My Slim Fast diet
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PixieKazza
Posts: 48 Member
I really want to lose the 1/2 stone I've put on over lockdown, plus the 1/2 stone I was trying to lose before. 1st altogether to get back to a sensible weight for my height, plus fit into my nice clothes again!
I have lost weight before following a strict calorie controlled, deeply joyless diet and exercise plan. I am short so anything over 1500cal per day if I'm not moving much will put weight on me. I am also getting older so it's harder to lose now :-(.
As the days are getting warmer and lighter, I'm hoping to get out more for exercise and start yoga and youtube fitness sessions again. I'm really struggling to be motivated, as I think a lot of people at the mo! When I worked from the office I'd walk round much more in the day, plus a lunchtime walk and an evening walk if the weather was ok. Working from home, I don't move so much, plus we manage a short walk at lunch. Nowhere near as much as before! My partner doesn't help as he snacks a lot and isn't bothered about his perfectly fine weight. He's got no motivation to do longer walks more regularly. I need to sort myself out and get some will power to resist chocolate and booze!
So the point of the ramble is background really. I'm going to do Slim Fast as a jumpstart to trying to get back to 'normal'. The structure will hopefully keep me on track, I won't have to calorie count every meal and the shakes are nice and quick to make. I do understand healthy eating, I'm just going to try a different approach to losing the lockdown lard. I don't think it'll be an easy option, but hopefully the weight will start to shift and I'll get some motivation and focus back :-)
Would love to hear from anyone else doing Slim Fast to find out how you're finding it :-)
I have lost weight before following a strict calorie controlled, deeply joyless diet and exercise plan. I am short so anything over 1500cal per day if I'm not moving much will put weight on me. I am also getting older so it's harder to lose now :-(.
As the days are getting warmer and lighter, I'm hoping to get out more for exercise and start yoga and youtube fitness sessions again. I'm really struggling to be motivated, as I think a lot of people at the mo! When I worked from the office I'd walk round much more in the day, plus a lunchtime walk and an evening walk if the weather was ok. Working from home, I don't move so much, plus we manage a short walk at lunch. Nowhere near as much as before! My partner doesn't help as he snacks a lot and isn't bothered about his perfectly fine weight. He's got no motivation to do longer walks more regularly. I need to sort myself out and get some will power to resist chocolate and booze!
So the point of the ramble is background really. I'm going to do Slim Fast as a jumpstart to trying to get back to 'normal'. The structure will hopefully keep me on track, I won't have to calorie count every meal and the shakes are nice and quick to make. I do understand healthy eating, I'm just going to try a different approach to losing the lockdown lard. I don't think it'll be an easy option, but hopefully the weight will start to shift and I'll get some motivation and focus back :-)
Would love to hear from anyone else doing Slim Fast to find out how you're finding it :-)
11
Replies
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but how will you keep it off or are you planning on drinking shakes for the rest of your life?
I'm 43, 5'1, and my maintenance at 120 pounds is around 1400 if sedentary. that does not include exercise calories that can be eaten back.
shakes and meal replacements are a temporary fix and not a long term solution.21 -
As I said, it's a jumpstart for me to lose weight, not for ever. Maintenace calories are 1500 for me if I walk and exercise more, once I'm at my goal weight. I usually use MFP to keep within my calories. I'm shorter than you so harder to keep the pounds off without a lot of effort if I even want to eat nice food or have a drink now and again.11
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but as a jumpstart, how will you maintain that loss and continue once you stop taking it?13
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Well, I guess if someone wants to eat something utterly joyless for a bit, and then switch to real food but at a deficit it could be considered a positive and motivational. Other than that I don't see the reason.10
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/\"once I'm at my goal weight. I usually use MFP to keep within my calories".
I'm not sure you have read and understood what I've written? I'm perfectly aware liquid meal replacements diets aren't a long term solution. I'm perfectly aware I could diet using the same calorie allowance for food as SlimFast can. Unfortunately it's not working for me right now for so I'm trying a new approach.
I'm looking for people in the same situation as me for support.
21 -
I've tried Slim Fast in the past, the best I can say for it is that you'll debloat for a couple of days from the reduction in solid foods, but that's pointless because as soon as you start eating them again the water weight is regained. As a kickstart to eating healthier, I don't think it helps at all, in my experience it just made me hungrier.
Getting older doesn't make it harder to lose weight - check out the success stories - there are plenty of women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and older who have lost weight and are maintaining just fine.
