There are tons of diets and programmes out there that promise to get you in shape. But, we all know how easy it is to lose motivation and give up before you really get going. To try and find a plan which actually works, we decided to try Muscle Food’s latest fitness and food system – Do the Unthinkable.
Do the Unthinkable claims to be able to transform your body and your lifestyle in just 90 days, so we gave it a go to see if it lives up to its promise. For this review, we tried the five-day plan for weight loss to get a taste of the Do the Unthinkable experience and see whether it really works.
How it Works
Muscle Food specialises in nutrition, health and exercise, aiming to help both beginners and athletes achieve their goals. Providing a combination of lifestyle advice, specially made diet food hampers and exercise programmes to match, the all-encompassing Do the Unthinkable programme helps you not only dramatically improve your health in just three months, but sets you up to maintain a full and healthy lifestyle.
With Savoo’s exclusive Muscle Food discount codes, you can try Do the Unthinkable for less and see how it works for you.
Still need convincing? Read on to learn about our experience.
Getting started
To get started, simply sign up for an account and enter your details such as weight, age and your fitness goals. Choose a goal of losing weight, gaining lean muscle, getting slim and toned or getting ripped. There’s then a choice of plans which are five, six and seven days.
The Meals
Muscle Food then gives you a list of recommended meals and snacks to suit your goals. These meals require little to no prep, arriving either as a handy ready-meal or packed with all the ingredients you’ll need to cook a delicious, healthy meal in just 10 minutes.
All the food is prepared with clean, fresh ingredients and carefully packaged to make sticking to your diet as simple as possible. Perfectly portioned to one person, you’ll be eating the right amount to keep you feeling full and satisfied with zero-waste. Learn what you like and change up your order week to week to keep your diet varied and interesting.
Delivery
Your meals will be delivered to you every week on a date of your choosing. You’ll get a tracking number and text updates so you can plan your day around your delivery. Everything you need to begin doing the unthinkable will be included so you can get started right away.
The Food
First things first – the food. For every day of your plan, you’ll get breakfast, lunch, dinner and three snacks. No more trying to ignore your rumbling stomach and nibbling on celery to make it through the day – now you can snack guilt-free.
Muscle Food lays out an amazing selection of high-protein, low-calorie options so you won’t go hungry. As it turns out, where most of us are going wrong with dieting is eating too little, which not only means you won’t be able to perform your best during exercise, but also leads to binging on unhealthy snacks and giving up altogether. This plan will help you break those habits and get into a healthy, sustainable routine.
Although Muscle Food gives you suggested menus, you’re free to pick and choose your own meals – the plan is completely customisable. There are more than 100 meals to choose from, and it isn’t all salads – in fact, you won’t find a salad at all!
From Chinese food to curry and pizza, you can enjoy it all. In fact, some of my personal favourites were the chicken tikka pizza, a thai green stir fry, a ready meal lasagne and Nakd’s delicious blueberry muffin bars. I even got to pig out on pork rinds – something I never thought you could put ‘healthy’ in front of, but they were a perfect pre-gym snack and only 156 calories a bag.
We know what you’re thinking – you don’t naturally associate ready meals with healthy eating, or with great quality. However, Muscle Food ensure every ready meal is made with fresh vegetables and responsibly sourced meat, guaranteeing no additives and staying well clear of added salt.
Every meal is packed with protein and has none of the nasty bits you find in classic ready meals. All meals have a full breakdown of the ingredients, calories and nutrients so you know exactly what you’re getting. This makes clean eating fast and simple to make weekly meal planning a doddle. Even when you’re in a rush, grab a ready meal to take to work and stay on track around your busy lifestyle.
What’s so great about this diet plan is it doesn’t feel like you’re dieting. Unlike more restrictive diets where you might end up getting bored, feeling hungry or craving sugary, fatty foods, this was easy to stick to because the food was genuinely delicious. It makes being healthy easy because you don’t feel like you’re missing out.
The Workout
As we all know, dieting alone is rarely enough. To reach your goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle, you have to balance diet and exercise. The Do the Unthinkable plan eases you into a new, balanced lifestyle to transform both your body and routine to get long-lasting results.
With your food hamper you’ll get Do the Unthinkable workout plans with carefully curated workouts you can follow online or watch on your complimentary workout DVD. These are designed to be accessible for any fitness level, starting you off slow and building up your strength and stamina over three months.
There are three workouts a week for the first month, clocking in at 30 minutes a session. It’s accessible and easy – you don’t need any equipment and it can all be done at home. Your introduction to the plan is a fitness test which you’ll repeat at the end of the month to see how you’ve improved.
