Slimming World Secrets

What is Slimmer of the Week – and how can I win?

Slimming World members like me who chase all the many and varied shinies and certificates are only too familiar with the Slimmer of the Week award.

After all, it’s the only award almost guaranteed to be presented at the end of every group meeting, in church halls and village function rooms across the land – apart from on those rare occasions when no-one qualifies.

How do you qualify for Slimmer of the Week?

In plain terms, the Slimmer of the Week title goes to the group member who’s lost the most amount of weight that week.

However, it’s not that simple. First, you need to have maintained or had a loss the previous week in order to be considered.

If you’ve had so much as a ½lb gain, you’re out of the running, which is really annoying if you then go on to have a big loss the following week, and whoever wins has lost 1lb or so!

Slimmers who missed their weigh-in the previous week are also out of contention, and new members, who generally come in with a monster loss in their first week (mine was -8lbs) are likewise disqualified.

When I first joined in 2014, there was another rule that you had to stay to group in order to qualify – but this appears to have gone by the wayside, at least in my group. Your consultant’s ways and means may vary.

So, in a nutshell, to win Slimmer of the Week, you need to have lost or maintained the previous week – and then lost the most amount of weight this current week. If two or more people have lost the same amount of weight, they are all named Slimmers of the Week.

So what does Slimmer of the Week win?

Well, apart from a round of applause from everyone else in group – and the dying adulation of your other half, if you have one, when you return home – there are goodies galore!

The first thing is your sticker, or “shiny” as Slimming World regulars call it. This is resplendent in golden yellow with a little star, the Slimming World logo and your Slimmer of the Week title. I still get a buzz when I receive one for my book, even seven years after starting Slimming World.

Then, the all-important certificate. Again, beautifully designed in golden yellow with cascades of stars (for the star that you are), this contains fields for your name, your consultant’s name and the date, plus the message, “Congratulations, a fabulous achievement”.

If, like me, you keep a log of your weigh-in results on the Slimming World app (Android or Apple), or Lifeline Online website, you’ll get a little digital badge, too. That one looks like this:

Some groups also award fridge magnets for Slimmer of the Week, but this all depends on your consultant, as they have to buy them (they get the stickers and certificates for free from the Sparkly Castle).

I have a few of these but, to be honest, the certificates and shinies mean far more to me – and I can’t put any fridge magnets on my fridge anyway, as there’s a ruddy great MDF panel over the front of it!

The Slimmer of the Week Fruit Basket

The final “prize” is the stuff of Slimming World folklore and legend – the contents of the Slimmer of the Week Fruit Basket. This is a concept that brings out the best and the worst in humankind.

The idea is that each member takes along an item of Free or low-Syn food, such as a piece of fruit or a tin of baked beans. All the items go in the basket and are then won by the Slimmer of the Week (or shared if there are multiple winners).

Usually, this is fine. I’ve won some lovely goodies over the years – everything from allotment-grown vegetables to tins of premium pulses.

Sometimes, however, you might end up with the plum that’s been sitting in the fruit bowl on a sunny windowsill for a fortnight, or the apple that’s so far gone it’s turned to Scrumpy.

Don’t be a Slimming World Scrooge!

Sometimes (and this is definitely not the case with my group) most members simply don’t bother to take anything along, and the basket sits there virtually empty. That said, I once weighed in at another group where the basket contains dozens of fresh foods – it looked like an offering from a harvest festival. So, it really does depend on your group and the generosity of its members.

So, that in a nutshell is Slimmer of the Week. I don’t win it too often these days – as I approach Target, the big losses are harder to come by. But, when I first started, I remember once winning it five weeks out of six – and it really spurred me on to do well.

As our consultant tells us at the end of each group meeting: “Have a good week.” And then, who knows, the next Slimmer of the Week could be you.