Slimming World Sunday - My EESP Week

I think it's safe to say I really enjoyed my sister's wedding! I lost track of the amount of syns I ate and drank that day (and for part of the day after whilst we were still at the hotel!) but everyone's allowed days like that, right?! I was absolutely dreading stepping on the scales but I did have a quick sneak peek on the Saturday evening, and I was facing a 2.5lb gain from just two days!!! I already had my plan in place to follow the SP plan for the next four and a bit days (so not quite an EESP week, but we'll go with it!) before weigh in to try and limit the damage as much as possible.


For those that don't know, the SP plan is all about eating as much Speed and Protein foods as possible. Ideally meals should consist of at least 50% of food labelled as Speed (most fruit & vegetables) in your Food Optimising book, and the rest of those labelled as Protein (meat, fish, eggs, beans etc), and trying to reach for more Speed foods to snack on between meals. You can of course still enjoy your syns and, if you really need to, you can reach for those free foods not covered by SP.

I have to be honest, I wasn't great at planning so for most of my meals I was having the main dish, such as chilli, and instead of serving it with rice, I was having extra vegetables with it. That's not a terrible idea, and it still stuck within the SP rules, but I feel like I should have been a little more adventurous whilst following this plan!

I really thought I was going to struggle for lunch ideas, without going for something like a tuna salad, which I thought would get a little boring four days on the trot, but it turns out one of my favourite lunches is actually an SP meal - I didn't realise until I started researching for this week! I didn't think I'd be able to have quiche this week, but it turns out cottage cheese is classed as a Protein food, which I didn't know, so all of the ingredients were either Speed or Protein - happy days! Look out for my quiche recipe next week! Other lunches consisted of Ryvita topped with Extra Light Philadelphia, cucumber & ham, and I did go one day with a boring salad!

One of the great things about SP is that it allows you to have an additional Healthy Extra B choice every day, which I took full advantage of! I really love having porridge for breakfast, as I find it to be so filling, it will keep me going for hours. Depending on what else I'm having during the day though, it's not always possible to have my porridge, as I'm not keen on synning additional healthy extras (I'd rather have chocolate!). Having two healthy B's on my SP days though meant that I could enjoy my favourite porridge every day!

I have to say I found SP quite easy to stick to and I wasn't missing my rice or pasta much at all, as I was still very satisfied by the meals that I was having. The SP plan definitely beats the old Success Express plan that Slimming World used to have, as you have a lot more freedom! I stepped on the scales on Thursday to find the I had maintained from my previous weeks weight - that's essentially a 2.5lb loss in just over four days which I was so pleased with!

Having looked into SP a little more since this week, I can see there were so many other meal options available to me, so I'll definitely be giving it a go again whenever I feel like I need a boost. If you're a Slimming World member, there's a 7 day SP meal plan on their website, and plenty of other SP recipes to try besides on their website, so I'd definitely recommend checking that out if you're thinking of giving SP a go.

Have you tried the EESP plan?