Thank you for the good wishes, Deedee39 and BeeBeeSee!
Jael001 - Dukan is fine if you are a big meat eater, but I am not, so my choices were quite limited and I got heartily sick of plainly cooked chicken and fish. I lost weight very well on it, but it required a degree of obsession for which I just didn't have space in my head in the longer term. So it was very easy to let everything slip when other priorities took over, and very hard to pick it up again. It's a shame, because the diet worked wonders for my arthritis.
Fitnessqueen1 - I hope your weigh-in goes well!
I am pleasantly surprised by Exante so far. The last time I tried meal replacements was in 1986 when I stuck about two days on the Cambridge Diet (I think it was fairly new then, and it was quite controversial). I was worried about the Exante approach since I generally cook everything from scratch, we seldom buy pre-prepared food, and I never eat sweeteners, but I have found that the products are fine as long they are approached in the right spirit. It's all very well having principles, but it's more important that I lose weight!
I have reservations about the tomato & basil soup and the strawberry shake, but if I view them as medicinal, or as camping food, or as survival rations, then they're not too bad.
What I like about Exante at the moment is that there is a degree of choice (as in the specific flavour of soup/shake to choose), but you don't have to plan ahead and go shopping, and work out how your food choices fit with what the family is eating. All I have to do is choose my three food packs for the day, then prepare and eat them at the appropriate times. Any other food planning is specifically for the family and not for me, which is less time-consuming.