Slimming World #4

[rubyred66]

After the food bank scandal in my local slimming world, all the morning group members have left. I am not sure about the other groups but it’s a big step for us after being ripped off of our meal deposits.

We now have a community slimming programme, we have the scales. One of the members, her son is a personal trainer, we are going to do a weigh in, a little bit of exercise, meal prep and calorie discussion and we’re paying £3 to cover costs and the hire of the community hall.

The head of the community centre is in the process of not welcoming slimming world back and giving us the slot in place of Slimming world in return. We were a group of 12 in slimming world, we now have 18 joining us in the Community Slimming Group.

Everyone we have spoke to are really annoyed with slimming world and the truth about the food bank donations were hidden from the other groups.

It feels like a very small victory and I have far too much time on my hands post retirement.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

I’ve just joined SW for the first time 2 weeks ago. I’ve read through the thread and agree with what a lot of you are saying however people need to use their heads and eat in moderation. I’ve slowly gained 4 stone in 3 years and managed to lose the first 1/2 a stone in 2 weeks.

For example you’re saying people think they can eat a shit load of ‘SlimmingWorld chips’ or 27 muller lights and lose weight… they’ve got to take personal responsibility and have a handful of chips and one muller light. The same goes with syns… I never knew what a syn was until 2 weeks ago and they’re a good visual for what is bad for you eg I used to buy cold latte drinks in home bargain for 49p- I wouldn’t buy one I’d buy 3 and drink them in a day or 2. A Big Mac burger is 25.5 syns which I was eating weekly so Now I can see where I’m gaining the weight.

I don’t think I’ll be a die hard SW fan… I wanna get the chunk of the weight down and as soon as I feel good enough I’ll be back at the gym and calorie counting.

I don’t know what I’m adding to the thread tbh. I don’t disagree with you but people have to take personal responsibility for their own weight. And all this making crazy concoctions for a sweet treat.. if they’re that desperate have a treat and earn it by doing a walk or bike ride and eat the bloody sweet.

A Big Mac you mention is 25.5 syns so you won't eat it now and blame it as cause of your weight gain.
Eating one would be classed as off plan.
A big mac is 493 calories

This is a Slimming world alternative the 'big daddy burger' for 0.5 syn with HEB or 6.5 syns. Its off their website bear in mind, and not a random insta hun recipe

If you put the ingredients listed into nutracheck its more calories than a big mac (this not including the syn free chips you'd likely have with it)

Yet you could eat 3 of these if you use one of your buns as heb and still be on plan and under 15 syns.

So, if you ate the big mac you'd probably watch what you ate for the rest of thr day because its a big mac and we associate it as high calorie and fattening.
If you eat the half a syn 'big daddy burger' you'd likely enjoy another 14.5 syns, a heA, breakfast and lunch on top.
Your consultant would even tell you that you need to eat all these things.
You could walk into and eat a big daddy burger monday - saturday and only eat a big mac on the sunday.
If you gained your consultant will blame the big mac.
Demonising a food for no reason.

Syns are loads of shit.

 

[thepantsqueen]

I have to say, I lost 3 stone on slimming world and eventually gained it all back through the pandemic and tried to lose it again beginning of the year with calorie counting but it all fucked up my head. I realised I was burnt out by dieting...and growing up with a mum who was always doing slimming world and eventually just barely eating anything. For some fucked yo reason i wanted to be like her.

but this year I began feeling so exhausted from years of these diets I just decided fuck it all off and not in a "I'll get back to it Monday" kind of way.
My life is far too short to go back and forth between slimming world and CC, it's so tiring.

I stopped dieting. I started cooking food I liked and eating what I want within reason and I started running 3 times a week for my mental health alone. I'm pretty sure I've dropped some weight since but I've completed couch 2 5K and I'm now running 5K 3 times a week and drinking more water than ever and I feel SO free from counting calories or syns. It feels incredible.

I genuinely forgot what life could be just seeing food as food and exercising and doing things for your mental health not your weight. It's genuinely joyous.

I could be slimmer (14) with size 16 hips ha but I think this is my happy weight.
Sorry for the ramble!

