Ready Meals • Big Loss • My weight loss journey

Back in 2016 Slimming World announced an exclusive deal with the Iceland supermarket to sell a range of Slimming World branded ready meals, soups and sauces.

The official instructions from Slimming World is that these meals are NOT required to follow the Food Optimising plan. It’s not like some companies that mandate that you buy their products in order to follow their diet. It’s perfectly possible to do Slimming World and never taste any of these Iceland products.

However, what they do say is that the foods are there if you need them.

We all lead busy lives, and sometimes it’s hard find the time to cook a healthy meal from scratch. Sometimes we only have a few minutes to grab something to eat after work before running out of the door again. And for those time, Slimming World says that these frozen ready-meals are available.

If they help avoid resorting to a takeaway or something else equally quick but unhealthy, then that’s a good thing!

And the best news about these Iceland Slimming World meals is that they are all syn-free!

The portions are also fairly generous, so you can feel like you’ve had a proper dinner (unlike with some other ready meals). And if you feel like trying to reproduce the meal at home, they print the recipe on the back of the packaging for you!

Iceland locations in Dublin

At the moment there are a few Iceland stores located around Dublin:

Ballyfermot, Dublin 10
Coolock, Dublin 17
Finglas, Dublin 11
Cabra, Dublin 7
Talbot Street, Dublin 1
Tallaght, Dublin 24

The stores aren’t always in a convenient locations, depending on where you live. I know I have to make a special journey across town to my nearest shop.

What about other supermarkets?

The deal to sell branded Slimming World meals is exclusive to Iceland, and other supermarkets are not allowed to sell products with the Slimming World name or with Syn-values listed.

That didn’t stop Aldi introducing their range of ‘SlimFree’ meals last year aimed at slimmers. Slimming World promptly threatened to sue them, and I believe the dispute is ongoing.

Aldi SlimFree Meatballs & Pasta ready meal

In the mean time the Aldi meals are a third cheaper than the Iceland ones, but we don’t have any official Syn values for them, as Slimming World refuses to list the Syn for these ‘SlimFree’ foods in their Syns Online database.

Unlike a lot of diets or healthy eating plans, Slimming World isn’t about getting you to buy their products.

There are no shakes to buy, and no ready meals that form a mandatory part of the plan. You can food optimise without having to buy anything from Slimming World themselves.

However, they do have a small number of products for sale in class that you can buy. Most notably they have things called Hi-Fi Light bars, which are sold in boxes of 6 for €3.00 a box. You can have two of these bars every day for your Healthy Extra B (HEB), which is great if you have a sweet tooth, or if you use your HEB on something else, they are 3 syns each. The bars seem to be very popular, and often provoke heated debate – especially when the flavours change. As far as I know these bar are only available to buy in class.

Some classes may also sell packets of Scan Bran – or Scandinavian Bran Crispbread to use its actual name. Scan Bran often divides people. Some love them. Some hate them. Personally I quite like them, especially with some Laughing Cow Light spread over them and a slice of ham. Scan Bran is available to buy in some health food shops, including Holland & Barrett.

Books and Magazines

There’s often a number of different recipe books for sale, if you’re looking for inspiration on what to cook. They’re often themed around one area, such as curries, desserts, or fakeaways (Fake Takeaways – the taste of a takeaway meal without the syns). New books are occasionally given away for free as part of a promotion, typically when you sign up to a 12-week Countdown – but check with your consultant first!

The monthly Slimming World magazine also seems to be quite popular, and is sold in class more cheaply than it’s available in the shops. There are some pretty good recipes in the magazine, along with motivational articles. There’s even a small men’s section, focusing on men’s issues!

Iceland Ready Meals

Last year Slimming World announced an exclusive deal with the Iceland supermarket to sell a range of frozen ready meals. There’s no requirement to buy any of them, but they can come in handy if you’re in a hurry or stuck for ideas. And best of all, I think all of them are syn-free. And unlike a lot of other ready-meals on the market, their portion sizes are quite decent, so you feel like you’ve had a proper dinner!

I’ve only tried a couple of them, and find them to be a mixed bag. I didn’t like the sausages at all, but loved the Chicken Tikka Masala.

Because of the exclusivity deal, other supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell products that claim to be Slimming World friendly, although it seems that some of the value supermarkets are starting to bring out products that end up being syn-free, even if they can’t sell them as such. So for now it’s down to word-of-mouth to find out about them.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_gat_gtag_UA_46938954_7	1 minute	Set by Google to distinguish users.
_gid	1 day	Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.