Review: Sian's Plan

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sian’s Plan for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

It's a new year, and as we  all know, that means the media is filled with celebrities who've lost stones, exercise dvds and dieting advice from skinny people. It's everywhere you look. Most of it involves things that are perfectly reasonable for the first week or so, but quickly become too hard to keep up with every day/week/month, and fall by the wayside.

What caught my eye about Sian’s Plan is that it didn't promise me I would lose weight, drop a dress size, or feel instantly happy.

Sian Breslin is a home economist and has taught thousands of people how to cook through Sian's Cookery School in Ireland.

Sian's Plan guarantees nothing, except that it will provide healthy meal choices. The idea is to help you to prepare real, healthy, home-cooked food, easily. I was surprised when I signed up to the site, at how easy and sensible it is. No mung beans or things you can't buy in your local supermarket; no random things you've never heard of.

Each week you choose evening meals from a massive list of recipes. You can search based on what ingredients you want to use. You then pick four red meals, a green and a blue.

Red meals are healthy main meals that serve 4 people and take under 35 minutes to cook.

Green recipes are designed to help you use up what's already in the cupboard. They're flexible so that you can just chuck in whatever you've got lots of; the idea is that you don't need to do any shopping for a green meal.

Blue recipes are larger meals that take 45 minutes or longer to cook and produce at least 8 portions.

You also have a white day in your week, which is for days when you don't fancy cooking; you can either use up what's in the cupboard, eat leftovers from a blue day, or go out for dinner.

Spicy Potato Wedges: a blue recipe; still super easy to make.

Once you've chosen your meals for the week, you can have the website produce a shopping list for you. You can then either print it out and wander off down to the shops, or you can have it export directly to Tesco or My Supermarket. "AH, " I hear you cry, "what if the recipes I have chosen include things I already have in the house? I don't want to order those!" Sian has thought of that too: you can fiddle with the shopping list before you export it; so if your list says you need 4 chicken breasts, and you already have 2 in the fridge, you can change your shopping list so that you only order two. Genius.    

This is a great way of planning your meals, whether you're trying to lose weight, eat a little more healthily, or just save time and money feeding your family. I tried the plan and found everything so much easier. You can plan your meals at the start of the week, get your shopping in, and everything's sorted. The recipes (at least the ones I tried) are easy to follow; nothing complicated involved, not too many ingredients. The sort of thing I can make with S sitting on the worktop next to me.

Sian's Plan plans start at £8 a month - but I've been given a fabulous offer for my readers. By using the code JANPLAN on the payment page, you can get 25% off the quarterly package - so 3 months of healthy eating for £20. Hurry though; the code expires on January 31st.

This is not a weight loss plan or the latest fad; it's just a great way of organising your family's meals to ensure you don't waste food or money, and are still eating healthily.

Have you made a resolution to sort out your eating this year? Are you planning to lose weight or just eat more healthily?