Slimming World: should I or shouldn't I?

[Cartoonjane]

i am all set to start Slimmming World on Monday but have just read another thread on here where people are saying they have found it hard to lose with SW. Has anyone got any better experiences to report? I am a bit worried about the unlimited pasta etc as for me "unlimited" could involve quite a bit!

Hi, my sil lost 3 stone on sw and she ate like a pig.

It does work, slowly and regularly which is better in the long term.

I find it hard as i like cereal and bread in a day and find it hard with the amount of travel i do to manage. She worked in a salon and ate the same things everyday, jacket spuds and fruit salads.

I found ww better as it was interesting to log what i ate and why and that helped me understand my eating habits. I lost 4 stone at a solid rate of 3lbs a week, however i was walking for an hour a day to shift it.

The encouragement in either group will be motivational. I found with optimising which i have tried, i got fed up of muller light yogurts and that the slimming world recipes were very repetitive under a different guise each week!

I also find the encouragement to eat whole packets of ham, pasta n sauce and bags of apples slightly disturbing. Do you learn good eating habits from that? What about the salt intake. One woman on sw forum eats a pasta n sauce for breakfast every day.

I think as long as you are balanced in your outlook it could be fine, after all it is the only diet pregnant women can follow and young children.

Go, give it a try, you will loose, but you might get bored!

Sorry not young children, teenagers!

A couple of my friends have done SW and all seemed to lose intially, and then plateau very quickly. THe thing about good eating habits is a very good point - one friend said she didn't feel it helped her to manage her portion sizes - and when she goes off plan, she is still in the habit of eating huge portions.

I've just restarted WW; I chose this originally as I found it helped to structure what I ideally should be doing anyway - eating healthily, with the option to have choose treats. It was the only one I could see working long term.

I tried SW numerous times and i would only lose about 7lbs before i would start plateuing or gaining. I got bored of eating the same things, like muller lights and bloody quark, it seems to be in most of their recipes. My portion sizes were huge when doing SW and i don't think that actually teaches you good habits for the future.

I too left SW and started WW and have lost 3st 7lb and got to goal with WW. It has taught me about healthy choices, portion sizes and that treats are still ok in moderation and also it allows so much more variety in the food you eat

I found SW a really easy plan to follow and lost 3-4lbs / week steadily until got to target and was never hungry.
I ate loads of the unlimited fruit and veg and gave the pot noodle-esque things a miss.
Didn't really go for Muller Lights either, had fat free yog with fruit instead.

IME the desire / habit to overeat is curbed naturally as you lose the weight.

Not sure how WW works but would recommend SW.

I've never done it but I'm highly dubious about SW. Don't see how being encouraged to gorge on certain not very healthy foods is a good thing.

For me losing weight and maintaining a certain weight all boils down to the simple theory of 'Eat less, move more'. Ensuring that your body burns more calories than it consumes and staying fit by exercising regularly.

I don't believe in having to pay a fiver a week to do this (to the tune of a huge corporation's song) when common sense will do it for you for nowt (with no ulterior motive).

I have been doing SW for three months and have lost two stone.

You are not encouraged to gorge, but eat to your appetite or hunger.
You can eat the free foods without measuring them, but you should only eat when hungry.

I think the plan is very healthy and easy to stick to. The only downside is the amount of time spent on food preparation, if you like to eat ready meals then it probably isn't for you.

I'm not sure where this myth of SW = being encouraged to gorge comes from, have heard it a few times recently.

Emphasis is definitely on eating free foods when hungry and not eating past the point of satiety.

The key for me was knowing I could have fruit and veg whenever I felt hungry and also that there are no 'banned' foods.

I found the 'syn' allowance surprisingly generous and think the plan is sustainable in the long term as there are no 'banned' foods.

The bread restriction were the hardest thing to get used to for me.

I too don't understand where the gorging idea comes from. I have done SW a couple of times quite sucessfully (although I have put it all back on when I stopped)

I think some of this comes down to common sense. As a rule I eat simple, unprocessed foods which I cook from scratch, if you eat processed junk like pasta'n'sauce till it comes out of your ears you will not lose weight. I think the idea of not setting portion sizes is that you will not feel "starving" and your portions will naturally reduce as you progress. I found SW better than WW as I felt constantly hungry on WW and just couldn't stick it.

All diets have drawbacks, a colleague recently was bemoaning the fact that she had succumbed to a creme egg and would have to virtually starve for the rest of the day to limit her WW points. I can't cope with a diet that gives me that much freedom to choose (hmmm creme egg or vegetables....?) but that doesn't mean WW is bad.

Anyone who thinks they can stuff their face and lose weight on any diet is not being very sensible.

Thanks for all your comments. I have done WW points successfully a few times but now feel stuck in a rut and want to try something different.

I have watched a colleague sit at her desk and eat a small salad with a whole family pack of ham. On the website, they promote no weighing and use terms such as oodles and oodles, also encouraging you to have for example more than one jacket potato at a meal setting...or as many quorn sausages as you like.

