Cooking Light Diet Review

Cooking Light Diet Overview

The Cooking Light Diet is a meal-planning service that plans your meals for you. Since your breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner are already planned, you won’t be confused about how much or what to eat every day. The best thing about it is that the eating plan is tailored to your specific needs and goals. However, the food preparation and calorie counting involved may not fit everyone. Read on and learn more about the meal plans, menu options, cost, scientific support and side effects of the Cooking Light Diet.

Keep reading our honest Cooking Light Diet review to learn more.

Cooking Light Diet Ideal For

• who want a healthier alternative to frozen foods.
• people who don’t have the luxury of time to buy and prepare ingredients.
• who are looking for a weight loss vegan plan or a weight loss program for vegetarians

How Cooking Light Diet Works?

The Cooking Light Diet started with the idea of providing people with the right diet advice and tools to help them lose weight and live a healthier life. It originated from Cooking Light, an American food and lifestyle magazine that has been in publication since 1987. According to Cooking Light Diet, they provide customized diet plans that are based on your favorite foods. You can lose weight, live healthy and eat well at the same time. However, this may not work for everyone because each person has a different idea of the right diet plan for them. Some people don’t want substantial calorie reduction in their diet. Calorie reduction, however, is a part of this program.

What Makes Cooking Light Diet Different?

The Cooking Light Diet reduces your daily intake of calories to as little as 1,200 every day. This amount varies depending on your weight, size, goals and health. Reducing your intake of calorie can help you lose weight, but you need to follow the diet plan’s rules properly.

Mayo Clinic shared that the number of calorie you consume versus the amount of calorie you burn off is an important factor to consider when you want to manage your weight. Calories provide the body with energy but when you consume too much, it’s simply stored as fat. If you want to lose weight, you need to make the right choices. Some foods provide more minerals and vitamins to nourish the body, more fiber to keep you full longer and fewer calories to burn. The Cooking Light Diet incorporates a wide range of foods. Men are encouraged to drink 12 cups of water every day and women 9 cups of water daily. Aside from keeping you hydrated, drinking water can also help you manage your weight.

According to Women’s Health Magazine, drinking plenty of water improves the metabolism, lessens hunger pangs and prevents you from drinking coffee, soda, energy drinks and other unhealthy beverages. The Cooking Light Diet doesn’t mention anything about regular exercise. However, you should remember that regular physical activity is important for weight loss and overall health.

Cooking Light Diet Meals & Menus and Recipes

You will get a customized meal plan every week. This meal plan can be followed as is or modified to better suit your food choices. Here’s a sample menu.

Breakfast

• For breakfast, you will have three-ingredient pancakes. The pancakes are made with one egg, whole grains and fruit.

Lunch

• Your lunch will consist of chicken-quinoa salad with pistachios and arugula.

Dinner

• For your dinner, you will eat a bowl of easy Thai steak noodle.

Snack Option

• For snacks, you can have no-bake chewy granola bars.

You can access other meal plan samples from your computer, mobile phone or tablet. The Cooking Light Diet website provides printable grocery lists and recipes that you can get anytime. Here are the customized diet plans they offer.

Gluten-Free

This diet plan includes gluten-free breakfast, dinner and lunch meal plans and snacks. Gluten is found in rye, wheat, barely, cereal grains and spelt, but this protein can cause problems for those with Celiac disease.

SmartCarb

SmartCarb is a diet plan that is low in carbohydrates. It includes minimally processed foods that contain a very small amount of sugar.  These foods provide energy and have low chances of causing blood sugar fluctuations. SmartCarb doesn’t include carbohydrate-based appetizers, desserts, refined bread products, sweets, crackers, pretzels and other refined snack foods.

Vegetarian

This meal plan doesn’t include meat products. It’s a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet that includes dairy and eggs. The meal plan comes with a grocery list, so you will know what to buy.

Allergen Exclusions

People can have a mild or severe reaction to foods they are allergic to. Allergen Exclusions doesn’t include certain ingredients you are allergic to. These ingredients can include shellfish, milk, peanuts and soy.

Cooking Light Diet Health & Nutrition

The Cooking Light Diet changes the portion sizes you eat and introduces you to new snack options and meals. Just remember that reducing your calorie intake and changing your diet can lead to several side effects such as hunger pangs, fatigue, headache, changes in bowel movement and nausea. These side effects can occur because the body needs time to adjust to your new diet. According to Women’s Health Magazine, practicing healthier eating habits can cause some unwelcome side effects such as difficulty pooping and gas.

Cooking Light Diet Fitness and Activity

Regular exercise is important. You should be active at least 30-60 minutes every day. What and when you do it depend on you.

How Easy Is Cooking Light Diet To Follow?

Customizing a Cooking Light Diet plan allows you to access printable grocery lists that provide the ingredients and foods you have to prepare for that week. What does this mean? You will get 21 meals and snacks that are categorized and organized according to the grocery store’s different departments. This allows you to shop for the ingredients quickly. The SHOP feature makes this possible. You can make changes to the Cooking Light Diet food list. If you already have some of the ingredients at home or you don’t want something in the recipes provided, you can easily remove it from the grocery list.

Can You Lose Weight With Cooking Light Diet?

Since the Cooking Light Diet focuses on following a light diet plan and portion control, you can expect to consume fewer calories and smaller portion sizes. This is often done to help people shed off excess pounds. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute shared that limiting the calories of meals will help reduce one’s overall caloric consumption to 1,000 to 1,600 calories every day. This calorie range is shown to help many people lose weight.

The Cooking Light Diet requires a lot of meal preparation, cooking and grocery shopping, so it won’t be suitable for everyone. If you cannot handle the preparation involved with this diet plan, it won’t suit you. You might quit halfway.

Cooking Light Diet Mobile App

The Cooking Light Diet has a mobile app that allows you to access the meal plans and menu options on Android and iOS devices.

Cooking Light Diet Plans & Pricing and Costs

The lowest price is $1.52 per week. The amount that you need to pay depends on your plan. Recipes and menu plans usually cost $4 to $5 per week. This amount doesn’t include the food ingredients that you have to buy. You don’t need to worry because there are coupon codes that are posted on websites like Offers.com, Coupon Chief and Good Shop. If you want to save money, you can use these codes. Many of the coupon code options available on the site provide a 15% discount on any purchase.

Unfortunately, there is no free trial offer for the Cooking Light Diet. You only need to pick a plan and pay its subscription cost. If you want to cancel your subscription to the program, you can sign in to your account. Next, go to SETTINGS and click the subscription tab. Click STOP AUTOMATIC RENEWAL and that’s it. Your subscription is cancelled.

Cooking Light Diet Delivery Areas

The program is currently available only in Canada and in the United States.

Cooking Light Diet Help & Support and Customer Service

The Cooking Light Diet has a FAQ page that you can check out anytime. You can also call their phone number that can be found on their official website or contact them through email.

Cooking Light Diet Pros and cons

Bottom Line

The Cooking Light Diet is designed to help people lose weight deliciously. It provides weekly meal plans that are based on your food preferences and weight loss goals. Their goal for doing so is to motivate people to maintain a healthier lifestyle by giving nutritious and tasty portion-controlled menus that don’t require them to spend a long time inside the kitchen.