My Slimming World journey so far

As you may know, at the beginning of this year I decided to have a go at Slimming World, which you can find here. They very kindly gave me a four-week trial, and I thought I would let you know how I’ve been getting on and what a typical day of food looks like for me.

So, for breakfast I always have some orange juice and Cornflakes with coconut milk.

If I’m at college, I tend to have a gluten free cereal bar at about 11am, but if I’m just at home I don’t eat anything between breakfast and lunch.

Then we come to lunch time, which I found the most difficult to work out on the Slimming World plan. I have a Fortisip, which is prescribed by my doctor because I struggle to eat enough to nourish me. Depending on how I’m feeling, I might have a little bit of chocolate afterwards, but it depends on what my nausea and stomach pain is like.

In the afternoon I like to have a cup of tea and a bowl of popcorn.

Then for dinner, I will have something like a Jacket Potato, although I struggle to eat the whole thing, so usually end up having about half. Another day, I’ve also had a go at one of the recipes from my Deliciously Ella book, which was really nice.

If I’m really honest, I haven’t been counting syns like you should on Slimming World because I’ve struggled to fit it around my extremely restrictive diet. Since starting Slimming World my digestive problems have got worse, which has meant my appetite has completely gone and I’m struggling to eat enough to keep me going. I have lost some weight, but I’m not sure I can put it down to following the Slimming World plan unfortunately because I’m struggling to eat enough as it is. Saying that, reading all the Slimming World materials has made me more conscious of what I’m putting in my body, so rather than just reaching for a cake or biscuit, I am more mindful about nourishing myself with healthy foods.

Unfortunately I’ve also found that it has triggered my eating disorder rather more than I had hoped. The biggest problem is that, when my eating disorder was really bad, I was weighing out everything I ate and it became an obsession. I think having to weigh out foods on the Slimming World plan has fed into those old ideas I held around food and I have felt myself slipping back into eating disorder behaviours, which is obviously something I need to be really careful about. Because of this, I have stopped weighing things out before it got any worse, and instead I just try to make a healthy judgement about what I think my body needs.

I think it would be wrong of me to discuss exactly what I’ve lost, but I’m definitely happy with the way things are going. However, after discussing my weight loss with medical professionals, they are rather concerned about the prospect of me losing weight, so I think, because of this, perhaps Slimming World isn’t the right thing for me to be doing. Yes, I would still like to lose some more weight, and I will definitely be using what I’ve learnt from my Slimming World experience to help me plan my meals, but I also have to put my health and mental wellbeing first and work with my medical team. It’s not easy – I’m desperate to lose weight, but I don’t know how much of that is healthy and how much is my eating disorder getting stronger again. So I think I need to try and focus on getting enough nourishment to keep me as healthy as possible and hopefully by doing that I can reach a healthy weight that I can feel comfortable with.

Have you given Slimming World a try? I’d love to hear about your experiences

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