Ex - Slimming World Disordered Eating Recovery

[confusedlady]

have been a yoyo dieter for years and did join SW and WW at different points of my late teens and early 20s, i am almost 30 now and have been recovering from disordered eating for about 3 years and i just wanted to throw some tips that really helped me (these may not work for everyone and i'd love to see other tips so i can continue my journey!):

• joining therapy!
  • this is incredibly privileged as i pay for my therapy and i have no children and don't pay an extortionate amount to live because of where i live. i tried a few therapists through the NHS and CBT really did not gel with me, i needed to address the roots of my issues.
  • i didn't join therapy initially for food related issues but once i was there it just came about that a lot of my emotional eating stemmed from not knowing how to cope with emotions (even positive ones!), i still sometimes emotionally eat now as i know ultimately it's just food and if i'm having a really hard time i deserve to cope and get through it in whatever way i can.
• not engaging in diet talk with others
  • in the midst of my disordered eating i needed to distance myself from diet talk wherever possible and working in an office it's literally impossible to do that, if someone talked about their diet and mentioned a meal i would focus on that meal and create a conversation around it.
    "oh for my diet i made sweet potato brownies"
    "oh i didn't know you liked to bake?"
  • this was a super good way to distance myself from the diet itself but let the other person indulge a bit in what they want to talk about
• intuitive eating
  • this will not work for everyone but it worked very well for me. i read the book and the very basic principle is initially you just let your body have whatever it wants and my god was i ravenous. i think for about a year i just consumed and consumed and consumed and granted i gained quite a bit of weight, but then my brain just settled and all i wanted was a big load of veggies
  • once you stop depriving yourself of food and labelling food as good and bad you can start understand what food actually makes you feel - if i eat pizza 2 days in a row i feel really low energy and sluggish, so i try to increase my veggies the next day! it helps because i am listening to what my body wants and i want my body to have energy and i want to feel upbeat, so i'll learn what works for me and what doesn't
• exercise!
  • one of the things that frustrates me about weight loss accounts is the ENTIRE focus is on weight loss and that means it's just about calories and a lot of the time there isn't a mention on exercise, i've never been an active person even from when i was a child and then i decided one day to go for a run and something just clicked? i kept running and like oh my god the mental clarity it gave me!
  • the benefits of exercise tend to boil down to what it can do to your weight but my weight hasn't really shifted but i feel a gazillion times better when i am consistently moving my body in a way that is fun for me
• my weight and what i eat do not affect my moral compass
  • understanding that whatever diet i've done and whatever i put into my body and whatever shape my body is does not affect who i am as a person is huge to me. in life your body will change because of literally everything and anything, and that does not mean you're a better or worse person because of it
  • when i used to binge i felt so shameful and guilty and sad and now if i slip up and binge i just look after myself, i deserve to heal and just because i ate 3 meals does not make me a bad person and does not change me inside

sorry for the long post, i know how hard it is to be all consumed by these dieting programs and to know that your weight can affect so much - i hope this post is even a little bit insightful?

 

[JustWonderingIf]

Following a discussion on Slimming World #4
This is a thread to talk about with like minds who are leaving SW for good and switching to more sustainable and healthy diets.

Many of us who have done SW know it promotes unhealthy eating habits and fear foods. The aim of this thread is to create a space for ex members to rant and ask for advice and support in undoing SW habits.

Whether your lingering issues are -
- fear foods (i.e olive oil)
- constantly looking at food as synful
- still measuring cereals, bread and cheeses and scared to break the habit.
- blaming yourself when you have a gain
- scared of exercise due to a consultant telling you it stops you losing weight.
Or any number of ways SW may affect still affect your diet after you've left..

Feel free to share what you are struggling with or what has helped you take back control of your diet.
Together we can put syns in the bin for good.

 

[rydell high]

I heard this story today and I’ve got to share it with you all because I was rolling when I heard it

A woman I know was doing SW last year, and her daughter was too. But as Christmas approached they were getting a bit fed up, so decided they’d relax a bit and eat/drink what they liked over the festive period. Then the week before Christmas, the mum got a text from the consultant saying something like ‘Are you ready for a Slimming World Christmas? Here’s what you can do to stay on plan’. By this point mum had well and truly had a titful, so she forwarded the message on to her daughter with a series of finger up emojis Except… she didn’t forward it to her daughter, she sent it back to the consultant She ended up having to message the consultant again saying she’d meant to reply with lots of thumbs-up but didn’t have her glasses on

 

[Ups27]

I remember one of my friends was a veggie, but ate meat she didn’t want in Nando’s because of the syns in veggie wraps

 

[Souffle]

I was first introduced to slimming world when I was around 13 years old. My mum told me that I could eat a whole chicken and as many muller lights as I wanted. I joined a group when I was 19 and failed. Joined again when I was about 25 years old and over 16 stone and managed to get down to 13 stone which I was happy with. I wasn’t healthy though. I would spend the whole of Wednesday (weigh in day) starving myself and giving myself enemas before weighing in and then buying a huge takeaway and large bar of chocolate or packet of cream cakes to binge on that night.

