The 'flavour' of SW that's mostly sold now is Extra Easy, rather than Red and Green. On this plan you have free foods (lean meat and fish, potatoes, rice, pasta, noodles, fat-free yogurt and the small number of veg that aren't super-free) and free foods - most veg (not peas, sweetcorn or parsnips) and fresh fruit. You can have as much free and super-free foods as you like, but you are supposed to make up 1/3 of every meal with super-free.
On top of that, you get one healthy extra A (basically dairy) and one healthy extra B (basically grains) per day. Then you have syns - 5 to 15 per day. Anything that's not free or super-free has a syn value, including healthy extras if you go over the allowance - unofficially, one syn seems to equate to 20 calories.
I've only ever done Extra Easy, so not too clear on Red and Green, but they restrict slightly different foods. On Red meat and fish are free, but carbs are not, on Green carbs are free but meat and fish are not. You get to have more healthy extras on those plans - because, say, on Green if you want to eat meat if has to be a healthy extra.
Example of a day's food - hm, you can have bacon and egg for breakfast, with tomatoes and mushrooms perhaps, or fruit as your super-free instead. Sandwich for lunch perhaps, bread as a healthy extra, lean ham inside, salad with it; or super-free vegetable soup; spaghetti bolognaise for dinner - lean mince, tomatoes, onions, herbs, all free/super-free, the pasta is super-free, parmesan as a healthy extra on top (28g of parmesan goes a looong way, I've learned that much!), fat-free yogurt for pudding. All that and you'd have syns left for a glass of wine.
Now if only I actually ate like this I wouldn't have recorded my first weight GAIN on this diet this week. Oops. :)
I'm enjoying it though, have got a bit slack lately but it IS a good plan. For the most part it's actually healthy eating, not gimmicky (bit dubious about the fat free yogurts and Fry Light spray, but needs must), and for me it's family-friendly as it allows me to continue feeding DD pretty much the same food as me and DH.
Weigh-ins - there is an on-line version, so you don't have to weigh in. Or you could probably go it alone with a bit of knowledge of how it works, but the support is sort of nice. I'm sticking with the weigh-ins as it's my absolute barometer of how I'm doing, once a week, accurate scales.
There's a support thread for SW on here, which I must get back onto, been neglecting it a bit. They're very welcoming!