There are so many reasons that prepared meals can be life-changing for many people. If you’re particularly busy, or unable to cook on a regular basis then it’s incredibly important to have healthy meals that you can rely on. Especially when you have the temptation of a takeaway just an ‘app’ away.
Prepared meals services have improved massively over the last 10 years, with incredible variety on offer. Two services with strong reputations are My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals, especially for anyone looking for a diet that matches their fitness efforts.
As both services offer very similar products at a quick glance, I wanted to take a deeper dive into comparing My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals. This comparison aims to help you decide which service is right for you.
Featured Service
Page Contents
My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals: Quick Comparison & Discounts
Configurable Meal Plans
Additional Snacks, Sides and Protein Shakes
Best Tasting Meals in Australia
Get Up To $120 Off Your First 6 My Muscle Chef OrdersClick this link and use code SAVE120
Training & Diet Plans
Great Texture & Taste
Australian Farm Ingredients
Explore Workout Meals with a $40 DiscountClick here and use code 'NEW40' for your discount!
Our comparison will look in detail at each service’s offering, food and cost before making a final recommendation for which service is right for you. If you want, you can click here to skip down to our recommendation.
My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals: The Offering
We’ll start by look at the various products and services that each company provides, identifying any differences that are important to consider.
My Muscle Chef
The My Muscle Chef team have been serving prepared meals since 2013, becoming easily the largest and most disruptive meal delivery service in Australia. A selection of their meals can be found in supermarkets like IGA and Woollies, with their full range only available from them direct.
Subscription Options: It’s very easy to either purchase a one-off box of meals or subscribe to a regular delivery from My Muscle Chef. Their meals all fit into the categories of Muscle Gain, Performance or Calorie Control which act as filters to their menu. Through their website, you can fill in a few questions and they’ll recommend a personalised meal plan with your fitness goals in mind.
Meal Variety: With a rotating selection of 55 different meals available at any one time, there is always a good selection of meals to choose from. This includes 12 Plant-Based meals making the service suitable for vegetarians and even vegans. We found that like most services, My Muscle Chef focuses its meals on chicken and beef dishes.
Delivery Options: Delivery to over 4,200 postcodes across Australia means you’re very likely to be able to receive a My Muscle Chef delivery. The available delivery dates depend on the area you live in.
Additional Products / Extras: There are some interesting additional products including side dishes, which I quite enjoyed to get my calories up on gym days, protein shakes, breakfasts and snacks. This makes My Muscle Chef a quite comprehensive service that could make up your entire diet.
Workout Meals
Workout Meals has been delivering meals even longer than My Muscle Chef, from 2012. They are highly focused on creating meals designed to meet your fitness goals, using ingredients from their farm in Kulnura just an hour north of Sydney. Whilst not available in any supermarkets, all their meals are delivered fresh to your door when ordered from their website.
Subscription Options: The website asks you about your gender and activity levels before recommending a plan for you. This will either be a ‘Weight Loss’, ‘Lean & Fit’ or ‘Muscle Gain’ plan with a set of meals recommended based on your inputs. You are then able to fully customise the menu if you want to switch out any of the meals they suggested.
Meal Variety: There are 38 – 40 different main meals on offer, with a few recipes rotating in/out of the options every week. Around 50% of the meals have chicken as the primary protein source, although there is also a good selection of beef, turkey, pork and fish meals. Most dinners are available in either a ‘regular’ or ‘large’ portion. There aren’t many options available if you’re a Vegetarian or Vegan. Instead, you will find more options if you’re on a Gluten-Free diet.
Delivery Options: Workout Meals deliver to over 3,000 locations on the East Coast of Australia, mainly New South Wales, Adelaide, Brisbane and the ACT. If you’re a ‘subscriber’ and receive a box on a regular basis, delivery is free. Otherwise, there is a flat rate of $15 charged per box.
Additional Products / Extras: There is an impressive range of breakfast meals available, which are actually very tasty. You can also get snacks (nuts) and juices with your delivery, which is useful if you need some extra sources of calories during the day.
With every subscription to Workout Meals, you also receive a subscription to their WM360 service, This offers a personalised training regime and food plan, produced by their in-house personal trainers.
My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals Service Comparison
These are the key differences you should consider when choosing between My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals:
- Plant-Based Diets: If you’re on a plant-based diet, then Workout Meals will not be suitable for you. My Muscle Chef do offer a good range of plant-based meals so provide a strong alternative.
- Delivery Areas: My Muscle Chef deliver across Australia and can be found in many supermarkets, making them available to most Australians. Workout Meals instead focus their delivery area on the Eastern coast, making them available in over 1,000 fewer postcodes.
- Additional Products: My Muscle Chef have a much wider range of additional products to choose from, including the introduction of protein shakes. If you want more options to improve your fitness diet, you’ll find My Muscle Chef is a more suitable option.
My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals : The Food
Knowing the difference in the options provided by these two meal delivery services, it’s important to talk about how good their actual food is! This definitely comes down to a lot of personal preference, but hopefully I can give you a good idea about what you’ll receive.