Then, unfortunately, I was raped and something inside my head was telling me “well if I was fat they wouldn’t have wanted to rape me” so gradually I gained my weight back and more. I ended up at 20.5st which meant I had gained a stone every year since I’d been raped and even though I hadn’t gone back to a SW group I had tried to follow the plan from home by myself. I eventually gave up in 2020 when I realised it didn’t work for me anymore.

I now do WW which I find so much better. I can have things I enjoy without the guilt - like white bread and it has taught me healthy habits like drinking more water etc. I am now down to 19st with a long way to go still so I plan on trying to get some sort of help for my binge eating/emotional eating and finally stop 20+ years of yo-yo dieting.

 

[Tove_drew]

I didn’t do SW but I did do WW twice. Once as a teen when frankly I was at a slim weight but my mother brought me along as I wanted to lose weight. Looking back I can’t believe she did that but lot of the ethos and habits were around me from childhood.

I went again when I was in my early 20s as I had gain around 2 stone. That time I was only there for 6 months some of which was maintence but what I learnt lingered since as I often returned to the habits/ tips. It definitely warped my relationship with certain foods.

The community itself was quiet toxic and reinforced disordered eating. Everything was about tricking the system and big losses each week. I stupidly went along with it all and lost weight at a fast rate. I was effectively pushed out of the meetings towards the end. While in queue for my weight in, another person saw me and began to loudly criticise me for being there as I was “slim enough” and my mere presence was mocking her. She told the woman leading the meeting I needed to stop losing weight and it wasn’t right that I was even there. Without asking me how I felt the leader then immediately told me “you’re not going to lose any more, you’re on maintence from now on”. This was in front of everyone. Now I wasn’t even at my goal weight and my goal wasn’t to be underweight but bam in the middle of my BMI. Years later I know BMI is often meaningless but I felt so hurt that day for not being respected. After a few more meetings I left mostly because I didn’t feel welcome by the other members. I felt bad for making that member uncomfortable but I needed support also. I ended up skipping meals desperately trying to keep it off.

More than a decade later, I have tried many ways to repair my relationship with food. I was vegan for nearly 5 years because I thought it would take out some of my guilt around food. Eventually I got seriously ill with covid and suddenly craved meat. I began seeing an intuitive eating specialist last year and it’s been great for me to focus on how my body feels with different foods and movements.

My goal now is to lead a healthy balanced lifestyle where no food is off limits by listening to my body. It’s hard because I still wish to lose weight and I know long term I will balance out where I should be. I began to calorie count in the last few months which I know is a slippery slope but I’m learning basically what recipes work and listening to my body because my long term hope is to forget cals.

I would really recommend initiative eating to any other SW/WW disordered eaters.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

Is it just you cooking for yourself or do you cook for other people too? I do all the cooking in my house and think my other half hates it when I’m cooking SW meals, he won’t say anything but I know he can tell the difference that it’s not cooked with proper oil etc so find it easier to make myself one thing and him another which is just extra work for me wish I could just enjoy a smaller portion of my ‘proper cooking’ as he calls it but I always end up bingeing on it cos it tastes so good ie a proper lasagne compared to a SW friendly one.

You'll probably find its not that many more calories to enjoy a 'proper' lasagna.
If you regularly ate the normal lasagna you'd be far less likely to binge on it because it would become normal.
Just because somethings not syn free doesn't mean its instantly fattening.
I know its not home made but for comparison;
A sainsburys Taste the difference Lasagna that is full of synful cream, cheese and oils is less calories that the SW syn free ready meal.
Yes, its a bit smaller but I know which one will be nicer and more filling.

Another thing to think about is you may eat more of the 'proper' lasagna but it will keep you full.
After eating your low syn SW lasagna you will likely eat other treats afterwards to get your 15 syns.
So you're probably ending up eating near the same calorie wise and enduring eating a SW recipe you don't particularly enjoy.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

I didn’t do SW but I did do WW twice. Once as a teen when frankly I was at a slim weight but my mother brought me along as I wanted to lose weight. Looking back I can’t believe she did that but lot of the ethos and habits were around me from childhood.

