The NHS's Weight Management Service - anyone attended?

Has anyone been through the NHS's Weight Management Service that they offer? I only heard about it through a friend who'd also been diagnosed diabetic at the same time as me, so asked my doctor to refer me. My first appointment is this Tuesday - excited but nervous at the same time, and would love to hear from anyone who's gone through the programme.

In case anyone else hasn't heard about it, the very rough description is that it's a programme that helps you (over a period of 4 months or longer I think) to change your eating behaviour and physical activity levels, while develop confidence and the skills to change unhelpful habits. I can't remember the full details, but I believe in my area anyway sometimes they run an exercise class with it, and sometimes they have a psychologist in to gives talks on various related topics. Fortnightly appointments for the first 4 months, and think they are all 90 mins long.

Really hoping this helps me, as I know a lot of the information about healthy diet etc, but putting it into practice is eluding me somewhat

Updating this now I've attended 2 sessions.

The first session was very much a general introduction, with talk about setting realistic achievable goals, and the barriers we face where weight loss is concerned. Nothing ground-breaking, but atmosphere was good and the feeling of determination in the room from everyone else was motivational.

Second session was last night. Started with a weigh-in and being given our personalised diet plans. By that I mean you get told a number of calories calculated to help you lose weight, and then that's broken down into how many portions of starches, meat/alternatives, dairy, fruit & veg, fats and extras (in calories). At first I was a bit concerned, as it had me down for 6 startch portions which is more than I'd want However the rest of the session was then spent discussing portions, how to work out what a meal comes to etc (a bit too simple for me, but this is a course designed for everyone including people who really don't have a clue about portion sizes etc), and the question came up about exchanging portions. While the dietician was careful to point out that exchanging portions would make your diet a bit more unbalanced, she was also happy to say (several times) that you can adjust it to suit you, and if you are always going to eat less of something (eg starches) then you are better to replace it with something else suitable to bring the calorie total up to your prescribed figure than just miss it out completely. So I can happily swap some carbs for some more veg, for example
While most things she was saying was stuff I knew from various books/diet groups etc over the years, for some reason discussing it in that setting actually made it seem more real (or maybe that's the fact it was in a hospital room, with the hospital smell, and with hospital equipment in the background - easier to take your weight related potential health issues more seriously when sat in a hospital environment!), I think for the first time I fully acknowledged one thing I am guilty of - serving 5ft me the same size of portion as my 6'2" boyfriend! Where veggies are concerned not such an issue, but where things like macaroni cheese, pizza, naan bread etc are the items it does become more of an issue

So overall so far I am quite impressed. She's a huge improvement on the diabetic dietician I saw when first diagnosed, who was pretty useless. And as the course has been co-written with psychologists there's an element of CBT in there which should help us all feel more motivated to make the necessary changes. I'm just sorry that the free psychologist talks happen during the day so I can get to them.

No weight loss for the first fortnight, but I wasn't really trying...this fortnight I'm aiming to get a good result :thumbup:

The one they make up for you is low fat/high carb, however I could swap some of the carb portions for fat or dairy portions (they split them) to make it work better for me. Her goal is to help us loose weight, so if swapping some of the portions about makes it work for us, she won't complain (just mention it's not quite the balanced diet it should be, which I can ignore :wink: )

I'll need to sit down and look at the amount of actual carbs in various starch portions, work out the best ones for me, then decide how many I'm going to eat. I'm not trying for very low carb (for now!), to start with I'm going to aim to half the amount of carbs I consume. Once I'm used to that, I'll try and reduce it a bit further, maybe to a third of what I currently consume, and see how things look from there.

So I'd guess I'll be using between 3 - 4 starch portions as opposed to 6 (a portion = 80cals = a slice of some breads, or half a baked potato, or 20g egg noodles, for example). I was definitely planning on one of the 'spare' portions being exchanged for an equivalent value of dairy, and one for meat alternatives. Not sure what the remaining portion will exchange with, might be a case of wait and see what looks like it'll fit in best with the rest of that day's meals! I've only just started testing my response to various foods too, so it's quite a bit of change to adjust to. It's a guideline for me anyway, and I'm more going along for the support/encouragement than the actual diet part - it's free, and has a better atmosphere than weight watchers :lol:

I've not tested a baked potato yet, I'm hoping that I may be able to get away with it (with beans or cheese) as it's about the only healthy thing my work canteen sells (if I forget my lunch). Egg noodles appear to be ok I think, although I'd want to repeat the test a couple of times (both with/without something dessert-like) to see how much I can get away with. I need to find a good cheap supplier of both needle drums and test strips for my Nano, so I can afford to do a large amount of testing.