Blood Sugar Diet and Fast800 thread 14

[thenewaveragebear1983]

Here’s the new thread for the BSD followers, plus those following the Fast800 plan. Everyone is welcome to join us. Here’s a quick recap!

The BSD/fast 800 is a low carb, Mediterranean style way of eating, with the primary aim of stabilising your insulin response when you eat. You achieve this by: eating fewer carbs, cutting out sugar and sweet tasting foods including most fruit, and by following a low calorie plan that reduces your visceral fat meaning that everything functions more effectively. Less insulin means less fat storage (in a nutshell, although more info can be found on this online). The blood sugar diet was designed to reduce T2 diabetes symptoms (or even reverse it entirely) but can also be used for weightloss.

Eat:
Meats and fish
Oils
Eggs
Full fat dairy products
Nuts, seeds
Pulses/ beans
Veg that grows above ground
Limit fruit: apples, pears, berries- in moderation, with meals, with fats

Occasional alcoholic drinks allowed (spirits, red wine are preferable to beer, lager, etc) although alcohol is calorie heavy and can influence your appetite
Tea and coffee, herbal tea etc.
And water- drink lots of water!

Avoid
sugar, sweets, and ‘naturally occurring sugars’ such as fructose, maltose, honey, agave, puréed dates etc....

Potatoes of any variety
Pasta
Rice
Breakfast cereals (occasional steel cut oats are ok)
Breads/ flour based products

Exercise:
Michael Moseley recommends HIIT workouts to increase calorie burn and help to tone up, and recommends walking more (increasing your steps weekly until you hit around 10000 a day)

Mindfulness
MM also suggests a programme of mindfulness, meditation, practised for a few minutes each day.

How to follow the plan:
Fast800: follow the plan above, sticking to 800 calories every day for 2 weeks. Ideal to give your weightloss a real kick start, plus improve your insulin function and reduce your sugar cravings.
8 weeks BSD- 8 weeks, follow the guidelines above- 800 calories a day. You don’t need to count carbs grams because the diet is naturally self limiting.
BSD 5:2- for a more leisurely weightloss journey, or as maintenance, or once you’ve done an 8 week stint or 2 weeks of Fast800, you can play around with a combination of increased calorie count, ‘free eating’ and fasting days (800 cals) until you achieve your goals. Many of our long standing members now follow this approach.

You can stop 800 calorie days at any time once you achieve your goal. It’s advised to limit yourself to 12 weeks maximum of 800 calorie days, but you should get excellent results in 8 weeks. Depending on your weightloss goals, you can do further ‘rounds’ of either the 8 week BSD or the Fast800. We recommend you take your measurements before you begin, not just your weight. A target pair of jeans in a smaller size or even a photography or two can be very motivating!

Some useful links:

previous thread

meal planning thread

<a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=healthyeater.com/important-tool-weight-loss" target="_blank">TDEE calculator to calculate your daily calorie requirement

information about the ‘whoosh’ phenomenon

nowork an average sized tomato has about 3-4 g carbs. I've always eaten them and I try to stay under 50g carbs per day

I should have been clearer. I'm eating very low carb (under 30gs) as I am really carb sensitive. So not eating lots of things that are allowed on BSD but planning to introduce them and see how it goes with my appetite. Being this restrictive doesn't work long term for me. Its deadly boring and probably unhealthy.

Thanks, both!
Good luck with the fiery lasttime, hope you figure what works for you.

My official weighing day is tomorrow, but I’ve been in new numbers for the last two days so hopefully I will stay here for the official weigh in tomorrow.
Another good thing...I wore a dress today that hasn’t fitted in three years. Now I need to go though a big pile of things of a similar size to see what else fits!

Macca - that's so exciting!! I love it when things fit again. I hope you discover more.

I've had a tough day. Hungry and sore and cold. I will try drinking bouillon and salt earlier in the day. Maybe left it too late. Felt miserable by dinner time. Just over 900 cals. I hope it's not the extra carbs from the additional veg. Bah!

last, when you say you are very carb-sensitive, do you mean you get hungry and cravings, and put on weight with a very low level of carb? That must be tough to manage for any length of time, and could be really tedious, as you said. I know in keto days, I used to make sure I ate fat with any carbs I did eat, to slow their release, but on 800 cals that’s not so easy to do.
How do you get on with the very high fibre carb sources, like some beans and lentils? That might be a way to carefully add a bit more fibre and a bit of variety.

Macca - i get really hungry. I'm going to try adding fat like you suggest. I want to try to work out how much carb I can tolerate, but perhaps I need to be smarter adding fat and seeing how I react to lentils.

I had a restless night dreaming of carbs. So I'm going to figure out what to do. The disaster would be to crash out and binge eat my way to even heavier than I started.

