Slimming Club Survey Results
Good morning, everyone. How are doing? Got a smile on your face right now? Better hard because I'm gonna wipe her off right now with some stats. Jogging.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe though. So I've done a survey, slimming clubs survey. Now I'm not coming at this from a hated angle of slimming clubs, it's just the fact that slimming clubs are the most popular forms of fat loss in The UK. There's over a million active subscribers to slimming world in The UK, which is a huge chunk of the population really when you think about it. So I want to get people's insights into slimming clubs, the past experiences, and shed some light on maybe why they don't work.
Speaker 1:No hate here, it's just facts. I'm not it's not gonna be it's not subjective here in terms of this in terms of the facts I'm gonna say. So when we look at the the survey I've done, so forty two percent of you have done five to nine diets over your lifetime. Twenty percent have done 10 to 14, right, And so and seventeen point two percent makes up one to four. So most people have done between, say, five to 14 diets in their lifetime.
Speaker 1:It's quite a lot. Quite a lot of different types of diets, dieting. Similar diets might have been counted the same, but still quite a lot. So Slimming Clubs, the people have tried. 50% of people Slimming World, 21 Weight Watchers, and a lot of people have done both.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of, Slimming World is The UK version of Weight Watchers basically, if you think of it that way. This is really this stat is quite scary. How many times have you lost weight but put the weight back on again? Seventy percent of people, seven zero, said every single time they've lost weight they put it back on with twenty percent saying most of the time. And then the rest are sometimes, and there's only two percent of people that have never put weight back on.
Speaker 1:So eighty seven percent of people who go to a slimming club put the weight back on pretty much every single time. So you can say that nine out of 10 times you join a slimming club membership, you're gonna put the weight back on. That's just a fact from the stats. Now why is that is the question. And we got some clues.
Speaker 1:When I asked people, in your own words, what's the experience like at these Slimming Clubs? Okay. That's all. Just what's the experience like in your own words? Self conscious, restrictive brainwashing.
Speaker 1:Didn't find a negative. It's another one. So it was not it's not all negative. I said I didn't find a negative. Although strangely, all strange, didn't lose much weight.
Speaker 1:Pressured, restricted, couldn't have bread or cereal, made it feel normal to diet all week and weigh in and binge and eat everything possible in one evening after the weigh in. Hamster wheel, hopeless and conflicting, unrealistic, felt guilty. This is a big one, guilt. The weekly weigh in, guilty. Like being in a cult where you sit around in a circle there where you clap if you've lost and gained weight and ask what happened and what went wrong this week.
Speaker 1:People say things like fridge pickers were fridge pickers were big knickers. Wow. Everyone gets weighed and goes for a chippy tea as they have a week of of the as they have a week to lose. Stressful, demeaning, patronizing, boring, focus too much on scales, shame if no loss, guilty, victimized, cheesy. Food is either good or evil, embarrassed, self conscious, rebellious, depressed, for eating normal foods, negative food mindset.
Speaker 1:Short term, ashamed, starving, confused, anti exercise, exhausted, depressed, stressed for the weekly weigh in and judgmental, embarrassed, negative, fake, pressured, hypocritical consultants. You know, these are big words these, overwhelmed, pressured, embarrassed. A lot of embarrassed comments coming up after the word clouded, lot of embarrassment, a lot of guilty, a lot of feeling ashamed. That's because it's a weekly potential humiliation for people. So you haven't lost weight, you might have lost fat, we know there's a difference between fat loss and weight loss.
Speaker 1:And you go there and you've had a great week, you weigh in and the scales have gone up, two pounds for example, total weight, but you could have lost fat. Right? And you sit down and go, oh, why do why do you think you've put two pounds on? And everyone's like, oh, come on, Janet. What are you doing?
Speaker 1:You know? What do do this week? Oh, I don't know. I I did everything though. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But maybe next week. Yeah. And then you walk walk out feeling terrible about what you've just experienced. Right? That's a yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, they need to fix that. Just as a if there is any slimming club senior management listening, just fix that part of your business for god's sake. You got a of people going. Don't make it a weekly hell. And then for the people that lose two pounds, they could have lost two pounds of water and not lost any fart, and everyone's like, yeah.
