How does Food Optimising work?

What are Free Foods?

What is a Healthy Extra?

What are Syns?

What are Flexible Syns?

What’s the difference between the Green and Original choice?

Does Food Optimising encourage members to consume 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day?

Is Food Optimising the same as food combining?

Q: How does Food Optimising work?

A: Food Optimising is in line with current guidelines on effective weight management and healthy eating. Essentially Food Optimising takes account of a foods’ energy density, its health-giving properties, ability to satisfy the appetite quickly, ability to keep and maintain a feeling of fullness and peoples’ behavioural patterns. Unlike many other leading commercial diets, it ensures an overall good balance of nutrients by the inclusion of Healthy Extras and guidance Health Points.

Food Optimising turns on its head the whole idea that food of any sort or in any quantity is bad. Quite the opposite, in fact. Food Optimising encourages slimmers to eat freely from a generous list of Free Foods, without any feeling of guilt or judgement whatsoever. This is a unique and hugely powerful concept for slimmers. It allows them to take control of their eating (often for the first time) and enjoy a much healthier relationship with food than ever before. The rationale encourages slimmers to feel free and relaxed about food, eliminating the distress caused by feelings of deprivation and loss of control.

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Q: What are Free Foods?

A: At Slimming World we recognise that to lose weight healthily and comfortably, and to sustain that weight loss, slimmers need and want to eat lots of 'real' food, not diet food! A plate of food when Food Optimising will certainly be full - but it is what it is filled with that will help members lose pounds, not pile them on.

The concept of Free Foods promotes consumption of plenty of low energy density and highly satiating foods which can be eaten without restriction. Members are encouraged to use these foods to satisfy and suppress appetite while reducing overall energy intake, and without the chore of counting or measuring.

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Q: What is a Healthy Extra?

A: Healthy Extras help provide a good overall balance of nutrients in addition to those obtained from Free Foods, with particular emphasis on calcium and fibre-rich foods. These can include wholemeal bread, high-fibre breakfast cereals, soups, and dairy products, and again you'll find there are a wide variety of foods to choose. On Green days, the Healthy Extras list also includes lean meat, fish and poultry, and on Original days, members can also choose potatoes, pasta or pulses.

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Q: What are Syns?

A: Synergy is our word for the way that every part of the Slimming World experience - Food Optimising, Body Magic, Image Therapy and so much more - work together to create an unstoppable force for success! And from synergy comes Syns - a new name for the foods that, together with Free Foods and Healthy Extras, make Food Optimising the best weight loss system available today.

The concept of Syns helps members to recognise that while all foods can be included in a healthy slimming plan, some foods are simply less helpful than others. The key is to raise members’ awareness to this unwelcome but honest truth and then make it easy for them to limit consumption of those foods. Free Foods, Healthy Extras and Syns do just that. Controlling ‘Syns’ automatically limits saturated fats, alcohol and sugar. With plenty of highly satiating, low energy dense Free Foods to fill up on, members are helped to change their eating patterns sustainably over time as they realise that they, not the food, are in control.

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Q: What are Flexible Syns?

A: There's plenty of evidence that being too rigid means that slimmers are more likely to give up and put their weight back on and that allowing themselves to be a little more flexible now and again is the key to long term success. If 10 Syns a day is where they need to be on a regular basis, but sometimes it's just too tight for comfort, it's far better to allow themselves extra Syns every now and again without the punishment of compensating the next day.

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Q: What’s the difference between the Green and Original choice?

A: Both choices encourage members to eat plenty of highly satiating foods, while controlling intake of energy dense, fatty and sugary foods. The choice offers flexibility in terms of members’ tastes and preferences. They differ only in the proportions of the food types a member chooses to fill up on and those added for extra nutrition.

Within the Green choice many complex carbohydrates and certain protein-rich foods such as pasta, rice, potatoes, pulses and grains can be eaten freely along with fruits and vegetables, while dairy products, bread and cereals, lean meats, poultry and fish can be consumed as Healthy Extra choices.

Within the Original choice, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, poultry and fish can be consumed freely whilst foods such as bread and cereals, pasta, potatoes, pulses and dairy products can be chosen as Healthy Extra choices.

Members can enjoy either the Green and Original choice all day, or alternate between Green and Original meals using the Mix2Max choice. We encourage members to either follow the Green choice only or include both Green and Original choices within a week to provide an overall good balance of nutrition. We find this gives those new members whose initial eating habits are based extensively on a non-wholegrain and high meat intake, improved compliance, and results in them changing their eating pattern sustainably over time.

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Q: Does Food Optimising encourage members to consume 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day?

A: Because fruit and vegetables are Free Foods on both choices, members naturally consume more than they used to and easily find themselves enjoying 5 portions a day without any conscious effort.

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Q: Is Food Optimising the same as food combining?

A: No. Unlike food combining, Food Optimising is not about separating different types of nutrients, but about allowing people to choose the proportions of different types of food they prefer. All food groups are encouraged in any combination – it’s all a matter of proportion and the greater likelihood of slimmers self-limiting total intake when at least some foods are controlled.

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*References on this page:
1 Lavin et al. Feasibility and benefits of implementing a Slimming on Referral service in primary care using a commercial weight management partner. Public Health (2006) 120, 872-881.