Hi Stef and Welcome, sorry to hear about your partners redundancy. I tried Lipotrim and lasted 6 days so well done you!!!
I do SW myself from home, I have been to classes before (and used to be a consultant) but this time decided that I needed this ti be a lifelong change and I couldn't see myself going to class for the rest of my life so thought I needed to stop pratting about and get on with taking responsibility of what I put in my mouth for my own sake, not just for the threat of the scales each week, but its each to their own I guess.
I think the thing is, £36 a week maybe a lot, but on LT that is all you are spending, I know I spend more than £36 a week on food for me (whether I was on the plan or not!) but I guess you can do it much cheaper.
The basis of SW is around Food optimising, there are 3 steps, free foods which are foods you don't have to weight or measure in anyway and you can eat as much as you like, healthy extras, there are 2 lists A and B and you can have 2 of each each day, the A list is measured amounts of milk and cheese, the B list measured amounts of Fibre rich foods like bread, cereals etc, then there are syns which are basically anything that is not a free food or HE will have a syn value, you can have between 5 and 15 a day.
There are 2 days you can choose Red or Green, you have to stick to either day for 24 hours (you can mix them but if you have never done SW before the best way to start is just by doing red and green days until you get used to the plan before you start with the variants), you can do as many red days in a week as you want, or all green if you prefer or alternate, its up to you. On a red day you can eat unlimited amounts of meat, poultry and fish, on a green day its unlimited rice, pasta, potatoes and pulses.
Thats a very brief overview of the plan, if you have never done it before I would advise going to a group until you get the hang of it but its a great plan, one you can adopt for life as you can fill up on foods you enjoy, you don't feel restricted and most people find they are eating more than they did before
good luck!!