Can you explain this?

[Sam9769]

Hi,

Please can you explain this to me?

According to slimming world, pasta is a free food meaning you can eat as much as you like.
According to my pasta packet 100g of pasta has 350 calories.
According to slimming world, one Ryvita is one syn.
According to the packet, one Ryvita is 35 calories.

So, I can eat 100g of pasta which equals 350 calories no problem but if I eat the same number of calories of Ryvita biscuits which is 10, I have acquired 10 syns.

How can the pasta be free and the 10 Ryvitas not free when they both contain 350 calories?
Can someone explain this to me please?

Cos SW is not rigorously scientific and they need a selling point to distinguish themselves from WW and others?

Apparently you’re always supposed to have a third of your plate as vegetables which they call “speed” food. So I guess that means that it’s not as much as you can get on a plate when it comes to pasta.

It’s bonkers and illogical. I’ll have my Ryvita thanks.

SW is v odd. That's the answer. Their own material fights against common sense, and forces its leaders to have to have ridiculous conversations with people who are eating a bucket of pasta for dinner every night and mysteriously not losing weight.

Also they pretend that Syns is not a judgy term to use, which is just ridiculous.

I don't know, but I've been doing SW for about 6 months and lost a couple of stone, so I'm quite happy with it.

just because a food has a syn value doesn’t mean you can’t eat it. In fact, eating healthy foods with a ‘syn’ count works really well on SW. 10 ryvitas will fill you up a lot more than the equivalent syn value in chocolate or wine!

And it’s filling foods which is the point of SW. A plate two-thirds full of pasta with a sauce made of tinned tomatoes, chopped peppers and tuna, with a third of the plate a salad will fill you up. You are meant to eat until you are comfortably full not completely stuffed. And if you are someone who is overweight because of eating larger portions, the chances are there are more than 500 calories for a large plateful.

You don’t have to have pasta on SW, you could eat a chicken salad or a cooked chicken dinner with plain vegetables and low-syn gravy if you prefer. But for vegetarians the choice of eating low fat, no sugar carbs can work a lot better than the alternative of a low carb diet which seems to be the current favourite method for losing weight.

It may not be a WOE which appeals to you, and that’s fine, but it works for a lot of people.

But none of that explains why a Ryvita (low fat, low cal, high fibre, nutritious) would be deemed sinful while a plate of refined white pasta (high cal, no nutrients) can be eaten on an unlimited basis?

Yes you can have salad with the pasta. You could also do that with the Ryvita so it’s a moot point.

if I was on any diet with unlimited pasta I would gain weight at a rate of knots! Partially because I overeat it. It’s pretty much the first thing I have to get rid of whenever I’m on a weight-loss journey.

I don't think it's scientific, I think it's based on what is 'easier' to overeat. There are 15 calories in 100g of lettuce, but no one is likely to eat enough of it for the calories to be significant - it's a less extreme version of that. Pasta has to be cooked before you eat it, so if you measure out a reasonable portion in the first place (according to SW guidance about the composition of your plate) you are likely to stick to that because you'd have to cook more to eat more. Ryvitas come ready to eat in a packet so it's easy to think 'just one more', especially if you are topping them with something nice.

I'm not advocating SW as a way of eating, I think it works for some but not others, and the headline of 'attractive' free foods such as pasta is a misleading because, as pp have said, if you ate huge bowls of it all day long, you wouldn't be losing weight - you have to take 'free' as meaning 'you don't have to weigh/measure this but you have to eat it in moderation' which isn't really 'free',

But then why make it unlimited? You’re saying it relies on the user actually knowing they have to ignore that and limit their portions.

Which is one of the reason a lot of people have become overweight in the first place. It’s a hard message to get right, that this food is free and can be eaten in unlimited amounts, except it can’t.

Marketing. It's a selling point of the diet to get people to sign up to it in the first place - "Look at all these free foods you can eat and still lose weight!". By the time people read the small print, they've already joined.

It's also worth noting that not many people would eat a bowl of pasta without adding something to it that would have a 'syn count' (or 'healthy extra' limit) so they are relying on common eating habits being self-limiting - how much pasta could anyone stomach on its own, or with only chopped vegetables - no fat, no meat, no dairy etc?

But none of that explains why a Ryvita (low fat, low cal, high fibre, nutritious) would be deemed sinful while a plate of refined white pasta (high cal, no nutrients) can be eaten on an unlimited basis?

You're taking one example...for SW to 'make sense' you need to look at the whole thing.

Fat people are not generally fat because of one food. You don't get to 20 stone solely because you're overeating plain white pasta whilst the rest of your diet is perfect! You get there because you're consistently eating many kinds of wrong food and too much of it.

If a 20 stone person on SW is filling half a plate with white pasta but the SW rules and syns stops them overeating all the snacks and much of the other UPF crap they've been eating then they're still going to lose weight. Often, a lot of weight.

I don't think SW is much good for someone wanting to drop a stone or finely tune their nutritional intake. But for your average obese person with a LOT of weight to lose, when calorie counting can seem overwhelming - if you stick to it, it can be fantastic and an easy way to drop a lot of weight.

Like any other diet, it will stop working when you stop following it though.

I’ve never understood SW approach where potatoes and pasta, basically carbs appear to be free, when most people have to drop carbs significantly to lose weight. They are also more likely to spike insulin after eating leading people to feel more hungry.
It’s past its sell by date as a gimmick I think.

But that avoids answering the question completely. Yes limiting snacks helps people lose weight, but why tell them they can have a large limitless portion of pasta and pile it on their olate, and continue to overeat on portion size. People aren’t just overweight as they over ate the wrong things, it’s also often as portion size is too big. Factually 97 percent of people who lose weight on slimming world regain it. It’s how they make their money. It encourages volume eating and stuff people can’t stomach long term like laughing cow triangles and muller lights.

I've never understood SW's bizarre food rules. Indeed,it was one of the reasons that I decided against trying it. And I also dislike the 'cultish' attitude that prevails around it. I was considering it quite a few years ago,but was put off by the religious zeal by people on it,also by the fact that practically everything you eat must be prepared from scratch. I am disabled with several health issues that make me very tired and lacking in energy,so I really can't be doing with spending hours every week preparing food.

It's not encouraging overeating...that's not the aim. It's just to simplify it.

For someone with 10 stone to lose, no idea where to start, averse to calorie counting and terrified of feeling hungry all the time I think it's a truly brilliant start. As you get close to healthy weight it's probably necessary to be more careful.

I'd imagine that a huge % of people starting any diet regains it or all diets bar the one 'successful' one would have died out!