Syn-tastic: Low syn snackbox

One of the keys to Slimming World success is maintaining a good intake of syns. Too little and your body will go into starvation mode... Too many and you undo the good work you've been doing. Losing weight depends on striking this balance... and it's sometimes easier said than done with so many temptations around us!

Some slimmers find that creating a snackbox which contains all their favourite treats and doesn't exceed their weekly syn level is the trick. So, how do you create your box?

The most successful dieters have at least 5 syns of their 15 syn daily allowance each day.  If you were to have 5 syns available for day-to-day eating to cover things like oils, cheeses, etc, you would have 10 syns available per day. So your snackbox could contain as many as 70 syns! And that's a lot of snacking!

Your box could contain any type of snack - sweet or savoury. The only rule would be that it contains no more than 70 syns for the week. This way you could dip in when and as you please to meet your body's needs.

Low syn snacks - sweet

Hartley's low calorie jelly - .5 syn
Mini milk ice lollies - .5 syn
Quality Street (per sweet) - 2 syns
Celebrations (per sweet) - 2 syns
After 8 (1 square) - 2 syns
Cadburys Heroes (per sweet) - 2.5 syns
Mini Wall's Twister lollies - 2.5 syns
Terrys Chocolate Orange - 2.5 syns per segment
Jaffa Cake - 2.5 syns
Oreo - 2.5 syns
Pink & White wafer - 2.5 syns
Snack A Jack Jumbo 3%Fat Caramel 2.5 syns

Chocolate Snack A Jacks - 3 syns
Mars bar - fun size - 4 syns
Skinny Cow ice cream lollies - 4.5 syns
Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Toffee Popcorn - 4.5syns
Toffee Crisp - 5 syns
Snack A Jack Popcorn Butter Toffee 23g 5syns
Curly Wurly - 6.5 syns
Walnut Whip - 8.5 syns



Low syn snacks - savoury
French Fries All Varieties 19g 4syns

French Fries All Varieties 22g 4½ Syns
Walkers Baked Crisps All Varieties 25g. 5 syns
Quavers All Varieties 17g 4½ syns

Walkers Light Mutipack 24g 5½ syns
Wotsits All Varieties 21g 5½ Syns
Squares Mutipack All Varieties 22g 5syns
Potato Heads All Varieties 23g 5½ Syns
Monster Munch All Varieties 25g 6syns
Salt N Shake 24g. 6½ Syns
Walkers Crisps All Varieties 25g 6½ Syns
Walkers Crisps All Varieties 34.5g 9syns
Walkers Baked Crisps 70% Less Fat All Varieties 35g 7½ syns
Doritos Dipping Chips Lightly Salted 28g 7syns
Salt N Shake 30g 8syns

Doritos Dipping Chips Lighty Salted 175g 43syns




 

Low syn snackng that is just heavenly!

Anyone who knows me, knows I love that feeling of eating well while losing weight.

Restricting your eating or dining like you are dieting is the first step to downfall for me... every time!

There's plenty of wiggle room within Slimming World syn system for a bit of fun, too. You have between 5 and 15 syns available a day to you. So don't waste them - enjoy them!

