To think that Slimming World just doesn't work

[insomniasucks]

Ok, so I have been following SW for a week and have lost nothing! Exactly the same weight as last week. What am I doing wrong or does SW not suit everyone. Here is a typical SW day for me:-

Breakfast: 3 eggs scrambled in Frylight, tomatoes and mushrooms fried in Frylight, slice of wholemeal bread from a small loaf (HexB), cup of tea with milk from allowance (HexA)

Lunch: Batchelors Pasta N Sauce Cheese & Broccoli made with water (2.5 syns), jacket potato and a huge salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, beetroot, onions) balsamic vinegar

Dinner: Either syn free Quorn lasagne with HexA 30g cheddar cheese, salad and maybe syn free chips cooked in Airfryer or syn free Quorn curry and rice, or jacket potato with salad, or roast Quorn dinner with Frylight potatoes and loads of steamed vegetables

Snacks: Fruit, syn free homemade soup made with loads of speed veg, sometimes homemade crisps in AirFryer, Fage yoghurt with frozen fruit

Help! 😩

@BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou

That sounds like a lot of food to me TBH but I’ve never followed any of those sorts of diets.

I use My Fitness Pal (sort of). I put in my details and target weight and it calculated that I should be eating about 1200 calories per day. I can easily keep to that and it is coming off slowly. It is slow for me because I eat carbs at almost every meal - if I actively reduced carbs I’d probably hlose faster. A friend of mine allows herself a tiny amount of carbs per day on her 1400 calls allowance and has lost weight MUCH faster (she also had more to lose which. makes a difference too)

I’ve just put OPs food into MFP. Just the 3 eggs are over 250 calories! The pasta n sauce is 233 (assuming only half the packet). I haven’t totalled any of the salad items or fry lite or drinks and it’s already almost my allowance of 1200 calories before I’ve got to the end of OPs list!

Try MFP OP. It’s free and you just scan or enter your food and it tells you what you are actually eating. There is no such thing as “free” food - it ALL has calories.

I think MFP might be the future for me. Thank you!

Christ. Your portions are massive and that's way too much food regardless of how healthy it is. That's why you're not losing weight.

@Lurchermom

You might find just general calorie counting works better for you then SW if you're finding the 'rules' confusing to follow. Like others have said that is a huge amount of food for a diet. I'm currently calorie counting with My Fitness Pal, losing between 1-2lbs a week (I only had 1.5st to loose, so not in free fall anyway). I aim for 1200kcal a day and my day would look like this:

Two eggs scrambled, no butter or milk. No toast.
100ml orange juice
1 cup of tea with ss milk

A small wrap filled with a slice of ham, possibly a slice of cheese and lots of salad

An apple for a snack

Black tea /zero calorie fizzy drink/water throughout the day

One medium sized pork chop, small portion of pasta with pesto (50g) and a big side of broccoli or asparagus etc. Dinners totally vary as I used Gousto a lot of the time so pick meals that are under 650kcal per portion.

Cup of tea with ss milk in evening. Sometimes I can have a biscuit or a fibre one bar (90kcal) with my cup of tea if I've eaten low cal meals.

The rules are very confusing. I'd never heard of 'tweaked' food until today.

Slimming World didn't work for me, it felt like a cult! Paying each week to get weighed and listen to sob stories? It was all a bit much!

I've been calorie counting for 4 weeks now and have lost a stone. I'll eat whatever I like, as long as I stay under my calorie limit for the day. It's super simple. I log absolutely everything in the Lose It app. I weigh everything I eat so it's all as accurate as possible.

And I don't mean a normal plate I mean a specific portion plate

I did slimming world last year, the focus for me was being weighed each week. I choose vegetarian free meals and ate plenty pf free vegetables and fruit (only one banana per day) and consistently lost 2ilb each week

I got to target weight in 12 weeks and have pretty much stayed there ever since, though now am 4/5 ill heavier so being careful what I choose to eat and making sure I eat plenty of vegetables and salads with each meal so my plate only has one quarter main course - be that a pasta dish or chicken etc

@user1486915549

You are only allowed 1 HEXA so you can’t have milk and cheddar cheese Are you sure all your Quorn ready meals are free ? A lot of them aren’t You are also , frankly eating too much ! You are supposed to have speed instead of , not also. You are supposed to eat until you feel full but not until you are stuffed You really need to think about your portion control

Ah ok, the milk and cheese thing I may have been doing wrong then.

