To think slimming world is a mugs game?

[TheWorldIsMine]

Been doing sw for around 3 months. Yes I lost weight which is great but after a few weeks you start to realise how unsustainable the whole thing is. Constant pushing of "fat free" yogurts - full of god knows what sugars and crap to make up the taste? A breakfast of two sugar caked cereal bars which wouldn't fill a toddler up?
At one class a girl was asked what she saves her syns for. She replied "chocolate and alcohol" which was applauded - sorry but it what world is it seen as a good thing to substitute proper good with chocolate and alcohol???

Then there is the constant "ooo how many syns does each of these biscuits have in them? Ooo I could eat three Nice biscuits but only two ginger biscuits ... decisions!

I once took a fat Fred yogurt into work and a colleague looked sxpetrenrly concerned and told me I'd bought the wrong yogurts. I said "it's fat free" to which she replied "yeah but you're supposed to get muller lights ... " what a load of 'endorsed' bollocks!!!

It comes to something when a nutritious homemade fruit smoothie is classed as 20+ syns yet a chocolate cereal bar is encouraged as "healthy extra".

I can't understand the massive following they have! You may lose weight in the short term but I've never known anyone keep it off for more than a year unless they sack it off and switch to eating healthy instead.

Sw won't let your weight go under the bottom of your BMI healthy range. If it does you are given time to get it back to healthy otherwise membership is terminated.

As for the rest of your points they have all been covered multiple times in the thread.

It doesn't work for you, fine. It does work for lots of other people and it is something that is sustainable long term.

Maybe - as long as you don't die from aspartame poisoning first.

Again that has been covered and I am pretty sure nobody forces it down your throat.

Both of your examples are untrue, coco Shreddies are synned and eating ten weird lasagne spring rolls would be a tweek and they should be synned as actual spring rolls as well.

Also the computer calculates your BMI by your height and won't let you join if your target is underneath a healthy weight range.

The tweaks (or hacks as you said) are not permitted by slimming world either.

I sometimes get baffled by some of SW choices, but remember that the bowl of choco whatever is a tiny tiny tiny amount! So actually you get very few calories in the amount you allowed.

The whole point of slimming world is choice, your choice to use the parts of the plan in a way that fits you. If you love your chocolate use your syns on it. If you can live without chocolate spend your syns on avocado (which is hugely fatty all be it good fats)

Hand on heart, I use a few squirts of olive oil in my cooking, and never syn it. It's less than a quarter of a syn per portion.

Also to an extent your right, the are a business so they do care about your money, but the also need people like me who are at target and have been for a while, otherwise no one would ever go. People need to see it's successful.

I still have lots of support from my old group even two years on.

Weren't all the consultants at a recent meet where they were told to stop taking the money of members who either don't lose or who are to yo-yo-ing and getting nowhere? Or was that just our region??

Kinda puts a different spin on the 'money' thing

Oh.... so you actually ate a lasagne spring roll then op??

I did, it was vile. Tasted like cardboard.

As others have said they wokldnt have let you choose that weight if you'd gone for it. I imagine she hadn't thought about height weight ratios. TBH I'm surprised you want to lose at all. I'm half an inch taller. My target weight was 10.10 and at 10.3 I looked scrawny. At 17 is the only time I've been as low as 9 stone and my hair started falling out and my periods stopped

Of course these slimming groups don't care about your health, they are a business first and foremost. I've been to around 6 or 7 groups for both WW and SW. I moved around groups as I couldn't find a leader I liked and never did. I mean, they were nice enough as people but as leaders, I was disappointed. I found them both pushy of products. WW push their own pathetic excuse for a "biscuit" but all the SW groups went on and on about mugshots and muller lights.

Another thing that bothers me is that the group leaders are naturally seen as a diet 'expert' when they are not. I used to know somebody who ran a SW group and she knew bugger all about what a real healthy diet is - but could quote SW's rules parrot fashion.

My consultant is brilliant - she used to be size 22 and now she's a 10 - she's a great role model and has all sorts of ideas for how to improve your diet.

Line your plate with baby spinach leaves is one of hers - if you're having curry and rice or bol and pasta, lining the plate with leaves helps you get more veg in.

I don't want to put people's weight loss regimes down - if it works for you, great. But someone said upthread "how can cooking with olive oil be wrong?" I did low carb for years and that's how I've ended up needing to lose 5 stone.

If you follow low carb 100% properly, it works. If you follow 80% low carb and the other 20% carb you won't lose weight because you won't go into ketosis AND you have all these habits that will result in weight gain. Mayo on everything, frying in butter/oil, full fat everything, loads of cheese, fat on meat etc and a sneery attitude to anything that may have carbs or chemicals (crusty bread accepted of course because it's "natural", well that was my fatal flaw!). I also stopped eating fruit completely ("sugar - ugh") and veg mostly.

Since starting SW I've had about 8 fruit and veg a day, through needing to fill up and through needing to replace the sheer volume of what I ate before.

If you're an overeater, you just are one, and I'm hoping I've found a way to manage it for me by eating the right stuff. I still trough but it's on satsumas so at least there's a health benefit. As I get closer to target I may have to look at how to cut down on the troughing... we'll see. But partially low carbing and being snotty about only eating "natural" stuff was an absolute disaster for me.

I did low carb for years and that's how I've ended up needing to lose 5 stone

If you follow low carb 100% properly, it works. If you follow 80% low carb and the other 20% carb you won't lose weight because you won't go into ketosis AND you have all these habits that will result in weight gain

With all due respect Sticky, if you "cheat" when low carbing (aka not low carbing ) then you're eating high carb high fat. Of course you're going to gain weight.