 

[WhatABore]

This is why I just won't go back, the guilt! I've been a member on and off for years but I left a few months back and received a copy and paste letter from the consultant recently and I quote: "you were doing so well with your weight loss so imagine my disappointment when you stopped coming to group." Ouch. YOUR disappointment?!

Exactly the reason I won't go back too.

I'd stay the same one week and it'd be "Ohhh shall we go around the room and get some tips for you?"
No. I've lost 8 stone. I don't need tips from the women that have lost and regained the same stone for the past 4 years

 

[rubyred66]

i need tattle advice, do I have a right to be angry right now? I will give you the details.

For a while in group we have donated to a member of the social teams daughter, we bring an item of food for slimmer of the week and we also bring a item for the social teams daughter who lives in a town not too far away. We renamed the donation basket to the food bank to protect the daughters identity and dignity, but it’s agreed the donations goes to the social teams daughter as she doesn’t work and struggles financially.

I dropped a food blender off recently for the social teams daughter at her house, when I was invited in, I was asked if I want a coffee and she told me she had just spent £1,000 on a bean to cup machine. Afterwards I thought something doesn’t seem right.

We all had a meal planned for the Woman of the Year at a local restaurant and we paid a £10 deposit each, there isn’t many of us who attend group. 12 all together at the most. The meal was cancelled because of Covid. Rather than refunding out deposits, they have said they will donate the money to the group food bank. Only a few of us know that it is just a name we use for the sake of the social teams daughter. It has caused a lot of anger in the group. The consultant has rang us all individually and has called us mean spirited and selfish and the social team member is angry with us all for challenging it.

Are we in the wrong, be honest?

 

[leoparddolly]

First post on this thread. I did Slimming World very successfully about 12 years ago. Stuck to the plan 100%, cut out most junk, switched from wine to gin & slim, etc etc. Then damaging behaviours crept in. The classic "don't eat on weigh day and don't drink anything after lunchtime (My weigh in was 7pm). I even started taking laxatives because I NEEDED to lose each week or I'd feel like a total failure. I lost 5.5 stone in 11 months. Won all the awards at my group. LIVED for the thrill of the praise. Then Christmas arrived. I'd been so restricted all year (I didn't have crisps for SIX MONTHS ffs) that I went nuts. Gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks. And never lost it. Kept gaining. Eventually regained all the weight, plus an extra 2 stone, over a period of about 4 years.

I've rejoined Slimming World groups numerous times over the years (most recently joined online a few months ago) but no matter what I did I was never able to replicate how well I'd done the first time. Probably because I'd destroyed my metabolism and mental health with how restricted I'd been tbh. And I couldn't bring myself to starve on weigh in days anymore. I've lost and then regained the same 3 stone about 5 or 6 times now.

I'm now in my mid 40s. I'm probably 5 stone overweight. But I've discovered exercise that I love. I work out 5 or 6 times a week. I feel physically fitter than I ever have. And I'm now trying to address my issues with food. I had a problem with binge eating long before I joined Slimming World. I can't blame Slimming World for that, but it did make it worse as I restricted myself so much in order to "succeed." That's my own issue though and not one I'd blame Slimming World for.

This is a long post and I'm not sure what the point of it is really. But yeah. My life has now been ruled by my weight for over 12 years and I have such a terrible relationship with food. I've started calorie counting and I am finding the binging has reduced as I'm building foods I love into my meals and snacks, rather than eating stuff I didn't love simply because it was "free" food or low in syns. Desperately trying to stop myself from mentally calculating how many syns something is every time I eat but hopefully that will come in time. And I will NEVER eat scan bran "cake" again

TLDR: Lost 5.5 stone too quickly. Regained it all. Only now realise how awful Slimming World was for me personally due to my own issues and how much damage it did.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

 

[Damocles]

I've been a slimming world member now since 2019, and to say I have a love/hate relationship with it would be an understatement. My mrs used to show me all these people that had lost LOADS of weight with slimming world, Jack Towers, Big beggy ben, Mr snares, not forgetting Harry Pickard and his fabled 8 stone loss

