Common SW misconceptions put right.

Jennyonaplate

Gold Member
Just thought i'd put in one place a lot of the same points and questions that have been made recently. Feel free to add more!

Cutting back on syns won't always help boost your losses. Many people who increase their syns to 15 a day then have greater losses. Syns are an important part of the plan and cutting them out is not a short-cut to target.

Cooking/mashing fruit is not ok (even if you were only going to eat one anyway). It's not just about the one piece of fruit you were going to eat, it's also how it fills you up and affects your metabolism and appetite later in the day.

Too much fruit will not slow your losses. The official line from SW is that fruit can be enjoyed as a free food, provided you stop eating when you are full.

The 1/3 superfree food is important and not optional on EE. The SW guidance says that you must fill 1/3 of your plate with superfree, not that it's better if you do, or you'll have better losses if you do - the 1/3 superfree is an integral part of the EE plan and is the key to making it work.

Only the Healthy Extras listed on the website and in the book are allowed. If it's not listed then it doesn't have enough nutrients and fibre to be considered a healthy extra, so having something similar is not the same as having a healthy extra, and should therefore be synned.

Muscle does not weigh more than fat, and you cannot build muscle after a few workouts. It takes a very long time, and intensive weight lifting workouts to build muscle, so if you STS or have a small gain after starting exercise it will likely be water assisting the muscle repair and not weight gain. Also, 1lb of fat weighs the same as 1lb of muscle.

Everyone does not have big losses in their first week. A lot of people do, but a lot of people also start slowly, it bears no relation to their long term success of the plan, as things usually balance out over the following few weeks.

STS for a few weeks does not mean the plan isn't working. Our weight fluctuates naturally anyway, so sometimes it can take a couple of weeks for the scales to show a loss. It takes 3500 calories EXTRA a week to gain 1lb of fat, so if you've been good and still sts or gained, stick with the plan as it will show sooner or later.

Losing weight quickly does not mean it goes back on quicker. It doesn't matter how fast you lose weight, or what diet you follow, the only way weight returns is if you consume more calories than you burn off, so returning to the eating habits that made you gain weight before, will do exactly the same again.
 
nicely said ^_^. Though the syns thing if i can work them into a meal then so be it but i'm not going to use it for the sake of using it when i dont need to. The most i;ve used in a day was 10 and that was yesterday and today has been 5 and i know 5-15 is reasonable.
 
Free foods are not completely unlimited! You can't eat Mugshots and Muller Lights all day every day, and then be surprised to STS. I'm putting this one up as it seems apt, while I sit trying to force down the last few mouthfuls of my MAHUSIVE pasta carbonara. You still have to exercise portion control, it's just down to your own judgement of when you are 'full' rather than having amounts and weights set out by the plan.
 
This should be sticky.....very helpful :D
 
Great thread - I've been guilty of saying that mashing a banana wont make a difference but basically - theres the plan, it works if you follow it properly. I'm sure the people at SW dont put these rules in place just to pee us off!!
 
Great thread - I've been guilty of saying that mashing a banana wont make a difference but basically - theres the plan, it works if you follow it properly. I'm sure the people at SW dont put these rules in place just to pee us off!!

Lol yes. That should be a rule too!

SW do not make rules up just to pee us off. If your favourite food is high syn or not a healthy extra, or not a free food, it's for a reason other than to annoy you.
 
'I don't need to weigh or measure my healthy extras'.....Always measure/weigh your Healthy Extras.
It's so easy to go over what you're allowed as a healthy extra when you start to guess it because you are used to it. Added up every day over the week makes a difference. I always measure and weigh my milk & cheese even though i could guess it right i still do it.
 
I can eat as much as i like.
Actually you can't. You eat your meals and snack on veg/fruit if you have to. You cant eat free foods for the whole day and wonder why you aren't loosing or putting on! There is some portion control with sw, always fill your plate with lots of veg to fill you up and get used to not having loads of free food in your plate.
I always have a massive salad, or LOADS of veg with my dinner and not a big amount of free food and i feel full. People assume on sw you spend the whole day eating mountains of pasta and a whole chicken lol

Great thread by the way, should be a sticky :D
 
The one about extra easy and the 1/3 rule is very relevant. Lots of people at my group do extra easy because it means they eat what they want - in the main.

Not many of them eat the 1/3 as it is not their nosh of choice;)
 
Fab post, thank you - as a newbie these 'rules' will become my mantras!
 
I find this thread very helpfull , thanks ladies x
 
I'm sorry in advance for this rant, but this really annoys me, and I need to set it straight:

"Muscle does not weigh more than fat, 1lb of fat weighs the same as 1lb of muscle"

That's like saying nothing weighs more than anything else. Seriously? OFCOURSE 1lb of muscle will weight the same as 1lb of fat. That's a weight measurement and not a fair comparison. 1lb of feathers will weigh the same as 1lb of steel, does that mean one isn't heavier than the other?

What it DOES show, however is that less - volumewise - is needed in 1lb of muscle, than with 1lb of fat. If you compared 1 cm3 of muscle with 1cm3 of fat, the muscle WOULD weigh more - try it.

SO, if you loose only 1cm3 (as an example) of fat, and gain only 1cm3 of muscle, you WILL be heavier than you were with the fat (albeit ever so slightly).

Now can we stop with this silly statement that they weigh the same?

Cheers

</rant>
 
I'm sorry in advance for this rant, but this really annoys me, and I need to set it straight:

"Muscle does not weigh more than fat, 1lb of fat weighs the same as 1lb of muscle"

That's like saying nothing weighs more than anything else. Seriously? OFCOURSE 1lb of muscle will weight the same as 1lb of fat. That's a weight measurement and not a fair comparison. 1lb of feathers will weigh the same as 1lb of steel, does that mean one isn't heavier than the other?

What it DOES show, however is that less - volumewise - is needed in 1lb of muscle, than with 1lb of fat. If you compared 1 cm3 of muscle with 1cm3 of fat, the muscle WOULD weigh more - try it.

SO, if you loose only 1cm3 (as an example) of fat, and gain only 1cm3 of muscle, you WILL be heavier than you were with the fat (albeit ever so slightly).

Now can we stop with this silly statement that they weigh the same?

Cheers

</rant>

It's there because too many people say 'muscle weighs more than fat', in response to a gain or STS after exercising.

It's simply a statement of fact in response to an incorrect statement.

Yes it is leaner and that is not disputed, but as the statement also says, it is not easy in the slightest to actually build new muscle.

I know several people who have put gains or STS down to 'muscle weighing more than fat', when actually when they looked back over their week they had tweaked the plan till it only vaguely resembeled the SW plan. So all the statement is there for is for people to realise that exercise isn't going to make you gain weight after a few workouts.
 
It's not a silly statement, Jaffaqueen. Yes, I know what you mean - a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead. The difference is, though, that people don't regularly say that lead is heavier than feather on this forum, whereas people DO say that muscle weighs more that fat on this forum.

Often this is after having done a twenty minute workout DVD and walked the dog. It is highly unlikely that they would have burned fat and replaced it with lean muscle in this situation - why would people go to the bother of doing proper training if a few weeks on SW and a little light movement would do it?!

The people who that point was aimed at will know exactly what Jenny means, it is a common misconception and, pedantry aside, it deserves to stay.
 
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