Speaker 1:You legend. You're amazing. Oh my god. Star of the week. Star of the week.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. You are the best. And then still celebrate with a chippy. You know, and that's fine but you can celebrate with a chippy is fine but they're not celebrating with a chippy understanding that they're thinking they're guilty and they're gonna be guilty after eating it, right? Okay, a few more stats for you.
Speaker 1:Are you actively trying to lose weight right now? Ninety one point nine percent said yes. What do you find most difficult about trying to lose weight? Consistency, consistency, consistency. The psychological side eating emotions and overeating, commitment versus motivation, consistency, exercise, consistency, motivation when stressed, comfort eating, making fat loss work or socializing, maintaining or self sabotaging, knowing when to stop.
Speaker 1:Feels like a chore, like you have to be unhappy to pry yourself of things and kill yourself in the gym in order to achieve a look as acceptable today's societal ideals. Turtle's different, of course. Not going over macros when stressed or bored. Consistency. Consistency.
Speaker 1:Staying motivated. Shock news. You will never stay motivated. It's a feeling motivation. It comes and goes.
Speaker 1:What do you find the most difficult between losing it? How slow the turtle method is? Well, shock horror as well that the stats are clear. You're trying to lose weight fast, you put it back on. So total method, whilst it's on paper slower, is actually faster.
Speaker 1:If you've got 50 pounds to lose and you'd lose it in the year with total method, you've probably been trying to lose weight for twenty years, ten years, fifteen years. Which one is slower? You tell me. Mindset and self control, while we've disciplined is destiny for book club over the next challenge, we'll be covering all this. Willpower, being accountable, confidence in myself to succeed, so self sabotage.
Speaker 1:Self control, because a lot of consistency here, guys. We we had talked about on the podcast the other day, what do we mean by that? Just turn up for yourself every day. That's being consistent. Don't think consistency is like losing weight every week.
Speaker 1:It's not how it works. Everyone everyone is on a turtle app now. If you go to your data studio, tap the yearly view, and please start sharing your yearly view on Instagram stories or in the Mighty Networks or in the Turtle Method Silver Group just so we can see what your yearly view looks like for everyone. And let's have a look. And this is an interesting question and I think we will finish on this one and I got more to share on this once we get more data.
Speaker 1:But what would weight loss do for your life if you achieved it and kept it off? Give me confidence, confidence, make me healthy and happier, healthy and confidence, make me more comfortable in my clothes, healthy and happier, the unimaginable number of things I don't do or afraid to do because of my weight is actually quite sad. It shouldn't be that way, I'd like to live not just exist, I'd like to love myself. That is you know, that's the reality for a lot of people. The flip side to this is even when you lose weight, if you haven't worked in your mind you'll still feel that way, and I promise you the weight loss isn't gonna fix a lot of the psychological stuff.
Speaker 1:So your self worth whilst you think is linked to your weight and in your head you're like yeah but if I did lose weight I'll be transformed. There's a lot of people that aren't transformed when they lose their weight because they still feel like they're never good enough. So the first thing to understand is why can't you do the things just because you're overweight? It doesn't mean you can't do it. I mean I know it's about the confidence thing, but that's why you have troops of people around you like when you join the turtle method community, can do the local meetups, we'll do some workouts in gyms across the country, join in, no one's gonna be extreme pushing hard, we're gonna be there enjoying.
Speaker 1:And you really, yeah, of course I can do these things. Yeah, I'm just thinking people are gonna think things and some people are nasty people. But don't hold off living just because you haven't you're not an x amount of weight. Right? When you're older and you're 70 years old or whatever, you look back, I didn't do those things because I weighed a bit more.
Speaker 1:And I know it comes out of the confidence, but that's why the community is essential. Reach out to people at Turtle, you know, I'm not feeling great. I don't not doing any sort of I wanna do more things, I feel I feel terrible about myself, whatever. That's what we can help. And that's what turtle really you can't really explain that to, people like, oh, hey.
Speaker 1:I wanna lose weight. We go, yeah. But you know what turtle is as well? It's an amazing community that you're gonna end up doing stuff with people and you become friends. Like yeah, whatever, I don't want friends.