Sorry op but that is not similar. That poster ate far less than you.

When they say free it just means you dont need to count it as syns, it's not a free for all.

Perhaps look up the old style slimming world green week meal plans as these dont contain meat.

Think about changing habit rather than diet.

Your body will go into shock when you stop consuming so much sugar etc so may take a few weeks to catch up. Water retention is also a big deal .do you have a medical condition which causes water retention at all?

I have a condition and find when I had a flare up I wouldnt lose or would gain weight.

The whole process includes understanding how your body retains weight and what you need to do to lose that weight

@user1486915549

You are only allowed 1 HEXA so you can’t have milk and cheddar cheese Are you sure all your Quorn ready meals are free ? A lot of them aren’t You are also , frankly eating too much ! You are supposed to have speed instead of , not also. You are supposed to eat until you feel full but not until you are stuffed You really need to think about your portion control

I've only been using Quorn mince and pieces and cooking my meals from scratch using just 'free' food.

That sounds similar to what I have. I guess it doesn't work for everyone, but well done on losing 4 stone!

How is it similar?

You have what I have for lunch as a snack. Breakfast is the same, your lunch would cover me for lunch and dinner.

It has never worked for me, but neither did WW. I have PCOS though so it is quite difficult to lose weight and I tend to avoid eating too many cards. The only thing that worked for me was a total lifestyle change and adapting the way I thought about food.

Carbs are free? How on earth can you lose weight if you eat loads of carbs? This sounds like the now-discredited low fat/high carb approach.

If you need external motivation, I'd switch to WW. They have a balanced carb/fat/protein approach. And yes, I lost weight in the first week, and have lost steadily since.

@user1486915549

You are only allowed 1 HEXA so you can’t have milk and cheddar cheese Are you sure all your Quorn ready meals are free ? A lot of them aren’t You are also , frankly eating too much ! You are supposed to have speed instead of , not also. You are supposed to eat until you feel full but not until you are stuffed You really need to think about your portion control

To be honest I've never felt stuffed all week.

Carbs*

@Rhine

When I opened the thread I knew it would be full of SW cult members defending it rabidly!

They’ll be telling us in a minute that ‘Syn’ is short for synergy...😂

some can be quite vicious on here. It's ok I have my hard hat on

OP:

Here you go - an idea of what you could eat in a day:

Breakfast: 2 weetabix, or bowl of porridge. Made with skimmed milk. Topped with berries.

Lunch: Small wholemeal roll with 1 hard boiled egg, cucumber, tomatoes, carrot sticks and tablespoon of hummus to dip into.

Dinner: Lentil and quorn sausage casserole. Brown 3 sausages, onion and garlic. Add passata, veg stock cube and preboiled and drained lentils. Add some chilli flakes if you fancy, mushrooms, corgettes, whatever you want. Bake in the oven for an hour, or bung in a slow cooker. Serve with a couple of tablespoons of brown rice or a small jacket potato.

Snacks - 2 pieces of fresh fruit.

Drink lots of water.

Less food than you're used to, but filling and nutritious. You're welcome, that'll be five pounds please

@insomniasucks they don't actually say you can eat as much as you like... they have portion sizes recommended etc. They also say the free food must come after the 1/3 of plate with speed food, the idea being that you can't eat as much carbs etc if you've just filled up on salad

@Pebblexox

I did slimming world and lost 4 stone last year. The plan does work, however the whole you can eat as much as you doesn't always work. That's the biggest flaw in their plan. Even free food has calories, if you're struggling with the plan I would recommend downloading my fitness pal, or something similar to track what calories you're eating in a day. Also the first week it isn't uncommon to maintain your weight, as your body holds on to water and fat due to a change in diet.

Totally agree. It IS a flaw. They really shouldn't say you can eat as much as you want.