"I wished I could do that" I thought. I had a serious health scare in 2019, long story short, I was rushed to hospital and told straight "lose weight or you will be dead soon" my blood pressure was 220/200.

within days I'd joined slimming world for what felt like the 528th time. I used to blag it, eat shit on weigh days after getting weighed, take the absolute piss out of the plan (like those I mentioned above that still do )

But this time, I wanted to do it by the book, after all, my life was at stake now and it was very serious. I saw Ben, snares, even jack towers and thought "I want to be them"

I was 2.5lb away from being 27st when I joined. I was addicted to food, I'd eat a multipack of 26 packets of walkers to myself A DAY, washed down with full sugar coke, I'd go mental if the kids threw anything away and I'd honestly get stuff they'd thrown away from the bin and eat that too...

I lost a stone in my first week, I'd lost 1 and a half stones by week 3

fast forward 3 years, and I've had all sorts of shit from slimming world. They accused me of being a bully and pulled a feature they had planned on me, I've had a slimming world consultant take personal photographs of mine of my children and plaster them all over social media without my permission and their response to it was pretty much "if you dont want it to happen you could always set your profile to private"

I strongly believe unless you are a kiss arse, or you have a look about you they like to promote, they dont want to know..

"Slimming world is for men too" is a recent campaign they ran.. well, this particular member got to target a while back, 12st award and I was voted man of the year in my group all on the same day...I tagged sw in my social media posts and all the rest of it but it was met with silence. I maintained my 12st loss for 3 months before deciding to change my target again, and I've just got my 13st award and got to target again, and was again ignored by sw..If I sound like a bitter bitch, I guess i am but I think it's justified.

 

[ChubClubThug]

Has Harry joined the thick thigh brigade? Is this a weight gain I see before me..

That gucci belt will now be an anklet

 

[uokhun92]

I'm still creasing at the comment the other day about Mags being off sailing her yacht on the tears of the fatties defo needs to be the next thread title

 

[JustWonderingIf]

You name it, I'm likely to have tried it. Scan bran forerro rocher, fake haribo, curry loaf with a batchelors rice, pasta n sauce quiche... I was slim no doubt because I'd eat half then turf it

I'm feeling the nostalgia now...
-Lasagne sheet crisps (yet would use butternut squash sheets for actual lasagne )
- scan bran pancakes (soften them with boiling water, mix in an egg)
- lasagne sheet spring rolls
- smash as a pizza base
- quiche made with cottage cheese
- freezing mullers to make ice cream
- always ordering black bean chicken or beef from chinese
- having a mugshot but always having a clementine on side for speed
- quark cheesecake
- quark lasagna topping
- quark tagilatelle
- using quark instead of mayo with tuna

Fuck quark.

Oh but the big difference - fry shite! And the most over used line at group "it's free so squirt til it hurts!"

You can have your SW chips with chippy fish as long as you take the batter off and it's completely free!

I know some people used to spray the butter flavour one on toast..i drew the line there

 

[BegDavis]

I remember feeling traumatised every time there was a ‘taster’ / ‘sharer’ session, it really looked like a table of bush tucker trials

 

[Tharsheblows]

Good god! I haven’t been to SW for years. I got asked to leave the last group I went to (about 10 years ago) as I’d gone ‘off plan’ over Xmas and New Year and put on 10lbs. I actually laughed out loud when she told me how much I’d put on and she asked me if I thought losing weight was a joke! I told her that I thought the whole SW ethos wasn’t sustainable if I could put on that much weight so quickly and she asked me to lower my voice. I didn’t and after another dose of how I felt about SW she asked me to leave and find another group. I didn’t need asking twice lol
Anyway, really just wanted to say that my friend and I tried a SW ‘hack’ which was to spray the butter fry light on bread and put in the toaster to mimic fried bread. First time I tried this, I popped the bread down in the toaster and went upstairs to sort the washing, after a while, I heard the smoke alarm go off, I rushed downstairs to see the toaster alight and flames licking the cupboard above! I chucked the toaster outside and scrubbed the soot of the cupboard and never told my husband

 

[Damocles]

I remember the fad of using smash potato as pastry..I made a "sausage roll" using it... fuck me, it looked like the elephant mans penis.

