The Cambridge Weight Plan

The Cambridge Weight Plan: What is it?

 This is a low calorie or extremely low calorie diet plan. It’s made up of branded shakes, bars, soups and porridge.

The products can be used on their own for fast weight loss or they can be used in tandem with normal meals for a more gradual weight loss.

The programmes range from 415 calories a day to more than 1500.

You can’t buy any of the products in a shop or online. If you want to try the diet you can only do so by getting in touch with a Cambridge Weight Plan consultant, who will visit you, weigh and measure you and decide which programme best suits your needs.

It used to be called the Cambridge diet and was the brainchild of Dr Alan Howard at Cambridge University as a method of rapidly shedding weight.

Since its launch in 1984 more than 25 million people have used the weight plan globally.

The Cambridge Weight Plan: What you can eat

What you can eat depends on how much weight you want to lose. The backbone of the diet though is the branded products. They contain carbohydrate, protein fat and fibre as well as more than thirty other nutrients.

The shakes, soups and porridge come in a sachet, which you mix with water.

The shake flavours include, strawberry and banana.

Soup flavours include chicken and mushroom, oriental chilli, spicy tomato, vegetable, mushroom, leek and potato.

The porridge comes in original, maple and pecan or apple and cinnamon.

There are chewy or crunch bars. The chewy includes caramel, toffee, chocolate and chocolate orange. If you prefer crunchy, these include cranberry, chocolate mint or peanut.

If you are on a later step of the programme you can also eat calorie controlled meals. You get the recipes and ideas from your Cambridge consultant.

The options

There are six steps or options to the plan and you and your consultant decide which step you should start from.

1. Sole Source - three or four Cambridge diet products are eaten or drunk a day.

Sole source Plus - you have three branded products as well as a normal meal of 200 calories. Or you can have four branded products and 200 ml of skimmed milk.

According to the guidance this stage should be followed for between 1 week minimum to 12 weeks maximum. The calories in this stage vary from 415 to 615 daily.

2. Next stage, three weight plan products plus protein rich foods, skimmed milk and some vegetables. This gives you 810 calories a day and should be followed for a week minimum.

3. This stage gives you 1000 calories a day. It consists of two diet products, milk allowance, breakfast and salads for lunch and dinner. It’s recommended this is followed for two weeks.