I went again when I was in my early 20s as I had gain around 2 stone. That time I was only there for 6 months some of which was maintence but what I learnt lingered since as I often returned to the habits/ tips. It definitely warped my relationship with certain foods.

The community itself was quiet toxic and reinforced disordered eating. Everything was about tricking the system and big losses each week. I stupidly went along with it all and lost weight at a fast rate. I was effectively pushed out of the meetings towards the end. While in queue for my weight in, another person saw me and began to loudly criticise me for being there as I was “slim enough” and my mere presence was mocking her. She told the woman leading the meeting I needed to stop losing weight and it wasn’t right that I was even there. Without asking me how I felt the leader then immediately told me “you’re not going to lose any more, you’re on maintence from now on”. This was in front of everyone. Now I wasn’t even at my goal weight and my goal wasn’t to be underweight but bam in the middle of my BMI. Years later I know BMI is often meaningless but I felt so hurt that day for not being respected. After a few more meetings I left mostly because I didn’t feel welcome by the other members. I felt bad for making that member uncomfortable but I needed support also. I ended up skipping meals desperately trying to keep it off.

More than a decade later, I have tried many ways to repair my relationship with food. I was vegan for nearly 5 years because I thought it would take out some of my guilt around food. Eventually I got seriously ill with covid and suddenly craved meat. I began seeing an intuitive eating specialist last year and it’s been great for me to focus on how my body feels with different foods and movements.

My goal now is to lead a healthy balanced lifestyle where no food is off limits by listening to my body. It’s hard because I still wish to lose weight and I know long term I will balance out where I should be. I began to calorie count in the last few months which I know is a slippery slope but I’m learning basically what recipes work and listening to my body because my long term hope is to forget cals.

I would really recommend initiative eating to any other SW/WW disordered eaters.

I think intuative eating is something that is brilliant if its right for you and is one of the most psychologically healthy ways to eat. Food should be guilt free and enjoyed without shame.


However, I also think its something to approach with caution if you don't have a grip on binge eating or emotional eating.
If you're in a emotional or binge eating mindset it can be easy to convince yourself that you're 'listening to your body' by eating a 12" pizza, cheesy chips, chicken nuggets and a tub of ben and jerrys in one sitting.
When really you're still in a binge cycle and those feelings of guilt will come back as you know you've over ate.

 

[sassmaster3000]

I had CBT for anorexia and bulimia when I was 17, and they gave me this teeny tiny therapist who insisted on weighing me at the start of every session, and then forcing me to eat lunch with her. I had to bring a sandwich but she only ever brought a salad. She once said to me “I’ve done some research and there’s no point making yourself sick after five minutes because that’s the time it takes for your stomach to digest whatever you’ve just eaten”.
I assume she said it to put me off purging behaviour, but obviously it just made me feel a lot more panicked about it and I felt compelled to frantically leave the table after every single meal with my family to stop myself absorbing calories.
So yeah, agreeing with the earlier posters that therapy isn’t always the answer. In fact it 100% made my ED worse.

My breakaway was going to college and suddenly being in charge of all my own shopping and food. I think being a poor student and realising the cost of food gave me a different relationship with it and I suddenly only wanted to buy things that I actually wanted to eat and enjoy.

It certainly hasn’t been the end of my ED journey. I have unfortunately developed a bit of gastroparesis so I can’t eat full meals anymore because I will just vomit 10-15 minutes later, which has been a bit of a head fuck for someone who was bulimic for nearly 10 years. I gained a lot of weight when I started doing shift work and the comments I have got from people (mostly innocent but still hurtful) do really try to send me back to that awful place that I was in when I was 17. But the world is mostly a kinder place than it was 15 years ago, and I thankfully can now value myself based on my sense of humour and my kindness etc instead of just what I see in the mirror.

Sorry this has been a bit of a rant! I just think fuck all these companies that make money off us hating ourselves for not being small enough. They’re designed to fail, so that we have to keep renewing our memberships and lining their pockets. That’s why they are so rich! Fuck em. If you wanna lose weight, go for it, but please don’t pay these fuckers because if I can guarantee you one thing, it’s that they want you to fail.

 

[Damocles]

I follow slimming world, and doing so I have lost 13st.

I have thought about stepping aside from it, but I honestly dont know what to do about it.

