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)

"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"

Oh, for health, sure. But for weight loss, exercise isn't much use at all. You could be on a treadmill for a couple of hours and have the same effect as just skipping a Mars Bar. Reduction in caloric intake is much easier than increase in outgoings.

Caloric deficit via eating less and exercising is all you need to lose weight
Yes, noone denies that. But some people (a lot!) have various issues with food and/or have lifestyles that are not compatible with 100% clean eating and counting every calorie that passes their lips. SW and alike are there to help those people. I am one of those people.

Ive lost 7 stone doing SW, and apart from a little bit too much food at Christmas, I’ve managed to keep it off since I hit target in June last year.

I never ate mullerlights, mug shots or made cola chicken.

The people at group who tended not to lose were the older ladies who treat the place like a social meeting and the ones who didn’t quite understand the plan. The consultant, couldn’t stand her, she always banged on about hitting target weight, yet in the 10+ years she had been running her club, she’d never once got to target.

Any member can be a consultant, which I think is wrong, and not very inspirational when you have someone telling you what you’ve done wrong when their weekend has been gin filled.

I’ve lost nearly a stone at fat fighters (aka WW) but I also go running, swimming and ice skating

I don't get what's so bad about 'diet' drinks, other than if you have a bee in your bonnet about artificial sweeteners. They aren't inherently unhealthy, and they enable people to make a massive change in their diet, calorie-wise. It's just flavoured water (ok, I will grant you the acidity isn't great for the teeth). There is nothing wrong with aspartame, but you can always switch to stevia if you really don't trust anything 'artificial'.

www.skeptic.com/reading_room/aspartame-safe-sweetener-or-perilous-poison/

Yes I tend to discount the views of people who talk as if aspartame is the devil.

I'll add MSG to the list of unfairly demonised flavourings as well
fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia/

I love MSG.

To the people that say 'I put the weight back on when I stopped doing it' ... like DUH! Thats the point isnt it? Its a lifestyle change, not a quick fix diet programme that says go back to eating crap and you'll keep the weight off confused

Precisely.

All the genuine SW info I’ve seen has encouraged huge amounts of vegetables, alongside lean meats and carbs. They state that eating lots of pasta etc will slow down your loss.

My DM has followed a low fat (yoghurt, slim a soup and all that stuff) diet all her adult life, along with loads of exercise. She is super slim and healthy - who am I (slightly podgy) to tell her she should be eating avocados and nuts?

I actually don't get how you can have unlimited pasta when it's so high in calories!

You can’t.

You can put enough on your plate to fill a third of it. That’s what it says inside the little book.

In the ad campaign it says you can eat unlimited amounts of ‘delicious free foods’. But you can’t. Obviously.

I think the idea is that you can have all the pasta you want as long as you first eat at least three times that weight in spinach and celery. After all that veg, you won't actually eat so much pasta.

I might be wrong.

Exercise is not discouraged on Slimming World. Their start up pack has a booklet focusing on exercise alone. And their diet tracker books have a section each day to log exercise as well as encouraging you to set weekly exercise goals.

Volume for volume, muscle does weigh more than fat. Really pisses me of when people deliberately misconstrue the meaning of the phrase to try to make out that the person who's said it is misinformed. People obviously don't think a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat.

The company also has guidelines saying that muller light yoghurt is syn-free and that a flump has fewer syns than olive oil and avocado.

Half of people's issues with Slimming World can be explained by the fact that it is such a flexible plan. The essence of the plan most certainly isn't that we should all be eating shite packed with artificial sweeteners. But it allows for it if you're not the kind of person who cooks from scratch with confidence. And yes, flumps are fewer syns than oils on Slimming World. Because on a plan that focuses on satiety, something must be restricted in order to keep calorie count low. In Slimming World's case, they limit calories from simple sugars and calories from fats. Things are then synned on a calorie basis. And flumps are fewer calories than oil, so fewer syns.

Those who stick up for SW always turn out to be adapting it according to their own rules.

I don't adapt the plan at all. Because even following the plan religiously, it is flexible enough that I don't need to. Nor do I eat loads of artificial shite. I've never cooked meat in fizzy drinks. And it's not because I'm into clean eating. I'm not. I simply don't come at the plan from a standpoint of trying to adapt it to still fit a load of junk food in. It wouldn't occur to me to use fizzy drinks to add flavour. Nor have I ever put a muller light in a curry. Ideas like this come from the members who are adverse to cooking properly. They most certainly aren't enshrined in the plan itself.

