It's that time of year again when it's chilly and nothing much is happening - making it the perfect season for a health boost. Lots of us are looking to shed those extra festive pounds, and there's no shortage of diets out there ready to lend a hand.

Slimming World sits among the UK's favourite weight-loss groups, offering both local group sessions and online membership for those wanting to get involved from home. To sweeten the deal, they've even launched the Slimming World Kitchen service, where you can have recipe boxes packed with all the ingredients for delicious meals delivered straight to your door.

These dishes all fall under Slimming World's "free food" category, fitting into their "Food Optimising" strategy to aid weight loss goals. Having previously lost an impressive amount of weight on the Slimming World plan, I gave these meal boxes a whirl.

I'm not an active paying member at the moment, but after a week of integrating these boxes into the broader Slimming World guidelines, I managed to drop six pounds. The service operates on a subscription model, so when you initially sign up, you have to choose whether you want the boxes delivered every week, fortnightly, every three weeks, or monthly.

There's also the flexibility to skip weeks, or you can cancel your subscription at any time. Here's how I got on with preparing all the meals throughout January and what I liked and didn't like about the service - and of course, whether it helped me shed any pounds.

To get started, you simply visit the Slimming World Kitchen website, select the week you want your delivery, and then 15 recipes pop up. You can pick up to five dishes for a week, and there's an option for a two-person or four-person portion size.

All dishes are individually priced, and they're listed on the website per dish and per portion to help you budget - for instance, sizzling steak in oyster sauce is £13 (£6.50 per portion). Meat dishes tend to be pricier than veggie options, and it's more cost-effective if you're feeding four people, with prices ranging from £10 - £13 for the two-portion options and from £13 - £22 for the four-portion options.

Selecting the meals is a simple process. There are menus for each week, and you can choose up to five meals from them.

Options I was choosing from included dishes like jerk hake with mango salsa, hunters chicken with baby roasties, and sticky spiced tofu and rice. I opted for meals that I wouldn't usually prepare at home or ones I've struggled to perfect despite numerous attempts.

The boxes are quite large (especially if you're ordering five meals), and they contain a recipe booklet on top with numbered recipes for the entire week. Inside the box, there are five bags filled with the ingredients for the recipes you've chosen.

These are all numbered to match the recipe in the booklet. In a smaller section of the box, there's a clearly labelled tab for the refrigerated items - the fresh meats and yoghurts required for the recipes.

However, the bags also now indicate that they need to be refrigerated. This might be fine if you have a large American-style fridge, but I don't, so, I couldn't just put all the bags in my fridge. Instead, I had to remove the vegetables that needed refrigeration from each bag. I tried to keep everything else inside the brown bags (like vinegars, garlic, ginger etc) to stay organised for the upcoming week of cooking from scratch.

The beauty of the meal boxes for Slimming World followers is that EVERYTHING in the box is categorised as "free food". According to the diet plan, devotees can consume unlimited amounts of foods labelled as "free" - which includes lean meats, pulses, fruits and vegetables, and a variety of herbs and spices - and theoretically, still shed pounds.

Moreover, everything in the recipes is pre-weighed and measured for you, so items like spices are portioned into sachets, you get the exact number of tomatoes required, and even things like tomato puree are provided. The recipe booklet also offers comprehensive step-by-step instructions on how to prepare each meal - with estimated preparation times ranging from 25 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the dish.

However, if you're cooking solo, as I was, I found the prep time to be significantly longer, possibly because I'm not particularly quick at chopping vegetables. If you're a kitchen pro, you'd likely whip it up faster than me.

You can choose between a two-meal or four-meal option. I opted for the two-meal options throughout, and each recipe has its own price tag ranging from:

• Week one - £60 for five meals (plus £4.99 delivery);
• Week two - £49 for four meals (plus £4.99 delivery);
• Week three - £49 for four meals (plus £4.99 delivery);
• Week four - £61 for five meals (plus £4.99 delivery).

The total for the month came to £238.99.

Well, this is the million-dollar question, isn't it?

I'm thrilled to report that I did indeed shed a significant amount of weight after using the mealboxes for an entire month. It's crucial to mention that during my month with the meal boxes, I also strictly adhered to the Slimming World diet plan.

This meant incorporating foods like fruit and fat-free yoghurt for breakfast and lunches such as beans on toast (using my Healthy Extra B for the wholemeal toast) or homemade tuna pasta (using my Healthy Extra A for a cheese topping). The fantastic thing for those following the Slimming World plan is that all the meals in the boxes are entirely free, allowing you to use your HEA and HEB choices for your other meals throughout the day.

I embarked on the diet after a period of overeating. As any experienced dieter will tell you, you always lose more weight in the first week of a plan as much of the weight lost is "water weight" your body retains. Standing at 5ft 6ins, I am overweight for my height, so I know I have several stones to lose to fall within a healthy range.

