Do slimming clubs actually work ?

[Thequeenisdeadboys]

Decided I'm going to join a slimming group this week. Could do with losing a good couple of stone and simply can not do it alone. Which one is best SW or WW ? Tried researching and SW seems to sound good but unrealistic. I can't see me losing weight with the amounts you can eat !! and WW seems a bit complicated !! What to do ? What do you folks reckon ?

MonkeysMummy - I have fussy kids so we basically eat the same few meals on rotation but it doesn't seem to have been a problem.

Absolutely liquid. That's why I haven't joined before but I really need some support now. Enough is enough.

Statistically people lose more weight through slimming clubs than doing it on their own, but yes the problem is that when you leave, you haven't got someone weighing you every week, so you put the weight back on again. Maybe its because if you do it on your own, you have to learn self discipline. But so many people never get to that point, and so many people have bad habits that creep back on whatever they have done. I go to Slimming World and there are people there who go every week even though they hit their target 2 years ago! I think its like a social thing for them. Its free if you are at target and they go and chat to people every week. I am a bit concerned that Ill have to spend every Thursday for the rest of my life! If you want to lose weight, I think the only thing you can do is just eat healthily and manage portions and just keep at it. I cant think of any other way. If you stick to healthy eating, you ll keep the weight off. I suspect its a constant struggle.

Most people gain weight again because they start eating crap again though. You can't really blame a diet if people start eating badly.

Slimming World worked for me, I started in January 2017 and by August I was 4 stone lighter and I haven't chubbed up again yet

I don't go to meetings any more but I do follow the general guidelines of zero fat in everything dairy, shedloads of fruit and veg, and minimal processed food. The only thing I can't do is enjoy a few pints of real ale, I am now a G&T girl.

MonkeysMummy - agree re some of the logic with SW. The one that gets me is you can eat a whole apple but put that same apple in a blender and you need to syn it. Nah. I just use common sense. An apple is an apple.
Also, I refuse to use pseudo food like fry light and sweeteners. Again, common sense. A dash of veg oil to cook onions isn't a big deal. A load of olive oil in a salad dressing does matter.
I use it as a guideline and although much of it is obvious (eg you can have a slice of cake but don't eat the whole thing) it helps me stay focussed.
I'm a grown up. I should be able to do that but I can't seem to.

Scottish Slimmers is totally different from SW. There’s 2 different plans; one is basically calorie counting, the other is reducing your carbs and eating lean meats/fish/chicken and lots of veg and fruit.
It’s a great plan, in my opinion, but only available in Scotland.
I am realistic enough to realise that even when I get to my goal weight, I’ll need to keep going to classes to maintain (although I won’t need to pay). It’s what works for me. As with any weight loss, you need to find what suits you.

I've found that switching to low fat, low sugar alternatives has been pretty easy to do and hasn't made much difference to taste. Yes, full fat yoghurts are a bit nicer but not two stone nicer
Similarly I made a birthday cake with quark instead of cream cheese frosting, and reduced the sugar by half. It was probably not quite as nice as the original recipe but not by much. No one noticed it was less sweet.

A friend of a friend has lost just shy of 17 stone. He says it’s given him his life back and to date he’s kept it off. Hats off to him, he’s worked incredibly hard.

Lucky the theory behind it is the same as why fruit smoothies don't count as more than one of your 5 a day. Its easy to drink an apple, a banana and some berries in a smoothie in 5 minutes, but if you were to eat an apple, you'd have to do it in bites, slowing down your eating and you probably wouldn't eat all 3 in one sitting. I do agree that on an individual basis, yes it is a bit silly, but like with the change for life guidelines, they are for the people who will puree three bananas into a smoothie and drink the whole lot down and then have a full dinner. Its taken me 6 months to lose a stone, so I'm clearly not following my own advice, but that's the theory behind it.

Cheers all. I think SW seems to be the one I will be checking out ! Luckysplat me too !

In regards to SlimmingWorld, they don't encourage massive portion sizes or to eat as much pasta as you want. They do encourage you to fill a third of your plate with vegetables and/fruit (speed food) before putting other things on (like pasta).

You syn fruit after you have blended it, as the act of blending removes much of the fibre. It is to do with the science of how your body breaks it down.

Blueberries are free. Muller yogurts are not synned but they are not free either and should be eaten in moderation. Avocado is synned because of its high fat content. Fat is fat, despite where it comes from.