You don't have much weight to lose, have you considered recomp instead? Slight deficit to Maintenance with adequate protein and a progressive strength program.
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PixieKazza wrote: »... He's got no motivation to do longer walks more regularly. I need to sort myself out and get some will power to resist chocolate and booze!
... but hopefully the weight will start to shift and I'll get some motivation and focus back :-)
Motivation is something we all struggle with in normal times and the pandemic has made that exponentially worse for people.
If you don't find a way to fix the fundamental issues that are impacting your mental, motivational state, you aren't likely to reach your goals -- slimfast isn't going to solve your motivational issues. Losing a little weight isn't likely to provide any sustainable motivation boost. Slimfast isn't going to help you resist chocolate and booze -- in fact it's probably going to just drive hunger and make it worse.
You can't blame your partner for the fact that you are taking short walks rather than long walks at lunch. Take two laps, one with your partner and one on your own. You can't blame the lockdown on your now sedentary lifestyle. What's preventing you from doing youtube workouts now ?
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I did Slimfast before and I have one word that summed up that experience: Hangry. Lol
I don't know how long you're planning your "jumpstart" for, but in my experience I wasn't able to stick with it more than a couple of weeks because the shakes didn't keep me satisfied very long and all I could think about was how hungry I was. I did lose weight, but it came right back on when I stopped.19 -
Pixie, do what works for you. You are taking steps that you feel will help with your current state. I wish people would be more supportive and helpful rather than so opinionated and bashing. It sounds like you know yourself well and don’t have the energy to get started so I agree with you 100%. I believe this can give you a few days of less food, curving your appetite and Lose a few pounds of bloat and water weight. This will make you feel better and encourage you to keep going with a healthy and active lifestyle. Wishing you success and joy in all areas of your life.27
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Being in the industry for a long time, this is NOT an uncommon excuse. Sorry, I'm just being honest. It's NOT working for you right now because you're NOT putting in the effort. That's the plain flat out truth. If you want support, then this is it. You have support telling you that you just need to make the decision to just do it right the right way NOW and not use some gimmick diet to try to achieve what won't be much but a temporary drop in water weight.PixieKazza wrote: »I'm not sure you have read and understood what I've written? I'm perfectly aware liquid meal replacements diets aren't a long term solution. I'm perfectly aware I could diet using the same calorie allowance for food as SlimFastcan. Unfortunately it's not working for me right now for so I'm trying a new approach.
I'm looking for people in the same situation as me for support.
Write down your own personal eating and exercise plan to be in deficit. Then just DO IT.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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sunnysidefarmsus wrote: »Pixie, do what works for you. You are taking steps that you feel will help with your current state. I wish people would be more supportive and helpful rather than so opinionated and bashing. It sounds like you know yourself well and don’t have the energy to get started so I agree with you 100%. I believe this can give you a few days of less food, curving your appetite and Lose a few pounds of bloat and water weight. This will make you feel better and encourage you to keep going with a healthy and active lifestyle. Wishing you success and joy in all areas of your life.
Being supportive doesn't always equate to telling someone what they want to hear.43 -
sunnysidefarmsus wrote: »Pixie, do what works for you. You are taking steps that you feel will help with your current state. I wish people would be more supportive and helpful rather than so opinionated and bashing. It sounds like you know yourself well and don’t have the energy to get started so I agree with you 100%. I believe this can give you a few days of less food, curving your appetite and Lose a few pounds of bloat and water weight. This will make you feel better and encourage you to keep going with a healthy and active lifestyle. Wishing you success and joy in all areas of your life.
Well, I mean, OP asked for N=1 and I gave mine. That was really it. Back then, I really thought it was the answer for me too.
The thing is, there have been lots of threads about Slimfast in MFP over the years (I mean, it's been around a long time. Tommy Lasorda even talked about his experience with it in one of his books when he was the Slimfast advocate, and that was in the early 90s.). Anyway, in all of those threads, I can't ever recall seeing anyone whose experience with it differed that much from mine. That's why I answered..so they will know what to expect from someone who's done it. If you consider that "opinionated" or "bashing", then I'm sorry.21 -
I will say that I think the mocha one was probably the best tasting one, IMHO.9
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Being in the industry for a long time, this is NOT an uncommon excuse. Sorry, I'm just being honest. It's NOT working for you right now because you're NOT putting in the effort. That's the plain flat out truth. If you want support, then this is it. You have support telling you that you just need to make the decision to just do it right the right way NOW and not use some gimmick diet to try to achieve what won't be much but a temporary drop in water weight.PixieKazza wrote: »I'm not sure you have read and understood what I've written? I'm perfectly aware liquid meal replacements diets aren't a long term solution. I'm perfectly aware I could diet using the same calorie allowance for food as SlimFastcan. Unfortunately it's not working for me right now for so I'm trying a new approach.
