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! 😩

@georgielovespie explained it well

Sw really is a cut the crap out and have it in small moderation and then have 3 balanced meals.

You are eating too much from your first description.

My typical sw day would have been

Overnight oats (oats, fruit, yogurt and splash of milk)

Snack banana and hifi bar (or similar)

Lunch : soup or salad. If I havent had toast in the am then maybe a cheese or ham salad sandwich

Snack : carrot stick and homous

Dinner: a sw recipe, bolognese, meat with chips and veg, fish with mash and veg

Evening snack : couple of biscuits or squares of chocolate. Depending on what syns are left.

In between I would be drinking tea, squash and water.

I swapped out sugar in tea for sweetener and now I sometimes dont have sweetener.

I also did some form of exercise. Have recently taken up running to get to a point where I can join parkrun at a reasonable pace.

I have done sw several times. Children helped me to undo my hard work but i know that and I know I can get back to a reasonable weight. It really is a change in lifestyle and approach to food rather than a diet.

Perhaps look at what your normal non sw would be and then see what you can change for a "better" version or reduce to a reasonable moderation .

I have lost 4.5 stone on SW (have put the half stone back on in lockdown though so need to get my ass in gear).

You are not eating enough syns. Furthermore, you are not synning your frylight which is not syn free.

I am not a big fruit and veg fan so I did the plan a bit more flexibly - didn't eat all the fruit and veg I was meant to, but it still worked for me.

The meals you have listed have too much carbs. I’m in slimming world, last week I lost 5lbs and I’m about 3 stone overweight.
This was my meal plan for one day last week:-

Breakfast Fruit, 5 strawberries, handful of blueberries, 7 grapes, and apple (sliced), muller light yogurt

Lunch, 2 crust less wholemeal slices of bread, 1 laughing cow cheese triangle used instead of butter (part of HexA), 3 slices wafer thin ham, lettuce, onion, tomato cucumber

Dinner, home made spaghetti bolognais (I don’t have too much pasta because I would rather have the protein ) and I make some frozen veg and mix that in with it too.

Snack packet of low fat crisps and a 2 finger kitkat.

My milk allowance is in my tea and I make sure I drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day. I also do a lot of walking an try to get at least 10,000 steps a day.

I know SW say you can eat as much as you want and honestly I’ve never understood this and that’s just not possible. Whatever you put in your plate take 1/3 back off and replace with veg or salad and cut back on your carbs.

I know a lot of people slag off slimming world and I totally get that because their theory seems to be you can have unlimited amount of pasta, potatoes etc.......that just doesn’t work.
There are loads of recipe sites out there that have proper home cooked food that you can follow on slimming world. I lie slimming world because for me, it helps me stay away from the takeaways and the chocolate and crisps as that’s my downfall. It makes me cook from scratch.

Stick with it for another couple of weeks and see how you go x

Bloody hell, you're 'snacking' on soup. Soup is a meal! Your eating pasta AND potatoes for lunch, chips AND lasagne for dinner. You need to be sensible. If you cram pasta in your mouth every minute of everyday you clearly arent going to loose weight just because its free

I did SW about 8 years ago and it was brilliant but it was a very slow process. I lost about 2lb a week but as time went on it added up to 1.5 stone which is what I needed to lose. Slow and steady wins the race! Exercise is important too. I think to be honest what really took the weight off was not eating things like crisps, chocolate, cake, biscuits etc. As soon as I stated eating normally again I slowly started to put the weight back on. However, I've never got back to the weight I was before SW as I keep an eye on it, eat what I like but rein it in a bit if I'm starting to put on too much weight.

You are eating too many carbs, yes they are ‘unlimited’ but that actually means 1 x portion is free, not eat as many carbs as you like. It will never work.

You need to base most of your diet on protein and veggies. Slimming world does work if you follow the plan. Tot up your calories on myfitnesspal and I bet you are over

see I don't know slimming world that well but one of the things that always jumped out at me when friends did it is perfectly shown in your example day, you had pasta AND a baked potato for lunch and then pasta AND chips for dinner - that just sounds like so much food, I don't care how low fat something is, if you eat enough of it you will eat excess calories...

@Chicchicchicchiclana

It's only been a week!

if i am dieting properly, the first week i tend to drop 5 to 7 pounds. I also ignore that, kind of, as i know i will put it back on again if i relax the diet

SW is just nonsense (and a borderline MLM). If you're sold on how much 'free' food you can eat, rather than recognising which part of your diet you need to reevaluate, you'll never lose weight. You'll just get miserable counting those nonsense 'syns' and eventually give up.

As an example, you say you had Bachelors pasta and a jacket potato for lunch? The jp would have been enough on it's own, and the packet pasta is not at all healthy. Nothing wrong with packet pasta once in a while (I don't personally care for this whole 'good food/rubbish food' mentality) but to over-eat because it fits into your 'syns' rather than seeing your plate as over filled means you will not see any results.

As a side note, what is it with SW and eggs? If my social media is anything to go by, it's an absolute obsession. I think the only way SW helps you lose weight is by eggy-farting your way thin (and friendless).

A typical day for me on slimming world would have been:
Breakfast: 2 bacon medallions, 2 eggs and mushrooms.
Dinner: sandwich or wrap: with chicken/tuna/ham salad.
Tea: spaghetti bolognese/fajita rice salad/jacket potato.
Then I'd probably have a pack of crisps and a freddo or something similar as snacks.
I always weighed my pasta, rice and potatoes as it's so easy to overweight on those without realising.
Looking at your meals in more depth, you're eating too much food, you need to shrink that down before you'll start to see any losses.