Some people get super defensive when their diet of choice is criticised and I understand. I am very about the diet industry in general, not just Slimming World. It’s a business, they don’t really if you lose weight, they just want money in their pockets. Yep, some leaders/consultants/whatever do genuinely care about the people and want to help but I am a sceptic. I did SW for years and also WW. I attended various classes also. We have an obesity problem in this country and I don’t believe the messages being sent by these various companies are solving the issue. While the NHS is funding some of it, I do believe there is some moral responsibility towards ensuring they send out good messages. That said, the Change for Life campaign have got it wrong many times also. I don’t know if there is an answer, I doubt it.

I always thought SW was kind of, 'off the wall'.

Red days and green days. (Red days weren't meat days, apparently.)

You can eat unlimited sausages but only a particular brand. Unlimited something else such as baked beans but again, only a particular brand, and then only on a Tuesday when there's a 'r' in the month. Total gibberish.

Sounded to me like SW encouraged binge eating.

Actual meals seemed scant. To make up for all the bingeing I assume. That's a diet is it ?

I accept there's, 'Slimming World magic'. Yeah, the magic is how they get people to pay for this.

Half a cup of chicken Bovril was gravy, but only half a cup mind. Why be so tight over something that was just about calorie free anyway ?

I lost a fuck ton of weight on a low fat diet. Proper meals. Nothing off limits just go easy on the high fat food but even that wasn't banned.

At that time there were no calories to count as I just weighed my meat or fish portion. Weighed my starch portion before cooking it i.e. potato, pasta, rice etc. I had to be mindful of the fat and therefore calorie content of sauces, gravies and dressings. Butter or olive oil came out of my daily 'treat' calories. Personally I'd rather have end of day chocolate or cake as my measured high fat treat.

Mayonnaise, cream, crisps, peanuts, butter, olive oil or worse still olives, yuck. Do I really need these in my life ? Nope. As for avocadoes, again, yuck. So them being on the 'treat' list was no problem for me what so ever.

I did WW as a teenager it was very good but I'd not long finished college and resented being lectured by the group leader who was actually very good I just didn't have the mind set. That's back when I was 'going for the burn' with Jane Fonda - LP record IIRC !

I am at target and have been since 2014. At my group exercise was encouraged. Lots of people signed up for Race for Life etc. As with food in general it can be as healthy and unhealthy as you like. I don't think mug shots etc should be low syn so don't have them.

I can’t stand the lingo - star week, body magic, speed foods it’s all so bloody twee!
Also the fatlogicky recipes for those members who still feel the need to eat a full cake in one sitting - no problem, tub of sweetener, tub of quark, 17 eggs and it’s just like the real thing (bleurgh)
I left when I was told to give up wine for good ‘to protect your weight loss hun’ (I only drink at weekends and bloody enjoy it too)

I tried all those diets and actually what’s working for me now after yo yo dieting is just simple calorie counting. I’m still eating as normal but it’s making me think about some
Of
My choices and having to log the calories makes me think about what I’m choosing and whether I am
Actually hungry.

It goes off of he fact that it’s difficult for many to be fully informed about every aspect of diet and so focuses on calories as a guaranteed way of losing weight ... even if it’s not in the best way.

Red days and green days. (Red days weren't meat days, apparently.)

As I said up thread, I find it funny how people come on the thread to dismiss SW that clearly don't know much about it. Red/Green days haven't been part of the plan for a very very long time now

I don’t understand why those who don’t like SW get so het up about it. Why not do whatever you want and let people who do like SW get on with it?

OP, do you think maybe you put on weight because you were overeating?

SW is pretty simple - low fat, low sugar = low calories. Fill up on vegetables and fruit, choose lean meats.

I've done SW three times (after pregnancies) and have lost 1-2 stone each time. It's basically just eat healthily, have treats but limit them.

If for some reason you don't like artificial sweeteners, just don't eat them?

Also the diet coke chicken is bloody delicious.

ToEarlyForDecorations, the diet you're telling us you lost a fuck tonne of weight on very closely resembles the modern day Slimming World plan. Except it doesn't make you weigh your meat and carbs. Portion control is achieved by filling a third of your plate with vegetables that they've identified as 'speed'.

I agree blackcoffeeredwine the language is fucking awful. I'm on the Facebook page and want to shake all the fully grown women talking about 'star week' as though their period is just too disgusting to mention by name.

I know shapely. It's funny how many people go on about how shit SW is and then go on to describe their infinitely superior diet plan that is 98% exactly the same as SW .

DD is on sw and is doing well. She has learnt to cook and some of the meals she makes are really tasty, beef steyfor instance.Syns are not meant to be sins but synergy they are the more calorie dense foods.As far as I know the only artificial food she has is low calorie coke but she still drinks Les of it than the full fat she used to. SW has actually made her think about food and nutrition and she's doing well on it,

They were sins in the 'bad food' sense back in the red and green days. It's no longer fashionable to think of food as sinful, so they've had to rebrand them, and that's where the 'synergy/syns' thing has come from.