if not lower).
You may have also noticed that HelloFresh recently added more <650 calorie meals so that should help even more!
Hope this helps.
I’ve been using hello fresh for about 10 months now. I’m 76 and finally learning to cook! While weight loss wasn’t my original goal (eating more healthy food was), I found that when I contemplated something calorie-laden later in the day I’d think twice because why negate the good balance? I’ve lost 39 pounds because once I started it was such a wonderful feeling. I was losing weight by eating better! I also found that the portions were very generous and with most meals I could split it into 3 servings and have enough to feel full and fewer calories to boot. My only other trick has been to set goals of no more than 3 pounds down because that is doable and not daunting.