Regardless, I was over the Moon when I stepped on the scales at the end of the first week and discovered I had lost 6 lbs - the same amount I lost when I first tried the mealboxes last year. After an impressive first week, the weight loss naturally slowed to a more manageable one to two pounds over the next three weeks.

After four weeks of using the meal boxes and adhering to the Slimming World plan, I was delighted to have lost a total of 10lbs. Despite consuming large portions of healthy, vegetable-rich, home-cooked meals from these boxes, I still managed to lose a significant amount of weight by sticking to the plan.

There was a good variety of cuisine styles to choose from each week, including vegetarian options as well as fish, pork, beef, and chicken dishes. While I enjoyed all the meals, some stood out and I will definitely try to recreate them.

1) Creamy chicken supreme: A real hit with a sauce made from fat-free yoghurt, stock, and mustard that tasted restaurant-quality.

2) Barbecue baked sweet potatoes: A fully vegetarian dish that was a revelation for me, with the taste of the aubergine barbecue being fantastic. I've already cooked this recipe again because it was so tasty.

3) Posh risotto with steak and garlic mushrooms: I chose this because I've never been able to perfect a proper risotto. This dish helped me do just that, and the excellent quality of the steak added to its flavour.

4) "Just like mum's" savoury mince with colcannon: Now, my mum has never made this dish for me. But whoever's mum has is a lucky kid as this one tasted great.

5) Beef lasagne with charred broccoli: Again, another dish I've never been able to achieve well at home. This was a lovely lasagne, although I have to admit I "cheated" a little and used my Healthy Extra A allowance to add some cheese on top.

Some of the dishes felt like a lot of prep for not that much reward. That included the chicken tikka masala with cucumber salad, which I felt was disappointing.

I also ordered a jerk pork dish that I had forgotten I tried last year that I didn't like then. And it hadn't improved now unfortunately so I regretted ordering that.

The salmon dishes I tried were also a little disappointing this time around - I tried a "showstopper salmon" so I expected big things but I just found it a tad bland.

What I love about the meal boxes is that they're packed full of healthy ingredients, and you know that EVERYTHING in there is "free food" if you're following the Slimming World system. So there's no need for weighing anything, or ticking off your HEA and HEB because everything in the recipes is "free".

The fresh meat and vegetables also seemed to be really great quality, and the stock cubes and tinned produce on some recipes were quality brands. The beauty of cooking everything from scratch is that you can freeze any leftovers if your family or partner aren't keen on the dishes. This also helps to stretch your budget further, especially if you're sticking to the plan. The portions are absolutely massive, so you might want to consider saving extras this way anyway.

However, after four weeks, I found it quite tiring spending so much time in the kitchen. I grew weary of spending around an hour each night preparing four or five meals - all by myself.

On the plus side, standing and chopping for an hour at a time did provide some good cardio exercise. But the worst part about the boxes was the fact that almost EVERY recipe required onions to be fried.

While I love the taste of fried onions and understand they add flavour to a dish, I'm not a fan of how they make your entire house, clothes, and hair smell. So, unless you're a regular onion user or have an effective extractor fan in your kitchen (mine doesn't seem to work very well), this could be a problem.

By the end of the month, I also experienced what I'd call "vegetable fatigue". The dishes are loaded with fresh veg which, while good for you and weight loss, felt overwhelming when some recipes seemed to cram your full five a day onto one plate.

I found myself saving some of the vegetables from various dishes to use in my lunch meals, such as extra peppers and mushrooms for a healthy omelette.

For Slimming World followers and long-term devotees, these boxes offer great inspiration and new recipes to try. The produce was fresh and super healthy, and it felt good to cook everything from scratch.

I can see how these meals would work for an entire family (even those not trying to lose weight). It also inspired me to incorporate a wider variety of fresh herbs and vegetables into my regular recipes.

The included recipe book allows you to recreate your favourite dishes at home. However, if you're not a member of Slimming World and you order the Slimming World Kitchen box with the intention of losing weight, you'll need to understand more about the overall plan. While the recipe booklet does include a section on the 'lowdown on how Food Optimising works', it falls short of explaining the full rules of the plan.

The box only covers your main meal for the day, leaving those aiming for weight loss in the dark about what to eat for breakfast and lunch, although there are numerous prompts to "join your local Slimming World group" peppered throughout the booklet. I lost weight eating the recipes because I followed the Slimming World plan religiously alongside them.

Having previously been on the plan, I was familiar with the rules regarding "free" foods, the HEA and HEB allowances, and the "syns" system that permits a certain number of daily treats. For those on different diets, the booklet helpfully includes a comprehensive nutrition table at the end.

While the convenience of tailored recipes comes at a higher cost than supermarket shopping – I was taken aback by the total monthly expense of £238.99 – it's a trade-off for customised meal planning.

Personally, I wouldn't opt for a full five meal box again as the sheer volume of food entering my home was a bit too much for my kitchen and fridge to handle. However, for an occasional burst of culinary inspiration, I reckon a three or four meal box is well worth it, given that most of the recipes were of excellent quality.