My Slimming World Healthy Extra B Favourites
Eating fibre is important to keep your bowels moving well and fill you up. Here are lots of ideas that are high in fibre including breakfast cereals and breads.
Just Average Jen is an independent blog not connected with any weight loss plan. Please check nutritional values and/or syns yourself.
Why does Slimming World have healthy extras?
If you are looking to follow Slimming World and have read my Slimming World guide but are a bit confused about the healthy extra choices this should help you.
There are two healthy extras, Healthy Extra B is the one I want to share with you today with a list of foods we have enjoyed as a family.
You may see this referred to as healthy b, Hex b, hexb, or HEB (I tend to use a mixture!), basically, they are all the same thing, your fibre element of the plan.
The Slimming World diet, however much they say it is not, is primarily down to calories. All diets are, aren’t they? You can only lose weight if you burn more calories than you eat.
There are some crucial elements to nutrition that you may not be getting from your diet which is why they have the healthy extra choices. Healthy extra a (also known as HEA, Hex a or healthy a) is for calcium, and healthy extra b is for fibre.
We all know without fibre you can become constipated and generally, you don’t have the bowel movements you should.
How do you eat the healthy extra b?
The choice is actually completely yours. If food has fibre in then whether it is cooked or raw the fibre element is still the same. This means you can count it as your hex b, healthy b or healthy extra b choice, whatever you wish to call it.
Many people have their healthy extra b choice as part of a meal but you can choose to do whatever suits your lifestyle. If you want to blend it into a smoothie then you can do that too.
How many healthy b do you have?
In general, you have one healthy b choice on the Slimming World EE plan. If you are a target member you may have more healthy extra b choices depending on how easily you are maintaining your weight and advice from your consultant.
Is Slimming World Healthy b essential?
No one can make you eat anything. Whichever diet you choose to follow, and there are many to choose from, it is your decision what you put in your mouth.
Slimming World advises you to have a third of your plate as speed foods, one healthy extra b choice and two healthy extra a choices. Of course, this is just advised. People can, and will, lose weight without this.
Every person is unique in their own way, with their own individual body chemistry and preferences. Find what works best for you. Of course, however, if you are not having your healthy extra choices then Slimming World would say you are not actually following their plan.
Cereals as a Healthy Extra B choice
Many people choose to have a bowl of cereal as their Healthy Extra B choice. It is a great way of having a filling breakfast and ensures you also get your fibre.
If you follow a gluten-free diet then don’t worry there are plenty of healthy extra choices for you too. Here are some of the cereals you can choose and how much of them are considered by Slimming World on the extra easy plan as a Healthy Extra B choice.
40g of cereal for a healthy b choice
- Plain porridge oats
- Puffed wheat (not sugar puffs though, sorry!)
- Alpen no added sugar muesli
- Dorset Cereals Simply nutty muesli
- All-Bran, Golden crunch
- Shredded Wheat bitesize – plain, multigrain barley and spelt or honey and nut. If you prefer Red Berries and Vanilla you get 45g of that flavour, I have no idea why!
- Fruit and fibre cereal.
- Shreddies or their own brand equivalent
- Grape Nuts (sound strange but are really nice and almost biscuit-like)
- Cheerios – Oat, honey or multigrain cheerios.
45g of cereal for healthy extra b choice
- Aldi fruit wheats (Apricot, Blueberry, Cherry flavours)
- Bran flakes
- Oat bran
- Jordan’s Natural Muesli (no added sugar)
- Weetabix crunchy bran (I love this!)
50g of cereal for a healthy b choice
All-Bran or other supermarkets own brands similar cereal.
Cereal you don’t have to weigh
Don’t get excited, this does not mean that you can eat as much as you like. It just means you simply count the item eg Weetabix.
Weetabix – 2 biscuits of either plain, protein, chocolate, banana, red berries or protein with chocolate chips. It does not include Oatibix unfortunately.
2 Shredded Wheat
Bread Choices
If you worry you will miss your sandwiches then using your Healthy Extra B choice for bread could be a lifesaver.
You have a few choices open to you so don’t listen to people who say you can only have a certain brand as this is not right.
- 60g wholemeal bread in any form you choose, sliced, crumbs, roll, pitta or even dough made into a pizza base!
- 1 Warburtons gluten-free multiseed sandwich thin
- You can even have a shop-bought sandwich on wholemeal bread. Simply deduct the 6 syns for the bread from the syns of the sandwich.
- 60g Rye bread
- High fibre gluten-free white bread 60g for hexb
- High-fibre gluten-free white rolls or brown/multiseed rolls 60g is your heb choice
Cooked fruit and nuts
If you find that cereal or bread just doesn’t agree with you then there are other options you can choose such as cooked fruit, nuts and seeds.
Here are just a few of the options you have to choose from. (weights are the cooked weights)
Cooked fruit syns and hex b choices
All the following cooked fruits are around 7 syns if you want to count them as syns instead of your healthy b choice.
- 250g of apples, or 300g if they are cooking apples.
- 250g of blackberries or raspberries
- 500g rhubarb
- 200g Strawberries
Nuts and seeds
Raw nuts or seeds can be enjoyed as a healthy extra or used in a recipe. Here are some of our favourite choices. All the below are usually considered as one hex b choice or around 7 syns.
- 20 Almonds as healthy extra b – a popular choice!
- 25 Hazelnuts (unfortunately you can’t have Nutella and claim this counts as hazelnuts!)
- 40 pistachio nuts (my favourite nuts!)
- 2 level tbsp pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, chia or flax seeds.
- 20g of pine nuts, perfect in a pasta salad or similar.
Of course, this shows how varied they can be so you do need to check them out with Slimming World to be sure that you know what fits into your plan as a hexb choice and what doesn’t.
Recipes that use your healthy b choice
Remember you do not need to have your healthy extra on its own or as a sandwich or cereal there are so many options available.
Here are just a few ideas to use your hexb in a recipe.
- Breadcrumbs for a meal like Chicken Katsu curry or KFC fakeaway.
- Overnight oats with your 40g of oats, check out my 10 tasty ideas.
- Homemade pizza using wholemeal bread dough as your base.
- Bake a dessert or breakfast using 40g of oats and make one of these 10 tasty baked oats recipes including chocolate orange, cherry Bakewell and banoffee!
Gluten-free Choices
Being gluten-free doesn’t mean that you need to miss out on your Healthy Extra B. There are a number of gluten-free cereals you can have alongside gluten-free bread so having to avoid gluten doesn’t mean it is difficult to have your heb choice.
Dorset cereals Gluten-free tasty tropical or blissful berry muesli, both of which you can have 40g of for heb. Lizi’s does gluten-free granola which you can have 30g of but it can be tricky to get hold of.
If you choose a high-fibre gluten-free bread then you can enjoy 60g of it as your hexb in any way you choose. Gluten-free oats can be enjoyed in the same way as other oats such as porridge, overnight oats or baked oats with the same portion size of 40g as your heb choice.
Wraps and tortillas
It is easy to panic when you see a recipe using tortillas or wraps on Slimming World as they can be high in syns.
There are no wraps or tortillas which are syn-free on Slimming World, unfortunately. There are also only a few choices at the moment that you can have as your healthy extra b choice.
