Have you heard of the "Naturally Slim" weight loss program?

January 5, 2021 9:22 PM

My health insurance is offering participants free enrollment in a weight-loss program called "Naturally Slim." I'm having problems googling it because of the generic title. Does anybody have experience with this program?

Since it's free, I'm interested in signing up if this is a quality program, but I haven't found a lot of info online.

(My particulars are: I've lost a lot of weight in the last two years, but I have a bit more to lose + I think I'll really need help adapting to the post-weight loss phase of trying to maintain. Would love to hear anybody's thoughts about this program and if it may assist me.)

posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

I don't have experience with it myself, but I found that Googling "Naturally Slim" + "insurance" brought up some helpful results, since the program looks to be specifically sold to insurance providers, employers, and health care practitioners. That then led to suggested searches for consumer reviews and discussions on Reddit, etc.

There are some comments and notes on Consumers Compare and Consumer Health Digest, and there's a subreddit at r/Naturallyslim, if any of that is helpful.
posted by northernish at 9:45 PM on January 5, 2021

I'm currently doing NS through work. The basic idea is that it's a mindful eating program with specific tools to help you (1) wait to eat until you are hungry; (2) eat slowly and savor your food; and (3) stop eating when you are full. This sounds like it would be obvious or easy but if you are like me and have a not-great history with food and eating it can be pretty hard.

The way it's implemented is with specific skills. To learn about your hunger you use a numerical hunger scale and practice evaluating your hunger levels to wait and eat until you are hungry but not famished. To practice slower eating there is a timer where you eat for 10 minutes, pause for 5 minutes, then eat for 10 more minutes - based on the science that it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to realize from your stomach that you are full. To slow down you also practice chewing thoroughly to really taste your food.

There's a lot more, but those are the core pieces. The program gives you weekly videos which I like and are based in science and explain what we know from the data. The topics include these core eating skills, exercise (what, how often, why), self care and stress management to deal with emotional eating, getting better sleep, nutrition, and other stuff I'm not remembering. It covers relaxation techniques, and developing self-compassion. There are coaches you can email with and a forum that unfortunately has appallingly terrible software. You can access the program on a PC or phone app - the app is fairly buggy.

Personally this is having a massive positive transformation on food and eating for me. Being able to relax and enjoy food without calorie counting or putting certain foods off-limits is just... liberating. I started the program because of pandemic-magnified stress eating, which is now way, way better because of tools from the program. It's just been so good and helpful, I can't believe I never heard of it before the announcement from my work. It's also real ongoing support: new videos every week for a year. I had fairly low expectations going in (usually my work wellness stuff is super stupid) but I am absolutely loving this. It's just so gentle and positive. It's really changing my life for the better.

If there's anything I don't like, it's that the program has some conservative framing - for example one video has an Ayn Rand quote. Also you lose access to the early (best) videos after 20 weeks. If you're tech savvy you may, umm, want to think about that.
posted by medusa at 4:48 AM on January 6, 2021

I don’t have much to add other than I saw this post on my phone and 5 seconds later an email came through at work advertising this program. My default position is to be skeptical of any employer wellness-type programs because my experience is that they are pointless busywork at best or actively harmful (usually because they are not evidence-based) at worst. So maybe start from there in deciding whether this is right for you.
posted by scantee at 7:05 AM on January 6, 2021

I know a few people who have done it (via work), had good results, and liked the program. From the outside it didn't seem restrictive or gimmicky.
posted by mersen at 8:03 AM on January 6, 2021

I looked through the video topics for you: some examples of things addressed in short videos are
- during meal skills
- between-meal skills
- added sugar
- alcohol and weight loss
- taste satisfaction
- how to eat less and still feel full
- how to move exercise from "I have to" to "I want to"
- the 4 Rs (relaxation, relationships, recreation, renewal) and vital needs
- SMART goalsetting (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely)
- how much exercise
- breathing exercises
- added salt
- RAIN exercise (recognize, investigate, accept, nurture - an emotional mindfulness technique)
- saboteurs
- food beliefs
- can you eat more if you exercise more?
- how to deal with parties and buffets
- metabolism
- nutrition
- consistency during change
- flirt foods
- sleep
- eating triggers
- eating and stress
- urge surfing
- mindset
- exercise intensity
- emotional eating
- serving sizes
- self compassion

If you have questions, feel free to memail me.
posted by medusa at 11:25 AM on January 6, 2021

I used the Naturally Slim program through my employer and medusa has described it perfectly. I didn’t find it very useful overall. It did help me to stop snacking which helped me stop gaining, but I wasn’t able to use it to lose weight.

The thing that bothered me most was that a few months after the program, I received dozens of pages of explanations of benefits from my insurance company showing the program cost $35-40 per week. That didn’t cost me anything out of pocket, but my employer had just promoted it as a free program. Something rubs me the wrong way about being led to believe my employer was paying for it when really it was being covered by insurance. Hard to explain but I feel like that cost will eventually be passed on to employees when rates go up. I think I also feel like I would rather have had $40/week to spend on a program of my choice. That’s not really Naturally Slim’s fault though.
posted by erloteiel at 10:49 PM on January 6, 2021