Exante review: we asked a personal trainer to test out the Exante diet
FOR many of us, this is the time of year we start thinking about weight loss. As we head towards Christmas we want to look our best for the (hopefully) many parties we find ourselves invited to.
There’s also the added excitement of festive food and drink – who wants to abstain when everybody else is indulging over the holidays?
Then of course, before we know it we’re into the New Year and resolutions to lose weight, be more active and get healthy are everywhere…
By taking what we eat and drink in hand now, we have a head start – and the Exante Diet is one way to do this. It’s a healthy, balanced diet that provides the vitamins, minerals and fibre you need in a selection of meal replacements including, breakfasts, main meals, desserts, soups, shakes and bars.
We asked a personal trainer and qualified nutrition coach to put Exante to the test and find out how easy it was to lose weight following the diet and how healthy it actually is.
- Up to 40% off Exante "create your own bundle" meal replacements until 30th April 2024 - buy here
Visit the NHS Better Health website for support and information about dieting in a healthy way.
Pros
- Lots of variety of meal replacement options
- Fairly priced and there’s always offers on
- Some really tasty snack options
- Mostly healthy ingredients with added vitamins and minerals
- Most ‘meals’ are pretty filling
Cons
- Not all the ‘meals’ taste great
- Some of the diet plans are very low on calories
- Lowest calorie plans could be unhealthy long term
- Some of the ‘meals’ do still contain sugar
Exante review: quick summary
Does the Exante diet work? The short answer is yes, it does. If you want to lose weight and have the willpower to forgo ‘real’ food and stick with meal replacement options, then the calorie deficit that comes with the Exante plans will inevitably result in weight loss.
Most read in Product Reviews
The key is to choose a plan where the calorie allowance is less than what you get from your regular diet. There’s a super-low option of 800 calories a day, which would be hard (and unhealthy) to maintain long-term, but can work as a kick start to your weight loss journey for a few weeks before moving onto a slightly more realistic 1200 calorie plan. there’s also other plans including a maintenance option and fasting plans.
The general idea is to swap out all or some of your meals for Exante replacement meals, which include high protein shakes, breakfasts, soups, pastas and bars and low calorie savoury snacks and desserts.
The replacement meals are lower in calories than meals you would normally eat, but the high protein content means they are still pretty filling and the snacks provided are tasty and good at tackling any hunger pangs.
The meals provide a good amount of vitamins and minerals and some of them don’t taste too bad. Over time you can find out which you like the taste of and only order those meals as part of your plan.
I would say the vegan shakes (all flavours) were standout for taste, followed by the savoury snack shots, caramel meal replacement bars and the berry yoghurts. The desserts need some work, though!
READ MORE:
Exante review: full review
What is Exante?
- Shop Exante here
Exante is a diet plan company that offers meal replacements, with each meal totalling around 200 calories.
The idea is that you swap your regular meal for one of these once, twice or three times a day. The meals they send you are considerably lower in calories than the ones you would normally eat, which means you’ll be taking in less energy than you usually do and will in turn lose weight.
The meals they offer are high in protein and low in carbs. They include shakes, porridge, yoghurts, high protein bars, pastas, noodles, rice dishes and desserts. All are made by mixing with hot or cold water, and a shaker is provided for the shakes.
All are fortified with vitamins and minerals, and the website explains that 'each serving provides over 17 grams of protein, five grams of fibre and 27 vitamins and minerals'. In addition to this, some plans come with small snack shot packs of flavoured nuts, seeds, dried fruits and chickpeas. (These actually taste great and are around 95 calories.)
How does Exante work?
Essentially it works by making you eat less than usual, and by taking in less energy than you’re exerting.
Exante makes this easier by providing you with meal alternatives in the form of bars and packets or pots of meal replacements that you can mix with water and eat instead of your regular meals.
Once you go to the Exante website you can follow a number of routes depending on what your current BMI is, what your goals are (weight loss or maintenance) and whether you’re willing to give fasting a go; if the answer is yes, they suggest a 5:2 approach where you eat your own healthy food for five days a week and then go on an Exante low-calorie plan for the remaining two days.
Depending on your goals and current BMI you will be directed to the plan Exante thinks is best suited to you. This could be the rather drastic Exante 800 - just 800 calories a day, swapping all your daily meals to Exante meals.
- Exante 2 Week Diet Plan, £49.99 - buy here
This includes three meal replacements a day, plus two low-cal snacks: this could look like a shake or porridge for breakfast, a soup or high protein bar for lunch and a small Exante pasta dish such as carbonara for dinner.
The two snacks are around 100 calories each and could be something like lemon and coconut or carrot cake bites, or a savoury snack of flavoured chickpeas or fruits nuts and seeds. You can choose your own meals when you order, and eat them in whatever order suits you best.
The next plan is the Exante 1200, the premise here being that you swap in two Exante meals a day and then add in your own 600 calorie meal and 200 calories of healthy snacks (which can also come from Exante).
The company also provides a free ebook to download, which is full of healthy recipes you can make at home to stay on track. The plans also come with options for vegan shakes, meals and bars.
What do Exante meals taste like?
In general, the shakes, which come in flavours including lemon cheesecake, cherries and berries, salted caramel, mint chocolate, creamy coconut, cinnamon swirl, coffee and walnut, chocolate peanut butter, banana and strawberry are very palatable. They’re quite thick and more filling than you would think, though I preferred the taste of the vegan shakes myself, with my favourite being the vegan chocolate.
