A good healthy diet with lots to eat (Slimming World)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Slimming World
Date:	25/01/09 (1907 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to follow, healthy

Disadvantages: Thinking before you eat

As you may know from some of my recent reviews Dave and I have finally decided to do something about our weight. Dave has been diagnosed with slightly high blood pressure and I, as a diabetic, really must do something about controlling my blood sugar before I end up on Insulin.

What we really needed was a diet where we could eat well - providing we ate the right things of course! I will not follow a starvation diet as I know enough about nutrition to know that they are dangerous. What we needed was a sensible eating plan that could be maintained over a period of time so that we could loose weight at a reasonable rate and be healthy.

A friend of ours had followed the Slimming World plan last year and had lost over 2 stone during the year and she had been telling us all about it so we thought we'd take a look. She went to our local class on a weekly basis where she got support, encouragement and information. Unfortunately we are not in a position to be able to get to the class at the moment as Dave has been into hospital for an operation on his ankle and is currently convalescing at home.

Therefore this review will be telling you about the diet rather than the classes.

The basic premise of the diet is that no food is banned - so it's sounding good already then!

The plan is split into red days and green days where you eat a diet of mainly meat or vegetables respectively. You choose which sort of day plan you want to follow and you can have all red days, all green days or a mixture of the two. So far we have been alternating the days, although when Dave goes back to Scotland to work I shall probably have mainly green days as I find them easier.

To follow the diet properly you need to get the books and leaflets from Slimming World which would normally only be available by joining but I have bought some things off EBay and borrowed my friend's books to look through. You need the books because you need the full list of free foods and the syn values of foods.

On each day you have a long list of free foods of which you can eat as much as you like. Then there are healthy extras and you choose two of these from each of two lists, so four healthy extras each day. Lastly there are syns which are all the other foods and each of these has a syn value. You are allowed a certain number of syns per day.

So that's the basics sorted; now lets get a bit more specific.

There are certain foods which are always free foods and these include eggs, Quorn, very low fat fromage frais, very low fat yoghurt, Quark, very low fat cottage cheese, almost very fruit you can think of and a lot of vegetables. There are certain branded foods that are free foods too including low sugar jelly, Muller Light flavoured yoghurts and sugar free soft drinks.

For our healthy extras each day I measure out 500ml of semi skimmed milk for Dave and 350ml of skimmed milk for me to be taken in tea and on cereals. This counts as 2 of his 4 healthy extras and 1 of mine.

If we are having a red day we begin the day with a cooked breakfast consisting of bacon, poached eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans. The baked beans are counted as one of our healthy extras but the rest is all free on a red day.

For lunch we might have a roast dinner with meat (beef, pork, lamb, turkey or chicken), broccoli, roast potatoes, carrots and green beans. Here only the potatoes would be counted as a healthy extra for the day the rest are free. For pudding we would have a low sugar jelly with fruit in it topped with Muller Light yoghurt.

For evening meal we would have meat and a salad again followed by jelly and yoghurt.

During the day we would snack on fruit and we could of course eat more meat if we wanted it. Dave usually also has prawns as a snack. I make a bowl full of fresh fruit salad each morning which consists of one of everything in the fruit bowl usually apple, orange, banana, pear, grapes, kiwi fruit and sometimes melon.

On a red day the choice of vegetables is more limited as potatoes, parsnips, peas, sweetcorn and some others can only be taken as healthy extras or syns.

On a green day we would start with cereals as a healthy extra with milk from our allowance and a banana.

Lunch could be a shepherd's pie made with Quorn, lots of vegetables and topped with potato. Incidentally this could be done on a red day with a topping of mashed swede. Pudding would be our jelly and Muller Light as usual!

Evening meal might be jacket potatoes with low fat cottage cheese or maybe chips made by cooking parboiled potatoes sprayed with Fry Light in the oven. We would either have eggs with the chips or maybe a dip made from low fat fromage frais. Again pudding would be jelly and Muller Light - you can see that we like that can't you.

Again I make a bowl of fruit salad and we snack on this and fruit.

The menus that I have quoted are just examples and we do eat a good varied diet.

You choose the amount of syns that you will allow yourself each day. I am trying to keep to 10 or below and Dave is trying to keep to 15 - 20. Examples of syns are a glass of wine is 5 syns, a mini Babybel Light is 2 syns, a Cadburys Wispa bar is 11 syns, a crème egg is 8.5 syns and 10 salted peanuts is 4 syns. This gives you just a bit of an idea how the syns work.

Having looked at the eating plan it is clear to see that it is a low fat diet made up of plenty of fruit and vegetables. You can eat as much of the free food each day as you want. For example on a red day you could eat a whole chicken or two if you wanted to. On a green day you could have two or three large jacket potatoes (providing you don't ladle the butter on!!!!).

We have been following the plan for just over a week and Dave has lost 6.5 pounds and I have lost 2.5 pounds. Dave's higher eight loss is due to the fact that even walking about is good exercise for him whilst his foot is all bandaged up and his body is also using a lot of calories in repairing his wound. My weight loss is less because I am doing less exercise than I would normally do but I shall be doing something about this.

Exercise is another key part of the diet. It doesn't have to be 3 hours in the gym but just walking more or using the stairs instead of the lift will make a difference. As with any weight loss programme the trick is to expend more calories than you are taking in, and providing you are eating healthily this will result in weight loss in almost every case.

So there you are, that's a feel for our eating plan (I don't really like to call it a diet as such) and we both feel healthier already.

My personal high has been to take my blood sugar and get a near normal reading of 5 before lunch and this was the best treading that I had taken since September 2007! Yes!

Summary: We feel better already