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! 😩

Sounds like SW have conned you and they should be ashamed. It is unhealthy for foods to be packaged as "good" or "bad" just cutting back a little but still allowing yourself some of what you enjoy should mean you begin to see progress. All or nothing diets rarely work on the longtime, your body needs carbs, and fats and sugar, just load up on veg first! 🙂

hadtojoin

I always weighed myself before going and was always consistent with my scales at home

[quote Zoecarter]@Railingsohno I didn’t get on with slimming world but it’s actually about cooking from scratch. Not buying there products[/quote]
@Zoecarter the way the syns(godawful name) points whatever are structured encourages you to choose their own branded lasagnes etc...

It’s great you lost weight but the fact is that so many people put weight back on after stopping. The thing is it’s not rocket science -eat less, move more. My fitness pal and doing couch to 5k or some other form of exercise is free! Lots of support on forums here.

Ps not having a go at you, just frustrated that (some) people are still being conned!

“One of the local leaders was actually sacked for altering the scales.”

How? They’ve no controls on them...

It doesn't work for everyone. The amount of carbs you are eating is reaĺly high. I got bloated and got indigestion on the SW diet.Hated it.

That's why I thought SW would work as there is no weighing or measuring all these delicious free foods

It’s not a magic diet tho 😂 you need to be having the majority of speed food eg vegetables not double carbs and snacks that most people would have as a meal!

Slimming World worked really well for me but only if I didn’t use any of my syns - this made it so boring and hard to maintain but it does work and I tend to do it for a few months each year to get back on track. But yes predictably it goes out the window when I go back to normal.

@hadtojoin thats bloody terrible i didn't even think about stuff like that.

@tabulahrasa

“One of the local leaders was actually sacked for altering the scales.”

How? They’ve no controls on them...

Not calibrating them properly and this leaving it to start in a 2lb weight for instance.

My scales at home are stored away so I need to recalibrate every time I use them. If I don't they are over by 3.6lbs.

2 meals with double carbs (pasta & sauce / baked potato and lasagne / chips) and you wonder why you're not losing weight?!? I couldn't lose weight on slimming world, I don't have an off switch and need portion control. Unless you're running a marathon a day every day that is far too much food.

@insomniasucks I don't have time to read 13 pages but if you are still reading, all I'd say is that your first post saying what you ate is about 3 x what I eat normally and I'm not on a diet (and have a BMI of around 19).

If I had 3 eggs and all the other stuff for breakfast I'd go without lunch and have one more meal in the evening.

Bloody hell- your 'snacks' are almost as much as my entire day's food!

why are you eating so MUCH??

I've never done SW but did a bit of WW for a while but hated it. Now I use myfitnesspal to track calories and it seems like you are eating a lot. I aim for about 1200 calories as I have a lot to lose and a typical day looks like

Breakfast - bagel with dairylea
Lunch - pasta in sauce made with milk (didn't know you could make the broccoli one with water, does it work ok?)
Dinner - ready meal, often just standard range.

I occasionally have a piece of fruit which I don't bother tracking because it's not really my favourite and if I tracked it all I'd not eat any I do love veggies though so fill up on steamed veg but sadly potatoes are mainly off the page

@slashlover

I've made shepherd's pie, lasagne, curry, stir fry, egg muffins, all from scratch this past week.

All from Quorn though. An inmportant part of the plan is a wide variety of foods.

But if I gave up the carbs, there wouldn't be much else to eat as I'm a veggie.

Replace your carbs with protein. Eggs, beans, lentils, nuts, tofu, quinoa, green vegetables. Do they still put the P next to high protein items in the free food products section of the book?

The curry and stir fry were made with speed veggies not Quorn.

Lol at the people saying 'eat more syns', yes, that's why OP isn't weight on large amounts of food, needs more 'treats'!

“Not calibrating them properly and this leaving it to start in a 2lb weight for instance.”

No, they’re self calibrating and only slimming world head office can change anything about them.

If they have a discrepancy before they weigh it comes up as a warning on screen and won’t weigh someone.

@Theresapossibility

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

But you don't know what size my portions are?

Diets don't work. This study has the lowest of all the figures I see, most are much higher.

newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832

If slimming world worked long term, their sessions would be PACKED with members at and maintaining target. Some people do lose weight and keep it off - most don't.

Best advice - read up about why diets don't work. Address the reasons why you're overeating. That's much harder, but much more sustainable.
I did slimming world on and off for years. I reached target twice. I put it all on and then more, much more.

Slimming world taught me to overeat. I'm not exaggerating. The official guidance and in your handbook you'll have the hunger scale but how much of your consultant's time is ever spent on making sure you're only eating when hungry and listening to your body's satiety signals?

I'm having consultations with a nutritionalist now. I'm finding what they're suggesting infinitely more sensible, healthy and sustainable than slimming world. They're more interested in me eating (high quality, healthy) protein and fats and getting my carbs from vegetables than portion sizes or free foods. I've already done a couple of courses with a specialist who helped me work out why I was overeating and address the reasons why and set up better listening to my body and healthier strategies.

