I am not hugely overweight, but keen to stay fit and healthy as I get older. I love cooking and eating and socialising, so staying slim is not that easy for me I am afraid. When Love Yourself, a company that delivers healthy food, in a range of plans, got in touch, I leapt at the chance to try their service.

I found the meals handy to take on picnics, I took my mid-morning snack of sweet potato hummus and carrot, a nectarine salad and an afternoon snack of an apple cake with yoghurt on a walk around St Abbs Head and had a great day out!

I have always felt that if I could take a break from cooking and just eat a controlled amount of food without having to think about it, as I assume you do on a spa break, say, somewhere like the Mayr Clinic in Austria, I could do it. Eating needs to be a passive experience for me, the moment I get in the kitchen and start experimenting, and tasting and sipping wine, well that is the end of 'a controlled amount of food' for me I am afraid!

The Love Yourself service is an affordable and achievable experience for me, varied meals delivered to your door and if you do not eat anything else or drink too much alcohol, you should lose weight. You receive a delicious breakfast, a mid morning snack, lunch, a mid afternoon snack and dinner, so you do not go hungry, the portions are generous and they just keep coming.

A typical breakfast from Love Yourself

Here, I combined a mid-morning snack, a sweetcorn muffin with a 'lunch' and added some of my own home made redcurrant and apple jelly and some frozen peas.

The mid afternoon snack is sweet, so you get a nice treat every day, but the best thing is you simply do not have to think about food at all and not thinking about food is a really good way to lose weight I reckon!

I enjoyed these chocolate Brownie bites with Turmeric latte tremendously!

I do not really like the idea of living solely on ready meals, so I added a little bit of greenery and a few cherry tomatoes to some of the dishes for a pop of colour and freshness. The food does not always look great in the packet, but honestly cooks up really nicely. I do not have a microwave, so I heated things in the oven, in oven proof dishes or cooked it up on the hob, I do wonder whether that helped actually?

The scrambled egg, delivered in the recyclable pack above, looked so much more appetising heated up with some cherry tomatoes, some herbs would have been nice as well!

I also invested in some Real Kombuchas as an alternative to alcohol and really enjoyed them. Alcohol contains a frighteningly large number of calories I am afraid!

I am very grateful to Love Yourself. It was really useful for me to see and experience what I should be eating if I want to lose weight. It was very bearable, I was not hungry and really feel I can keep it up.

Anyone else wanting to change or improve their diet, should definitely give them a go, either long term, as sustained weight loss it is a bit of a journey, or just short term, for some excellent inspiration and ideas.