Understanding 'Fat logic'

[Bluetree]

To help me understand fat logic-y 'lifestyle changes' like Slimming World?

Aspartame full muller light yogurt is 'free'. Yet, a natural full fat yogurt is synned.

An avacado is highly synned yet you can have two of their Hifi bars as an extra which have a high % of fat in!

Mashing a banana doesn't go without it's syns either!

Advised against proper exercise as 'muscle weighs more than fat' - Ha.

I followed for a while and did lose weight. I'm not saying it doesn't work. Just that a lot of it is fat logic-y rubbish!

(I'm not talking about the ones who 'eat clean' while doing it and don't touch a muller light or hifi bar)

Do they really advise against exercise?

I laugh at the weight watchers flex "Free foods"

The only things I eat are on that free list and I can and do gain weight on them if I over eat them.

I am not sure how it works either. It makes little sense but does seem to work, I lost a lot with it but couldn't keep it off when I stopped.

Exercise was encouraged though.

I gained 1lb one week after having followed the plan to the tee. But I had gone to the gym most days that week..

I was told that it was water retention due to the exercise and that once that goes, I will be adding muscle which weighs more than fat....

That I 'didn't need to exercise' while following the plan!

“synned” ??

It's a bit of an old fashion diet with theories that have long been discredited. You would never, ever get me to eat one of those low cal dry soup that you rehydrate with hot water.

The logic to it is that you end up eating less calories in total, and yes, there is a lot more calories in an avocado (235) than in a dry soup (44).

But in the end, people on it lose weight. And the motivation from the group is also helpful for some. I tried it for a week end I was hungry all the time - so I gave up. I much, much prefer eating less or no carbs and higher fat/protein. I don't feel hungry and lose weight anyway.

When I wanted to lose a lot of weight I looked briefly at the Cambridge Diet, I visited the local "rep" who had gone from about size 24 to a 12, (I was a size 18 wanted to get back down to a 12). I was horrified when she told me she never exercised and two years down the line still didn't eat any carbs. In the end I paid for a gym membership and just started eating healthier, no fad diets, and lost the weight...plus kept it off 5 years later! Its the "lazy persons" diet plan - starve yourself and don't exert yourself.

Well, you don't really need to exercise to lose weight. It's pretty much entirely diet.

@twofishfingers

Agree, high protein and low/or complex carb is what's worked for me. Sugar is the baddie, not fat!

I think that slimming world was developed for the mindset of a food addict/problem eater.

Not that there will be any mention of food addiction or the many complicated reasons why people eat too much in the group session.

You can eat “unlimited” amounts of fairly low calorie food. Even pasta but not bread. To eat the pasta you have to acknowledge it, cook it, put it on your plate.

A problem eater is unlikely to do that in order to get a lot of food. It’s easy to keep dipping your hand into the bread bin though. So bread can only be eaten in controlled amounts.

They do no advise against exercise (or they didn’t when I went).

I’m not a fan of slimming world but some of it does make sense and it does work when trying to lose weight.

It’s a lot better than other diets out there where you starve yourself of eat lettuce for a week, none of these work because they are short turn solutions, as soon as you start eating normally again you will regain the weight plus more. With SW your changing your diet for ever and thinking more about what you eat without starving yourself, you usually loose weight slowly making it less likely to put it back on.

I use some SW recipes, I go to the gym 5 times a week (which seems to help more than my diet), I don’t eat the muller light yoghurts that are full of sweeteners and I don’t touch any SW products (bars, ready meals), I try and prepare all my meals and stick too things that are grown or were once alive and at the weekends I might eat some rubbish

@lovemusic33 you are my inspiration, wish I could motivate myself for 5x a week!

The actually actively encourage people to be active so no they don’t advise against exercise

@Sirzy - I wouldn't really call 'body magic' actively encouraging exercise.

We were told to walk for a few mins a day. Okay, that's better than nothing for anyone who doesn't exercise at all. But isn't really encouraging proper exercise..

I've been going for a month and I haven't heard them discourage exercise either

Are you sure you went to Slimming World and not Fat Fighters from Little Britain?

I see a lot of SW posts on Instagram and their daily "goodie plates" have more junk on them than I eat in a week!

I have no idea how it's supposed to be healthy. Everything is meat cooked in Coke or Fanta, light versions of dairy and a plate full of crap at the end of the day.

It's a low fat low calorie diet... that's pretty much the answer to all your examples.

Except mashing fruit and that's just because without having to chew and digest fruit it isn't as filling.

@Trills - This made me laugh out loud

Hont1986

You could lose some weight without exersise, but if you want a long term solution to be healthy and weigh less then exersise is crucial
The idea that you shouldnt exersise because muscle weighs more than fat is ridiculous because its putting all focus on the number on the scale. Id rather weigh more but be stonger and healthier.

It's a fallacy that muscle weighs more then fat; I thought that until the science of it was explained recently.
If you have a pound of feathers and a pound of pebbles or sand, they both WEIGH the same. However, if you look at the MASS, the pound of feathers takes up more "room,",if you see what I mean. A handful of pebbles or sand equals one pound, a massive bag of feathers equals one pound, so therefore has more volume.

Same with fat and muscle; a pound of fat takes up more volume/ room/ space than a pound of muscle, as muscle is more dense ( like pebbles or sand is more dense than feathers)

I have no idea how it's supposed to be healthy. Everything is meat cooked in Coke or Fanta, light versions of dairy and a plate full of crap at the end of the day.

I've lost 9lbs in a month on SW, and haven't once made one of their recipes. For me it is healthy as I snack on the Speed foods whereas before, I would pick up a bag of crisps. I don't understand why people on these threads who have never done SW always comment with little understanding

I've been to various Slimming World groups on and off for years, losing a bit of weight hear and there but I found the plan very strange in their theories and going to the actual meetings just made me feel crap and when you're being told about everything that you can't eat and food is a 'syn' it made me want to eat it all the more!. It wasn't until three years ago I lost 4 stone, no faddy diet plans or clubs or weighing myself. I just ate a healthy diet and did more gentle exercise like walking and swimming. It's the only time I have succeeded in losing weight and I've been a big lass all my life. The other thing I don't do is tell people, even family. It just puts unnecessary pressure on and prevents all your conversations with people being based on 'your diet' and 'hows the diet going' etc. Ooops, I've gone a bit off subject OP - sorry!

Trills

The best thing for me was to go low carb/high fat when the weight literally fell off. I didn't have loads to lose (went from a 14 to a 10-12) but couldn't believed lowering carbs made such a huge difference.

I also exercise a lot, I couldn't trust a weight loss programme that said 'don't exercise' - do they actually say that???

You can make SW as healthy or unhealthy as you want it to be. I follow it and about the only thing I eat that's processed is the bars. Everything else is made from scratch. Others that follow it have Mullerlights and ready-meals.

SW is not really a healthy-eating regime. It's a low-calorie plan that you can turn into a healthy-eating one. Some people don't enjoy cooking or don't have time to, or just plain don't want to cook. Some people want something for lunch that you can just put in a mug and pour hot water into.

And it depends what your leader is like as well. My current leader is fantastic and really pushes the healthy-eating side of it. My previous leader promoted MugShots and suggested making up 'treat bags' to have at the end of every day.