My seven - week summary:
Start: 16st 8.4
Week 1: 9.2lb loss
Week 2: 4.0lb loss
Week 3: 0.6lb loss
Week 4: 5.0lb loss
Week 5: 1.2lb loss
Week 6: 2.2lb loss
Week 7: 1.6lb loss
Total loss 23.8lb loss
Current weight 14st 12.6

I had a plateau of six days before a 1.6lb drop overnight finally brought me into new numbers. So all my loss this week happened in one day!

I’m on Easter holidays now and have family staying next week. I’m not going to count cals closely but will stay mostly on plan and try to keep logging my food as much as I can. Then the week after, I’m undecided as yet....whether to go back to a few more weeks of full 800, or to stay at 800 through the week and increase cals at weekend. I’m finding it really easy to stick to still, so not need to change things because of that. But I know I need to move on at some point, which is making me a bit nervous as I think it will be harder to stick to once I’m not just doing 800. I tried 5: 2 years ago, lost no weight at all and found it quite stressful.
What I want to avoid is going back to high carb sugary stuff, as I feel so much better now I’m off it all. It’s great feeling in control and I don’t want to go back to being controlled by food again.

So I guess I will see how next week feels, then make a decision next weekend.

Lovely chart!! And so much weight lost. It must feel incredible to get to the end of 8 weeks (soon). I'm also wondering how to ease out/ease up and also found 5:2 really stressful.

last that does sound bad, dreaming about carbs. I occasionally have dreams where I’ve eaten something off plan, then feel relieved when I wake up and know I haven’t. But I’ve never craved anything in dreams.

One technique I used when I first did keto, to stop me craving chocolate - I think it came from Paul McKenna originally. Picture yourself holding whatever you crave, smelling it, craving it, then starting to eat it. Then picture that it is mixed with anything you find repulsive to even think of eating ( for me this was cat food) and keep thinking about eating it till it is making you feel nauseous. I did that every day for a few days, then just when I thought about chocolate or was tempted to eat it. It worked for me, for as long as I kept up the visualisation. So if there is a specific food you crave, it might help.

For long term, for all of us, it’s about finding a way to make it a lifestyle not just a diet. That’s the hard bit isn’t it...finding what makes it sustainable long-term.

Yeah theres no way willpower will trump that sort of craving long term. At least not for me.
I am kind of trying a low level version of your repulsion thing. Im not easily repulsed by anything and things like the McKenna make me rebel do weirdly I do more of the thing the hypnosis is telling me yo stop. Totally weird but my experience.

But I am making time to really think about what I want in my life in relation to my serious trigger foods. Cake toast pastry. And just calmly recognising exactly what happens when I eat them. How the whole carb wagon spins out of control and next thing I know is I'm 10kgs heavier plus while I gain rapidly I lose slowly. And therefore that I'm just not going to eat them or if I have a bit it needs to be just before a proper fast day so I clean that out of my system.
I'm also using the mindfulness to think of myself aging but being fit and strong. Exercise everday of some sort. Weight lifting, being older but stronger and leaner than I am now. There has to be a solution that doesn't involve dreaming about carbs!

I've had a great first week with a 5.2lb loss!

Start: 10st 13.2lb (I'm 5ft5, so BMI was 25.4, making me just overweight).

Day 1: 1.8lb loss
Day 2: 0.6lb loss
Day 3: 0.8lb loss
Day 4: 0.8lb loss
Day 5: 0.4lb loss
Day 6: 0.4lb loss
Day 7: 0.4lb loss

Total loss: 5.2lb

Current weight 10st 8lb, BMI 24.6

I'm planning on doing 800kcal/day for another week (2 weeks total), then switching to 2:5 (so 5 x 800kcal days) until I hit 10st, then I'll reduce the fast days until I hit my target of 9st 7lb / BMI 22. I will add in some exercise next week too (felt too shaky earlier in this week, although I'm ok now).

I can't believe how good I feel & how much energy I have.

That’s fabulous concerned - you are off to an amazing start!

Well slightly over on numbers so still around 11.13 mark.(been stuck on 12.2-11.12) But strangely I look like I have lost like 5-6lb my face is much less puffier and stomach seems smaller. Though don’t know why not showing on scales.

Akire it will show on the scales soon - keep with it! How have you got on finding some recipes that work for you?

Great week concerned. Akire its weird isn't it scale weight? This time round I've lost no inches yet on waist or hips. But sports bra suddenly needed doing up tighter and it was a squeeze on the last hook before. So I measured the under bust and yes that's down 1.5 inches. I guess I'm doing that thing where I lose weight on the extremities first. Problem with that is the bad bad stomach fat will hang on in there grimly. Bastard!