My Muscle Chef Meals
Packaging: Meals arrive in shallow black plastic trays, with a cardboard information sleeve. They’re vacuum packaged so that the plastic film is covering the food, which is very different to how most other meal delivery services package their food. Cooking each meal is incredibly easy as you just need to pop the plastic container directly into the microwave, no messing around with poking holes in the lid. Each meal cooks in around 90 seconds.
Flavour: I can’t understate how impressive the flavour of most My Muscle Chef meals are. In fact, they generally tasted far better than anything I could have cooked up by myself. Meals tend to be very well seasoned and spiced, with each ingredient contributing to a delicious meal.
Texture: The packaging and cooking process appears to be slightly magical as My Muscle Chef meals really deliver on a great food texture. No more soggy/mushy microwave meals. Even dishes like risotto retained a good bite, while the steak dishes were soft and buttery. It wasn’t always perfect, but generally I have found My Muscle Chef meals to be the best microwave meals I have ever tasted.
My favourite My Muscle Chef meals include the Salmon Risotto, Korean Beef, Burrito Bowl and Chicken Nasi Goreng. Discover more by reading my review of My Muscle Chef.
Workout Meals Meals
Packaging: I’m not sure who started the trend as Workout Meals also use shallow black plastic trays covered with a vacuum-sealed plastic film. I find this to be a really effective and simple way of cooking prepared meals as there’s no faffing around poking holes in the top. It also seems to keep food fresher for longer.
Flavour: I found Workout Meals to be quite hit & miss with their meals. Some of the dishes are incredibly flavourful and delicious, whilst others really failed to hit the mark. No meals were genuinely terrible, they just simply felt unrefined and unbalanced. I need to call out the Peppercorn Steak & Chips for delivering an outstanding dish, easily becoming one of my favourite meals ever.
Texture: Overall, the packaging and cooking process did a good job of helping retain the texture of dishes. With most meals, the meat remained juicy and tender, whilst the vegetables still had a slight crunch. The less I mention about the Chicken Karaage the better… I’m not sure why these services even try creating fried chicken dishes?
My favourite Workout Meals dinners included the Turkey Mince Poke Bowl, Beef Bolognese & Pasta and Peppercorn Steak & Chips. You can discover more at my Workout Meals review.
Get Up To $120 Off Your First 6 My Muscle Chef OrdersClick this link and use code SAVE120
Before I compare the cost of each service, it’s worth considering the discounts you can get with each service. Taking advantage of a discount when you subscribe will make your first box incredibly good value, allowing you to make your own decision about the food. Simply click one of our unique discount links to get access to your money off.
Explore Workout Meals with a $40 DiscountClick here and use code 'NEW40' for your discount!
My Muscle Chef vs Workout Meals : The Cost
Both of these services offer meals at different prices, allowing you to choose whether to eat the cheaper or more expensive meals. To try and create a fair comparison, I will take a median price for each service and then apply any bulk discounts you might get.
You might be interested to find my industry analysis of the cheapest meal delivery service, allowing you to compare My Muscle Chef and Workout Meals against all the other prepared meal services.
Price of a weekly subscription
| Meals | My Muscle Chef | Workout Meals |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | $72.80 | $90.65 |
| 10 | $104.00 | $129.50 |
| 15 | $152.10 | $194.25 |
| 18 | $177.84 | $233.10 |
| 21 | $196.56 | $271.95 |
| 24 | $224.64 | $310.80 |
My Muscle Chef are able to offer meals at a significantly lower price. Whilst they are quite comparable for smaller orders, the difference becomes huge when you make larger orders.
This is because My Muscle Chef offer a scaling discount when you order more meals, whilst Workout Meals don’t provide any discounts for larger orders.
Delivery Costs
| My Muscle Chef | Workout Meals |
|---|---|
| $15 – $20 ($10 discount with subscription) | $15 (free with subscription) |
You’ll be able to claw back some savings with free delivery from Workout Meals when you sign up for a regular subscription. This can be a weekly or fortnightly subscription to access the free shipping deal.
Should I buy My Muscle Chef or Workout Meals?
Overall, I rated My Muscle Chef a massive 8.4/10 whilst Workout Meals scored a respectable 7/10. I found the quality of meals consistently higher with My Muscle Chef, which makes them a clear winner when you also consider they are cheaper, provide more variety and are available in more postcodes across Australia.
I would recommend My Muscle Chef to most people, especially anyone who hasn’t tried a prepared meals service before or maybe has special dietary requirements. Their meals deliver a fantastic flavour and texture profile, as well as being healthy and nutritious. I highly recommend giving My Muscle Chef a try.
In contrast, I think Workout Meals provide a solid service with interesting meals. They also offer the WM360 personal training program, making them an interesting service for anyone who seriously wants to work on their fitness. Their team will help you by giving you clear routines and holding you accountable for your fitness goals.
These aren’t the only services available in Australia, so it’s worth checking out my reviews of other meal delivery services.
Get Up To $120 Off Your First 6 My Muscle Chef OrdersClick this link and use code SAVE120
Explore Workout Meals with a $40 DiscountClick here and use code 'NEW40' for your discount!