 

[ChubClubThug]

This is interesting old mags is no longer a director

She's off on her yacht, sailing the world on the tears of the fatties

 

[NapQueenReturns]

We've only got roughly 80 years or so on this planet...imagine spending a good portion of those days eating cous cous cakes and manically trying to do 20k steps. Have a pizza and enjoy life.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

I see the Welsh one (sioned) who bums sw Ross has admitted a 13lbs gain. It can't be sustainable if as soon as you deviate from the plan, you put on a stone

'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'

If you have lost weight with SW and gained a shitload back why do you think if you do it all over again the results will be any different?

You can excuse (as I have many times before I broke the cycle) and say 'its not SW its me the plan works I lost 6 stone 5 years ago'
If you gained back 7 SW has failed you.

SW indoctrinate you to blame yourself for the plans failings. This is why even when you're losing overall and stay to group they go round and ask the reason you have gained on week.
Sometimes there is no reason could be hormones, stress, you've exercised more, the weather etc.
But a consultant will insist its sometime you've done.
If you say to a consultant you don't know why you've gained 9 times out of 10 they'll start reeming off reasons for a gain
'Did you eat your healthy extras?'
'Did you weigh your healthy extras?'
'Have you gone over syns?'
'Are you eating all yout syns?' (yes, they will say this a reason for a gain if you say you're not).
'Are you eating free foods? Eat more free foods!'
'Are you eating speed? Eat more speed!'

Then they expect you to choose one so you can be blamed.
After months if not years of this indoctrination if you start gaining back you'll look to these reasons as being the cause of your gaining and blame yourself.

Reality is its not eating 5g extra of cheese on a monday and eating 18 syns on a sunday making you gain back.

Its because -
-Its because SW don't teach portion control
-SW create a toxic atmosphere in groups where you compete to lose the most weight to win awards such as miss slinky, so some people start restricting which fucks your metabolism.
- they promote calorie dense foods like pasta, potatoes and rice as unlimited
- They don't address psychological reasons for over eating.
- They don't truely want you to lose weight. They're not dieticians or personal trainers with professional interest. They are a business that relys on return custom. If everyone that joined SW reached target and kept it off the business would make no profit.
Even when consultants seem to be encouraging you to lose its so they can stick you in the local paper at target or advertise their group lost 80 stone in a year on a poster so they can get MORE custom and more profit. Its not your best interests at heart.

I know theres more of you on this thread that seem to be SW member than there was before and some have mentioned considering re-joining.

Before you do ask yourself;
How many people do you know that reached target and maintained it for over 3 years purely following the SW plan? Not losing with SW then switching to CC or something else.
I bet its not many.
But I bet you do know many Debbie, Sues, Mels and Amandas that have been in and out of your group for 10+ years losing and gaining the same 2 stone or more over and over in a vicious cycle where the only thing that loses long term is your purse.

Break the cycle ladies.

 

[JustWonderingIf]

Exactly the reason I won't go back too.

I'd stay the same one week and it'd be "Ohhh shall we go around the room and get some tips for you?"
No. I've lost 8 stone. I don't need tips from the women that have lost and regained the same stone for the past 4 years

Brenda I see you've lost 1lb well done! would you like to share what helped you this week??
'I had boiled rice with my friday night chinese'
Oh well done on food optimising this is something we can all.....

 

[KeiraRose]

Genuinely who are these gullible people that would pay £25 for a weight loss ‘cookbook’ written by an overweight stranger on Instagram. Because people will actually buy it that’s the scary thing. Stop the world I want to get off

Also just seen someone has asked in her Q&A whether she managed to maintain her weight loss.. and the answer is no

 

[Sectre]

"no guilt" "no humiliation"
Then you sit in group infront of everyone. "So Sandra, why have you gained 4lbs this week?! Where did you go wrong"

This is why I just won't go back, the guilt! I've been a member on and off for years but I left a few months back and received a copy and paste letter from the consultant recently and I quote: "you were doing so well with your weight loss so imagine my disappointment when you stopped coming to group." Ouch. YOUR disappointment?!