Slimming World- concerned about artificial sugars, far free foods etc

[Owlfright]

I'm seriously considering trying slimming world to help me lose about 2 stone. My downfall is a love of sweet foods- biscuits, cakes, chocolate, which I really really struggle to resist. Overall my diet is too low in fruit and vegetables too.

However, I'm a bit concerned about the artificial sweeteners and fat free foods (eg fat free yogurts, diet drinks, low fat sprays) that seem to form part if the plan.

I'm probably partly just creating excuses not to give it a go, but I've read about how bad these things are for you and at the moment avoid artificial sweeteners as far as possible and stick to 'full fat' versions of food where the 'low fat' version has got wierd additives that make it fat free.

Can anyone give me any advise about this concern please?

[TurkeyDino]

You don't have to use the low fat/fat free/sweeteners but then you will have to use syns for the normal versions.

I find it a really easy plan to follow and don't really use too much of the above products, just plenty of fruit, veg, lean meats and pasta/rice/Cous Cous to pad it out a bit.

[Rooble]

I've never done SW but have done a similar on-line thing (gaurdian eat right) and had similar concerns. I just ate normal versions but smaller portions. Eg instead of one pot low fat yoghurt, I'd have 50g out of a big pot of normal yoghurt; instead of having low fat spread I used normal butter but only a scraping.
They will tell you that not following the plan 100% risks derailing you. It may be true that your progress may be marginally slower, but I still managed an average of 2lbs per week.
With the taste for sweet stuff: if you have the willpower to get through a week with none you will have made a huge stride in cracking your sugar addiction. (Because that's really what it is).
Good luck!

[PrincessOfChina]

I'm back on the Slimming World wagon and this is an annoyance for me too. We do eat some low fat things - plain yoghurt for example - but we rarely have sugar replacement things.

The oil one is easy - you can buy an oil spray dispenser thing from Lakeland and just use your normal oil in there. Like I say, I'm happy with low fat cream cheese, plain yoghurt, cottage cheese etc so go with that. I avoid stuff with artificial sweeteners and just have very small normal sweet things. This week I've been having a few squares of Green and Blacks at night.

Basically, the Slimming World Plan is about eating lots of lean protein and fruit and veg. Good luck!

[ethelb]

You can avoid the sweeteners quite easily by not eating sweet stuff or factoring normal cakes/biscuits into your plan and making up for it elsewhere (more exercise etc).

Low fat is a bit more complicated and I think the message is a bit confused. Strained low fat products (skimmed milk and low fat yogurts) that don't have any fillers are kind of ok. They have slightly less vit A but otherwise are nutritionally similar and just have had the fat taken out and nothing added.

However, I was looking on the back of a jar of low fat mayo the other day and it was nearly 10% sugar! This had been added as a thickener to give it the gloopy texture. The normal kind was about 0.5% sugar. I have found the same with sweet low fat yogurt. One I picked up was 30% sugar.

Nutritionist are now arguing that as fat keeps us fuller for longer than sugar, we should consider increasing the amount of fat we consume and reducing the sugar.

Slimming world is a low to no fat diet that works for some people. Weight watchers is similar, but has recently revised its plan to allow more protein and good fat into the diet and reduce the amount of simple carbohydrate.

Weight watchers also has ways of allowing you to incorporate the odd biscuit into your diet, so maybe you could consider that?