At the start of summer I did something I never expected I’d do.
I joined Slimming World.
Dun dun dunnnnn!
Now, I’ve never had anything against Slimming World, it’s more that if I as was to do something like this I’d have expected myself to go for Weight Watchers as I’ve done it once before many years ago and it worked. Another reason I’ve never considered joining something like this is that I’m generally very self-motivated or at least, I was.
Anyway, it was a Sunday evening when I found myself feeling frustrated with my lack of weight loss progress this year. I know how to lose weight, I know why I’m not losing weight but my self-motivation just hasn’t been there this year, not consistently enough anyway. I’m fully aware that to make progress with weight loss there needs to be consistency, it’s key. This led me to Googling local Weight Watchers groups but the class wasn’t ‘until Friday. Now, if I get an idea in my head I need to act on it straight away so after a few minutes I found myself planning to go along to Slimming World the following day.
I found the number of the local leader, dropped her a message and at 17:50 made my way over to the group. I’ve been to two different groups within Cambridge (you can weigh in at any once you’ve joined) and the leaders were both lovely. Actually, the whole group were really friendly. The sign-up process was straight forward and I soon found myself sat ready for my first Slimming World session. I found the full session a little long with two littles at home but this was my first time there so I had lots of extra bits to do to get fully signed up. I don’t believe you have to stay for the full sessions although I did for the first few weeks, that was my whole reason for attending – to be held accountable.
The booklets and app are packed full of information for getting started and it wasn’t long before I felt I had a good idea of why and how it all worked. My initial thoughts were that you need to ensure you have time to meal plan as opposed to going into each day with no idea of what you’re going to consume unless you plan on using the Slimming World pre-made meals. I think cooking from scratch is favourable over buying pre-packaged goods according to the books. I’m not sure how they say you can eat as much pasta or rice as you want because I could eat soooo much rice in one sitting, Persian rice will do that to you. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you obviously have to be sensible and mindful.
I’m not worried about my exercise because I’m generally hitting between 12-15 thousand steps a day or I was throughout summer. I should probably take a closer look at this over the coming week. I try to get spinning on my Peloton most days, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. So, when it comes to moving more I’ve got that down but there’s always room for improvement.
NEWSFLASH!
I stopped going to the sessions.
BUT…..I’m keen to go back! Let me tell you more.
It was around the time that the school term restarted. I had a lot going on and it just didn’t work out for me. I even stopped following the plan that was so clearly working. Anyway, one week ago I got back on it because quite frankly I’m done with feeling uncomfortable. I started to follow the Slimming World plan properly and lost 5lbs in one week. I told you, it works.
Will I go back to the groups? Well, I plan on dropping the leader a message tonight to see what the deal is. I’m not sure if you have to pay back payments or just a joining fee again so that is what will help me to make my decisions on returning to the groups. I find that I really need people to hold me accountable else I can easily fall off the tracks so I would like to go back to the groups or even take part online.