Bit confused about some aspects of the plan...

-Tally-

Silver Member
Some things just aren't making sense for me and wondered if others have thought the same in the past or if I'm just looking into it too much and not enjoying the plan as I should.

Firstly the fruit thing...can't mash fruit otherwise you have to syn it. So if I mash up a banana I have to syn it 4.5syns but if I chop it and then chew it, it's free. Surely the food is mashed when I chew? So what's the difference between my fork mashing it and my teeth mashing it?

Secondly...free food versus calories and syns. It doesn't seem to add up. For example a tom&herb pasta n sauce is 0 syns but nearly 500kcals for a full packet. So with respect to the free food allowance, I could have 5 of these a day if I wanted to and still have my syns and HEX's too. Ok, so I wouldn't, but I could. That's over 2500 calories just for the free food pasta. Even 2 of them, which is easily doable is an extra 1000 calories. You're not gonna lose weight eating all that, or are you?

I know we don't count calories at SW, and I'm not for my own purposes, just wondering I suppose.
 
You know i have wondered this, i think with sw its a psychological effect as well as a nutrition one. The plan encourages you to be active, its also low in fat and i would say very balanced. But as you said yourself you wouldnt eat 5 of them. I think by saying you can eat what you wish to a degree and also the support, it makes you more satisfied with your meal as you dont enter, that guilt, oh bugger it i;ve messed the diet up, binge circle. If that makes any sense and if it doesnt i apologize ^_^. For now i'm going to have faith in the plan and follow it as i have been 100%
 
It does doesn't it! Before I would think nothing of having 10 bags of crisps a day, maybe 8 slices of bread and then all my meals too. Urgh...
 
I think it would be very unlikely for someone to eat that many pasta n sauces in a day. Because if you are following the advice of a 1/3 superfree (fruit or unstarchy veg) with every meal that would be virtually impossible unless you wanted to be busted at the seams lol.

However that said, I do think that these type of items are not particular healthy and should be used with caution, like you have pointed out you only need to look at the calories and ingredients to get the shock of your life and it is so quick to make up your own pasta with fresh vegetables etc which will taste 10x better.

At the end of the day if you consume more than your body physically needs then you won't lose weight or at worse may gain. The 1/3 superfree rule helps control your carb and protein portions without the need for any calorie counting etc. Which means your plate is automatically balanced out.

As for the fruit thing. Fruit becomes syns if it is not eaten in it's raw form. So mashing, blending, cooking or juicing turns the fruit into syns.

Just think of a whole piece of fruit and how long it takes to eat it, now think about how many piece of fruit would go into a smoothie, the smoothie would be finished quicker than it took you to eat that one piece of fruit. Although the calories etc don't change when a piece of fruit is blended or cooked etc, the density does. Not to mention that chewing helps with digestion.
 
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I feel like i;ve been eating a lot but when i;ve overlooked my food diary for the day i realise what i;ve eaten which is making the difference. As most of it is not calorie dense, theres no fat(aside from my HEX dairy choices), im eating far better then ever and being a good vegetarian and not eating crap. Mydigestive processes are taking a beating but alas scan bran as one of my HEX's today lol
 
I get what you are saying here for example if I chose to have a banana sandwich I could cut the banana into slices and have it free or mash it and pay syns....doesn't really make sense when you think of it like that but you know what...it works so I just follow it and have faith :)
 
I get what you are saying here for example if I chose to have a banana sandwich I could cut the banana into slices and have it free or mash it and pay syns....doesn't really make sense when you think of it like that but you know what...it works so I just follow it and have faith :)


Yeah, that's what I mean! I understand the concept when explaining the smoothie thing as you could be using 10 pieces of fruit for one smoothie but you'd never eat that many pieces in one go. But the mashing one banana instead of slicing it doesn't make sense in the singular but would of course if there were many pieces.
 
With the banana thing it wouldn't make any difference if you mashed it on your bread or sliced it - you'd still only have the one banana on it. I think they try to simplify it by saying what they say about fruit as a lot of fruits you would eat loads more if you broke them down - stewed plums for instance. I think with cooking fruit too it does something with converting the sugar blah blah which makes a difference - something scientific.

I have fond memories of our pudding on a Saturday night being mashed bananas mixed with sugar and evaporated milk - yummy!!!
 
You use energy to chew and bite a banana, and you body uses more energy and takes longer to break down and digest it rather than if it were already mashed. The longer your stomach takes to break down food, the longer the period that energy is being released into your body and the more likely you are to be kept satisfied.

There's a reason that sw has set these rules and it is for our beneft, so if yoi choose to ignore them do bear in mind that you're not following the plan as it was intended.
 
Not ignoring them at all, am 100% so far, was just thinking out loud really, there must be a method behind the madness eh otherwise it wouldn't work so well :D
 
TheMissus said:
Not ignoring them at all, am 100% so far, was just thinking out loud really, there must be a method behind the madness eh otherwise it wouldn't work so well :D

Wasn't directing that last bit at anyone in particular, I just see very often people saying things like 'well i do it and it works for me' etc and it's always best to remind people that it's not how the plan works.

I've been guilty of it myself, tweaking the plan but then wondering why it wasn't working a few weeks down the line!
 
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