Wednesday 12 December 2012

Slimming World

Well, this is all very new to me! And different. Very, very different.

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally decided that I needed to do something major about my weightloss and its very stalled state of affairs. Weightwatchers hasn't been working for, well really, for a quite a long time now. And so, via the medium of my flatmate Krissy, I've stumbled into the arms of Slimming World.

I have to admit that I've been wondering about it for a while now, but the concept of no portion limits on all your core foods scares the hell out of me. I'm a greedy guts - Weightwatchers taught me that when I started measuring out pasta, rice and cereal portions with them - and I seriously worried that I'd end up putting weight on instead of losing. However recently, I've been making more of an effort to stop eating when full, and leaving stuff on my plate has occurred occasionally, and I started to wonder whether just maybe I could make this work for me.

Slimming World, for anyone not familiar with it, basically gives you a huge list of healthy items that you can, and should, eat as much as you want of: lean meat and fish, fruit, vegetables, pulses, pasta and rice, etc, and some key store cupboard ingredients for flavouring it all. In addition, they have what they call healthy options that you should have at least a little of each day - these cover your key calcium / dairy and fibre intakes. Everything else you could possibly eat has a sin value attached to it, and everybody is allowed 5 - 15 of those a day - your treats. It's very simple, and although you obviously still have to track your food every day, it's a step away from the Weightwatchers approach of pointing absolutely everything except fruit and veg.

For me, it feels like both a step towards encompassing a lot more whole foods back into my diet, and a step away from monitoring every little thing I eat and learning to trust myself a little more again.

I've been doing it informally, using Krissy's books, since last Thursday, and last night I stepped up to the plate and formally joined for myself.

Interesting fact for you: despite grumbling about my current weight, it's actually the lowest weight I've ever started a slimming program with!! I've done Weightwatchers twice, and had a brief foray into the world of Rosemary Conley whilst at university, and I actually see this statistic as a huge success. Whichever way you look at it, I lost 4 stone since 2009 and managed to keep just over 3 of it off for 4 years, and that's not too shabby. What I'd like to do now, is tidy up the loose ends of my weightloss and find a way of eating that will work for my life, to keep me happy and full-powered through my adventures (of which I plan on having many!).

So, here's the rest of the statistics. My official starting weight is 13st 7lbs (which is obviously a bit different to my usual morning, and distinctly less clothed, weigh in). I also weighted myself last week before I started and the difference between that and this morning was at least 1.5lbs, despite having a very heavy weekend in the middle, so that's somewhat encouraging. For my own records, I will probably continue to have my own Friday weigh ins, as I have done over the last 2 years, but it will probably be the official Slimming World Tuesday evening ones that I will (hopefully) celebrate on here.

Right now, I just want to lose for my first week, so I know that it's working, but my first proper goal is to get back under that sodding 13st barrier that I've been mincing around with for so long!!!

And that plan itself? How am I finding that? One word actually: filling. Very much surprisingly so. I've had to rethink my go-to foods, as many of them have changed. Whilst I've got the time off I'm playing around with what my new go-to foods will be, but I'm loving having jacket potatoes back on the list as they're one of my favourite comfort foods.

It's going to be very strange going to weekly meetings, and I do find it adds a certain need to lose to the proceedings, as I discovered last night that they go over everyone's weekly results in a circle and discuss them individually. There was no judgement or criticism for people who'd gained, but still, I'd rather not do that too often!!

Wish me luck with my first week!!

3 comments:

  1. Very impressed with your starting a regime before Xmas! I'm already of the 'let's start in the New Year' school of thought sadly...

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  2. I think this is a great move. I did SW world for a while and although I didn't stick with the meetings I still follow a lot of the fundamentals and I really think they work.

    Good luck! x

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  3. Ooooh, the dark side ;-)!!

    Will be interested to hear how you get on.

    Sx

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