Speaker 1:A lot of people say I don't want friends, just want lose weight. But really what we do need is a circle of support, people to lean on and like a group of people that don't judge us for how we look, and we can do all the fun things that you thought you could never do, but you do. And there's people from all ages from early 20s up to 50s, and we're all doing activities together, no one's talking about age, no one's talking about weight, where they're smiling, people have had transformations, people are slowly on their path, people are chipping away, people have you know, maintaining and that's all fine, we're still living, we're still enjoying. So please if you think this way, I know you think weight loss will change a lot and it probably will change a lot to your confidence, you know, but you still have to work on yourself and you still should do these things because when as the weight comes off, you'll start feeling more confident anyway. And you do these things and the more confidence you get from doing the things you feel uncomfortable with.
Speaker 1:And then eventually go, you know, I don't need to be an ex weight to do certain things. Hopefully that landed, I'm not sure if it did, but you know, reach out, reach out. Confidence, sense of achievement, healthy balance, health benefits, be healthier. Do you always strive to be thinner? No.
Speaker 1:Make me feel better about myself health wise, make me feel more confident, prolong my life, additional confidence, more time to focus on other things in life, not spend hours picking clothes and things are too big. Feel more confident, make me feel better mentally. Good example for my kids, that's an important one, really important one, because that will rub off on your kids, happiness, improve a lot of confidence, prevent diabetes, revolutionising my life, losing weight can be very consuming. That's a good point actually. So whilst the physical changes you might think will revolutionise you and you'd be this new person, you might not be if you're working your mind.
Speaker 1:But what is true is the amount of time and effort spent every year by people trying to lose weight is nuts. Money spent on supplements and specific foods you think is gonna help you. Slimming clubs, online subscriptions, expensive one to one coaching, hundreds and hundreds a month sometimes it can all add up to the one to one coaching. You could be doing this for years. Every day you're worrying about food to eat.
Speaker 1:Every day you think, you know, as a comment, don't wanna people thinking that it's bad to think about food every day. Now you're gonna think about food every day no matter what because you need to eat. So you're gonna think, no food. But there doesn't need to be more like a battle where you're like, oh, it's a bad food issue and it's just a good one. You know, when you're looking at the macros in the Tetris game, right, you eat whatever you want.
Speaker 1:If things come up, plans come up, you can just you can be so flat, you can change, you can be flexible, you can have more macros today and it'll automatically reduce tomorrow for you. So you're still on target at the end of the week. You might be like, I have maxed out today. Do you have to stay within those boundaries? No.
Speaker 1:You don't. You can go over. And then, you know, as the days go on throughout the week and go, should I cut down a bit to be on track weekly, should I just say, you know what? I'm not gonna be bang on this week. I'm not gonna have the exact 500 calorie deficit on average, but what I will have is I'll have I'll still be in the deficit, it just won't be as a big of a deficit.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's really like the time spent trying to lose weight, the mental energy of good and bad food is massive and I that I think this is one of the biggest transformations you can go through is to see food like macros, the flexible approach. Pulls away, like, example, Ryan, I can't remember it was, like, I was good days on my macros, went over for a few days, so I had the auto adjuster on, so my calories for one day was a bit lower. It's like, oh, we're gonna go for breakfast to talk about, future plans and all that with the videographer and so was like, yeah, Calcam. I went and it's like, you know, one of those full English breakfasts, orange juice, extra toast.
Speaker 1:And I was like, right. I'll find the closest one to this in the app, which is aware the spoons full English extra toast. It was like 1,300 calories total just for that meal. And I was like, right. Okay.
Speaker 1:So I pretty much nearly maxed out what I've done for the day because I've lowered anyway. It didn't add anything more to that. I didn't go and panic about it. I didn't go and feel bad about it. Like I had a social occasion with my friends, I enjoyed it, and it was nice to get out of the house and go and walk somewhere, somewhere nice.
Speaker 1:And that was it. And then, yeah, I did go over macros again. But to me, know, some weeks are better, some weeks are tougher, you know, depends on the social scenario. We're trying to do our best, we're trying to chip away, we're in there, we're not gonna have weeks. I see 52 in the year, I don't see fifty two weeks perfection.
