Book Q&A Page Query

[Bobber]

Hi,

Reading my book again, and got confused and unsure when I read the Q&A page.
Can anyone confirm the answer in the question that asks will I lose weight if I don't eat speed foods.
The answer says "you might".
On thinking about this, I'm reading this as all the free food we are told to eat (the mainstay of our plan), will actually do us no good in our weight loss.

Anyone else see it this way too? I'm kinda confused by this. And I must admit, rather unhappy to read that the free food is really not useful after all.

If this is the case, why not be honest, change the plan and say that you must focus on speed food and only have limited other foods (the free foods are not really unlimited then, after all).

Or would that make this plan, too much of an actual DIET plan after all?

 

[blue*smartie]

I must admit I don't have the up to date literature, but I have been doing SW for a long time.

My understanding is this, SW is a diet just like any other. To lose weight you need fewer calories than you use. SW limits calories by giving us lists of free foods and speed foods. Free foods generally have more calories than speed foods, so do help us limit calories we are advised to have portion of our plate as speed.

The 'might' (I'm guessing) is due to peoples starting weight and activity levels. When I started at 17+ stone, I didn't need to follow the 1/3 rule too strictly. But as time went on, and I was lighter, I did. The same I guess would apply for people with high activity levels.

The 1/3 speed, is merely a tool to help you keep calorie consumption under what you need, whilst also helping satiety levels. You don't then need to weigh, track, plan, count and measure making it (for me) less of a diet and more of a healthy eating plan

 

[sarahmuffin]

Free foods are exactly that - free. You can eat them to your hearts content if you really want. However if you're gorging on a whole roast chicken, 5kg of chips and 5 bags of pasta a day then it's pretty clear you're probably not going to lose weight whether you eat an apple on top of that or not.

Speed foods are there at meal times for portion control, the idea is you replace 1/3 of a plate of free food with speed foods. For example if you were to have a roast dinner, rather than a plate piled in meat and potatoes with a handful of veg on top you'd cut down on the meat & potatoes and replace it with the speed veg. Ultimately speed foods keep your calorie intake down, although slimming world doesn't technically "count calories" it's still a calorie controlled plan, within reason.

Now if you aren't a big eater and don't particularly eat a lot of free foods anyway, then eating speed foods for the sake of it probably isn't going to help your weightloss. On the other hand if you are "picker" then you'll probably find you need to choose speed foods over free foods in order to get the weight off.

The 'might' is down to the fact that everyone is different. A lot of people find as they get closer to target they struggle and have to up their speed intake, others find if they eat too much speed foods they don't lose, you just have to find your own way of doing things.

I hope this helps