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| Value for Money | 7.8/10  |
|---|---|
| Reviewer Rating | 8.6/10 |
| Overall Rating | 8.3/10  |
By moshi
on 19th Jun 2008
| Value for money | 0/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall value | 2/10 |
 moshi's recommendation | |
No banned foods. Online services including food checker for those not in 'the book'.
Online food checker not updated often enough - loads of foods or products not found.
You can be extremely unlucky with your group leader, as I was.
The whole system is clearly not aimed at overly bright people.
Group leaders are not trained in nutrition and only spout parrot fashion. Questions about nutritional facts are not welcomed as leader does not have the answer unless it's in 'the book' where you can read it for yourself anyway.
Encouragement to eat sugar-saturated, chewy cereal bars as snacks, as if they're a good thing. SUGAR METABOLISES INTO FAT! So why do they sell these things at the meetings? Most chewy snack bars are around 30% sugar - exactly what dieters DO NOT NEED.
Reading all the positive reviews here, I realise I must have been very unlucky with my group leader. Lectures? What lectures?
Here's what happened during each two hour meeting:
1. Arrive and queue for 15 minutes to be weighed.
2. Group leader is in a corner doing newbie inductions while an unpaid 'helper' registers attendance and another does the weighing. This really, really could be done at a different time to avoid eating into paying members' time while they have nothing to do.
3. Sit in plastic stackable chairs, arranged theatre-style in rows, so not conducive to chatting with other group members. And wait for group leader to turn her attention to group.
4. No activities are planned for the ONE HOUR OF WAITING. No whiteboard with suggested discussions. Nothing except sitting on your fat rear waiting and waiting.
5. Leader finally comes to group, takes up 'teacher' position, standing in front of class. Just like Fat Fighters on Little Britain, but with a lot more people. There's an hour left, which she manages to fill with almost nothing. No group discussions, no encouragement to make friends who can become diet buddies between meetings, none of the motivational stuff I'd do if I ran a group.
6. Leader informs group of any news from head office, eg new foods added to The List; updates to The Book; product changes resulting in altered portion sizes, and any feeble motivational games or inter-group competitions that have been devised. Ah, the Polka Dot Swimsuit Challenge, where you had to colour in a dot for each pound you lose over the given period. Just like being at nursery school. And somewhat sexist, considering there are plenty of male attendees.
7. Leader reads through today's weigh-in records - WHILE GROUP WAITS IN SILENCE AGAIN - then announces who is Slimmer of the Week in nursery teacher, whiny sing-song voice.
The prize for Slimmer of the Week is a supermarket carrier bag in which other group members have deposited their diet cupboard cast-offs. And, surprise surprise (not), the same old cardboard-flavoured junk keeps coming back. So it's a really great prize to win, as I'm sure you can appreciate.
I think members are expected to donate products they've tried and would recommend to others - it was never actually explained in the several months I attended. But after you've paid (at that time) £4.50 to be there, then someone comes around with raffle tickets to win some lovely polystyrene-flavoured junk and looks at you like you're truly evil if you decline to buy one - explaining that this is how the prizes are paid for (never saw any of those given in my time, either), and then they try to sell you those sugar-saturated chewy bars and the monthly magazine and more and more recipe books - well, it's easy to sympathise with members who feel somewhat disinclined to spend any more of their hard-earned on livening up someone else's diet. So they donate their cast-offs - the stuff they bought in a multipack and found inedible.
One week, I was Slimmer of the Week - technically. The leader didn't like me 'cos she'd taken care to notice that I rarely put anything in her precious cast-offs 'prize' bag. I didn't buy packaged junk - I cooked fresh ingredients. What did she want, a carrot? Also, I once asked if she was aware that there was no basis in medical science for a piece of dietary advice she'd just given. Oh dear, bad, wicked me, putting her on the spot and groping for an answer that didn't sound like a cop-out. It was a cop-out and did sound like one. All she could say was, "I only tell you what Slimming World tell me." "Even if it's factually wrong?" I helpfully asked.
So for that week only, she CHANGED THE RULES and made it Slimmer of the WEEK PLUS ONE DAY. It didn't matter to her that I'd lost four pounds and the next nearest person had only lost two. She carefully checked her records to find a way to exclude me from the results. She excluded anyone who hadn't lost weight the week before. I hadn't. But I'd made up for it this week. So she awarded slimmer of the week to someone who'd lost half what I'd lost.
Now you'll appreciate that I didn't give a hoot about the bag of diet nasties, or even getting the shiny sticker on my copy of The Book. But if someone's going to take on a job that's meant to be about motivating PAYING CUSTOMERS to achieve their goals, I EXPECT THAT PERSON TO BE IMPARTIAL and NOT CHANGE THE RULES because they don't like one of their PAYING CUSTOMERS. It was like being in infant school playground. I can laugh and walk away from a pathetic, childish snub like that. Some of the other members were a lot more sensitive and it could have blown their diet. The diet they'd paid a lot of money to follow.
She did lots of other exasperating things, too. Amongst us were those who were not chocaholics or sweet-toothed, but preferred savoury snacks. Well Nursery Teacher liked chocolate above all else, closely followed by anything sweet. That'll be how she got so fat in the first place, then. And she would not discuss the requirements of those of us who didn't like sweet junk, instead trying to make light of it and laugh it off, saying she knew nothing about savoury snacks but "I think iss breeeeewwyan!" about any new recipe or snack that involved "choklit" or anything sweet.
The other thing she would NOT discuss was EXERCISE, even though it's meant to be part of the complete Slimming World plan. I asked if any other members would be interested in meeting up once a week or more, for a healthy walk or even to begin running. One person said yes, but the Leader butted in, laughed and said, "Ooh, that sounds far too strenuous! I don't like exercise - far too much effort - and you can lose weight without it!" she cheerfully assured her wobbling audience. That'll be why, despite her general weight loss that qualified her to become a group leader, she still had a pot belly, thick ankles and pudgy knees. So, if all you wanted was to see a lower number on the scales, without gaining a body to be proud of, great. If you actually wanted to end up looking the best you possibly could, go somewhere else 'cos your efforts to improve your shape, tone your muscles and make your skin look great would not be entertained at this group. Leader didn't like exercise, so It Would Not Be Discussed.
I tried to find an address for Slimming World's head office, or an email address, so I could write and complain. I found an address that wasn't appropriate, but wrote anyway, asking them to pass it on to whatever passes for their customer services department. To my complete lack of surprise, I got no response. But if you manage to lose shedloads of weight, they're only too happy to turn up, take your photograph, and use YOU in the advertising to help them make even more money. And do you get paid for being such a great ambassador for their system, having shelled out all that money to sit in silence, be patronised and insulted and really, get stuff all out of it except your own commitment to lose weight? Don't you think they should give something back if you end up providing them with their latest success story for their advertising?
Perhaps Slimming World would like to answer that question, very publicly. And perhaps they'd like the name of the Group Leader who is being paid for this incompetent, childish behaviour.
I left, by the way. I don't need to listen to someone whining ungrammatically about the greatness of choklit in order to count calories and take a bit of exercise.
Important, please be aware that:
| Helpful | Unhelpful | Agree | Disagree |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Total Respect: -1
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13RT on 30th Jul 2008