There’s two other options for breakfast in the form of flavoured porridge (just add hot water) and berry yoghurt powder (just add cold water). Both taste good, though my favourite was the cinnamon flavoured porridge oats.
Moving onto the meals, options include sweet and sour noodles, creamy Thai noodles, red bean chilli, and a variety of soups including red Thai chicken, butternut squash and sweet potato and vegetable. Here it comes down to personal taste, but I didn’t love the flavour of most of these and neither did my mum who was helping out with the testing. However, we did make them tastier by adding some spices.
I would suggest playing around with the consistency of most of these meals, as some require a little more water than recommended, and this can make the meals more palatable. My preference was the soups because you can easily add extra taste through herbs and spices that don’t affect the calorie count.
The meal replacement bars were tasty and very filling. The salted caramel and chocolate fudge are probably the tastiest and if you’re going for vegan, then the dark chocolate and orange is nice.
If you have a sweet tooth, however, you might struggle — the desserts aren’t great. The lemon pancakes aren’t really sweet enough (although you can buy an Exante liquid sweetener to add to them) and the gooey choc pudding just came out as a rubber-like mess every time I tried to make it – it was totally inedible.
I preferred to just eat a meal replacement bar or have another shake for dessert instead — the calorie count is pretty much the same.
- Shop Exante here
What can you drink on the Exante diet?
On the Exante diet, you can drink anything that doesn’t add calories, meaning black coffee and green tea are great. If you want to add milk to your brew, you need to lose those calories elsewhere (perhaps by missing out on a daily snack).
Exante does offer a variety of drink options to make life easier. There’s Exante Burst multivitamin drinks sachets which come in strawberry and lime, blood orange, raspberry and apple and elderflower, and can be added to water to make a cordial style energy drink.
There are also flavoured water enhancers to help you increase your fluid intake if you find plain water a bit boring — there’s less than a single calorie in the drink once made up. Exante also offers its meal replacement high protein shakes in fruit juice form for something a bit lighter.
Unfortunately there’s no place for alcohol on the Exante diet because it adds extra calories, but you can opt for Exante’s alcohol-free, virtually calorie-free cans of pina colada and strawberry daiquiri for a night with mates.
How much does Exante cost?
There’s a whole host of plans you can choose from and you can also order the items individually - and the good news is there always seems to be offers available. Currently the prices are:
- 2-Week Plan (contains 42 meal replacements and a shaker), £49.99 (saving £46.01) - buy here
- 4 Week Plan (contains 84 meal replacements, a shaker and one water enhancer), £84.99 (saving £105.01) - buy here
- 4 Week repeat subscription, £76.49 - buy here
A number of other plans and mix and match bundles are available across the website.
Exante is currently offering a Try It All deal with 21 meal replacements and a shaker for £35, using the code TRYALL at checkout and it's valid until 29th February 2024. There’s also a "buy 100 meals for £99" offer here.
Does the Exante diet work?
If weight loss is your goal and you’re ready to make some sacrifices when it comes to taste, then yes, absolutely, Exante does work.
I followed the Exante 1200 for three weeks, occasionally going 200 calories or so over the daily target, and still lost weight. I gave the 5:2 fasting option a go for a few weeks after this, and this suited me better as I found it difficult to have meal replacements every day.
Meanwhile, my mum trialled the Exante 800 and saw weight loss after the first week. However she couldn’t stay on the diet for longer than two weeks as she was missing regular food and didn’t like the taste of the savoury meals. She moved to the Exante 1200 after that for a couple of weeks and has dropped a dress size.
Exante review: the verdict
Stick to the diet and you WILL see results, but the struggle is real if you don’t like the food. The shakes and breakfasts are pretty tasty so the easiest route would be the Exante 1200, which includes adding an evening meal of your own.
The food itself is pretty rich in whey proteins and sweeteners which can cause stomach upset if you have a delicate gut, and the added sugars in some items do go against the idea of being healthy.
Overall, if you’re desperate to lose weight, Exante is a good option. My advice would be to try out a load of different meals when you start and then build your own plans using the dishes you like - this can make the plan a lot more manageable.
- Explore the Exante range - here
Can I drink Coffee or tea on the Exante Diet?
Yes, you can drink black coffee and tea, as well as green and herbal teas on the Exante Diet, but you should include the calories in any milk used within your daily calorie intake.
Can you buy Exante in shops?
Exante is available in some branches of Morrisons and is also on sale on Amazon. However, for the biggest selection of products and greatest choice your best bet is the Exante website.
Can you drink alcohol on the Exante Diet?
Exante no longer has an approved food list so in theory you could drink alcohol on the Exante Diet, however you’ll be defeating the object if you do. Alcohol contains empty calories in that it provides no nutritional benefit, it simply eats into your daily calorie allowance.
Add to this the fact that after a few drinks many people’s willpower goes out the window and anything goes food-wise, which is going to set back your weight-loss goals and waste your hard work.
Does Exante cause diarrhoea?
Any change in diet can cause diarrhoea (or constipation) but that should settle down once your body gets used to the new regimen. The products contain a lot of fibre, which Exante says can cause flatulence and bloating, but they explain, your body will adjust to the high fibre intake.
Make sure you drink plenty of water on the diet, to keep hydrated, especially if you do have diarrhoea.
If you enjoyed our Exante review, you might be interested in more articles from Sun Selects Health and Fitness.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
If you're on a health kick, you might be interested in our roundup of the best skipping ropes, tried and tested by a personal trainer.
We've also reviewed an Echelon Bike to see if it's a viable replacement for spin classes.