It was when I found myself mixing sugar-free cocoa powder with fat-free toffee yoghurt that I realised there was a problem. What I wanted was chocolate. Melty, sweet, delicious chocolate. And what I was eating, as a terrible, terrible substitution, was sloppy and powdery and gross. Why was I not just eating the chocolate I wanted? That I’d been obsessing over because it wasn’t allowed? Sure, I could have a bite of a Dairy Milk or half a Curly Wurly, but what I wanted was some satisfying mouthfuls of yum. What I was getting was so under par that I realised I would never diet again.
So when it was revealed this week that Slimming World has changed the categorisation of some branded foods, including Muller Light yoghurts, tinned spaghetti hoops, and instant mash, so that they can no longer be eaten again and again and again, my brain was launched back to my days as a Slimming World member. The language took me back to those lunchtimes in a church hall when I’d be weighed and then the group would meet for what was called Image Therapy but was actually everyone’s weight loss being announced, repeated applause, and then a bit of a pep talk.
There are lots of euphemisms in Slimming World, and learning the diet itself was like learning a whole new language. There are syns – things you have to count, and you can have 5 to 15 a day. There are free foods – things you can eat an unlimited amount of. There are Healthy Extras – things you have 2-4 of a day that boost your intake of things like calcium and fibre. There are super free foods – oh, you get the idea. And, when I did it, you could choose each day whether to have a Red day or a Green day, and all the syn values, Healthy Extra values and free foods changed according to which you opted for.
As such, the first few weeks of doing the diet were utterly confusing. Do I have to ‘syn’ that? Can it count as my Healthy Extra? If I eat this, can I also eat that other thing later? But when you have to look up every drop of milk in your tea and every crumb of food on your plate, you quickly become depressingly familiar with the numbers associated with everything that crossed your lips. I’m on a Green day so I can’t have tuna on my baked potato. If it was a Red day I couldn’t have a baked potato under my tuna. Some days you just want them both together.
In no time at all, your head is full of sums and you know the syn value of every chocolate bar in the supermarket. Or every kind of cheese, or every kind of wine; whatever your particular penchant is. And you find the foods worth the least syns so that you can enjoy more of them. It’s not a healthy approach to food but it has to do when you’re obsessing over whether you can squeeze an extra bite of something in without going over your syn allocation.
Free foods are the best, and this is where Slimming World – perhaps unwillingly and perhaps informally – clings onto certain brand products and everybody but everybody eats them. At group meetings, the central table was covered in product packaging with syn values or Healthy Extra allowances written on them, and Muller Lights were the stars of the show. Almost all of the flavours were free food, and those of us with a sweet tooth would eat them by the gallon. Every group chat involved sharing which supermarket had the best special offer on Muller Lights that week, and we all made a mental note of where to go to get the biggest discount.
And that’s why this week’s news, that Muller Lights will now ‘be synned’ (i.e. have a syn value instead of being free food), was such a shock to members of the club. It’s been a Slimming World staple for years, if not decades, and people use it like I did to get a kick of sweetness in their deprived mouths. I ate so much of it during my time with the club that I couldn’t eat yoghurt in any form for years afterwards. I’d overdone it and only now am starting to be able to look at the stuff again.
But if the changing value of fat-free yoghurt makes people cynical of their diet, then that can only be a good thing. Basing your food intake on numbers or values instead of what something tastes like or how it feels in your tummy overcomplicates a process that so many of us have lost track of – knowing when we’re hungry and when we’re full. It’s because of diets and calories and syns and points that we eat what we are prescribed by the latest book or magazine, not what our bodies are calling out for and not what we really like.
Diets also rely on you hating your body. If you feel fine about what you look at in the mirror, where would your motivation be to cut out the thing you really fancy eating? They simply can’t work if you accept yourself, which is a much healthier mental place to be.
When I was on the Slimming World diet, I obsessed about chocolate brownie cheesecake. The thought of eating it would keep me awake at night. But since stopping the diet, I’ve not eaten it once. I only wanted what was out of my reach, and there should be no reason any food is like that.
Of course, things like finances and the accessibility of good food and the usefulness of local shops are all highly relevant issues that affect the food we eat versus the food we might want, but dieting is a core cultural activity that women, especially, are mired in. Let’s stop letting euphemisms and numbers dictate our food intake and, instead, have a bit of what we fancy. Or a lot – who’s counting?
Photo: quotecatalog