Speaker 1:I see in my end, I'm like, could probably hit fifteen to twenty weeks where I've had a bang on week or I've hit my macros, my trainings be good, feel good. I probably have another fifteen weeks where I've probably gone to maintenance maybe because I've tried to go fat loss or whatever and I've just ended up being in maintenance. That's fine as well because I have the social things and they're worth it to me like I look back on my life like yeah I enjoyed it, enjoyed life, did these things I could do and you know I had those little pleasures and I didn't catastrophize. And there'd be some weeks where I went way over didn't track maybe. You know, if you saw me in my Instagram posted a year view of my weight.
Speaker 1:And when I went away to Europe, I didn't track for those months I was away. But when I came back, I tracked as like three two or three kilos heavier for that first week back on average, so I went from eighty two to eighty five or whatever it was. And then you can see it coming down again when I'm back. So I knew as soon as I get back start tracking again because UK database easily will come within my macros again, and I'll keep my activity up and my weight started dropping again, you know, and I enjoyed being in Europe. I didn't panic about eating.
Speaker 1:I was eating all of the nice foods I could have. I was obviously in Madrid. I wasn't trying to go nuts. I was drinking alcohol zeros most of the time if I could get them. Didn't wanna get heavy in drinking.
Speaker 1:I wanted it to be like a active learning walking type of experience. But I was still eating the cuisines from these places. I never said, no, I can't eat today, no way. So I'll eat, I'll be active. And I'll be moderate and I'll try and be the best I can be with my portion sizes and if anyone knows me personally, when I was eating I can eat a lot, so for me that's difficult.
Speaker 1:But I did it, and really my weight was up two or three kgs in like twelve weeks, you know, probably a bit more than would have wanted, but in the grand scheme of things that came down in a month or two. Didn't panic, didn't increase my stress levels for twelve weeks because I couldn't track properly, didn't increase my stress levels because I thought I was gaining fat, even if I did gain a fat, you know, wow. To me, what is not there's no difference in my life really from three kilos heavier and fat to three kilos less. And I know you're saying, Scott, yeah, but you you might know all the weight I got to lose. I'm not saying everyone should can have that mindset, but we have phases.
Speaker 1:Unlike the seasons, have different types of phases when it comes to a fat loss phase. When it comes to the winter period now, I see the winter as a time to really, you know, get into a routine. The the it's darker. Gym's important. Steps are gonna be less for me.
Speaker 1:I know that for a fact. I don't really go out in the dark to walk. I'm bothered. I'd rather walk in the daylight. My macros are gonna be I got weirdly, I'm always a bit more motivated to be on my macros due to winter.
Speaker 1:I see winter as a time to kind of, you know, tighten things up. And then when I know summer comes, it's gonna be loose of me, and it could be the same for you. But we've got five weeks coming up, five weeks of training hard, getting strong, right? Meal prepping, being on top of our macros, getting into a routine, make sure we go to bed, good time every night, take your phone away, wake up earlier, get your session in, be this active person during the tough winter that's going to be coming up for us. It's an opportunity and getting to reading discipline is destiny.
Speaker 1:But I'll share more of the research on this survey we've done. But yeah, like everything is, we work in seasons as humans, okay, you're never going be the same all throughout the year. And that's fine. But if you were to and I'll do a graphic. If you were to look at my weight even when I'm further back, so the summer before as well, I've stayed within a four kilogram buffer for the last year and a half, two years.
Speaker 1:And it goes up and down. It's the same. It goes up through the summer, it comes back down towards the end of summer, winter's down and then, you know, as life opens up again, it goes back up. And that's how I am, And I'm happy with that, but that's how my flow is, and yours might be different. But if you do track your weight and stuff, you can start seeing this and app yourself.
Speaker 1:But I'm done now. Enjoy your day. Get your one big thing done, and start building momentum ready for a big five weeks coming on Monday. So look at the recipes, get some meal preps, ideas done, and I'll be seeing you on Book Club if you're Gold members later on. If not, I'll see you on the radio or the podcast.
Speaker 1:Have a good day, chaps. See you soon.
