Things you would use the hell out of if they existed:

[wickerwoman]

Here's the million dollar idea I had in the shower this morning. Maybe it already exists, but I've never heard of it. I'd set it up in a second if I had the money, the gumption and the desire to live in a major U.S. city.

Why do most diets fail? Work. It's easy to lose weight if all you do is stay home and cook. But most people have to go out to make money and most offices don't have gourmet kitchens (mine doesn't even have a fridge.) So you're stuck either eating over-priced unhealthy restaurant meals, or spending an hour every morning packing stuff in tupperware and hoping like hell the mayo doesn't go off in the four hours before lunchtime.

What would I prefer to do? I'd love to see a company that delivers diet-fare to your desk at work as part of a day-long menu. You could set up a website and have a nutritionist design four or five menu choices per day (low-fat, low-carb, world cuisine (for people who want to try exotic stuff), comfort food (for meat and potato types) and vegetarian). The customer could go in over the weekend and pick their lunch choices for each day, M-F. When they pay, they get a full day menu with a shopping list so they can prepare their own simple breakfasts and dinners. Then when they go to work, they can have a hot diet-friendly meal delivered to their desk within a half-hour time frame.

I would *so* use this every day of the week as long as the food was marginally better than plane fare and was delivered on time. And since all the meals would be pre-ordered at least a day in advance it would be easy to know how much of each kind of supply to buy. And you could give customers a wide choice (maybe they could pick their own fruits, snacks, salad dressings and desserts) so they wouldn't be stuck with something they don't like.

As long as the service was reliable and you could offer decent quality for a reasonable price, I bet this would take off big time. It would make it easier for people to eat right and lose weight.

So if anybody out there wants to try it, I'd be customer number one.

[flvegan]

1. Decent idea, but...

1. Most diets fail due to commitment, not work.
2. It's not easy to lose weight if all you do is stay home and cook. If I had a dime for every stay at home mom/dad that was overweight, and trying to change that, I'd be a brazillionaire.
3. Conflict. You have a customer choosing but you have a nutritionist designing menu choices. Neither will meet in the middle.

I think that the workable idea behind this is the hiring of a trainer/nutritionist that says, "you may eat this, at this time." Then, as part of the "program" said trainer/nutritionist provided same.

Constrictive, yes, but still the reason behind folks hiring that person in the first place.

[wickerwoman]

4. 1.) I'm committed as hell

to losing weight- I've lost and kept off more than 70 pounds over the past two years. I just live in circumstances that make it a pain in the ass. I don't have a fridge at work or even really a place to eat apart from my desk and there aren't any lo-cal eating out options around me (except grabbing a ready made salad from the supermarket and that gets pretty boring around day 20.) So I either have to get up at 6:30 and spend an hour when I'm most tired packing tons of tupperware or I have to take my chances that salad for lunch will fill me up (it usually doesn't). Diets fail because people get bored eating sandwiches and salads day after day after day. I can be committed and still have a day where I feel like crap and don't want to get up early and cook two meals (breakfast and lunch) at once. I think if we make it just a little bit easier to stay on a diet, it will be easier to stay committed. And not having to worry about meal planning or cooking lunch on workdays would make sticking on a diet much, much easier for me.

2.) I meant it's easy for single people to lose weight if they stay home and cook. I lost almost 30 pounds the last time I had a summer off. And it was easy because I didn't have lots of other things to worry about and I was near a fridge 90% of the time. And there's no reason why this service couldn't be offered to stay at home parents either. Maybe they just don't have time to worry about cooking lunch.

3.) The nutritionist would be offering at least 5 different menu choices each day, including a meat and potatoes unadventurous boring bastard option. Plus you wouldn't have to order for that day if you didn't like any of the choices. You could just eat out that one day a week. And it would be easy to offer people a wide choice of side-dishes, fruits, desserts, etc. because they're pre-ordering.

The whole idea came because I was thinking how great it would be to have a personal nutritionist, if I could afford it. I think most people just can't be bothered to plan out and cook healthy meals day after day after day. This is almost as good as having a personal nutritionist but would be much less expensive and would be available to ordinary people. I don't mind a little constriction if it saves me hours of counting calories and worrying if I'm getting enough folate, etc.

[flvegan]

5. Good.

1. Suggesting diets fail because folks get bored suggests that folks aren't committed.
2. It's not "easy" for anyone to lose weight. For most it's a lifestyle change, and a big shift in their paradigm.
3. A personal trainer should also be certified as a sports nutritionist, at least, which takes you far beyond the nutritonal training (no offense meant) of most medical professionals.