I'm looking for people in the same situation as me for support.
Write down your own personal eating and exercise plan to be in deficit. Then just DO IT.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Well said.4 -
Can we back up a bit, and let me ask you, when you say you're "going to do Slim-Fast", what does that mean? Are you only having the shakes or are you incorporating them into your diet elsewhere? Forgive me if I am overlooking info already in the thread, I have a massive headache.
I'm putting my two cents in only because this is a recent topic in my household. My husband uses the Slim-Fast powder mixed into milk, and has two shakes for breakfast. He has talked about replacing lunch with them as well. I balked because as expressed above, this isn't a nutritionally sound path to weight loss and isn't sustainable long term. He went ahead with it and found out pretty quickly that he did not enjoy being hungry for the sake of 'easy' meals. He still does them for breakfast -- for now, we are compiling a list of meal prep breakfasts to make on Sundays to have for the week-- but he eats a 'real' lunch now because man cannot live on shakes alone. Or, I should say, they can't THRIVE.
I know you aren't getting the response you hoped for. Most of these people, myself included, have been-there, done-that and are speaking from experience. Or even from the experience of loved ones.
I do think that the super-restrictive-diets-don't-work lesson is one we all have to learn for ourselves. Some of us (meeeee), multiple times. It always winds up to me getting burned out and giving up. I've become a big fan of making small changes progessively because anytime I've gone all in, it has bitten me in the butt. But the good news is, you aren't me.
Whatever you do, be safe and listen to your body. If you're hungry, eat. I understand seeing the scale move being a good motivator, but you deserve to thrive, OP. Take care of yourself.19 -
Thank you for the encouraging and positive responses. Telling me I have no-one to blame but myself - er, yes, I know that. I'm trying to do something about it but it's actually pretty hard when you are tired, demotivated and have nothing to look forward to to make the effort for. Like an awful lot of people I've had a horrible few months mental health wise which I'm hopefully coming through the other side now. Losing weight and doing more exercise will do me the world of good. Also, why be mean to @sunnysidefarmsus who has tried to be supportive of my plans? We're all struggling in our own way - doesn't take much to be nice to people! Thank you :-)
@FitAgainBy55 My partner has a shorter lunchbreak than me and if we didn't walk together he wouldn't go at all. We usually manage 40mins unless some idiot at work calls a meeting over lunch hours. Now the evenings are getting lighter and warmer hopefully I'll feel safer going out after work for walks/ jogs by myself. I do find it motivational to lose that first bit of weight but I'm really struggling to get going, I need that boost to feel like I'm getting somewhere.
@dragon_girl26 thank you for your honest experience, I love the blueberry Vitality shakes and find them pretty filling. I've bought enough shakes for a couple of weeks and will see how I go. If it's really not working for me I'll go back to calorie counting properly. @tinkerbellang83 thanks - will have a look at recomp as well.
@ninerbuff I think I know what doesn't work for me - I can and have lost weight calorie counting, pretty much the same 1.5 stone. As I mentioned before I am short and find it very restrictive to live off a low calorie diet constantly to maintain my weight. No fun, and gods know we need some joy in our lives right now. Anything over 1500 cals per day easily puts the weight back. Trying to calorie count right now, over winter during this miserable pandemic, hasn't been working tor me. I am trying something different and hoping following a shake diet for a couple of weeks will 'reset' my eating habits. You can disagree with me but I have done some research. While you might see it as a 'gimmick', I know people who have lost loads of weight on the Cambridge Diet etc. Took them a while but it did work. They put it back on eventually because they went back to their old eating habits. If this is the kickstart I need to get me going then that's what I'm going to do.11 -
I can understand wanting to jumpstart your weight loss with something quick and easy.
I've actually gone on the Body Reset Diet a few times (Harley Pasternak) to do that very thing. I am not into gimmicky weight loss schemes at all, but I liked the fact that it was very short and doable, and anytime I've done it I maintained that small amount of loss for awhile. The idea is that you make 3 smoothies a day (recipes are in the book) with a healthy balance of protein, carbs (from fruit and/or veggies) and healthy fats. You do that for 5 days, then go down to 2 smoothies a day with a healthy meal (recipes in the book). After 5 days, it's down to 1 smoothie a day and 2 meals. You also get to eat 2 healthy fiber/carb/protein snacks a day. In a way, it's similar to the concept of SlimFast, but the smoothies are all homemade and mostly whole ingredients (with the exception of protein powder and almond milk).
