There are hundreds of diets that slimmers can follow, but they can be pricey.
Buying the right ingredients, as well as paying for any membership fees, can mean you are spending hundreds of pounds every month.
Now a one-off special called Save Money: Lose Weight on ITV has put six of the most popular diets to the test by asking slimmers to try them over a 28-day period.
Based on what each person lost in weight and how much they paid for the diet, the show then totalled how much money each dieter spent per pound lost.
The most cost-effective diet was revealed to be a meal replacement shake-based programme – but a controversial juice cleanse saw one slimmer lose the most weight.
Save Money: Lose Weight crowned the Exante diet as the most cost-effective as it cost the least per pound lost based on one slimmer’s experience
Dieter Victoria weighed 20st 3lbs before trying the Extante meal replacement diet, and lost 13lbs in just 28 days. It cost her £171 – £13.19 for every pound lost
From cheapest to most expensive: Reboot with Joe’s juice cleanse; Slimming World; Weight Watchers; and the Jane Plan
Emma (left) tried the juice cleanse and lost the most weight of anyone, dropping 21lbs. Denise (right) tried the Slimming World group class programme, and lost 15lbs in 28 days
The Save Money: Lose Weight team found that the most cost-effective diet was the Exante programme, where you substitute up to three meals a day with meal replacements such as protein shakes, on Tuesday night’s special episode.
You can choose from an extreme 600-calorie a day plan, or a 1,200-calorie a day programme.
It had results, as slimmer Victoria, who tried the diet, lost 13lbs in just 28 days. Adn she spent about half of what she usually would spend on food: £171 in 28 days.
But the show’s resident doctor and presenter Dr Ranj Singh warned about the risks of such an extreme diet.
He said: ‘It’s performed really well but we have to be honest, this is not a normal way of eating.
Ravid (left) followed the Jane plan, and lost 9lbs in 28 days. New mother Jax (right) meanwhile lost 12.5lbs on the Weight Watchers programme
The Jane Plan was one of six diets tested on Save Money: Lose Weight, which aired on Tuesday night. It was deemed the most expensive, barring the Dopamine diet, which had to be disqualified from the results because the slimmer on the plan didn’t follow it faithfully
‘Even though these meals are nutritionally balanced, they are meal replacements, that should only ever be done in the short-term.
‘They contain quite a high amount of protein, which for some people may not be a good thing. As a doctor, I would say you cannot do this in the long-term at all.’
In second place was a controversial juice-only diet by Joe Cross, called Reboot with Joe, which replaces main meals with fruit and vegetable juices.
Slimmer Emma lost the most weight of anyone on this diet – 21lbs – and it was the second most cost-effective, costing £16.68 per pound lost.
However Dr Ranj warned that again, this diet would only be advisable ‘in the short-term’ and would have to be supplemented by protein over a longer period of time. He also warned that the sugar levels can be quite high.
The most expensive of the diets tried was the Jane Plan, a programme where slimmers choose from a range of weight loss meals and supplement them with fresh fruit and vegetables.
Slimmer Ravid lost the least amount of weight on this diet, 9lbs, and it cost £36.61 per pound lost.