5 Things You Need to Know About the Slimming World Diet

1. A World for Weight Loss

Slimming World offers more than a weight loss program for its members. Founded in 1969 by Margaret Miles-Bramwell, the company provides a complete atmosphere dedicated to weight loss and a healthy lifestyle. Support groups, a magazine and SMILE, a charity program, provide dieters with a system devoted to their success. Based in the United Kingdom, members have access nationwide to trained consultants and 24 hour support through "Lifeline Online," a member's only website.

2. Learn Self-Control

The Slimming World diet focuses on putting you in control. You optimize your food choices so that you eat foods high in nutrients. With this diet plan, you don't weigh yourself or your food and you don't count calories. You get to eat hundreds of foods without the restriction of other diet programs. The Slimming World Diet offers two menus plans, the Green choice and the Original choice. You eat to satisfy your appetite, any time during the day or night.

3. Classify Your Food

According to the plan, you can skip calorie counting and still lose weight or maintain a healthy weight. With Slimming World, you learn to classify your food into "free foods," or low-calorie foods like fish, fruits and vegetables; "healthy extras," foods like milk, bread and cheese that are high in calories but packed with nutrients, vitamins or fiber; or "Syn value," which estimates a daily allowance similar to Weight Watchers. The Slimmers' World website provides the Syn value for thousands of foods for quick calculation. For example, one glass of red wine carries a "5 Syn" value.

4. Mix and Match Your Food Choices

The original Slimming World Diet required you to pick one food group and stay with it the entire day. Now dieters get to choose per meal with the "Mix2Max" plan. With the "Success Express" plan, you get to pick foods from both groups at the same meal as long as 2/3 of your food includes "Superfree foods," such as side vegetables or salad with little or no dressing. The flexibility of the plans helps you fight cravings and eliminate binge eating.

5. Keep Your Focus on Food

While Slimming World encourages a healthy lifestyle, it doesn't require constant exercise to burn off calories. With Food Optimizing, you learn to eat better, which means your body works harder even if you don't exercise. Some foods like coffee naturally boost your metabolism. Most doctors still recommend at least 30 minutes of exercise, 3 days a week, which fits into any diet program.