Hello all! Great to be here!
I'm not quite sure if I'm going to be joining SW so I thought I'd come on here to ask you for advice, if that's OK...long post coming up, sorry!
Basically, I used to be a SW member many years ago (with plenty of scenic routes and re-starts) until I found losing weight too difficult and frustrating as the scales were not moving despite my best efforts. My health was also really bad at the time. Turned out that I had hypothyroidism, insulin resistance and anaemia, which were severely affecting my ability to exercise and lose weight. Fast forward to now, and I'm on the right medication, but very overweight and very keen to lose a good few stone! I know that I need the support of a group- I've tried using My Fitness Pal to count calories, which worked for a while, but I gave up after a while
I remember a bit about the SW diet from when it used to be just Green days/Red days but I know there's now Extra Easy and extra features. My dietary needs have changed a lot since then so I need to ask about whether SW will be suitable for me.
I'm severely allergic to dairy so any animal-based milk-related products are out (no MullerLights and no cottage cheese!) as well as gluten intolerant with some other food restrictions such as needing to avoid higher-carb food such as potatoes, bread, rice and pasta (they send me to sleep during the day!). I'm able to eat any vegetables (apart from avoiding high-starch/carb root veg where possible such as potato and parsnip), a limited amount of fruit, oats/some grains, any meat, white fish, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, dairy-free non-soya products such as coconut milk and yoghurt etc. At the moment I'm living on gluten-free cereal, protein shakes with peanut butter and coconut milk, and some veg/meat in the evenings.
I'm keen to join SW as one of my friends has recently joined and offered to take me along too but I'm just a bit worried that I won't be able to do the diet properly with my eating restrictions. I'm in a very busy job and have very limited cooking facilities in my place of residence, although I can make slow-cooker meals and have a microwave. I'm not fussy about "proper" meals, so can happily just eat a pile of free veg cooked in the microwave instead of making a chilli, for example.
Any advice/reassurance would be much appreciated, or should I try to find a different type of slimming club?
