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! 😩

If Slimmers World 'allows' you to eat all of that then yes, it will not work. That is a huge volume of food and calories (however you want to measure it).
You may need to train yourself to get used to less food. If I ate that amount of food every day I would gain weight and gain it very quickly. We are all different, but 2 small meals a day (eg: soup and bread, bowl of cereal) plus one substantial meal is enough for me to sustain. Add snacks on top and the weight creeps up. Add alcohol and treats at the weekend, ditto. Definitely gets harder as you get older too. Losing weight over 40 is hard work.

I'm sorry but surely common sense tells you that you can't eat unlimited pasta if you're on a diet!

I lost weight on SW. My typical day was eggs, toast (HeB) mushrooms and tomatoes, then lunch would be prawn salad and for dinner I would have bolognaise made with lots of veg and wholewheat pasta with grated cheese as HeA.

My weight loss was slow and steady I lost 2 stone.

Read your book, & don't guess your Syns. You’re eating too much.

🙄 Why am I not losing weight when I'm eating too much food...

It seems to work for lots of people. I imagine it's one of this things you can't do forever and the weight goes back on when you stop. I know you're using fry light etc but it still looks like LOADS of food to me. There's no way I'd lose weight eating like that. In fact I'd be surprised if I was maintaining on that amount. It's a lot of carbs. I don't do low carb but would still eat less carbs if I was trying to lose weight. It also contains a lot of diet food - fry light, hexa foods (whatever that is!!). I prefer to have a couple of decent meals a day of real food and that's it.

I'm not a SW fan at all.

And you really don't need double carbs. Jacket potato and cheese pasta (although it may come in as "low cal" ie 261 cals for the pasta and 130 cals for a small jacket potato) you don't need all the carbs.

I have a lot of weight to lose but when I do get my arse in gear I find low GI works for me.

I portion control my carbs, go very low carb a few evening meals a week (I then have extra protein) and cut out all the crap.

The idea of low GI is to stabilise your blood sugar levels and negate hunger pangs / sugar rushes / cravings. Double carbs - no matter how low in calorific count they are - will give you a spike and then you'll be hungry again.

IME, there is no substitute for cooking as much as you can yourself, making the majority of your plate veg / salad, controlling your carb portions and getting rid of all the junk (including alcohol, all refined sugar, ready meals etc)

It should be a gradual shift towards a lifestyle change as well and not going cold turkey.

SW may well help you lose but such a high percentage of people regain, and then some. Which is how their business model works. How many people do you know who are "going back to SW" or "getting back on plan"

They'd go out of business if they did the job properly

I don't know much about SW but you've only been doing it a week so I would have a bit more patience.

That said, your daily intake looks very high for someone trying to lose weight. Not sure how you would lose weight with all that food - 3 eggs for breakfast is a lot and you're eating other stuff with it too.

I keep a low weight by eating two healthy meals per day, only having fruit as a desert. I treat myself now and again, but it really is a treat and not something I have every day. I mean, do you need all those snacks? Is 3 normal sized meals not enough? You should lose weight if you eat ordinary sized meals and don't overload on portion sizes or carbs. You don't need to snack - have a cup of tea instead. You might need to accept feeling a bit hungry sometimes.

Been doing Slimming World a while now and lost 1st 5lbs with it... I'd say it works but you need to keep in mind that you should be focusing on speed food at meal times a third of the plat should be speed. Also remember calories count too... it sounds like you are eating too many carbs perhaps. Pasta and a potato is a lot at lunch time... so maybe try replacing the pasta pot with chicken or fish?

I'm vegetarian and lost 4 stones with SW. my food was something like

Breakfast - Omelette with 3 eggs and loads of speed veg and a sprinkling of cheese (part HEXA, used the rest for milk for coffee/tea)

Lunch - Homemade soup (speed veg and some beans/chickpeas for protein) with 2 slices of bread (HEXB)

Dinner - Jacket potato and veg/salad or homemade chilli or pasta with homemade sauce.

Supper - 2 slices of toast with a little peanut butter (syns)

Snacks - fruit/veg sticks with homemade humous

I felt stuffed after eating all that.

“Viewed objectively, Rebel Fit correlates with SW to about 98%” @BarbaraofSeville

It doesn’t, and can I gently comment in that describing rebelfit as a calorie counting diet means you don’t follow it. It is very literally about not being on a diet, and fixing the mental harm diet culture causes.

I’ve been the same weight since I was 18, never dieted yet never said no to biscuits, through being vaguely savvy re calories. I’m amazed people think being informed on calories is so taxing but can rhyme of the “syn” value instead?!

So I’m neither a SW survivor and nothing more than a fb follower of rb, but having watched in horror many of my friends follow SW since a teen, I’m reassured people are catching on how utterly awful it is.

Slimming world is about confusing the dieter with made up syns (how can mashing a fruit change it’s calorific content? How can pasta be a “free” food? How can a yoghurt or sausage change syn value overnight because SW is bringing our their own branded product?). That’s neither accurate, healthy, or “recognising people occasionally like a treat” it’s a cult set up to keep the 95% that put the weight on again paying their membership and buying their products.

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 have lost weight on SW but after I stopped I put it all on again.

Now I'm trying to limit calories the old fashioned way.

There's no point in a slimming business that works once and for all and gets no repeat business....

There probably is. We have a looming obesity crisis to deal with: the business model's sustainable in the medium term .

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.

If Rebel Fit isn't about calorie counting, why do they give you a daily calorie allowance, admittedly higher than most other diets, but they expect serious activity to earn that, and then tell you to use MFP to log it?

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

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...😂

SW does work! I've lost 2 stone. I would have your HEB for breakfast so something like cereal OR have eggs but not both regularly. Have pasta and sauce and a salad OR a jacket potato. Up your speed as well. It really really does work!

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.

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 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.

You are only allowed 1 HEXA so you can’t have milk and cheddar cheese
^^
You're allowed to hex a choices now.

*two

i lost 5lb and ive been doing it a week so it does work