Diet-to-Go Review: Pros, Cons, Cost, and How It Compares

What is Diet-to-Go?

Diet-to-Go is a meal delivery service that specializes in calorie- and portion-controlled meals. Diet-to-Go offers dietitian-designed, chef-created meals that are fully prepared.

Certain meals can be enjoyed cold while others are ready-to-eat after 2–3 minutes in the microwave.

Diet-to-Go menus include:

• Balance. This is Diet-to-Go’s most popular menu. The Balance menu is calorie controlled and lower in sodium, carbs, and fat.
• Balance Diabetes. This menu is promoted for those with prediabetes and diabetes. The meals are lower in sodium and fat and contain fewer than 45 grams of carbs per meal.
• Keto-Carb30. This menu is designed to deliver no more than 30 net carbs per day. The term net carbs refers to the carbs remaining after subtracting the fiber content from the total carbs.
• Vegetarian. This menu is free of meat, fish, and poultry but contains eggs, soy, and beans for protein.

How does it work?

Diet-to-Go customers start by picking a meal plan.

Customers choose from a 5- or 7-day plan that includes two or three meals per day. The two-meal-per-day plan does not include breakfast.

Diet-to-Go’s most popular Balance menu contains 1,200 calories per day for women and 1,600 calories per day for men. On average, the Keto-Carb30 plan provides just 1,300 calories per day.

Daily calorie info for the Balance Diabetes and vegetarian menus aren’t posted on the Diet-to-Go website.

Once you pick a meal plan and enter your address and payment information, you can customize your menu to include dishes that suit your preferences. Meals are delivered weekly, and you have the option of canceling or pausing your subscription at any time.

Delivery days and times depend on where you live. Diet-to-Go ships nationwide and also offers a fresh local pickup service for customers living in the Washington metropolitan area, as well as Baltimore, New Jersey, and Los Angeles.

Diet-to-Go meals can last 7 days in the fridge or 30 days in the freezer.

According to the company’s website, Diet-to-Go offers customers support from registered dietitians, health coaches, and nutritionists by phone or email.

How much does it cost?

According to the service’s website, Diet-to-Go is a more affordable meal delivery option than other popular plans like BistroMD.

The average cost per meal is $6.80, and the average weekly cost for 21 meals comes out to $142.99.

Keep in mind that there’s a weekly shipping cost of $19.98 for all mail order plans.

Summary

Diet-to-Go is a meal delivery company that ships ready-to-eat, calorie-controlled meals to customers nationwide. Diet-to-Go offers four menus and is less expensive than other weight loss meal delivery companies.

Diet-to-Go menu options

As mentioned above, Diet-to-Go offers four menus — Balance, Balance Diabetes, Keto-Carb30, and Vegetarian.

Here are daily sample menus for each plan.

Balance

• Breakfast: waffles with peaches and apples in syrup
• Lunch: Greek chicken with quinoa
• Dinner: herbed baked salmon

Balance Diabetes

• Breakfast: whole wheat bagel with peanut butter
• Lunch: chicken black bean wrap
• Dinner: chicken Parmesan

Keto-Carb30

• Breakfast: salmon and leek frittata
• Lunch: andouille sausage
• Dinner: chicken meatloaf

Vegetarian

• Breakfast: peach pecan oatmeal bar
• Lunch: Moroccan lentil salad
• Dinner: eggplant Parmesan

It should be noted that many of the dishes on the various menus overlap. For example, chicken fajitas are offered as a dinner option on the Balance, Balance Diabetes, and the Keto-Carb30 menus.

Summary

Diet-to-Go offers four menus — Balance, Balance Diabetes, Keto-Carb30, and Vegetarian. Some menus contain the same meals.

Diet-to-Go pros and cons

Like other meal delivery services, Diet-to-Go comes with some pros and cons.

Diet-to-Go pros

Diet-to-Go offers a meal delivery service that’s convenient and appealing to people who don’t have the time to cook or prepare meals for themselves.

The company ships nationwide and delivers ready-to-eat meals right to your doorstep, making mealtime a breeze.

The website is easy to use, and you can swap meals and change or cancel your orders easily. It’s also less expensive than other meal delivery services that advertise their meals as weight-loss-friendly.

According to customer reviews, Diet-to-Go meals are of good quality and taste great.

Diet-to-Go cons

Diet-to-Go has a few significant downsides to be aware of.

The Balance menu offers 2 options — a 1,200 calorie menu for women and a 1,600 calorie menu for men, both of which are considered low calorie diets (1).

Because most adults eat many more calories than this per day to maintain their weight, following Diet-to-Go will likely result in weight loss.

However, while significantly cutting calories by using a program like Diet-to-Go is likely to result in quick weight loss, research shows that drastically cutting calories rarely results in weight loss that can be maintained long term (2, 3).

This is because a low calorie intake triggers metabolic adaptations, including increased appetite and a reduction in the number of calories you burn at rest, that make it harder to maintain weight loss over time (4, 5, 6).

In fact, research shows that most people who follow low calorie diets gain back a significant amount of weight after they stop the program. Plus, these diets are often difficult to stick to because of their limited calorie content and restrictive nature (7).

For this reason, to promote long-term, sustainable weight loss, many experienced healthcare providers recommend healthful dietary patterns that reduce calories in smaller amounts (6).

In addition to the potentially inappropriate calorie content of their meals, there are several other downsides to Diet-to-Go.

Diet-to-Go does not offer gluten-free, vegan, or kosher meals at this time. Also, those who prefer cooking their meals should choose a meal kit delivery service over a ready-to-eat service like Diet-to-Go.

Moreover, though Diet-to-Go is unsuitable for people with severe food allergies, the site does have a form that you can fill out regarding your dietary restrictions.

Lastly, even though Diet-to-Go is marketed as an affordable option, it may be out of many people’s price range. With shipping, the total average weekly cost for 21 meals is $162.97.

With budgeting and planning, you can save money by grocery shopping and preparing meals at home rather than spending money on a meal delivery service.

Summary

Diet-to-Go is convenient, and the meals are tasty. However, the calorie content of Diet-to-Go programs is quite low and may not be the best choice for sustainable weight loss.

Should you try Diet-to-Go?

While Diet-to-Go may be a suitable option for those looking for an affordable method to achieve quick weight loss without the need to prepare meals, it’s important to understand that any low calorie diet program is not a good choice for sustainable and healthy weight loss.

When trying to lose weight or manage blood sugar levels, it’s much more helpful to develop a personalized dietary pattern that works for your specific needs.

Although this method usually takes more time, effort, and planning than signing up for a meal delivery service, it’s much more likely to help you reach a healthy body weight that you can maintain for life.

The best way to understand your nutritional needs is to work with a qualified healthcare provider like a registered dietitian. They can help you determine your calorie needs, as well as your macro- and micronutrient needs.

If you want to try out Diet-to-Go, it would be best used as a short-term dietary intervention rather than a long-term solution to weight loss and weight maintenance.

Get started with Diet-to-Go here.

Summary

Although it’s convenient, Diet-to-Go is not the best choice for sustainable and healthy weight loss.