In other words, find a trainer that's also a sports nutritionist. Should suit you well. If you can't afford it, which is very understandable, then please keep talking to me. I've got two personal trainer certs, and one nutritionist cert...

[LeftyMom]

2. Personal chefs do something rather like that

but usually there aren't a lot of options within the menu (since they usually cook for several families at once, although some do the cooking in the client's home) and you just need to find one whose approach to food is close to your own.

[undeterred]

3. This might be what you are looking for:

Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating

This was in the Chicago area when I lived there. They would deliver up to 21 healthy balanced meals per week. I've recommended it to people who were recuperating or wanted to diet.

http://www.seattlesutton.com/home.asp

Edit: Looks like they are now in 9 states.

[fishwax]

14. I was going to mention that too

I knew somebody who used it and liked it quite a bit, at least for the first five weeks--the meals are apparently on a five-week schedule, so after that it gets repetitive ...

[liberaltrucker]

6. Self delete

[liberaltrucker]

7. A Holodeck

:evilgrin:

[LeftyMom]

9. Hey, if we get to be all Star Trek about it

I want a transporter. Judging by the :evilgrin: for a similar motivation.

[liberaltrucker]

11. HEHEHE!

:evilgrin:

[dysfunctional press]

15. i'd wear out the angelina jolie/claudia schiffer roman orgy program

or die trying.

[ragin_acadian]

19. how 'bout a metric crescent wrench?

[njdemocrat106]

22. I'd rather a Replicator, myself

Even though the Enterprise crew always bitched about how bad the food that it replicated was.

[DanCa]

8. A flying car.

I really want a flying car.

[EstimatedProphet]

12. You say that now

But what if we all had flying cars, and the idiot freeper with the 'Bush is Lord' and 'Kill Muslims for Christ' bumperstickers cuts you off at 30,000 feet?

I don't trust the drivers on the road ON THE ROAD. I sure as hell wouldn't trust them to fly.

[DanCa]

23. Well that's the downside .

The upside is when a freeper gets out his car, to yell at you for all the anti Bush stickers on your flying car, he falls thirty thousand feet.

[u4ic]

10. No fat, no calorie chocolate

:bounce:

[Deja Q]

13. A lover (but only in the good way!)

:7

[dysfunctional press]

16. it already does...(mine, not your food thing)

http://sybian.com/aff/venusindex.htm

[Heidi]

17. Reverse microwave. (nt)

[KT2000]

18. A Flowbee for popcorn ceilings

It could get rid of the popcorn and vacuum it at the same time. Of course one would only use the hell out of it until the house was completely rid of ceiling popcorn.

[NMMNG]

20. It exists. It's called "The Zone Diet at Home"

Starting at $19.99 a day (for the frozen food) and starting at $36.99 a day for the "Zone Life Style" you can have customized food shipped to you daily.

That's a minimum of $599.70 per month just for the frozen food, and at least $1109.70 for the other plan. That's an awful lot to pay for convenience IMO.

http://www.zonedietathome.com/g/

[wickerwoman]

21. Yeah, that kind of sucks...

but it's not exactly what I'm talking about. First, it wouldn't be frozen food (Jenny Craig is awful!) it would be freshly prepared stuff delivered hot and it would be more local and only lunches. People can buy their own toast and grapefruit for breakfast, we'd just provide the meal plans. Plus you could choose between diets- not just the Zone, but South Beach-friendly, Weight Watchers friendly, etc.

I probably spend about $450 a month on food when I'm on a diet and food is pretty cheap in my neck of the woods. Another $150 a month for labor and delivery doesn't seem extravagent since I'm saving more than an hour a day of preparing meals from scratch. If you ate lunch in a restaurant every day or had something delivered to your office, I bet it would add up to more than $600 a month. But I still think it could be done considerably cheaper $6-7 a day x 23 workdays a month would only be $140-160 a month. That's well within the budget of most office drones.

[NMMNG]

24. That's probably the $36.99 a day (and up) plan for non-frozen

I've heard the celebs are going crazy over that, but I think it's outrageous.

As for me, even when I'm dieting I still don't go over $150 a month for food at the extreme. It's just not in my budget.

[PretzelWarrior]

25. A phaser set on "STUN"

I'd also use something to place the world in suspended animation for a bit while I caught up...sort of like a TiVO for life. BUt everyone else would be using it too. IT would be seriously funny to see how that would work with 300,000,000 of us split-screening and freezing our world around us.