SW with clean eating

[Maggiemoomoo17]

I'm starting slimming world this week but don't like to eat anything with additives or low fat. Also dairy free. Any advice please? Tia

You can have soya and other milks under your healthy extras. You can do it by using your syns.

Most of my recipes are meat with the fat cut off using spices out my cupboard. You don't need to eat lots of low fat stuff. You could just use your syns for oils and full fat stuff.

Thankyou groovee I think it's a case of just tweaking it. I use a lot of olive oil so I was going to get a spray one

It is quite difficult to do Slimming World and another eating plan at the same time. Dietary preferences / needs like being vegetarian, Halal or Kosher, gluten free are do-able. A friend I met at Slimming World was vegetarian and gluten free, she did really well and lost a good amount of weight, but she was very committed and reworked what she ate pretty much from scratch.

IMHO 'clean eating' is a eating plan itself, which is going to be pretty tricky with SW. SW is pretty much a low fat diet, with lots of vegetables and fruit plus small measured amounts of dairy and high fibre bread or cereal. If you love cooking from scratch and like a wide range of vegetables, then you might well find that your 2 plans can work together. However there will be very few shortcuts that you can take.

I would drop the unproven possibly faddy and unscientific clean eating and commit to a proven weight loss diet. If you stick to SW (or Weightwatchers or any of the popular slimming clubs) then you will lose weight. You will need to change what you eat. Feeling that there is some virtuosity in your current eating decisions, e.g. that some foods are 'clean' and therefore automatically better for you, is likely to make it easy to find excuses not to stick to SW.

Hi wild, I think I can do it as I eat lots of fruit and veg and don't mind cooking so going to batch cook. I just don't like the additives in low fat stuff. Iv factored in avocados too as a syn. I would rather eat food in its natural form.

I suppose if you can do without using your syns on cake which would be clean eating, there aren't that many syns in full fat stuff compared to a bar of chocolate for eg. I sometimes have ff yoghurt for breakfast as it fills me up more. You just have to weigh it all.

Tesco sell olive oil sprays which is5 sprays for half a syn. Unfortunately my body hates it post gall bladder removal. Causes me such pain.

Great re. The olive oil spray. I was looking for something like that. Iv done a weekly meal plan this morning. Thanks for your help

"I would rather eat food in its natural form."

See this is what I genuinely don't get about the 'clean eating' idea. Surely you shouldn't be cooking anything then, as the 'natural state' is raw? Just eating raw unpeeled vegetables is a very good way to lose weight by itself.

Honey for example, which people seem to think is more 'natural' and 'clean' is not designed for humans to eat, any more than cow's milk is. They are effectively the same - food made by another species to feed their young. Sugar itself comes from natural sources, why is grabbing it from some poor bees better than eating the stuff from sugar cane or sugar beet?

Sweeteners - there is no scientific evidence that eating non-sugar sweeteners is harmful to humans. They've been around for decades. If they were harmful, then they would have warnings on the packets, like cigarettes.

I don't think sweetners are harmful, but I think they do make it more difficult to lose your sweet tooth and therefore makes it harder to stop eating cakes and biscuits. I do agree that I think 'clean eating' is a fad term used by people who have no idea of nutrition and in some cases are using it to disguise an eating disorder. I'm not sure that's what OP is doing though, despite the title ( I'm not her, so I might be wrong ) You can eat food without additives and all home cooked quite easily on SW. Low fat might be more difficult, depending on what you like to eat. The only things I can think of on SW that are low fat are dairy products which OP doesn't eat and oil for cooking, which can be counted as syns. I have almond milk because cows milk makes me very chesty. You can have a liter a day, which I find a lot.

Hi, roses, no way do I have an eating disorder. I only want to lose half stone for a holiday. I originally started eating well (I will change the phrase clean eating as it seems to cause a lot of controversy) for health reasons not to lose weight. I'm disabled because of a neurological condition and have to use a rollator also have fatigue. Eating well has totally changed the way I feel and even my balance is better. Im also a medical professional and have a good idea about what constitutes a good diet. On SW I'm going to use most of my syns on avocados olive oil etc.

Thankyou ginea pigs, dairy makes me feel rubbish. I'm going to get provamel soya yoghurts as they are only 1.5 syns. And great re, soya milk that's quite a lot

I do slimming world (fell off the wagon recently back on weds!) and when I do I stay away from sweeteners, flavoured yogurts, hifi bars and drinks made with sweetners.
It's not hard to do and I syn avocado, oil (I use the spray olive oil) and any extra nuts I have. I usually use nuts as my healthy extra b. The only thing I really use that is "fat free" is Greek yogurt as I don't like the full fat one I have it a lot for breakfast with raspberries and almonds on the top.

If by ‘clean eating’ you mean a natural healthy diet then I think it’s completely doable on SW.
I would rather use my syn allowance on ff yoghurt, olive oil, avocado etc rather than muller yoghurts, hi bars, curly wurlies & sweetener.
I guess that’s the beauty of SW, it suits all types

Warm porridge oats made with hazelnut milk pinch of cinnamon & grated apple is my new favorite breakfast

Yes I was concerned about nuts because I love them but will do that and use them as Healthy B. Ooh the warm porridge oats sound lovely. Will be trying that

NB I didn't mention eating disorders, think you've mixed me up with another poster.

Porridge oats ('warm' or otherwise) = Healthy B (1 a day)
Almonds = another healthy B (so would have to syn instead)
Grated apples also need synning, as only fruit eaten in it's whole form is syn free.

Spray cans to deliver oil are not natural. They use some repellant that I am sensitive to. You can smell it - it smells like a solvent - as soon as you spray it. Much better to drip a few drops of pure olive oil on the pan and then wipe over with a paper towel or tissue.

Sorry Roses ; going shopping this morning so will check out the spray oils. Sounds horrible the chemical smell. I thought if fruit was puréed you couldn't have it? So it's grated as well. Thanks for all your comments x

I don't think grated apple needs to be synned, only cooked apple.

From memory (it may be different now) Weight watchers has a "healthy and filling" option where you don't have to count points provided you only eat "healthy and filling" foods. This corresponds roughly to clean eating I think...

I understand the reasoning around synning cooked or puréed fruit as it's very easy to eat vast amount if you make a smoothy for example. However if I occasionally have a mashed banana or a stewed Apple then I don't syn it. I look at whether I would eat the amount of fruit I'm cooking in its original form and if the answer is yes I don't syn it.
I didn't get fat eating the occasional mashed banana

@countertop Fillipo Berio do a pure olive oil spray that is half a syn for 7 sprays. I can't stand fry light either.

@counterpoint sorry!

Green it was me that mentioned eating disorders in relation to clean eating, but I wasnt talking about you, I was talking about the self styled 'clean eating gurus' that basically cut out all dairy, sugar, carbs, wheat, replacing them with 'superfoods' that cost a fortune in the name of 'clean eating'. Im going to do the same thing as you on SW because I cant seem to control my sugar intake on it. Im going to use most of my syns on full fat dairy, maybe a spoonful of maple syrup in my porridge (I know its sugar but I cant stomach plain porridge!) and olive oil instead of what Im doing now which is eating up to 15 syns and over in biscuits and wine