For the last 3 years, all I have done is follow sw to the letter. I've taken my own burgers to BBQs, my own packed lunch to parties... I'm not gonna say that sw has given me a bad relationship with food because anyone that was almost 28st and eating food out of the fucking bin isnt on the best of terms with food to begin with.

Time and again we see people lose weight with sw, then stop and before you know it...theyre a
butter mountain again.
I've had 3 "off plan meals" (a term I fucking loathe) in the last 3 years.. for the most part I've enjoyed it, I love cooking from scratch but being as honest as I can be, I am petrified of stopping and not knowing what to do going forward. I was sat in group last night and for the first time I said to myself, "why am I here, I dont need to be here anymore"

advice is welcomed

 

[Pebbleybeach]

Exactly! I did ask that question, but there was no satisfactory answer
Made no sense at all.

To save confusion it’s probably best not to eat bananas at all and just have a banana flavour muller light or three.

 

[WhatABore]

It's crazy!
My friend got slimmer of the week and month and congratulated for losing 19lbs over 2 weeks.

She had a baby.

 

[Cjh78]

I did SW a few years back, and I lost 4 stone and reached my target in exactly one year.
My target was a weight that was set by my consultant, however when I reached it, I didn’t feel or look like me.
My boobs were empty sacks of skin, my curves had gone, my bum was just saggy. My family no longer looked at me and said I was looking great - I had lost far too much weight.
When I look back on the lengths I went to, and what I ate, it’s truly shocking.
I would eat 3 muller lights a day because (at the time) they were “free”. (But actually added up to 300 calories!)
I would blend chickpeas to make cakes.
I would make a cheese sauce for lasagne out of yoghurt and egg!!
I avoided exercise in case it made me gain weight because “muscle weighs more than fat” how crazy is that!!!
I realised a couple of years ago how wrong I look at food now, when I said to a co-worker that I’d got a “naughty lunch” because I’d got a sandwich. Her response was “why is a sandwich unhealthy?!”
I love this thread, it reassures me that I’m not the only one that was completely brainwashed by SW! Thanks everyone!

 

[maharini]

As a lifelong chubster (about 25 lbs over my ideal BMI) who has tried many, many plans, the day the scales fell from my eyes (so’s to speak) was when my GP referred me to their ‘weight management consultant’ who very honestly was so overweight she had to leave her room in order for me to get in and sit down. She had a long list of the things I was probably ‘lying to myself’ about. Overestimating my exercise? I cycle 100 miles every week and walk my puppy 4km every day. Eating portions that are too big? I buy all (ALL!) my meals at M&S Count on Us, eat 1400 calories a day, and don’t eat between. Fizzy drinks? Fruit Juice? No, I care too much about my teeth (dental phobia). Her ‘prescription’ was 12 weeks with SW. ‘oh.’ I said. ‘Did it work for you?’ “I’m employed for what I know, not what I do.” I declined, never went back, and have decided to do what I’m doing, and enjoy life in a size 16 at 5’10”. I know when I’m eating badly, and you all do too. Listen to THAT bit of your head, not the bit that tells you to eat half a loaf. Therapy is a better investment than drugs. SW, WW, the Cambridge Diet, JanePlan - all of them - are businesses interested only in making money - if you get fat again, they’re rubbing their skinny little hands together. Let 2023 be the year you successfully take control. Happy January everyone!

 

[JustWonderingIf]

such a shame as I could have had ten of them a day and it’s all free, made of fresh air!!

Honestly such an odd diet

10 mullerlights for 5 syns: 'well done hun for food optimising and 'protecting' your losses'

Full syn blow out of avocado toast with butter using white bread...with a wrigleys extra : ohh your jepordising your losses!

'You could food optimise this completely and save your syns for other things! You could have 5 SW sausages, 3 eggs, 8 bacon medallions, a tin of beans and 2 slices of wholemeal bread completely syn free if you used your B choice!'

 

[uokhun92]

My god why is it so difficult to resist going back to SW even though you know it’s awful! I always seem to look back on it with rose tinted glasses about how much weight I lost. So I have to remind myself about:

-Constantly working out what to eat that day revolving around healthy extras
-Crying in the car after a weigh in because I’d had a ‘perfect week’ and not lost or gained, and getting told by the consultant there must be something I did wrong
-Starving myself before weigh ins, it was at 7pm I’d have a tiny breakfast then nothing all day and no water after lunchtime
-Freaking out if I was invited to eat at someone else’s house as I wouldn’t be in control of the food
-Punishing myself if I’d gone off plan either by being majorly restrictive in the name of SP days or with an insane amount of exercise

I could go on but still it’s so hard not to fall back into the SW trap!

