Why I've fallen out of love with Slimming World.

Slimming world, I'm sorry but our relationship is over. We're on an indefinite break, but it's definitely me, not you.

I've been thinking about this for a wee while now, but this weekend I made the decision to give up on Slimming World and go back to good old fashioned calorie counting, using My Fitness Pal to track my calorie consumption.

If you know me either personally or via twitter or Instagram, you'll probably be aware that I started Slimming World a year and a half ago in order to lose weight for our wedding. I LOVED that diet plan. I loved that I could eat certain foods such as pasta, potatoes, rice, and even bacon, absolutely guilt free. You can't imagine how it works, but it does.

I lost almost 2 stones for our wedding and honeymoon, and felt great being into size 10 and 12s when I've been a size 14 for years. So this itself is proof that the problem is with me, not the plan, because it definitely does work if you follow it properly.

After losing weight for the wedding I went a bit crazy on honeymoon and I put on about 11/12lbs in the 3 weeks we were away.. Since August last year I've just slowly allowed the weight to creep back on. I've been yoyo-ing up and down, losing a few lbs then putting a few more back on. I rejoined a Slimming world class but every week I found myself making excuses not to go, or I was wasting a fiver to go and find out I'd stayed the same because I just hadn't put the effort in.

I decided last week that enough was enough, and I wanted to get back to those 10s and 12s for the summer, but it wasn't going to be with slimming world this time, and here are my reasons why -

I need something new to revitalise my motivation - I've definitely become too familiar with the plan, I cut corners and cheat my way through the diet, but the only person I'm cheating is myself. A new plan to follow will give me a renewed enthusiasm for weight loss.

My eating routine had become predictable and boring - now there's no real reason for this to happen on slimming world. One only needs to look up slimming world recipes online to see that there is an abundance of exciting recipes out there, but I just didn't have the time and money to invest in trying new things every week. So we pretty much had the same meals week in and week out and it got pretty boring.

I miss certain restricted foods - obviously the plan has its science behind it and there's a reason why some foods are free and others are not but it's frustrated me at times when I was able to eat free pasta and potatoes and meats, but I couldn't eat something like a slice of quiche that had equivalent or less calories. The plan wasn't based on calories so I suppose that's an unfair comparison to make, but still, sometimes a girl just needs a slice of quiche!

Healthy choices weren't an option but unhealthy were - similar to the point above, it bugged me at times when certain options that were actually healthy or low on calories were synned but unhealthy options were free. For example, a whole meal pitta and humous would have racked up about 10 syns, yet I could eat a Mug shot with little to no nutritional value. This meant eating on the run at busier times could be really tricky - if I had to grab a shop bought lunch there wasn't many options. Or if I wasn't organised and I ended up eating something high in syns for breakfast, I'd feel like my day was ruined already and it could easily go downhill from there. The bonus of calorie counting is that nothing is off limits - as long as you count up the calories.

So those are my reasons for switching to calorie counting, but I definitely wouldn't rule out a return to Slimming World in the future because the problem right now is my attitude towards it rather than the plan itself. I only have 2 and a half weeks until my holiday in Spain but I'm hoping I can lose 5lbs by then; I know I'll manage that if I put my mind to it!

Thanks for reading if you made it this far through my wall of text... I had more to say than I initially planned.

Please friend me on My fitness Pal if you use it, my name is Jillyloves

Jilly xo