There isn't a toss up between a creme egg and vegetables on weight watchers. All veg, barring sweetcorn are free. If you wanted to eat a plate of fish and chips, or six creme eggs with your points allowance you spend the rest of the day eating points free soup, roasted veg, or salads if you liked. I was never hungry, so her choices must have been poor.

It makes you wise to the consumption of food, one chicken breast, or a teaspoon of butter, what will sustain me longest? You can also use extra points and your exercise plan gains you extra points. I find sw exercise plan very vague. With ww if you burn off x you can eat y.

A lot of posters find they plateau, my sil did, and she gained quickly once she stopped so it's on off on off with SW.

I have to agree though that ultimately you need to eat less and move more whatever you do.

Good luck op i hope you find success whatever you choose. After a break of a year from ww due to a moe abroad i am rejoining online this week. I lost 4 stone as i said, but still have 4 more i would like to loose (i started at 19 stone). Interesting the max i have put back on in that year is 7 lbs over Christmas, so when they say slow weight gain is best in the long run it seemed to have worked for me.

You will never be encouraged to eat more than one baked potatoe and cream eggs are so heavily syned you won't want to have even one, you are encouraged to use your syns in order to make your meals more interesting most sauces will have a syn value so you tend to use up your syns that way. Or I like a glass of wine once or twice a week.
Over one third of your plate should always be veg and of that half should be SS veg.
It frustrates me and makes me feel like I am depriving myself weighing out meal portions, I did WW it didn't suit me and I gave up after the first stone. I have gone from a size 20 to a size 12 in a year with SW. I am not at target just yet but will be in not too long.
I have stepped up my exercise and was encouraged to do so by my consultant when my weight loss started to tail off to half a lb/ or 1lb a week, and am back up to 3 lb a week again.
You don't have to pay to go and see what you think only when you decide to join. Good luck

I'm sorry Wonka but on the website to quote:

Jacket with beans and coleslaw:
Split a large baked potato (or two!) and spoon oodles of baked beans in tomato sauce over the top. Make up a delicious side of coleslaw by mixing shredded white cabbage, carrot, celery and slivers of red onion with fat free natural fromage frais and mustard powder. Enjoy fresh fruit for dessert, topped with a generous dollop of fat free natural yogurt.

Snacks: wherever, whenever and however much you like!

The phrases are there for all to see. Also doesn't tell you how big your plate can be!

Plus we are all needing to loose weight because we consumed far too much food in the first place. Personally i needed to refind my off button again.

I'm glad you have had weight loss success but the challenge lies in keeping it off, and i hope you have future success with that.

I think some plans will suit others and some won't. I had done WW successfully before i tried SW (i gained the weight back due to change of lifestyle and 2 kids) and have gone back to WW in the end because it works for me. I found that when i wasn't following the SW plan my portion sizes were still big because that is what i had got used to and added in with the extra junk i ate, the weight piled on. I don't think that encouraging someone who is over weight to eat unlimited amounts of food (even if it is deemed healthy foods) is a good strategy because telling them to stop when they feel full is a bit futile IMO because most people are overweight because they don't KNOW when to stop eating, aswell as eating some of the wrong things. When i was following the plan i was having SW chips and egg for my lunch which i wouldn't have even had before i was dieting but because they say you can eat it i did.
WW at least encourages control and because of the portion control and learning about which foods keep you fuller for longer i feel it means you have a better chance when you come off plan.

binfull feel free to come and join us over on the WW thread, we are a good bunch

I was wondering about this as have just started SW. Lost 2lb first week and thought I should have lost more. I decided to total up my points as well from weight watchers books (did weight watchers a couple of years ago - it worked but gained it back) I found that I am well within my points alllowance. I think if you go over board on the carbs you are going to struggle. I am not measuring, just having what I need.

Yes my sil said she lost more fom the red days but was consuming loads of meat. There is a lot of salt in ham and precooked chicken bits etc. Plus all that protein puts a strain on the kidneys. So i would just be mindful.

I think the ideal way to come out of a diet is with a thinner healthier body but also a normal way of approaching food.

I may well join the ww group as i am overseas so the more support the better for me thanks.

binfull where abouts are you? ( I noticed from another thread you were on that you have a forces connection (i think) so just being nosey in case you are somewhere i have been ). I tried doing WW on my own when abroad and would have welcomed the extra support

Hi no my dh was in the forces but he retired ly, we now live overseas through my job. I have found some ww food in the local supermarket but i don't speak the language fluently to get anything from a group here yet.

Oh, I see binfull, online ww is probably the way to go, at least you will get all the stuff and aslong as you can decifer the food labels in the language you're sorted

i started slimming world and i hated it because the girl never told us properly how it worked plus said that diet coke was free which i actually put on two stone and then when she started to read out the weights that did it for me i left!

yeah, i found the meetings abit 'fat fighterish' and too fluffy for me. maybe that was one of the reasons i didn't get on well with it because i didn't feel encouraged by going to the meetings ( to be honest i used to weigh and go because i just couldn't stand staying for the talk)