 

[JustWonderingIf]

I remember one of my friends was a veggie, but ate meat she didn’t want in Nando’s because of the syns in veggie wraps

That is the worst example of the toxic SW mindset i've heard in a long time.
Being so scared of syns that they were willing to compromise their vegetarian principles....just wow...really awful place to be mentally.

 

[disillusionedbythegram]

I’m a former Slimming Worlder who desperately wants to avoid rejoining this month. I’ve attempted it year after year since 2014 and I’m still fat. It can work, I believe, but not for the majority. I’ve ended up with a binge issue. I want to lose weight sustainably. CC is good, but a tad tedious. Especially if I’m cooking from scratch. It comes with it’s own downfalls too - eating food someone else has prepared, meals out etc. I used to have crazy anxiety about both situations.
I’d love to be able to just eat sensibly without obsessing, without paying out to someone/to a company that relies on me to fail to ensure I keep my tiny share of the money rolling in.
Does anyone have any IG recommendations? Recipes etc.
I’m determined not to go back. Even if I settle for losing 1lb per week from this week onwards, that will still be 50lbs+ in a year.

Hello lovely, you could’ve been me two years ago! In my opinion, there are actually 2 issues here. The first is what you’ve identified, that you’re unhappy with your current weight and want it to change. The second is that you have a bad relationship with food. What you’ve described (fear of eating food others have made, bingeing etc) are all signs of that.
Whilst dieting will likely help you lose weight, it won’t help you with that relationship so once the diet stops, you’ll get back where you started.
Two years ago I decided to put dieting on the back burner. I’m still young enough (mid-30s) that if I want to lose weight in the future I can, but what was more important to me was healing my relationship with food.
So I stopped counting. I still implemented a lot of the good lessons from slimming world (eg bulking out meals with veg, making my own sauces instead of using jars etc) but I also had a chocolate bar on a night if I fancied. Had a panini when I went out for lunch instead of a jacket potato with beans if that’s what I wanted more. Didn’t stress about whether the coleslaw I was being served was made with full fat mayo or not. You get my drift.
It took a while, and I did initially have a period where I would have Doritos and chocolate (my two favourites) most days. But honestly, once I stopped putting them so much on a pedestal, I lost the desire to binge. I’ve still got chocolate unopened in my house since my birthday (early November) because I just haven’t fancied it. We always have Doritos and peanut butter in the house now because I know I’m safe not to binge on them, just to have it when I fancy.
Once food isn’t put on a pedestal, you do start to become more mindful about what and how much you’re eating. The massive bowlfuls I used to eat when on slimming world turn my stomach now, I can have massive bowls of pasta anymore. A little bit of cheese is enough on top rather than weighing out my 30g.
Once I got to this point, I lost a little bit of weight and then it stabilised. I’m not as slim as I’d like to be, but I’m also not piling on the weight and bingeing. I know that I could now implement a few slight differences to my diet (eg more salad, more water, more exercise) and it would start to work, and I wouldn’t feel hard done by. I’m not currently dieting because I’m pregnant, so that’s going to be something I’ll reassess once a couple of months have passed after the baby and my weight has stabilised a bit.

What I’m saying is - healing your relationship with food is more important than losing weight; and in my experience, whilst losing weight seems like the thing we have to do first (“once I get slim enough I’ll be able to control what I’m eating better”) I’ve actually found it’s counterproductive doing it that way round. You’ll be much more successful in the long run if you cut our dieting culture altogether for a little while.

 

[Snippysnips]

I couldn't do slimming world, my mums been on an off for years with it but I done it once an was like nope, I found myself starving most of the time, getting angry because I wanted somthing but it was too many syns an I couldn't, feeling guilty because I had went over a syn or two then fully blaming any weight gain because of that

What I couldn't understand either is how some foods would be classed as "free" an I could eat as much as that as I wanted but others were a syn an yet there was little to no difference in calorie intake if I ate a ton of free food compared to somthing that was syns

In the end I just went to counting calories an watching what I took in compared to what I burnt off, started to enjoy food again an I never stopped myself from having what I wanted, I just limited how much of somthing that was high calories at any one time, dropped all the weight in a slow an more healthy way an have kept it off

 

[Mr Krabs]

I was more surprised at something containing 250g of bacon and being “syn free”. Such bullshit. If you want carbonara have carbonara, but don’t convince yourself it’s syn free

Have 250g of bacon but make sure you don’t go over 30g of cheese a day or you’ll never lose weight!