Can we really eat all this food?

[luccamum]

DW started SW on Wednesday brought all the SW pack home, I'm doing it with her for support and I also need to loose weight.
DW is gluten free, has tried to loose weight previously on british heart foundation diet recommended by hospital dietician. Although we weren't hungry it was a PITA to measure and weigh it all, it had a lot of veg, not much starch and little protein, so got hungry quickly.
I was skeptical about SW, but an old friend lost 12 stone and was SW slimmer of year in 2009, she hated dieting so had to be something in it that worked.
DW went to meeting with another family member, got weighed took 12 week countdown offer of paying for 10 weeks and no joining fee. Spent next two days reading material to understand the eating plan. I can see it's a healthy eating plan so I am happy with that. You eat lots of low calorie, low fat, low sugar, this makes sense to me. What has taken me back is the amount of food you are expected to eat.
In BHF diet unless it was a vegetable u couldn't have it. In SW seem to allow lots of things in free and superfree foods you can eat lots of e.g. meat, plain potatoes, rice, pasta, eggs. This is what I think it says. I'm a bit worried I'm reading it wrong. We already cooked all our own food, avoiding processed foods as DW is Gluten Free. The SW recipes seem tasty and tempting. There's just so much food to eat you avoid being hungry. Today we had Healthy Extra toast with lean bacon and tomatoes, lunch was ham or prawn baked potatoes with salad or raw veg batons with a fat free formage frais dressing finishing off with fruit salad and fat free yoghurt. For tonight's dinner I am doing a vegetable biryani. This seems a lot of food for a diet. Are we doing something wrong. Any help and insight gladly received. Tia.

yep its true, no weighing your pasta,rice, potatoes, cous cous etc. super lean meat or quorn and eggs.
yesterday I had a bacon and egg sandwich using bread from the b choice. synned a little ketchup and a banana. and I ate tons through the day!
ive lost 3st5.5lb in 21 weigh ins and I eat like a horse!!

It seems a very dangerous message is being given. No good is 'free'

Sorry Joules, could you explain?
No good is free.
Do you mean, no food that is good for you is free.
No food that is nice is free?
Don't understand your post, and what is the dangerous message?
Could you explain further?

The idea is that at least of your plate will be super free so basically veg so there will be no temptation to over fill on the stuff like potatoes and pasta.
I've been at this ten weeks and lost nearly two stone, so it must work!

I lost 3 stone in 4 months with SW and more than a year later it is still off, so I know something about it. You are not meant to eat unlimited quantities of rice, pasta and plain potatoes. The idea is that you eat enough to be full and keep you going to the next meal, so you don't crack and pig out on biscuits. Obviously, if you eat kilos and kilos and kilos of pasta and rice and no veg or protein, you won't lose weight.

I do not think it works the same for everybody. Although I follow the program strictly and also have submitted my food diary to my consultant I'm loosing abt half a pound a week.......

I don't think eating half a super lean chicken and 3 plates of pasta and veg is really gonna do it...

You must be reasonable.

Slimming World is absolutely horrendous at teaching people portion control.

Obviously some people do it sensibly, and see the results. But I've seen women gorging on baked potatoes and super noodles because they're 'free'. Not good for them at all.

Nursery I totally agree with you!
I do have issues with portion control, that is the reason I put on so much weight, my food was always more or less low fat, low oil etc, but massive portions.....

After 3 months on sw I have decided to slowly and gradually try and restrict myself.

On the other hand I feel soooooo much healthier and all my tummy cakes I had for years have gone after 2 weeks sw....

I eat huge portions (can hardly fit on the plate) and lose between 1-5lbs a week. I am strict about making my plate at least 1/3 superfree foods though, just going by photos I've seen on SW Facebook pages, a lot of people have a pretty stingy 'third' or don't have any.

There's no way I could do a 'diet' that meant I was hungry. That said, I do eat to hunger (well, mostly ) and don't just eat for the sake of it.

Midori
Thanks for sharing!
Do you eat breakfast lunch and dinner and what u snack on? Do u mostly eat one plate only at lunch dinner?

Yes, I do eat all three meals. I do usually only have one plate full at each meal, but if I'm hungry I have a second portion if there's leftovers. Rarely though.

Breakfast: 'fry up' of 4 sausages, 4 pieces of bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried eggs or 2 large bananas, total 0% and 35g of muesli (HEb) or 2 weetabix and a banana, sometimes with a yoghurt too or poached eggs on toast and a huge bowl of fresh fruit.

Lunch: pasta and sauce or savoury rice packed with extra veg, home made soup with bread, boiled egg/s and ham or big plateful of veg sticks with boiled eggs, ham (or other meat) and crabsticks.

Dinner: pizza topped chicken and salad (2 large breasts) or big plateful of pasta and salad OR SW style roast OR sweet and sour noodles etc

Snacks: boiled eggs, fruit, yoghurt, sponge fingers, veg sticks and home made syn free hummous, hifi lite bars, ham, crabsticks, chicken drumsticks, falafel....

I probably don't snack that much tbh as I'm usually full from meals, but I have at least one snack between breakfast and lunch and between lunch and dinner and have a snack late evening. I do try to stick to superfree where possible, but have other stuff if I fancy it. Afternoon snack is almost always protein based.

seriously?!

It def wouldn't work for me, i know that much! I only have to look at carbs to put on weight. I try to balance my diet out to be around 30% carbs. The rest is divided between fat and protein.

Neither fat nor sugar is bad, but you do need to know what works for your body. I'd give it a go and see how you do.

I will try with 3 meals one plate each time and drink lots of water!

I never lost more then two and that only once. Mostly half and sometimes one.

Its quite slow after few months like that.
Thank u so much for taking the time to write it all down.

Well, it's 5 weeks in, and we are BOTH 1 stone+ down.
And yes, we are eating all that food!
SW rocks! And I say that as someone who hates diets and dieting. It's not like being on a diet.
Not hungry, healthy diet.
We are sticking to this.

I did SW years a while back, in fact I have done it twice with great success but both times put the weight back on. I do think it does not teach you portion control which can be a problem going forward.

I don't understand how the new diet works. It used to be red days or green days which was straightforward but this idea of having everything at once confuses me.

Well done on your weight loss though, that's great

Yes.

But.

What I have found in the past is that there are only so many Mullerlights and bananas and shit that you can eat before you start to get fed up and not eat as many.

Also, pasta and stuff - great, but not fab on its own. And there's only so far a tablespoon of olive oil and 30g of parmesan goes on it in terms of syns. And its only so satisfied you can get from totally syn free sauce on it.

And so on so forth.

Veggies are great but taste better with lots of oil. Not so much with a couple of sprays of frylight.

Etc.

So yes you can eat all that food, but going forward, if you stick with it you will settle into a pattern that doesn't involve 15 mullerlights and 18 bananas and 6 hardboiled eggs for lunch.

As it were.

Also, a fact that a lot of people forget or choose to forget is that on extra easy, you are SUPPOSED to fill 1/3 of your plate with superfree foods. In my experience a lot of people stop doing this and if you are one of those people you are better doing the "original" (i.e red) or green days, and you get more healthy extras on those too.

In my honest opinion I think the best "version" of the slimming world diet unless you are vegetarian is the red day. When I have a red day (also known as "original") my food diary is a much better looking nutritional balance (if I were to show it to a dietician) than a green day or an extra easy day that doesn't adhere to the 1/3 rule.