Way too much food.
That breakfast would keep me going until dinner with just a snack inbetween not a massive lunch plus snacks.
The only time i eat like that is on holidays.
You need to calorie count or try intermittent fasting.

Breakfast: 3 eggs scrambled in Frylight, tomatoes and mushrooms fried in Frylight, slice of wholemeal bread from a small loaf (HexB), cup of tea with milk from allowance (HexA). Lunch: Batchelors Pasta N Sauce Cheese & Broccoli made with water (2.5 syns), jacket potato and a huge salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, beetroot, onions) balsamic vinegar. Dinner: Either syn free Quorn lasagne with HexA 30g cheddar cheese, salad and maybe syn free chips cooked in Airfryer or syn free Quorn curry and rice, or jacket potato with salad, or roast Quorn dinner with Frylight potatoes and loads of steamed vegetables. Snacks: Fruit, syn free homemade soup made with loads of speed veg, sometimes homemade crisps in AirFryer, Fage yoghurt with frozen fruit

Wow! That is a huge amount of food.

Why on earth do you need snacks when eating this much?

I am not on a diet and don't eat this much. For breakfast I have just one slice of toast and butter, nothing else. Lunch is usually a sandwich, salad or soup, and dinner could be anything from fajitas, bolognese, curry, quesadillas etc - all with loads of vegetables or salad. I am also not in the habit of snacking.

You don't need a potato with pasta or chips with lasagne. It's no wonder the weight isn't shifting.

Losing weight is 80% eating fewer calories and 20% exercise.

I wouldn't lose weight on the diet you mentioned either OP. However I can tell you what works for me: bowl of fruit and fibre for breakfast, then no other carbs for the rest of the day, and no snacking whatsoever. Fill up on fruit, veg and salad at meal times. Sneaky vodka and diet coke in the evening as a treat. Weight drops off.

I find it impossible not to snack if snacks are in the house so I buy zero snacks for myself and for my family I buy snacks I don't like but they do (anything lemon or blackcurrant, yuck. Sorbet, yuck. Super hot doritos, yuck) so I'm not tempted.

jeez. Ready meals and chips. No wonder you aren't losing any weight. Have some veg.

remember that SW and the other diet 'clubs' want you to fail, no money in one-time customers. It is a business model that has been paying off for years.

the NHS website will explain what a healthy food intake is.

The only thing that can make you lose weight is eating fewer calories than you burn. The weight loss industry can dress this up however they want and charge you huge sums of money for it but nothing changes that simple fact. The calorific value of a slice of bread or a 7 oz potato doesn’t change because a company has called it ‘free’ or put a label on it.

How you achieve eating fewer calories than you burn is up to you. If you exercise a lot you can eat more calories, but it’s not much more. Only professional level athletes training at high intensity for hours a day very day of the year will burn off enough energy to make any significance difference to their weight and even then, they will pay close attention to the quality of them food they eat, not load up on packet pasta and carbs.

If you have a more sedentary life style you will have to eat fewer calories. If you aren’t losing weight OP it’s because you are eating too many calories. And looking at what you eat (pasta and a potato at one meal?) it’s very clear that that is the case. A big part of cutting back on calories is portion control and you seem to be struggling with that.

@dontdisturbmenow

How old are you OP and do you exercise at all?

Because this to me is a massive amount of food and not only would I not lose weight on it but certainly put some on quite quickly. And I exercise quite a lot, a stage 90k steps, and do hit type exercise 3-4 times a day.

I'm middle age though so anything I eat seems to turn into fat! What I have found is that when I start a diet based on reduced calories, it takes weeks to see the pounds fall off. I never lose any the first 2 weeks even if I almost starve. I also now watch my fat content more than my weight as I do strength training. Its a much better indicator for me.

I'm in my forties and walk for an hour a day roughly.

When I tried SW years ago when it was red and green days, I stuck to it for 2 weeks religiously and put weight on. I thought I'd give it another go.

@Pebblexox

I also disagree with the exercise is the only way to lose weight. I did nothing but walking when I lost my weight. The only thing that truly works to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit.

Totally agree.