Weight loss/healthy eating help

I used to do Slimming World, in fact i've done it four times! It isn't healthy, sadly. When I did it, I 100% believed it to be a really healthy way to eat. Now, bear with me. This isn't for everyone, and you need to be open minded, but there is something we all should know about food, and everyone is free to do their own research into this (I used to think this was extreme/crazy, but please at least read and look into it)


This will be long, sorry, but it's important


Three months ago, I went *Vegan*! Until then, I am ashamed to admit I was someone who said things like Vegans are extreme, and rabbit food is for rabbits.


There're three reasons people go Vegan: 1) Ethics/the animals 2) Our health & 3) The planet/environment (or a mix of those)


Many are Vegetarian as they are against cruelty, so let's look at milk. (No judgement, as I was eating animal products my entire life until 3 months ago as we aren't ever told this)


To produce milk, just like us a cow must be pregnant. Farmers don't have time to wait around for this to happen naturally (time is money), so cows are artifically inseminated, which takes around 15 minutes & means they are restrained in a rack.


Once their baby is born, it is removed at or just after birth (as that milk is for us, not the calf . . yet we are designed to drink our Mother's milk, until weaning, so why are we breastfeeding from another species as adults?)


If a boy, the calf is killed as he's useless, unless he becomes veal. If a girl, she has the same fate as her Mother. Cows cry out for days, sometimes weeks for their calves as like us they are very maternal. In fact, in subsequent pregnancies they hide/stand over their calves. They are then milked 2-3x a day as they are manipulated to produce more milk, way more milk, than they would naturally, and they develop mastitis.


Once they are 5/6yrs old & a 'downer' (useless), bearing in mind they'd naturally be 25ish, they are sent to slaughter.



Cow's milk is designed to grow a baby calf into a huge 700Ib+ cow very quickly, it contains 35 hormones, including oestrogen & IGF 1, a cancer growth hormone. People are told they need dairy for calcium, so they have strong bones & don't get Osteoporosis . . . why then is it the countries with the highest rates of Osteoporosis consume the most dairy, and the blue zones/countries with the lowest rates have the lowest dairy consumption?


It is because cow's milk is too acidic, so we release phosphous to neutralise this, which binds to calcium and leaches it from the bones. As for IFG 1? Our bodies produce this when we need to grow, as a baby and during puberty, then switch it off as an adult, only we consume it, which leads to cells constantly growing.


Cow's milk contains pus (there is a legal limit as to how much), faeces (their udders are covered in it) & blood. We don't need it, or meat or eggs.


Since going Vegan I have eaten anything I like, with no counting/pointing, junk food etc all but one week, and haven't gained even a pound, for the past 20yrs i'd've gained at least 1.5st.


We have starving babies in Africa, yet right now we have food for 10 billion people, yet a population of 7 billion, why? We have 60 billion livestock to fatten up for slaughter. Parts of the world have no clean water., yet a cow drinks 50 gallons a day, let alone the methane gases it gives off.


Animal agriculture is causing so many issues: rainforest/habitat deforestation (a football sized pitch every mninute or two), ocean deadzones (fishless oceans by 2048), greenhouse gases, so many things.


Animal products contain cholesterol, yet our bodies make all they need, we don't need any more . . hospitals are full of people with cancer, heart disease & diabetes and they aren't Vegans. A Vegans blood is 8x more protective against cancer, and plantbased foods have zero cholesterol. Meat, including chicken, is a class 1 carcinogen like asbestos & smoking.


Yes, bacon & chicken taste amazing, but is 5 minutes of taste worth their entire lives? Why do we say cats & dogs are friends, and love them, yet pigs, cows & chickens are food? We are inherantly animal lovers, yet so disconnected from what we eat.


