Am I eating too much?

[Nigel g]

Hi I am observing the rules of the sw extra easy diet. However my girlfriend is concerned that I am eating too much of the stuff I am allowed to eat without control of portion sizes such as rice, pasta, potatoes. If I make a dish that is syn free I will also eat lots and lots of it. As the portion sizes are big my gf thinks I will still be in the habbit of eating big portions of food. This she says will not help my diet control in the long term. What do you think.
Is it ok to eat as much as you like??

 

[Mummy_Helen]

Are you eating until you are satisfied? Or eating just for the sake of it because it's free? If you are eating until you are satisfied then it shouldn't affect your losses, providing that 1/3 of the plate is superfree. If you're eating for the sake of it because it's free, thne eventually it could affect your losses.

I tend to make huge portions, but since my stomach seems to have 'shrunk' I'm finding they aren't as big as what they were when I first started.

 

[CAPRICORN]

Hi there

The easy way I would answer that would be that I use the distinction between eating as much as you need and eating as much as you want ... quite often they are very different things.
How about putting out a smaller portion and telling yourself that if you are still hungry 20mins after you have finished eating -THEN you will get some more.. You may suprise yourself
Best of luck

 

[Derbynanny]

If you are doing EE and observing the rule of 1/3 plate of superfree food then you will still lose.

I have a very large appetite but as long as i follow the plan 100% i lose weight.

Teresa

 

[eternity]

I think that your Gf is right in that you should only be eating until you're full, not stuffed. It's not a 'eat as much as you like' plan. It's a 'eat until you are full' plan.
Even though food is free you shouldn't overeat. You can always have more if you need to.

 

[Maximus]

I have to sympathise with Nigel - it's all ok saying foods are free, even superfree, and to fill up on them etc. but i still think there should be some guidlines as to what "average portions" are.

I think it would be easy to fall into the "it's all free" trap.

 

[Nigel g]

Hi, i spoke to our club leader. I asked her if eating as much as i want of the free foods is ok, or, if ,as some suggest it's counter productive to the diet.
She disagreed with that point of view and her advice is eat as much free as you like. case closed.

 

[Twizzle]

Our cons also says you can eat as much as you like of free foods, as long as you have the equivalent 1/3 superfree!

 

[Nigel g]

Our cons also says you can eat as much as you like of free foods, as long as you have the equivalent 1/3 superfree!

ooops yes she said that to me too. I think i eat more veg and fruit than anything else.
By the way how do you get your slimming world stickers into your profile signature. I can't seem to find out by myself.

 

[hatwell]

Eating until you're full rather than stuffed is probably a good rule to aim for in general but when you're just getting started with SW it's best to just have as much as you want as long as you're still on plan so that you don't feel like you're depriving yourself.

Also, once you're in the mindset that you can have as much as you want as long as you stick to plan you may eat less, because you know that if you wanted you could have more, so you don't need to worry - if that makes sense!

I do enjoy looking at a pot of soup or a big stirfry and thinking "I could eat the lot if I wanted to", but I don't always actually do it (sometimes I do though...)

 

[fillymum]

I work on the eat until I am full theory and have lost 60lbs since February/March so I think that says a lot.

However I do eat more vegetables than anything else and for me to have a meal of just super foods is not unusual. It is not planned that way, I just like them.

I think if you have smaller portions and feel even vaguely hungry you are more likely to go off plan.

 

[IanH]

They key words that most people forget (and this goes for consultants too) is "in moderation". Or, in plainer terms - till you are no longer hungry.

At the end of the day, Food Optimising is like most other diets - if your calories in is less then the calories you use, you will loose weight - Slimming World just takes the hard work out of it for you and gives us free foods, etc.

Technically - if i wanted to - I could eat a pack of pasta a day - am I going to loose weight doing so? For a while, probably, but it will slow down and stop eventually.

That said - I still ahve a huge appetite, i look at my plate and think "i can't really eat all that" even now. But when I think back - my portions are in fact a lot smaller then they used to be when I started 23 months ago. I now longer am having alot of the syn-free/low-syn snacks between meals that I was eating when i started. and my daily syns - tend ot average around 7 a day. Was any of this a concicous decision? Nope. It's just how my body/appetite has adjusted over time.


.

 

[Sparky67]

I think that SW is the most un-diet like diet I have found and I think a lot of its success is in the psychology - by having unlimited free foods (for me at least) there isn't any danger of "running out" of food (either points or cals etc), and knowing you could eat the whole lot means that (again for me) I find I don't need to.

I think that you do need to use a modicum of common sense with it, and if you are eating packets and packets of pasta, 10's of Mullerlights etc every day you're probably not going to have much weight loss. But if you follow the rules, you should naturally be eating much less (cal wise) because it is mainly low fat, low cal stuff.

I eat quite a bit, but sometimes I don't actually eat enough calorie wise, because it is healthy food, and because I am quite big still I need more calories or it is too low. As you are a man, you would also need to be eating slightly more calories, so you might need a bit bigger potato, or extra rice.

The main thing is if you are losing? If you are then you can't be overeating?

And as others have said, try to get used to listening to your body - stop when you are full and don't eat just because it's free.

 

[Nigel g]

Thanks Sparky that's sound advice. I am following the common sense approach and all is well so far.