I do think this helped to "reset" my taste buds, and I still have some kind of smoothie as a meal almost every day. They're easy to make now and I actually like them, and a good way to get a healthy balance of nutrients.7 -
PixieKazza wrote: »Thank you for the encouraging and positive responses. Telling me I have no-one to blame but myself - er, yes, I know that. I'm trying to do something about it but it's actually pretty hard when you are tired, demotivated and have nothing to look forward to to make the effort for. Like an awful lot of people I've had a horrible few months mental health wise which I'm hopefully coming through the other side now. Losing weight and doing more exercise will do me the world of good. Also, why be mean to @sunnysidefarmsus who has tried to be supportive of my plans? We're all struggling in our own way - doesn't take much to be nice to people! Thank you :-)
@FitAgainBy55 My partner has a shorter lunchbreak than me and if we didn't walk together he wouldn't go at all. We usually manage 40mins unless some idiot at work calls a meeting over lunch hours. Now the evenings are getting lighter and warmer hopefully I'll feel safer going out after work for walks/ jogs by myself. I do find it motivational to lose that first bit of weight but I'm really struggling to get going, I need that boost to feel like I'm getting somewhere.
@dragon_girl26 thank you for your honest experience, I love the blueberry Vitality shakes and find them pretty filling. I've bought enough shakes for a couple of weeks and will see how I go. If it's really not working for me I'll go back to calorie counting properly. @tinkerbellang83 thanks - will have a look at recomp as well.
@ninerbuff I think I know what doesn't work for me - I can and have lost weight calorie counting, pretty much the same 1.5 stone. As I mentioned before I am short and find it very restrictive to live off a low calorie diet constantly to maintain my weight. No fun, and gods know we need some joy in our lives right now. Anything over 1500 cals per day easily puts the weight back. Trying to calorie count right now, over winter during this miserable pandemic, hasn't been working tor me. I am trying something different and hoping following a shake diet for a couple of weeks will 'reset' my eating habits. You can disagree with me but I have done some research. While you might see it as a 'gimmick', I know people who have lost loads of weight on the Cambridge Diet etc. Took them a while but it did work. They put it back on eventually because they went back to their old eating habits. If this is the kickstart I need to get me going then that's what I'm going to do.
Heh, yeah, that's something else I should have mentioned, but you said you already bought enough for a couple of weeks...hopefully you had a way to buy a couple of each shake flavor (they used to sell some individually in some places, don't know if they still do.). If you've never had any of the shakes, I discovered that some aren't too bad (mocha) and some were downright nasty! (I avoided vanilla like the plague! Lol)
ETA: nevermind, the Blueberry Vitality mention didn't jump out at me for some reason when I initially read.3 -
Real food vs slimfast.
The omelette is part of my breakfast every morning. It takes very little time to make, I chop up all the ingredients in one batch on the weekend.
I'll let you decide which one is more sustainable and filling:
21 -
Speakeasy76 wrote: »I can understand wanting to jumpstart your weight loss with something quick and easy.
I've actually gone on the Body Reset Diet a few times (Harley Pasternak) to do that very thing. I am not into gimmicky weight loss schemes at all, but I liked the fact that it was very short and doable, and anytime I've done it I maintained that small amount of loss for awhile. The idea is that you make 3 smoothies a day (recipes are in the book) with a healthy balance of protein, carbs (from fruit and/or veggies) and healthy fats. You do that for 5 days, then go down to 2 smoothies a day with a healthy meal (recipes in the book). After 5 days, it's down to 1 smoothie a day and 2 meals. You also get to eat 2 healthy fiber/carb/protein snacks a day. In a way, it's similar to the concept of SlimFast, but the smoothies are all homemade and mostly whole ingredients (with the exception of protein powder and almond milk).
I do think this helped to "reset" my taste buds, and I still have some kind of smoothie as a meal almost every day. They're easy to make now and I actually like them, and a good way to get a healthy balance of nutrients.
Ooh that sounds interesting, thanks! Might investigate when my SlimFast runs out. I need 'easy' right now, but hopefully motivate me to eat less stodge and more green foods.3
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