@BarbaraofSeville are you really asking me why if you put your weight and goal weight into a calculator tells you what calories to eat to reach your goal? Come on.

Calories are like money. If you spend a lot of calories you’ll lose weight. If you save a lot of calories you’ll gain weight. That’s it. Your body doesn’t care for syns it only deals in calories.

Rb advocates entirely against “working back” calories exercised because a. Your estimate at what you’ve worked off is almost always wrong b. It perpetuates unhealthy relationships with food. Everything you’ve said about it is the complete opposite.

Diet culture is toxic people need educated not confused by made up rules.

Sorry OP I don't think it will be the diet for you. Not getting into all the pros and cons of diets but SW is not great for people who struggle with portion control. I follow a keto/low-carb way of eating and I eat more than I ever would on a 'diet' and lose weight every week. Not paying anyone... not following a diet plan.... just make some key different choices.

I would say screw SW off and calorie count but with better choices. Not pasta and potatoes all the time. You will get there!

That's an awful lot of junk food, is that what they recommend as healthy 😳

Only two things have ever helped me lose weight.

1. Cutting back on carbs (falling up instead on veg - led to some funny food combinations, but it worked) I hope you don't mind me saying this - I'm not implying you are an idiot or anything, but i was chatting to a girl in the post office the other day about weight loss, and I suggested cutting carbs. She said she hardly ate any - it was sweets that were her downfall, and also she liked a drink. She was shocked when I pointed out that sweets were sugar, and therefore carbohydrate, and there were huge amounts of carbs in alcohol. She wasn't thick - it just hadn't occurred t her - she thought of carbs in terms of rice, pasta and bread.

2. this bloomin' pandemic! I don't know whether it's stress or what, but I'm not eating snacks at all, and hardly drinking any alcohol, and I've dropped the best part of a stone.

It's free as in till you're full not stuffed. You need to eat three meals you're basically having 2 meals in one sitting.

Are you comfort eating? I'm not trying to be cruel. Trying to help.

I swear by SW but it's true it doesn't work for everyone. You food list in your OP is perfectly fine, are you having at least 10 syns per day? Trust me the plan doesn't work without them. I've lost 3.7st so it is definitely achievable but some weeks I didn't loose anything despite following the plan.

Where SW does fall down is that everything has a calorie content, so whilst you can technically eat as many potatoes as you want, they get round the counting aspect by making sure your plate is 1/3 full of speed and as PP have said you need to watch your portion size.

I'm obviously not sure how much you have to loose but if it's a relatively low amount it can take longer to come off. Try not to get disheartened, most people who are used to 'dieting' are used to quick fixes and SW isn't that, it's a lifestyle change, slow and steady wins the race

@MogHog

You can't honestly think you can eat a plateful of pasta and potatoes for every meal and think you will lose weight?

But SW says you can

@UltimateWednesday

It works brilliantly as a business model. Enough people lose weight that the photos are out there to draw people in because "it works" then they put it back on and sign up again because "it worked" last time.

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

Very true.

I feel like you and I are similar OP, in that SW just wasn’t strict enough for me. All this free food, eat til your full bollocks just gave me free reign to binge on yummy pasta and potatoes. I’ve tried it about 6 times, it doesn’t work for everyone.

I’m now on cycle 2 of joe wicks plan. It was expensive to buy it, but it’s working for me. I lost 9lb and a load of inches in cycle 1. They calculate your macros for you and give you recipes and workouts, snacks etc. Ideal for someone who needs a strict plan, I’ve found. And I feel bloody amazing from it!

OP have you looked at the calories in the Pasta n sauces? Very high in cals, and carbs. Team that with a carb-loaded jacket potato and you're asking for trouble!!
In my experience calorie counting is the only way to go for successful weight loss. I'm currently eating between 1300-1500 a day; it can be challenging especially around the time of your period when chocolate cravings kick in! But I've definitely noticed a difference.
Good luck with the weight loss, you can do it girl!!

No it doesn’t, when you actually look at what they say properly nowhere does it say eat two meals at a time which is basically what your doing!

Your looking for excuses to keep eating massive amounts of food, doing so is fine but your not going to lose weight doing so.

Thing I found about SW is i would be starving and stuff myself with loads of carbs because i wasn't getting enough fat and would just never be satisfied. My fitness pal is easier and cheaper.

That looks like a lot of food. My diet to lose 1-2lb a week is 30g cereal with a banana for breakfast, one sandwich with salad for lunch, and dinner is 100g of pasta or potato with 100g meat and some veg.

@WellAmThatBad

I did ww and lost 3 stone by changing eating habits but also exercising. Exercise was key for me but since lockdown I've not been able to leave the house (classed as extremely vulnerable) and I've put alot back on. I have started to follow my ww plan again properly though. Sw didn't work for me at all though i gained 6lb

That's interesting. I'm a vegetarian so rely on too many carbs to fill me up as protein meals on SW take a lot of preparation.

I've done slimming world and lost weight but then put all back on again.
That daily food intake you have listed is a massive amount of food (cheesy pasta on a jacket potato?) for trying to lose weight.
If you carry on with that daily intake you'll probably gain. You need to calorie control, probably 1500 a day for a week or so then drop down to 1200. Exercise too! Sorry to say but I've every trick in the bloody book and I'm only successful with calorie counting and exercising!!
The only thing I found useful with sw is the weekly weigh in and cooking everything from scratch.
Try Noom, been on that for 10 weeks and have lost 12lbs so far. You can eat what you like but you have to stick to a calorie budget each day.