Fry light, artificial sweetner, muller light yoghurts and green days full of pasta, potatoes and rice - I've done it all, extensively. It's not the answer. I hope you find what works sustainably for you 💛

Most women have friends who also want to lose weight
Set up a WhatsApp group
Share what you have eaten
Share ideas
Use each other's recipes

Did SW, lost a lot of weight in a very short space of time. SW has its pros like the community, I made some great friends at SW (all have now abandoned it though) and the accountability. However, SW has a lot of cons which include no understanding of how weight loss works, how exercise affects the body, calorific content of things and demonising foods. It’s also one of the worse body-shames going. After losing my weight and already telling my group I felt beautiful on my wedding day despite being fat, they asked if I would redo my wedding photos now I was thin. A pregnant lady was told that the more she lost now the better her post baby body would be, rather than trying to link it to the health of mum and baby.

I would say that you are eating too much. Rough guess on calories you eat daily - breakfast is probably 250 calories (eggs 150 calories, mushrooms and toms about 40 calories, bread about 60 calories). Lunch is probably about 750 calories But will depend on the size of the jackets (pasta sauce will be about 500 calories, a medium potato is approx 150 calories, salad depending on quantities is going to be 50-100 calories). Evening meal - most ready meals are at least 400 calories, even weight loss ones. 100g of rice (you’re probably having a lot more than that as is the norm with SW) is 110 calories. So you’re having at least 500 calories (conservative estimate) for dinner before taking into account your salad and veggies, which could be another 150 calories. When I made SW soup each portion would usually be between 200-300 calories. A banana is 100 calories. A couple of portions of fruit can easily add a couple of hundred calories to your daily intake. 100g of Greek yogurt and some berries is about 100 calories. Your HEA and HEB also work out at about 120 calories each. So that’s 240 calories you’re encouraged to eat on top of everything above. That’s before we take into account any syns with 5 syns being roughly 100 calories. However, muller lights at 0.5 syn are 100 calories which is the same as a small bar of dairy milk (5 syns). So often SW will tell you have to have a yogurt if you want something sweet but actually for the same number of calories, you can have a bit of chocolate but will feel guilty because they’re higher in syns.

A pound of fat is a deficit of 3,500 calories. So for one 1lb of fat to be lost you need to eat 500 calories less per day than you are using. So if you are burning 2,000 calories a day then you need to consume 1,500 calories. However, weight is a combination of fat, muscle, water, what you’ve eaten and it changes. You can still be losing fat and if you’ve had a deficit of 3,500 calories in a week then you will lose a 1lb of fat. That 1lb of fat might not be reflected on the scales at that moment.

When I was on SW, I was very strict with my syns and never exceeded that number. For breakfast I would sometimes have porridge using HEB or yogurt and fruit. Lunch would be soup or salad with lots of protein. Fruit snacks, carrot sticks and sometimes my HEA in soft cheese. Dinner would usually be a traybake - peppers, onions, proteins, maybe a small amount of potatoes shoved in the oven. If we are pasta/rice we had a portion of 50g and the gaps on the plate were filled with the speed food.

SW doesn’t work for everyone-it’s works well for some and not at all for others. For me the fundamental flaw with it is the idea of ‘free’ food, no food is truly free of calories, it does nothing to address portion control or the underlying reason people eat the way they do (comfort eating etc.) I also dislike the way it makes out fat to be the bad guy when actually we need some healthy fats and often low fat alternatives are stuffed with sugar/sweetener. As PP have mentioned calorie counting with My fitness pal worked for me. I would really recommend calaculating your basal metabolic rate (BMR) on one of the many calculators available on the net. This is the baseline calories your body need to function on a day to day basis. You could also read up on balancing macros or food groups e.g. what percentage of your calories should come from carbs/protein/fats etc. Also think that Losing steadily at 1-2lbs per week is far more likely to be sustainable than having a couple of big loses that pile back on. If you can there are some excellent personal trainers around who also have experience in nutrition and it may be worth seeking advice from one of those if you are able.

@mencken

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.

Cooked from scratch and veg with every meal.

I've done SW successfully in the past pre-wedding, post-baby and again now actually for my 'lockdown stone'!

In short.... you're eating far too much. You're also not following the rules - SW requires 1/3 plate is just speed free food (lower cal veg/fruit). This doesn't mean having pasta and jacket potato and then adding on a huge salad in order to say you had a 1/3 of speed. Don't add speed to an already large meal - instead, deduct some of the usual portion and replace it with speed. That's the real concept behind the 1/3 speed rule.

Whilst techically potatoes and pasta are free foods.... you're eating the non-speed free foods only. Bread, potatoes, pasta based free food rather than reaching for the speed free foods like cucumber, carrots, courgette, melon, berries.

As my consultant says, ALL diets work on a calorie deficit. SW is not magic - the rules are there to help pull people into a calorie deficit. If you are eating that much food in a day, it's obvious that you wouldn't be in a calorie deficit (except perhaps if you're running marathons daily) so you need to work on planning your meals around speed food more, and being diciplined with portion control.

Thats why I loathe SW now. Their ideas are nutritionally unsound and they are brainwashing women into believing total nonsense about food. Syn's, free food, speed food

Too many fried foods and fat too much carb I would say OP. The fewer carbs the better, don’t fry anything and eat a lot more fruit and veg.