Saturday Swapit #31

Welcome to another Saturday Swapit .
To join in you can either write a post and create a pingback to this one then leave a link in the comments to it below, or just leave a comment for others to read.
Sometimes we just need to let off steam when things are going off the rails, so tag along and do just that!

This week’s topic is calories, syns, points or something else……………

DISCLAIMER:
I am not, nor do I claim to be, a professional dietician, nutritionist or diet programme consultant.
I rejoined SW in May 2019 and have managed to stay within my target parameters since August 2019.
Saturday Swapit is not intended as a diet programme, and anyone who wants or needs to lose serious weight should consult a medical professional or their GP.

There are various ways of dieting as we all know. The main issue is that what works for one may not work for another and I know some people who have chopped and changed because they can’t get to grips with calorie counting, calculating syns or points, or working out fats and carbs.

I can only comment from my own experience, and in my younger days, calorie counting was the way to go, with 1000 being the magic number for the day.
I invested in books on calories, carbs and dieting in general and religiously weighed and examined everything I put on my plate and then in my mouth. What is it they say, a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips?
Image courtesy Etsy.com

I stuck a picture of myself at my heaviest on the fridge door as a deterrent, but to be honest I can’t remember what happened to it and the fridge didn’t lose an ounce.
This is also very me…………..
and this :
Image courtesy pinterest.com

All joking aside, dieting is a serious matter for most of us for whatever reason we chose to lose those unwanted pounds. Ex partner and Ex husband both made me feel guilty every time I looked at a cake or bar of chocolate and their criticism should something THEY felt was off the list pass my lips was more hurtful than any weight issue I had.

The 1000 calories didn’t really work for me but a friend knowing how depressed it was making me, gave me her diet plan on which she had lost almost four stone. It was a reducing diet insomuch as you started with 1500 calories a day for the first two weeks, then reduced it to 1250 for the next two and 1000 for the fifth which you stayed at until you reached your goal. I lost a few pounds over a couple of months but the suggested menus were a little restricted and I soon lost heart as the weight wasn’t shifting as fast as I’d hoped. She lost her weight over about 15 months and I didn’t have her staying power.

That’s the trouble though isn’t it. We give it our best shot but the results are so slow in making an appearance, or should I say disappearance, we wonder why we bother serenading ourselves with hunger pangs and making ourselves miserable.

The idea of all calories being counted for me appealed greatly so I tried the prepared meals, the micro diet, and a couple of liquid diets/supplements. I lost a lot of pounds in the money sense, and only about seven unwanted ones so I suppose the positive side was at least I lost something.
Ayds was also a popular choice where you ate a chewy cube (no way it was a toffee or sweet) which was supposed to help suppress your appetite and thus eat less. It worked for some, but not me as I liked the mint ones and chewed more than I should (sigh).

I bought The F Plan book, and way prefer Shirley Valentine’s (aka Pauline Collins) interpretation as after a week I was suffering from flatulence like you wouldn’t believe! Well, that begins with F I suppose.
As a teenager, I lost a lot of weight, but I was walking four miles minimum a day, and skipping breakfast as I preferred to have those extra fifteen minutes in bed. I chewed a lot of gum too and that made me less hungry, though I was eating whatever Mum cooked for dinner in the evening with gusto.
Skipping meals though is not the way to go IMO as the body needs nourishment and balance, plus the experts says breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Weight Watchers and points didn’t work for me, but Slimming World’s syns do so I’m sticking with it. Even if my membership lapses, I’ll still have the books and lists, just no access to the website, which I don’t use very often anyway.
I’m also in the throes of tweaking my diet to include more iron and vitamin B12, and hopefully, Hubby will benefit from some of it too.