What happens in a group?
Unique to Slimming World is group support, that’s carefully designed to meet the needs of local members. With the guarantee of confidentiality, empathy and empowering adult-to-adult guidance, members make step-by-step changes to their diet and activity levels.
Individual groups very much reflect the needs of the local community in which they are situated. Offered across a range of days and at different times of day, the majority of sessions are held outside normal working hours. People working shifts are able to access different groups according to their shift pattern.
All sessions run for 1 hr 30mins, with additional support provided between groups in the form of a series of lifelines:
- telephone support from the Consultant and other group members
- free support from the Slimming World member website
- magazines and other literature
Slimming World Consultants are themselves members of the local community and the Consultant facilitates group discussion and sharing of ideas relevant to the local population, the group demographic and current events affecting lifestyle choices, eg the credit crunch.
There is a strong emphasis on sharing favourite recipe ideas and discussing local stores’ special offers. There is promotion of basic cooking skills rather than reliance on convenience foods and general cooking tips are shared. Our advice and literature take cost, cultural preferences and cooking ability/limited time for cooking into consideration. We publish a Convertible Cuisine cookbook which makes use of leftover ingredients, and our recipe books, magazine and website feature foods and meal ideas across a range of cuisines.
Many groups have men as members and Slimming World encourages family members to attend together to provide additional support to each other.
Praise and recognition of progress is a fundamental part of the Slimming World group approach. Members are praised on a weekly basis for meeting their self-determined action targets, including changes to diet and activity levels. A number of reward mechanisms are in place. For example regular awards are given for different levels of weight loss achievement. An award and free week is offered on achieving and maintaining a 10% weight loss. When a member achieves their personal (self-selected) target weight and remains within ± 3lbs of this weight they are able to continue attending at no cost.
