Couple of questions

Hi I'm new to SW, I joined last night. I've been reading this forum for a couple of months and it's been a great help - I feel I know the plan fairly well but I just have a couple of questions,

1. I notice from the food diaries that everyone seems to eat breakfast. I wasn't told you have to have set meals and I've never been one to have breakfast - so does this matter?

2. I've noticed that there has been mention that if you don't eat enough then this can hinder weight loss. Since I've been following the plan I have been eating much smaller portions - which I know is the whole point to eat more filling food so you eat less, but I am a bit concerned that I'm not eating enough. I'm not hungry but at the same time I don't feel full. I just feel somewhere inbetween but don't want to eat more. Is it true that not eating enough can hinder weight loss and if so how much is enough?

Thank you in advance!
Tiggy x

Hiya Tiggy!

I dont normally eat breakfast until about 11am, so I guess you could technically all it bruch, I just always call it lunch in my food diary.

With regard to the amount you eat/dont eat... if you feel hungry inbetween meals, then have some fruit or a muller light. You can eat as much as you want...just not until your sick lol. And it is true, the more (good) food you eat, the more you loose - thats talking from experiance anyway.

Keeping a food diary is always a good idea so you can see what your eating. Its always nice for other people to see it too and give you some advice and/or encouragement.

Hope that helps

Hello and welcome
I am a sw newbie, but an oldie at ww so this is just MY opinion:
So long as you eat your HEX's and syns you should be fine. Really the ideal is to never feel starving hungry or stuffed, you always want to be somewhere inbetween. At least thats what I learned when doing ww, and it makes a lot of sense to me. If you plan your meals ahead, you should be able to make sure you use up all your HEX's and syns, and eat a good healthy balance of free and superfree foods.
Its very important to eat brekkie, it revs up your metabolism for the day ahead, and stops you eating something you shouldn't out of hunger.
Huge amounts of luck with your weightloss journey hon xxx

In regards to point 2 - I would personally eat more fruit, a couple of pieces extra isnt going to do you any harm. I stopped losing when I stopped eating as much so now I try to have 3 square meals and a couple of small snacks a day - mid morning and mid afternoon. If you eat SS foods as snacks then this will hopefully boost your weight loss too

Sorry, I wasn't very helpful about brekkie - perhaps you could half a HEX first thing and the other half a little later? Like half a portion of cereal, or one alpen light - then the other half a little later? I do this if the kids wake me up very early.

Just to add to what has already been said, not having breakfast is just another habit that you have got into, in the same way as overeating or making poor food choices. And in the same was as these can be overcome so can breakfasting. If you commit to it and do it regularly then breakfast will become a new habit. Do you eat breakfast if you're on holiday and someone else is preparing it? Well then!

wow thanks for the quick replies! I guess if I have to eat something in the morning I could eat something small mid morning, and gradually make it earlier! I've never eaten breakfast, not even if I'm on holiday or at friends/the in laws - at most I have a glass of fruit juice (which I'm not wasting my syns on now!) I suppose a piece of fruit would be easy to start with.

Hun thats the best option for the moment, start slowly and work your way up to a full breakfast. A piece of fruit is better than nothing and should help kickstart your metabolism for the day. Its a healthy option too

I guess we are all different. I almost never eat breakfast, and when I do it's only muller light and some fruit.
I find if I do eat breakfast I am hungry all day, and am inclined to want to nibble, but if I don't I am just fine.
I tend to only eat one meal a day, as I only eat when I am hungry, and that is enough for me.
I have lost more eating like this, than I did when I had 3 meals, even when they were free. However, what works for me won't work for everyone.

Nowt wrong with grabbing a nana and having a cuppa tea to kick you off in the morning. I was NEVER a brekkie person. I would eat nothing all day til about 12 noon, then have crisps and a chocolate bar, then have lunch of a big fat white bread sandwich with cheese/chicken/bacon and mayo and more crisps at one o clock, then snack on more crisps in the afternoon and have takeaway when i got in 'starving' at about 7pm.

Now I eat breakfast, almost NEVER snack mid-morning, and if i do it's on a banana, yogurt or alpen bar, and have a sensible lunch and dinner.

it all works out once you get used to what you are and are not supposed to be eating, and the HEBs kinda force you into having breakfast eventually, so just embrace it and enjoy it!

malaika said:

I guess we are all different. I almost never eat breakfast, and when I do it's only muller light and some fruit.
I find if I do eat breakfast I am hungry all day, and am inclined to want to nibble, but if I don't I am just fine.
I tend to only eat one meal a day, as I only eat when I am hungry, and that is enough for me.
I have lost more eating like this, than I did when I had 3 meals, even when they were free. However, what works for me won't work for everyone.

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Gosh our metabolisms and habits are so similar. I always snack if I have breakfast but mange fine if I don't xx

I think my metabolism is more like yours malaika and rosie. Once I have eaten for the first time, I will feel peckish (pre SW) a few hours later and this would continue everytime I ate. However there have been many days where I haven't eaten until 6pm, and I haven't realised because I haven't felt hungry and have been too busy to realise the time/that I haven't eaten.

I think the reason I have become overweight is because I used to be underweight as a child, and my parents gave up with trying to get me to eat properly, and were just happy for me to eat something, so I've developed a taste for sugary foods. If I follow slimming world and cut these out and replace them with proper meals with lots of super foods I should loose weight.

Thanks for all your opinions.