Sorry, just hate seeing the misunderstanding of what is actually a good plan, that leads to good eating habits for those who follow it and really good weight losses.

They work but you have to stick to them. I’m doing SW at the moment and have lost 15.5lbs in five weeks. I did it once before, lost 8 and gave up. You do need to be in the right frame of mind and actually commit to it.

I used to like WW before they messed with the points. I lost a ton of weight on that but gave up and hence put it back on.

And that’s what I like about SW - once you hit target you don’t pay unless you go out of it. So you can keep going and use the support without having to hand over the cash every week forever.

I've tried both but for me they only work when I keep going to the classes. Struggled on WW but went from 15.5 stone to 12.5 in 8 months on SW

Problem was I felt great about losing more than I hoped, stopped going to class thinking I could maintain on my own and put it all back on over the following year.

cosmic That makes lots of sense. But Avocado's ? Aren't they good for you ? Cholesterol lowering ? A 'good' fat surely..in moderation ?

I think all diet clubs work while you’re doing them but when you stop you tend to pile it all back in again. Sw is the big thing around here and everyone I know apart from and I mean this literally one person who has done sw and lost a lot has put it back on again including my sister and my mum.
I did ww instead as I felt sw was not necessarily going to help me make the best choices I’d just fill up on the free stuff and syns I found the ww points much more straight forward. My sil has lost a heap of weight on ww and is keeping it off. I’ve lost a stone fairly easily but haven’t been following the plan for a while. It has helped me modify my eating a bit though I like the daily points and weekly ones which I save for the weekend so I can have wine and crisps in front of a movie on a Saturday night. I find sw so confusing.

There's a lot of positive points re SW on here.

They are good in one sense, but still fatty. If you replaced the vegetable oil you fried your chips in, with avocado oil (I have no idea if that is even a thing by the way), it would still be oil. Like olive oil.

I got on far better with WW (three stone before I got pregnant). There is an app, which stops it being complicated - you scan or input your food and it deducts points for you

Another one for Rebelfit.

The evidence shows that diets make you fatter in the long term. Yes, you might lose weight and keep it off for 2 years, maybe 3. But 95% of people who lose weight via dieting (and yes, SW IS a diet) will put it back on and a high proportion will put more weight on than they were in the first place.

The only way to lose weight in the long term is to eat healthily overall (that means there is no food you cannot have, but you have to take it in moderation with the rest of your diet - I use diet as 'things you eat') and to increase your fitness. Proper fitness. Not 'my fitbit says I do 10,000 steps and I walk to and from the photocopier and one extra bus stop a day', but actual sweaty 'I hate this why am I doing it' exercise. Sedentary walking won't build muscle. Muscle is what burns the energy off. If you don't have the engine to use the fuel it will not burn it off.

Also - these plans don't work for everyone and they are buggers for making you feel that you are somehow at fault if you haven't lost even if you've been sticking to the plan. My mate is exactly one of these people. Loads of exercise, eats well and according to SW yet the loss has slowed to an almost halt. She's not doing anything wrong.

I have done both WW and SW. SW taught me to think about what I was eating and limit things I shouldn't eat. It encourages fibre and calcium.

WW just appeared to be another form of calorie counting (but that was in 2013 - it may be different now).

Weightloss is about consuming less calories than you use.

200 cal of avocado is better for your body than 200 cal of doughnut, but in terms of weightloss it's still a high fat, high calorie item.

I've just taken a look at rebelfit after treading this thread. I might be missing something, but surely its just the same thing? We all know that if we ate nutritionally balanced food, could stop at one biscuit and exercised for 10 minutes a day, we wouldn't be fat. I've looked at the facebook page and its just a rant about slimming world. How much exercise would you have to do to burn up 3500 calories a day, which he claims you should be doing in one of the articles ( the penis one where he says if you eat 3000 cals of food your body wont go into starvation mode) It takes approx. 1600 cals just to run your body. Ive been on a treadmill for half an hour when I was training for a 5k ( I was still fat, despite being fitter and doing loads of training) and I burned about 200 calories. I admit I might be missing something here as ive had a 5 minute browse!

Hanuta - "The only way to lose weight in the long term is to eat healthily overall (that means there is no food you cannot have, but you have to take it in moderation with the rest of your diet - I use diet as 'things you eat')"
Haven't you just described SW?