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)

Synergy bollocks! As if labelling stuff with something that sounds like sins helps people who struggle with overeating or eating too much of the wrong thing. Or even two much of the right thing!

I've just read some bollocks on Facebook about a Cambridge consultant dissing processed food, as if Cambridge is unprocessed!!! I tried Cambridge and I lost about 12 pounds in 3 weeks but felt all full of chemicals and all dried up in spite of drinking plenty.

A pal did slimming world and lost four stone which was fab, but she struggles to keep it off and feels she has to go back to 'fat club' to lose what she's piled back on.

I'm wary of group leaders who are large. I looked at Lighter Life a couple of years ago and met a lovely but large lady consultant but when I went back a year later to take the plunge she was just as big as she had been a year ago, not a good advert for the regime.

*too much

The whole syn and speed bullshit corpospeak puts me off tbf

Flump

Sorry. Those are those twisty marshmallows?

Just have a piece of cheese instead!

I thought this was going to be a fat bashing thread where we then bash the fat basher. Now I have to put my pitchfork away. 😑

I was told that they changed from sin to syn because many meetings were in church halls and some churches objected to the sin term.

SW can work for people. I've done it and lost 3 stone but my food issues took over and I stopped going and put it all back on again. My mum has been doing SW for about 15 years and yo yos. I know other people who have done it and kept it off.

The issue I have with weight loss clubs isn't whether it works or not, it's that the business model means that they make more money is you don't lose all the weight. Some people need to do so in order to attract new comers and prove that it works but because you only pay when you aren't at target, they need to minimise the number of these members. All businesses know that it's easier to get customers to renew than it is to bring in new customers so its best not to let too many people actually get to their target so they don't have to spend loads on finding customers. Look around any weight loss club and you'll see dozens of members who have been going for years for exactly this reason.

It's the same with dating. You find someone and you stop paying so it's actually in their interest for it not to work so long as it works for enough people to give you hope that it does work so you keep paying money.

It’s the same with IVF clinics.. It’s the repeat business that keeps them going.

SW can work for people. I've done it and lost 3 stone but my food issues took over and I stopped going and put it all back on again. My mum has been doing SW for about 15 years and yo yos. I know other people who have done it and kept it off.

I think most of us would be better off spending our money on psychotherapy with a therapist who specialises in food issues/addiction.

Slimming World is a revelation for someone who wants to lose weight and genuinely doesn’t know how. They go to group, they follow the plan, they ditch the wine and chocolate and lose 5 stone and keep it off. Marvellous!

Those of us who are unhappy with our weight, who know how to lose it but don’t, year after year after year?

There’s something else going on. I really think we each have our own long buried reasons for staying fat.

‘Synergy’ is 100% a made up word and the meaning behind it is absolute bullocks. It makes me cringe so hard when people try and sound all ‘in the know’ about wtf ‘Synergy’ is

Labelling a food as a ‘syn’ (It WAS sin, look it up) is going to do nothing for those with a bad mentality towards food.

If you ask slimming world HQ how they came about working out the ‘syn’ value for their foods, they cannot and do not give you a proper answer.

I agree with the above poster who said they just select a random number for their syns.

I know 1 syn is supposed to be 20 cals. But it doesn’t always work out like that.

I know two people that have used SW with great success - and they both exercise loads. Anything that helps people get to a healthy weight is a good thing - it prevented the imminent onset of T2 diabetes for one of my friends.

My mum and my sister both had great results on SW, and I’ve lost 16lb recently on WW.

They do work if you’re not stupid about it. Sure, I could gorge myself on zero points food all week and not lose weight, but the idea is you’re careful about portion sizes and a varied, healthy diet. The woman who runs ours is amazing though (huge weight loss herself) and really motivational.

I agree oP. I was a S~w revel. Wouldn’t eat Muller Light (think they have dead cow in anyway) and refused to use fry light, much to the amusement of the group.

I stopped going in the end, as whilst I lost weight, the consultant couldn’t answer my questions as to why it was so tiny each week and other weeks I’d put on weight, despite following to the letter.

I couldn’t fathom why men of any height were allowed extra syns, but as a 6ft woman I wasn’t. On weeks where I broke the rules, I tended to lose more. Hmmmm.

SW rebel!