The workouts are tough, but you’re encouraged to go at your own pace, and for just 30 minutes three times a week, the payoff is well worth the sweat. I felt like I’d done more in these 30 minutes than I would after an hour on the bike at the gym, largely because each session is packed with high-intensity training.
Each month the workouts increase, going from three a week to almost every other day – but by sticking to the plan, what seems like a lot of exercise becomes totally achievable.
With a mix of circuit training, pyramid training, super-sets and Tabata sessions featuring HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training), the goal is to build up your strength and endurance as well as torching fat and burning calories throughout the programme. PT Steve, the friendly and super motivating instructor, pushes you to keep going and reach new records, but you’ll never be pushed beyond what you can do.
There’s plenty of support to keep you motivated. Keep an eye on your progress as you go on the free workout tracker and tick off workouts to keep yourself on the ball. For every exercise, there are handy guides to explain the exercises and what the aim is.
Along with the scheduled workouts, there are also bonus workouts that feature yoga as well as full-on, six-minute ‘superhero’ workouts. This is complemented by lifestyle videos with great advice on how to boost your energy levels and how to get into a more healthy lifestyle. Steve becomes your personal trainer and nutritionist, always there to encourage and motivate you with his friendly, expert guidance.
The Value
So, how does the Do the Unthinkable plan work out in terms of value for money? Well, look at it this way: the basic five-day plan costs £60, plus £4.99 for delivery on a day of your choice.
That five-day plan includes five breakfasts, five lunches, five dinners and 15 snacks, plus £314 worth of free extras like the workout DVD and recipe book. When you balance how much food you’re getting, it works out at just £2 a meal.
Now factor in how much you’ll save in terms of time and convenience, plus how much you’ll be cutting down on waste and not having to grab that £3 meal deal for lunch every day. Sound good to you?
And that’s just the five-day plan. Upgrade to the six-day plan for just £69 and each meal works out at £1.91. Or, to truly get the best value, opt for the seven-day plan for just £79 – that’s just £1.88 per meal.
And that doesn’t even include the savings you’ll get with one of Savoo’s discount codes. Head over to Muscle Food’s blog to see Christie, one of our resident money-saving experts, fully break down Do the Unthinkable’s great value for money.
The Results
Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for – did I lose weight?
Keep in mind I only tried out this programme for five days and not the recommended three months. In those five days, I managed to lose around four pounds.
What’s so amazing about this is I didn’t feel like I was really trying. When I stepped on the scale on Saturday morning I wasn’t expecting to see much change at all, and that’s because through the week I can honestly say I never felt hungry. If anything, I was snacking more than I usually would, but because all my snacks were healthy, protein-packed, spread throughout the day and better quality than what I usually eat, I still ended up losing weight and seeing results fast.
I tracked my calorie intake over the week and found that on average I was eating between 1,200 – 1,500 calories a day. Usually when I diet I fall into the old trap of less is better, eating what I now realise is an unhealthily small amount. It goes to show it’s not just about how many calories you’re having, but what you’re eating.
I found I could exercise for longer because I was getting high-quality, nutritious energy boosts from my food rather than being dragged down by heavy, unhealthy snacks or running on empty.
My metabolism was better because I was eating consistently throughout the day, meaning I was burning energy and calories more efficiently. Naturally, everyone will have a slightly different experience, but this bodes well for a plan which will work fast and keep you motivated in the long term.
Even when I had a few slip-ups (a chocolate bar on Wednesday, a few cheeky gin and tonics on Friday…) the routine is so manageable it’s easy to stick to without being militant about calorie counting and losing motivation after one slip.
Can you think of any other diets that have been as easy as that? More importantly, can you think of another diet that lets you have a cookie for breakfast?
It really goes to show that we need to forget the old theory that being healthy and dieting means being hungry and restricting yourself. Instead, you can be excited about every meal, work exercise around your lifestyle and still get the results you want.
Not convinced? We think these transformation pictures from other Do The Unthinkable members speak for themselves!
If you want to try out the Do the Unthinkable plan, you can give it a go for less with Savoo’s exclusive Muscle Food discount code. Get £5 off all orders!
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Plus, enter our competition to win two weeks of free Do the Unthinkable hampers to get you started. Enter our competition on Facebook by liking the post and leaving a comment telling us your fitness goals with #SavooDoTheUnthinkable. Want to complete a marathon, lose weight or be able to do a pull-up? We’d love to know.
Hurry, the competition ends on 1st March at 23:59!
Let us know how you get on achieving the unthinkable and transforming your lifestyle for good.
Sponsored Post – Whilst Muscle Foods sent me this product for free to test, the opinions are completely my own and unbiased.