If you want to lose weight then, generally speaking, you can choose low carb high fat, or high carb low fat. SW is basically the latter, isn't it?

Incidentally, I follow low carb ish in order not to gain weight and it works for me. I doubt I spend much time in ketosis. I avoid pasta, bread, potatoes, rice (starchy things basically) but do allow myself sugar in moderation because I love cake, chocolate and biscuits!

"If you want to lose weight then, generally speaking, you can choose low carb high fat, or high carb low fat. SW is basically the latter, isn't it?"

It's low fat, it doesn't have to be high carb.

SW does permit high carb though.

Oh yes, but people do it and don't really have many carbs at all, there's no set amount you have to eat.

You can do it completely low carb if you want to.

Then there's all the "hacks" - people making spring rolls with lasagne sheets for fucks sake - looks disgusting, tastes disgusting and you know what, swapping that spring roll with a proper one will NOT make you put on weight - eating 10 of them well ... but thankfully your 'lasagne sheet monstrosities" are "free" so you can eat 10 of them with no ill effects, right? Right

You've very eloquently and succinctly identified one of the main flaws in SW or in any healthy eating plan. People who lack common sense. In fairness to SW HQ, they don't ever say to substitute lasagna sheets for pastry, or Smash for pizza dough, or wizzed up tinned mac and cheese for lasagna white sauce or any of the other tweaks used. But people being people will think of ingenious ways to bend the rules.

You know and I know that eating ten lasagna sheet spring rolls isn't going to do weight loss any good, but there are people who think they can eat all that and it won't count, just like they think that big plate of spag bol (cooked the SW way and therefore free) plus a large side of SW chips is a balanced meal, and then they look very surprised on weigh day when the scales say they've gained. ''But I've been on plan all week and I've stayed within my syns''.

Personally I think SW needs to drop the 'unlimited free foods' schtick.

It doesn't need to drop the unlimited free foods. People just need to learn the plan and stick to it. And not blame the plan when they don't lose weight.

It does work. You can't tweak food groups around to suit. A balanced plate of sw food contains protein, carbs, a small amount of fat and maybe some dairy or fibre based cereal. It should have 1/3 of the plate as fruit/veg/salad.

So on a normal sized portion 1/3 of it at least is low calorie filling food. Which should mean you are reducing calories while remaining more satisfied for a longer period. You shouldn't need to eat food high in fat to satisfy your appetite. Or be craving a biscuit at 3pm because your blood sugar has dropped.

It is a business. To be successful it needs to have people who make the diet work. Obviously there are people who are members for many years or rejoin time and time again. But the fact that the plan doesn't work for them is more a people problem than a plan issue.

The reason that muller lights etc are heavily promoted is that some people are overweight because they have a sweet tooth. A sickly sweet yoghurt will go some way towards satisfying that craving. And it's less calories than a cake. Or a biscuit. Or a chocolate bar. I don't know any diet that includes a 'pudding' every day. Unless you calorie count and allow 500 calories for it.

It's a diet that works for me. And manylon others. If you don't like it or it doesn't work for you then don't do it. But if you follow it 100%, without the tweaks and daft swaps and listen to your own appetite you will lose weight. That's true of many diets obviously. But the reason the diet industry exists is because it's not always easy to eat what we should. Far easier to eat the wrong things in the wrong amount.

irretating that's exactly it - that's what I was getting at upthread when I said that things like SW attract people who want to find some mysterious formula for losing weight, and don't want to accept that it's just going to involve eating less and differently. It's the same people who buy snake oil pills off the internet which promise to perform alchemical miracles in your stomach lining and reduce all your ingested fat to ash, or whatever. They have convinced themselves that weight loss is this mysterious complicated equation which they can fiddle their way through, and commercialised weight loss solutions (even potentially-legit eating plans like SW) allow them to feel like they're being proactive when they're just reallocating their calorie intake within a different structure. It's denial, pure and simple.

I think the fact that they're spending money on it is actually one of the appeals for such people. "I am doing something about it, look, I spend £x per week fixing the problem."

Frouby again, it works if you apply common sense, take the plan in the spirit it's intended, and don't twist it to enable yourself to continue overeating under a set of approved "rules".

Ultimately someone who is determined to lose weight will achieve it on SW or any other structured, healthy eating plan, whereas someone who just wants to console themselves that they're "doing something" but doesn't especially want to change their behaviour will fail to lose weight. I believe that SW attracts to the latter group because most other diets / eating plans don't have the built-in leeway to enable people to "interpret" the rules.

Cash cow like all diet clubs/groups.

You only need one thing to lose weight, willpower.

Unfortunately it isn't easy to find!

Quite a lot of the reasons given for failing remind me of MLM's...
"You weren't following the plan!"
Yet the consultants actively push the "you can eat as much of this as you like!" thing.

This is a good video to sum up my feelings towards SW and the like

MTV Can i add patience to that.

I posted upthread I lost 10 stone originally 2002/2003 and was class slimmer of the year. and kept it off for a few years before steadily regaining 4 stone over a few years when DH became ill. Its taken me 3 years to lose that 4 stone. So i guess you could say i kept most of it off. I stopped going to class this time back in June. And am doing fine. My weight loss was slow and steady second time around. No muller lights or hifi bars. Because it was slower i had to be patient. I really dont think fast weight loss should be pushed at all. It leads to illnesses like gallstones.