The tagline back in the 90s, with red and green days, was 'Sin a day!', i.e., you can eat something bad for you every day. You know, like a dash of milk in your tea. The brochure was full of women giggling about all the "sins" they had committed while still losing weight.

It was too deeply ingrained in the brand to cut out entirely so they've rebranded it and it's even sillier now than it was then.

I'm not dissing the diet, it works for a lot of people (well, they all work if you stick to them). Personally I hate it and can't get on with it, find WW much better, but that's just how I eat.

I have been wondering why SW is so dominant though....didn't know it had NHS backing.

pink they won't give you an answer on how to calculate the syn values because then you'd be able to calculate them yourself and wouldn't need to pay to go to the group. The plan itself is widely available on line and in their magazine on sale for a few quid, but the only way you can access all syn values is to be a member. It wouldn't make good business sense to give the details out to anyone that asked.

I don't think it's as simple as 20 calories per syn, I think it's more the ratio of calories, carbs, protein and fat as they are the details you have to put into the syn calculator on the members page. That's always given me quite consistent results, and the same as the values listed in the brands database so I doubt it's made up. If they were plucking a figure from the air than it wouldn't be a very successful weight loss plan.

I accept that it might not work for everyone, but for the majority if they follow the plan your they will lose weight.

Maintaining is a different matter. For those saying they know people who have put all the weight back on afterwards, well yeah, because they've gone back to their old habits. I can't speak for all but all the consultants I've seen have drummed into the group that it's a lifestyle change not a quick fix diet. I appreciate some consultants will be better than others.

Ktcluck they used to do a system called ‘smart syns’ which were foods that had an element of free food within them - so, for example, a scotch egg would have the egg’s calories deducted, but the rest counted. Similarly, mug shot or those kind of instant pastas would have the pasta element deducted. These then worked out as lower, better, Syn choices. Crisps used to be smart syns etc although this was 10-15 years ago. They obviously changed this now but I’d imagine that some foods still have this free food allowance such as cooked chicken pieces might be just 1 Syn to cover the marinade but the actual chicken is free. All ‘pure’ junk foods were always 1 Syn per 20 calories in the whole ten years + I followed the plan. It made me laugh how secretive the consultants were about this, as if it would destroy your weight loss if you worked things out like that!

I don’t know if this is mentioned on the thread, but things like miller light that are 0 syns, are not described as free foods and shouldn’t be described as free by your consultants. They are not in the free food list in your book. They are foods with a Syn value of zero. If you look at the tracker sheets they give you to fill in, those zero Syn foods should go in the syns column, not the free foods column. If you see that your syns column is filling up fast that is an area to work on particularly if you aren’t achieving weight loss. The emphasis should always be on free foods from the free food list first.

Ah thanks thenewaveragebear1983 I vaguely remember the smart syns from when a colleague was doing it years ago but I'd never heard the 20 calories thing. I couldn't understand how that could be right as then surely there'd be hardly any 'free food' at all, but it makes more sense if it was just for junk food. When you calculate syns now you do have to say whether it contains any 'free' food so yes, that is still taken into account. They've obviously just dropped the 'smart syns' title. Good point about free food versus zero syn too. I know of someone who complained the plan didn't work and made them ill after eating 6 muller lights in a day . Whether that's entirely their own fault or in part down to the consultant not explaining it properly, it's clearly not what the plan advises. And who could even manage that many on a diet or not?!

As much as I've had success with slimming world, and I do get irritated with some of the misconceptions that people throw about, I agree that some of the names are pretty cringey. Synergy and star week make me feel a bit queasy. Ultimately though they are just names and it's the principles behind them that are important.

Yes, it's 20 calories per syn for foods with no free food in them, so all the obvious junk like crisps, cakes, alcohol etc. So a 150 calorie bag of crisps would be 7.5 syns. It's rounded to the nearest 1/2 syn for simplicity and it not being necessary to be more accurate than that.

If there is a strong free food component, eg a ready meal with chicken, pasta and vegetables in, they have a calculator that works it out. I'm sure if you took enough examples and put the nutritional and syn values and into a spreadsheet, it would be possible to draw some graphs and derive their formulae as to how it is worked out.

The original idea was based on research that people ate more or less the same volume of food each day and if most of that was made up of low energy density food, then calories would be naturally restricted and people would lose weight. Ie, people are less likely to eat vegetables, meat, eggs etc when they are not hungry.

