Diet Out of the Box
By Michael Karlo Lim
PORTLINESS and some profession in the food industry are assumed correlated and sadly held as hard fact. I beg to differ. Sure, it’s all about indulgent gustatory experiences, but it’s the option of quality over quantity that separates the gourmet from the ubiquitous gourmand. There’s also the time-proven concept of balancing the intake-output equation with various forms of exercise.
My involvements in food have yet to render me visibly “out of shape,” so to speak, but along with my subscription to questionable, even highly skewed, Hollywood body standards is the genuine concern for my health and well-being. Yes, I dream of impressive bloodwork and optimal bodily functions on top of sporting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle abs.
Out all day and late, I’m rarely sitting down to a good home-cooked meal. Between eats at events and restaurants, I’m filling in on whatever readily accessible food and takeout options. Entering cutting cycles is especially hard with choices for healthy or “clean” meals often limited to overpriced and tasteless convenience store salads and additive-laden pseudo-health food.
I first went on Diet In A Box with my PussyKat for all purposes and intents of moral support and found myself loving the program. Everything revolves around the concept of calorie control. Different calorie plan options are provided based on body stats, levels of daily activity and weight loss or gain goals. Because I am highly active and have rather grueling functional performance training workouts at Fitcamp PH, they had me on the high-protein Lean Machine Plan at a total of 2000 calories per day. I also opted for my meals to be spread out over lunch and dinner only as I’m not a breakfast person and have also been loosely practicing intermittent fasting.
The ingredients for the meals are harvested from the house’s organic farm in Aloguinsan and supplemented by other organic resource partners from Carcar, Balamban and other suppliers in the city. You’d immediately notice from the week’s upcoming menu released online that the dishes are nothing like the usual plain boiled chicken breasts, canned tuna, and other cardboard-like alternatives in most diets. The actual meals themselves come attractively plated in disposable microwavables to look very appetizing. Labels indicate dish name, ingredients and caloric information. By all definitions a square meal, I’d say it puts what and how much we eat into perspective. For the longest time, I’ve probably been eating three times my base metabolic index. Who knew a salad could already pack as much as a third of one’s minimum daily caloric requirements?
Going on a diet comes weighed down by looming thoughts of lifestyle limitations, but my meals have proven rather more interesting than any one from a swing-by joint. Chicken Teriyaki with Broccoli and Garlic Black Rice; Pulled Pork with Cucumber Tomato Chickpea Salad in Simple Vinaigrette and Carrot Pumpkin Rice; Beef Chili con Carne with Veggies and Mexican Rice; Turkey Salad with Walnuts, Dried Cranberries and Mushroom in Honey Garlic Vinaigrette and, Grilled Beef Steak Salad with Bell pepper and Onion in Red Wine Dressing are just some of the delicious items on the menu this week. I cried with joy the first time I tried blue cheese dressing with their meats. Moderation and balance are combined with a lot of variety keeping everything interesting.
One detriment to maintaining healthy eating habits is meal prep. Really, who’s got the time? Diet In A Box takes care of all that by delivering your meals to your pre-registered delivery location and at your preferred single preset time. All you really have to do is tuck into it and stick with the program.
Revolutionizing the way people perceive healthy meals, their credo of “healthy, calorie-counted, convenient, delicious” and the delivery of consistency and results got them SunStar’s Best of Cebu – Best Wellness Food Delivery in 2016. Diet in a Box continues to be Cebu’s No.1 Healthy Food Delivery with the introduction of their new ketogenic meal line, Keto-Go. Now that’s another story.
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