Mikado chocolate covered pretzel sticks - .5 syn per stick
Mini meringues - .5 syn each
Soft Mints - .5 syn each
Rowntree's low sugar jelly - .5 syn (all flavours)
Sugar-free Chupa Chup lolly - 1.5 syns
Full sugar Chupa Chup lolly - 2.0 syns
Options Belgian Hot Chocolate drink - 2.0 syns
Coconut ring (biscuit) - 2.0 syns
Mini Milk - 2.0 syns
Mini Twister - 2.5 syns
Alpen Chocolate Fudge cereal bar - 3.5 syns (or 2 as Hex B)
Cadbury Chocolate Mousse - 3.5 syns
GoAhead yoghurt breaks - 3.5 syns (all flavours)
Milky Way (fun size) - 3.5 syns
Oaty bar - 3.5 syns
Cheese curls - 3.5 syns
BGTY sweet chilli cassaca snacks - 3.5 syns
Kings Velvet Crunch - 4.0 syns per bag
SlimFast Chocolate Caramel bar - 4.5 syns
Galaxy Ripple (17g) - 4.5 syns
Skinny Cow ice lolly - 4.5 syns
Blue riband bar - 5.0 syns
Walkers crisps - 5.0 syns
Solero bar - 5.0 syns
Freddo bar - 5.0 syns
Salt & Vinegar Snack-a-Jacks - 5.5 syns
Kellogg's Fibre Plus bar - 5.5 syns
Dairy Milk Little Stars bar - 5.5 syns
Maltesers (treat size) - 5.5 syns
Curly Wurly - 6 syns
McCoys crisps - 8 syns
Crunchie bar - 8.5 syns
Galaxy Bubbles - 8.5 syns
Galaxy Ripple (33g) - 9 syns
Malteasers bag (full size) - 9 syns
Twirl (from multi-pack) - 9 syns
Twirl (full size) - 11 syns

Weigh In - Week one (Mark II)

Hopped on the scales feeling slightly nervous this evening. You see, I have had a few hiccups this week...Fortunately the gods of dieting were on my side and I registered a loss of 6lbs. Of course, I am pleased with the results. However, I do know that if I managed several social situations a bit better I would have possibly seen a larger loss.

Take Saturday for example. I went to the cinema with the best of intentions. I saved a few points for a snack and a diet soft drink. Unfortunately I chose a snack that required incredibly strict willpower - of which I had none... I opted for the massive bag of Maltesers which weighed in at a whopping 16 points. I planned to simply eat the equivalent of a small bag's worth which only costs 3.5 points and pass it on to the others. Hearing the reply 'no thanks' to my offer left me perplexed...and reaching into the bag.

The funniest bit of this is that I really didn't even want a sweet snack. I longed for the ultimate movie treat - popcorn. And guess what? I found out yesterday that a small bag of salty goodness is only 3.5 points....

So, I guess this is just one of many lessons that I will learn that fall into the book of 'Point before you eat'!

Pimp my points!

Nineteen weeks into this adventure, I think I've become a point pimp. Inside my head is a virtual point calculator and I'm constantly tabulating the values of all sorts of foods for myself and for friends who are dieting but just don't understand how to do it without starving! I think each person on WW has a list of great low-point treats that will satisfy the naughty urge. Here's mine.

Sweet

Skinny Cow Ice Lollies - 1.5 pts

Pink'n'Whites - .5 pts each

Miles of Mallow - 1.5 pts

Tesco Chocolate Chip Cereal Bars - 1.5pts

Curly Wurly - 2.5 pts

Cadburys Fudge - 2 pts

Savoury

Walkers Baked Crisps - 1.5pts

Potato Heads - 1.5pts

Walkers French Fries - 2pts

Quavers - 2pts

Most people I meet find it impossible to believe that you can have this sort of stuff and still lose weight...what they forget is that you can have a little bit of this stuff as (hopefully) you're keeping your diet in check with other low-fat and low-cal options. I've even had people tell me that they don't understand why they can't lose weight because all they eat is...and when I point up their diet, I soon understand why.

A great example of this is a friend who feels she is constantly starving yet continues to gain. Her diet involves:

no breakfast (bad move)

a mid-morning baguette with sausage, eggs and bacon (at least 15 points)

scampi chips and peas for lunch (at least 15 points if not more)

for dinner two slices of bread and butter (4.5pts) followed by at least a bottle of wine (8pts or so).

Of course she's starving as she's:

a) not spreading her food throughout the day

b) a fair chunk of her calories feature saturated fat

c) nearly 1/4 of her calories are coming from booze

At the moment, thanks to folks like Jamie Oliver, the government is earmarking cash to be spent by local education authorities on nutritional learning for children. Let's hope this education scheme works as thanks to fear induced by the media children aren't moving as much as possible to burn calories and busy work schedules encourage parents to become part of high cal/high fat ready meal culture.