But people will often eat treat food or consume calorific drinks whether they are hungry or not, so limiting to 10-15 syns a day, it is effectively limiting these sorts of foods to 200-300 calories a day, eg one small item or something like a couple of glasses of wine.

But it just makes it simple and accountable and encourages people to have what they want while thinking about portion sizes, so if it just said 'a bag of crisps' or 'a glass of wine' people might be having larger portions than they should, which may slow their weight loss.

Unfortunately, the groups I have attended in the past haven’t had that ‘just a bag of crisps’ mentality- they’ve had members and a leader who seem hell bent on cramming as much food into those 300 calories/15 syns regardless of how good or even how nice that food is. Pink and white marshmallows for example, making jelly sweets out of actual jelly crystals, horrible ‘cakes’ made of quark etc. Nasty. And scan bran cake- well, if bran tasted like cake, we wouldn’t be fat, would we??!!!

Since doing Hflc and calorie counting, I can see how incompatible sw is for me. I must have been eating thousands of calories each day because I have a huge appetite, plus snacking all the time on fruit. These days I never snack, I eat very small portions, and everything is full fat and delicious. I’ve not eaten a banana in 2 years, when I used to have one every day. It’s different strokes for different folks though isn’t it? My plan wouldn’t work for everyone, same as SW doesn’t work for me.

The fact is though, it does work. At least it does if you've got quite a bit of weight to lose in the first place.
I think the ideology behind the fact that mashed up fruit (and juiced fruit) has syns is that it takes more of the fruit to fill you up in that way - eg, you'd need more than 1 orange to make orange juice etc...
Personally, I never found the green days (pasta, rice etc) to work at all for me, but if I stuck to red days (meat, fish, protein etc), it worked very well.
But, much like any diet, you need to stick to it.
I'm not sure why you're saying that it doesn't encourage exercise though, every SW class I've ever been to has always encouraged its members to keep active.

All diets work. If you stick to them. It's when things start creeping in round the edges that the problem starts. I do really well on low carb but I also love wine, and together they're really fattening.

I think a successful 'diet' needs to be changing your eating habits. I'm fat because I eat too much, drink too much and don't do any exercise. I don't like SW because it seems to find ways to continue eating crisps, cake, fizzy drinks etc. You never change your habits. I did Cambridge but the morning porridge was always sweet, no unsweetened version at all. I hate sweet porridge. The shakes are the same, really sweet. When I complained my consultant said 'yes, isn't it great? Keeps your sweet tooth satisfied'. Well I don't have a sweet tooth and I don't want one!

It's finding what works for you. I hated group work because of all the ooo I'm being good, ooo I'm naughty crap. It's just food! I lost weight for my wedding and one of my colleagues who did SW commented in detail in everything I ate all the time everyday (tiresome) but in in the two months I stuck to low carb I lost over two stone and she only lost a couple of pounds on SW and craved sugar all the time.

I do really well on low carb but I also love wine, and together they're really fattening

I like low carb too, but that seems to be the major downside, that it's rather unforgiving, as in any time you have carbs, it's quite a setback, whereas you could probably get away with an 'off plan' day nearly every week on a low calorie diet.

Low carb is especially difficult when eating out or eating from buffets etc. Sometimes when it's all sandwiches, sausage rolls and pasta salads, unless you start picking fillings out of sandwiches and eating the garnish off the sandwich plate, there is nothing that fits in with the plan. (I don't like plain hard boiled eggs, so that's not an option).

@Drivemecrazy1974

'I'm not sure why you're saying that it doesn't encourage exercise though, every SW class I've ever been to has always encouraged its members to keep active.'

I'm saying it because we were discouraged from 'proper' exercise

thenewaveragebear1983
I feel the same as you, it didn’t work for me because I was eating about 3000 calories a day in free food like a full pack of chicken drumsticks haha, plus I am crap with moderation and once I start on the sweet stuff I can’t stop. I don’t think encouraging people to eat a little bit crap every day is teaching good habits for the future either (yes you can use your ‘syns’ on nuts and avo etc but the people who do are very much in the minority)
I am now trying to eat like a normal person, so a small breakfast, sandwich for lunch, a cooked family dinner and if I want snacks, have fruit. Chocolate is a treat rather than every day thing and same with wine. I prefer it this way - on sw I constantly had food on the brain!

I have just eaten avocado on oatc akes for lunch. Fat and carbs. I'd be banned!