If you were eating a wholefoods, plantbased diet . . you could eat as much as you liked and would drop weight easily. Salad/fruit/vegetables/seeds/nuts/potatoes & sweet potatoes/rice/pasta if no egg in it, quinoa/lentils/beans & chickpeas. It's the healthiest diet on the planet, can reverse heart disease and is the cheapest too


If a junk food Vegan like me, while not healthy it is still better/healthier than the animal based equivalent, and contains zero cholesterol. I have everything, pizza/burgers/chips/crisps/ Ben & Jerry's etc & lose easily


Also, eggs, no! Please please think about if you'd consider trying scrambled tofu or an egg replacer? Eggs are a chickens period, pretty much. If you eat eggs (almost all saturated fat & cholesterol and no fibre), male chicks will be thrown live and fully conscious into a grinder at a day old as they never lay eggs. Meat chickens are killed at 6 weeks old, when they are fattened up to the size of a 25st 2yr old child and have broken legs as they can't take the weight.


Some say we need meat to survive, we don't. We USED to, but not now, not when we have alternatives in Tesco etc. We don't need it for protein, only plants can turn nitrogen into amino acids and all protein comes from plants, if you eat meat you recycle it thru an animal rather than go direct to the source.


David Haye is Vegan, as is Germany's strongest man and the williams sisters. If you worry plants feel pain, they don't. They have no central nervous systems or brains, and none of us are upset at a carrot being cut (& to eat meat uses more plants than to eat plants only anyway).


EVERY Vegan once said they could never be a Vegan, and we all now wish we'd done it sooner. I have an illness that has caused immense pain for 20yrs, in just 3 months without dairy/meat (another thing Dr's don't tell you), it's clearing up and I won't need surgery.


You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. PLS try, please. Have a look at What the Health (Netflix), Forks over Knives (Netflix) both are health related, Cowspiracy (Environment) none are gory.


Check out Earthlings (brutal but the truth) or Land of Hope & Glory (UK standard practice including 'free range/rspca approved etc) . . hard going but if we can't see it, why do we pay for it when we don't need to?


Try www.steven22.com for a free 22 day challenge to try it out, mentors and dieticians available, fun way to see what it's about with zero pressure. Oh, and Oatly Barista milk is meant to be ace in hot drinks?

Thanks if anyone read it and sorry to disrupt, but it's all that has worked for me and is so so important


One last thing, try This is your wake up call by James Aspey on You Tube, no gore, just a dude talkingabout how he was a Personal Trainer who ate meat 3x a day and thought it it didn't contain meat it wasn't a meal, and didn't even really like dogs, and now is the bigerst Aussie activist, or one of the two biggest. Funny guy and really interesting watch even if people decide it isnt for them x

If everyone went vegan then in order to produce enough food there would still be the issues around intensive farming and degradation of the environment, just in a different way. Mass produced soy crops are not environmentally friendly. But that's a debate for discussion time and not her.

Anyone doing a big change in their diet needs to understand the changes and be fully on board or they will fail. Smaller sustainable changes are going to keep the weight off in the long run.

NineDeuce wrote: »

So you are an exception to the rule, but statistics prove that the majority of people who go on diets or to such plans put the weight back on within 3 years.

maman wrote: »

Those that 'keep going back' know it works but like any healthy option whether it's food or booze or exercise it's easier to give up. Sadly, SW don't sell willpower.:(

I may be an exception but I don't think it's anything to do with Slimming World why people lapse from the healthy 'diet' and put the weight back on. I don't know why I'd never thought of it before but when I joined SW I started to meet people who had a very poor relationship with food. It's not just the obvious reasons like being lazy/lacking willpower and grabbing fast food, ready meals and take aways. There are people who are stressed by life for various reasons and eat to reward themselves/cheer themselves up after getting through a day. There are lonely people who get bored and cheer themselves up with chocolate. It's quite complex. In many respects it can mirror the reasons people have too much alcohol.

NineDeuce wrote: »

Plus, everything that you have said above, e.g.....

" we should be having more fruit, veg and lean protein than carbs and fats. Also we know that things like sweets and crisps and cakes and pastry and booze should be kept as a treat rather than everyday food. It really is that simple"


Why do you need to pay SW to tell you that?

You don't, but why does anyone join a club to go running or a gym for exercise? It helps to have a structure and the commitment and accountability and plenty of advice.


Eating healthily takes commitment and some people welcome some help.