Hi Tia and welcome!
I've not been on the diet long either, and this site is really helpful. I'm sure you'll find it useful.
In answer to your questions:
- Have you got all the books? Do you know about free foods, healthy extras etc? If you haven't, you can probably pick them up on eBay. Or just ask lots of questions here.
- Most people start using all their 15 syns a day I think. Then if they don't have great losses, they cut back a bit. To be honest, people vary. Do what's good for you. Personally, I don't have many day-to-day, but then I have a big night out once a week and use quite a few (50-90) up then.
- You have 1 or 2 Healthy Extra A choices per day and 2 Healthy Extra B choices per day. The choices depend on whether you are on a red or green day... but mostly consist of bread, cereal, nuts, cheese, milk etc.
- It's up to you how you mix your red and green days. I started off mostly doing red, now I'm trying to mostly do green. When you get used to things, you can also mix red and green days by doing the 'Mix2Match' plan... but I wouldn't worry about that for now. Get used to the basics of red and green. If you only eat meat a couple of times a week, you might want to do red days only on the days you eat meat. Even then, you can have a little meat on a green day as a healthy extra.
If you don't have the books and want to get started anyway... let us know and I'll try and see if I can find something that summarises the diet properly. I think most people would advise getting hold of the books somehow as a basic minimum though.
You'll see quite a few complicated things about this diet as you go along: superfoods, super-super foods (!), success express, fast forward, Mix2Match... it can seem all very overwhelming at first. Remember that these things are mainly for people who have been on the diet for a while and are slowing down in their weight loss. So don't worry about them at the beginning. My advice would be to get used to free foods, healthy extras and syns.... red days and green days - and go from there. If you can master that, you're 90 per cent of the way there. It's honestly quite straightforward once you get used to it! Have a look at the food diaries at the top of the forums for some ideas.
Good luck with everything, and let us know how you are getting on.
Ste
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