The Mediterranean diet is causing a stir on the Internet. Its proponents are touting it as a revolutionary approach to weight loss and diabetes prevention.

This diet emerged in the mid-20th century from the culinary customs of Mediterranean countries and promotes reducing refined sugar and increasing the intake of plant-based foods. This includes eating plenty of vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and whole grains and choosing healthy fats such as olive oil.

Fish is an important part of the Mediterranean diet, while poultry, dairy products and eggs should be eaten in moderation, a few times a week. Red meat is allowed, but only as an occasional treat, making the diet flexible rather than rigid.

Journalist Matt Jackson, 32, was desperate to lose a few pounds and decided to test the diet for a week. However, he quickly realised that it required a little more planning than his usual diet. He said: “Once my plan was worked out, off I went, armed with a list and a certain sense of curiosity to go shopping. However, I soon hit a roadblock.”

“I enthusiastically chose my meals and wrote down the ingredients, but then didn’t really consider how easily they would be available in my small Cheshire town,” reports the Mirror.

“How hard can it be to find edamame beans? An ingredient for my first meal of the week: salmon and Mediterranean vegetables. As it turned out, they were a step too far, and after visiting three different supermarkets, I gave up hope and simply replaced them with something else on my list.”

Matt decided to start his week with cinnamon roll overnight oats for breakfast, a choice he found both delicious and convenient. He explained, “Pleasantly straightforward, by throwing your oat batch, nonfat Greek yogurt, cinnamon, vanilla essence and oat milk into a container, then stir together and place in the fridge overnight.”

For lunch, he prepared on a vegetable-rich diet. He said, “I managed to prepare a few lunches in bulk. I opted for a ‘superfood salad’ consisting mainly of grains – quinoa – kale, lettuce, beans and chicken strips to get a protein boost at lunch.”

He found that having a ready-made lunch was a game changer, saying: “Having something I could just grab from the fridge at lunchtime was easy and fantastic. Even if you work from home for a large part of your life, you don’t want to be standing at the fridge at lunchtime scratching your head.”

This approach allowed Matt to enjoy fish-based meals in the evenings, often accompanied by an abundance of vegetables and sometimes whole-grain pasta. The result?

He started losing weight.

Looking back on the experience, Matt said, “All in all, it went smoothly. Although I didn’t have great expectations, part of me was hoping the scale would weigh a few pounds less.”

To his surprise, the effort paid off. He revealed: “I was amazed to find that by the end of the week I had lost 3.4 kg (7.5 pounds). Although it is normal to see a significant weight loss after changing your diet, this was more than I expected – especially since I assumed my diet was pretty healthy for the most part.”

Sharing his key takeaways from the week of testing, Matt explained, “Meal prepping for breakfast made starting the day much easier. Including a healthy, natural snack and water curbed cravings for ‘highly processed’ soft drinks. And lunch prepping eliminated the temptation to ‘quickly run to the store’ for a pre-packaged sandwich when ‘there was nothing there.'”

This is what Matt’s daily meal plan for the Mediterranean diet looked like.

• Breakfast – Overnight Oats with Cinnamon Rolls, Walnuts and Blackberries – 453 Cal.

• Morning snack – pear with peel – 104 calories.

• For lunch, a superfood chicken salad with 546 calories is on the menu.

• Dinner consists of roasted salmon and vegetables and has a total of 422 calories.

• The total calories for the day is 1,525.

The NHS recommends that anyone trying to lose weight eat a balanced diet that includes eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

The Department of Nutrition and Dietetics also emphasizes the numerous benefits associated with following a Mediterranean diet.