Slimming World Secrets

A demon weight gain despite being angelic

Thanks body! Yep, it’s another one of THOSE weeks – where you’re absolutely angelic, you do everything right and then the scales reward all your hard work with a weight gain.

Aaaaaaaargh! Now I know it’s only a ½lb weight gain – and I know that, so long as I stay on plan, there’s a good chance that I’ll “see it on the scales next week”. But it’s still really annoying. I mean, look at my stats:

My week

• Average Syns per day: 9.1
• Average Speed foods per day: 13.9
• SP days: 2
• Body Magic days: 5
• Result: +½lb
• Total loss: -4st 6lbs

An insane amount of Speed foods spread across every meal, plenty of exercise, a couple of SP days and an Archangel Gabriellic average of 9.1 Syns per day – even more remarkable when you factor in the Shiraz I quaffed (it’s like drinking but you spill more – Terry Pratchett) on Saturday night.

I was just ½lb away from my 4½st award, and so I worked extra hard to make sure I nailed it. But my body says naaaah, not this week Andie Pandie. So that feeling of getting a brand new award (not a regained one) for the first time in four years is going to have to wait at least another week.

I was thoroughly grumpy with my weight gain at the start of group tonight on Zoom but, as always, my amazing consultant Jackie, along with all the members, soon picked me up.

Wot no layered learning?

We took a break from layered learning this week, which was nice because I didn’t have to take so many notes to update the blog.

Jackie (super-consultant – she of Happy Post fame) said she wanted to hear us talk as we’d had less of an opportunity to do so in recent weeks due to the layered learning. So we postponed week five (The One With The Body Magic) to next week.

And that worked great because I’ve been struggling a little of late. I guess it’s easy to overlook members who are losing weight every week – but sometimes even they have a wobble.

So, even though I’d had four consecutive losses until this week, the last three were only ½lb ones. I appreciate that the losses are smaller the closer you get to Target – and the fact that I’ve started drinking alcohol again after a three-month break will have an impact, too.

But this week’s weight gain means a grand total of 1lb lost in four weigh-ins – and that is not what want I want when I’m working so hard to keep my Syns within range, eat plenty of Speed foods and do exercise for at least half an hour five or six days a week.

So I asked: what am I doing wrong? And…

What more can I do?

And the answer was: not a lot! After years of just playing with the plan and having good weeks and bad weeks, I’m finally in a really good place where I follow it to the letter. I’ve even delved into the world of C and F (Calcium and Fibre) foods, and make sure I eat plenty of them pretty much daily.

Anything I can do that will give me the slightest edge I do. And I certainly don’t want to drift into the world of calorie counting, like so many people on Instagram are. I’ve just unfollowed another one tonight.

How can you build up a following of thousands of Slimming World followers over several years and then just abandon them – and the plan? You OWE Slimming World for all those followers and, if you ask me, you shouldn’t just ditch it like you would an old car for a newer model. Traitors!

Anyway, I digress. Here’s my Instagram feed, by the way. Feel free to follow – there’s not a calorie in sight (and never will be)!

Drinking water to lose weight

One suggestion to help me from one of the members was about drinking plenty of water – and I know this is important because I heard Claire from the Slimming World Podcast say it had really helped her, in one of the most recent episodes.

I’m not really one for drinking water on its own unless I’m in a hot country, and then I can gulp litres of it every day. But in Blighty? Nah!

I drink loads of tea and coffee and thought that would be OK. After all, it’s mainly made up of water, right? Even the milk I add to it is mainly water.

But possibly not… one of our awesome Target members, Nicola, suggested downloading an app called Water Balance (available here for Anroid and here for Apple users).

Apparently, every time you have a drink, you tell the app what you’ve had – and then it tells you how hydrated your body is. Hydration is great for weight loss, so if you drink plenty of water, it helps.

Which confuses me, because surely a pint of water weighs a pound, right? I dunno, I need to read up on the science. Can this turn my weight gain status back into a loss? I’ll report back next week.

Anyway, if you tell the app that you’ve been drinking water on its own or with added squash (and that’s fine by me) you get all the glory from the app. If you inputs teas and coffees, less so. And alcohol – forget it. Which explains why your mouth is so dry and you feel so dehydrated after a night on the beer.

What else can I do?

Well, I could stop drinking permanently, but I’m not going to. I look forward to a cheeky glass or two of beer or wine with my friends on a Saturday, and I don’t see any reason to remove that joy from my life.

I’ve now worked out how to limit my intake, how to choose lower-Syn drinks and how to plan for potential pitfalls, such as preparing low-Syn or Syn-free food to warm up for when I inevitably get the munchies. My days as a regular at the town’s late-night pizza and kebab shop are long gone.

I can increase my Body Magic. I’ve been doing Lorraine Carr’s step aerobics classes ever since last June (they’re still on the members’ website) but I’ve only been doing them once a week or so for the past few weeks.

So I’ll start to increase the amount of times I do my workout. I did it last night and tonight, so I’m back in the zone already.

Then there’s this:

The Fast Forward Plan

Described as a “straightjacket for slimmers” by some and “beyond the last resort” by Jackie, this is completely different to the Slimming World Extra Easy plan – the one we all know and love.

Forget Healthy Extras and forget Syns – this is all about “units”. You get so many depending on your weight and so many depending on how much activity (exercise) you’ve done.

Then you need to apply these units to small portions of healthy food. There are salad units and vegetable units as well. It all sounds a tad complicated, but Jackie’s going to lend me her booklet about it, so I’ll have a read.

I was going to have a go at this anyway because I thought it would make an interesting post for this website. But I really want to wait until I’m closer to Target and REALLY struggling before I take on this challenge.

It sounds like a proper, old-fashioned, deprive-yourself DIET! But I’ve done one of these before when I did the old Cabbage Soup Diet, so I don’t see why I can’t do it again.

I lost 10lb in a week doing that (though I was far heavier then than I am now). One of Jackie’s members lost 9lb in a week doing Fast Forward. A weight gain, it appears, but would be all but impossible.

So I’ll probably give it another month or so and then give it a blast as one final push to get to Target, especially if I’m still struggling to see the losses I want by then.

In the meantime, it’s plenty more water for me, and a bit more pulse-raising Body Magic. Fingers crossed I’ll get that 4½st award next week. Wish me luck!