I seem to be having same thing over and over. 3 egg omelette with ham spinach and tomato for dinner. Just throw in pan and seems to fill me up. I’m trying stick to 800-1000 even if cabs may be there. But no bread or rice etc. I’m probable having to much soya milk but find milky decaf coffee fills me up and is easier than making food.

Great numbers @macca & @concerned! Very inspiring!

I was down another lb yesterday to a loss of 19 in just less than 4 weeks. That said I had my first big calorie day yesterday. I went to stay with a friend in the countryside so there were loads of drinks & we went to a fab gastro pub for dinner and I had a risotto starter & a few amazing chips with my main. Thankfully no pudding but I don't want to know how many calories! Breakfast were homemade croissants It all tasted amazing but I do feel sluggish and bloated & my sleep was deep but I still woke up tired. I'm going to count cals today, even though breakfast will put me over, but I do want to be aware of how much so I can temper my reaction to the scales tomorrow!

Phoenix just remember most of the gain is just water and glycogen back due to carbs. The thing is to just get back to it.
Akire I think the thing of BSD as a way of eating is learning to eat more smartly and on the principles of a Mediterranean diet. An omelette and lots of milky coffee doesn't sound like a long term plan. I think it was you who has limited mobility so bookings hard? I've been experimenting with more fish this week esp canned fish. A lot of that's just assembly rather than cooking. I've had tuna salads and baked into tomato with cheese , canned sardines fried and those ready to eat frozen prawns with avocado and dressing. Could do with tweaking things and actually looking up recipes but healthier than last week which was basically chicken thighs for most meals.

Akire I ate the same few things for the first few weeks, and still do for most weekdays in last two weeks - an quiche type thing, then a veggie version of shepherds pie with celeriac or cauliflower top, then soup or salad with oily fish. I make it all(except salad!) at the weekend and don’t really cook again till it runs out on Friday! I vary the soup I make, and the veggies and beans in the shepherds pie, so I’m hopefully getting a decent range of nutrients. Then at the weekend I try out anything new that I fancy - today it will be a low-carb tortilla made into a pizza.

I’ve never much loved cooking, and I only cook for myself, so I prefer recipes that I can make in bulk and they last a few days in the fridge or can freeze. I use lots of shortcuts- frozen onions, frozen veg mixes as soup bases, frozen spinach and kale, frozen fish and meat that can be cooked straight from the freezer. If I need to cook beans, I do loads and freeze the spares. If you have those around, you can easily put some onion and kale in your omelette for a bit of a change, or make an easy bean/meat and veg curry with a spoonful of curry paste and some tinned tomatoes.

Typing that, I might go for curry tonight now instead of pizza!

phoenix well done on your weight loss, and on getting straight back on track!

Is anyone else really cold?

I walked up a hill today, it was much harder than it should have been. (I’ve done a fair bit of walking in the last couple of years so know what it feels like, even at this weight). Maybe the lack of carbs?

I had battered fish from the fish and chip shop for tea. The carbs in the batter were the only ones I had all day so I’m hoping hasn’t put my daily amount up too high!

Yes I’m freezing!

bear is expert on exercise and low carbs, but she is in Rome....I’m sure she will have some thoughts when she is back.

I am planning a completely off-plan meal on Wednesday...fish and chips from the Blists Hill museum in Shropshire. I haven’t had fish and chips for about two years and am really quite excited. Shame that it will be over 800 cals in one meal...that’s with the chips of course. Just the battered fish, a medium portion, is likely to be around 500 cals and 25 g carbs, according to nutracheck.

Hi everyone, just waiting for my flight and catching up with the thread. Oh my, I have eaten some serious carbs this weekend! I will break the scales when I get home (not weighing til I've done a few days on plan!)

Purple if you get that heavy legs feeling, it can be alleviated a bit by having some electrolytes/salt. I do find I get tired sometimes when exercising, but usually once you're properly fat adapted (when you're burning fat for energy effectively) then you should find no real difference. Depending on how long your walk is (eg if you're doing a long hike etc) then you could plan your menu to incorporate some 'good' carbs such as oats or butternut squash or something to give you that extra bit of fuel?

Having just completed my first week of Fast800 (still on the 800kcal/day stage), I was amazed to manage a 7.5 mile run today. For context, I normally run 5K (3 miles) twice a week, plus the odd occasional longer run - rarely more than 10K. I didn't run at all last week as I felt quite wobbly of leg on days 1-3. Like @thenewaveragebear1983 says, once your body has got used to burning fat for fuel, it seems quite easy. I decided to give a run a go today and it was quite easy so I just kept going. No shakes / wobbles at all! Very pleased