BSD and Fast800 support thread #17

[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 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)
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 at 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.

Time restricted eating/TRE :
In addition to the fast800/ BSD plan you can incorporate a strategy of time restricted eating. Put simply, this means only eating between certain times each day to maximise your fasting time. TRE has shown to have positive results for weightloss, even if there is no calorie restriction, and increases insulin sensitivity/reduces insulin resistance. At first, try for a clear 12 hours without food each 24 hours, increasing to 16:8 as you get more adept at fasting.

Some useful links:

previous thread

Meal planning ideas thread
Blood sugar diet recipe thread and menu planner 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

CaptainBrickbeard I know the feeling! Sounds like Phoenix has the right idea though, just be sensible and keep at it the rest of the time? Basically you're doing 5:2 (or 2:5?) for a few weeks which is still a diet.

I'm trying to be extremely good this next week in anticipation of DHs birthday on Friday and my brothers wedding on Saturday. No intention of holding back for either

So reassuring, Phoenix! One weekend is just me, husband and kids at Center Parcs so I figure we will take most of our own food and get plenty of exercise anyway. But we will eat out one evening and I’d like to take the kids to the Pancake House one breakfast and I don’t know if my willpower will withstand it! The other weekends I suspect it will go out the window because once I start drinking, I go a little carb-crazy. But I will do my best to rein it in!

Not sure about my calorie count today; started with spiced fruit porridge from the cook book, fine. But went to the Everyman cinema over lunchtime and ordered a pot of smoked almonds which were DELICIOUS but I have no idea what the serving size was (and I ate the whole pot!). Plus they brought me a mini Green & Blacks butterscotch milk chocolate which I also ate. Just had roast pepper and squash soup now and grated cheese into it quite freely as well without weighing it first. Oh well!

I've had a crap day today, to compound my stressful week, and it's ended with a horrible, out of control, feeding frenzy binge. It's a very long time since I've done that, but oh dear, I was unstoppable.

I'm not going to derail the thread with the details. I'll check back in tomorrow when I am back on track.

(I did run 8km though, that will have slightly offset me)

Bear sorry you’ve had such a rough day and week. Hope it’s behind you now and next week is easier - with food and with life in general!

@Maccalenny thanks. It's not even that bad really, I just feel absolutely exhausted and frazzled . Maybe I'm coming down with something? Whatever it was, raiding the kids Christmas chocolate didn't help.

Emotional eating is the most difficult kind of eating to deal with. It will happen to us all!

I’m starting to wonder a little bit about my heart rate. My resting heart rate has continued to drop daily throughout the two weeks I’ve been on the diet. Today it was 56bpm. Prior to starting the diet it would be high 60s into the 70s every day and it’s decreased by about 1bpm every day of the diet.

I’m not an athlete; I am not very active and I’m starting to feel a little bit concerned that my resting heart rate is now below 60bpm and has been steadily falling. This week I’ve felt very drained and a couple of times I’ve been faint or lightheaded. I am considering increasing calories a bit.

I once read a horror story about a woman starting Lighter Life for her wedding and dropping dead of a heart attack so I might be overthinking! But I do feel a little niggle of concern now.

Saturday morning weigh-in...I’m 11st9.8 and have been since Monday! A loss of 0.6 lb since last week - I was expecting a small loss as I dropped nealy 3lb the week before. But it is my lowest weight for 20 years so I’m not bored of seeing it just yet!

I’ve lost 68.6lb overall, with 1.4lb to go to make it five stone, and 4.8lb to get to my target of having a healthy bmi.

When I started last Feb, I was hopeful I might have found a way to maybe get down to about 14 stone and stay there, rather than keep yoyoing down to 15 stone and back up again, as I had been doing for several years. This year has changed that....I now have confidence that I will get to a healthy weight and maintain it, and get fitter and enjoy activity. The impact of this on my sense of self is immeasurable.

Well done @Maccalenny ! That's amazing!

I daren't weigh in today. Yesterday was awful! My only target for myself this weekend is to keep off the sugar and cheap white carbs entirely and to track everything I eat. I went totally off piste this week, and tracking is always the first thing to go.

My plan for today: I'm off to bootcamp first thing. Lunch will be salad, probably with tuna. Dinner will be sausages with a sort of Eastern European style celeriac hash.
I'm going to try to get 2-3 litres of water in, plenty of veg and no snacks between meals.

This is all well and good, but I always plan well, so I need to exercise some control over myself and actually stick to it. This is now 18 days alcohol free too- it's strange, I haven't craved a drink at all but I actually don't feel any better without it. I feel exhausted despite going to bed earlier, and despite sleeping better, and I'm not finding I'm eating any less at the weekend (I always blamed my grazing at weekends on my alcohol consumption). I had, maybe naively, hoped I would feel energised and refreshed by now!

2lb down today , so 😊
Well done at @Maccalenny ! You are doing great , you must feel amazing
@thenewaveragebear1983 don’t be so tough on yourself , you’ve had a lot of stress and ok you fell off the wagon but pick yourself up and keep going . I think you should give yourself ‘ permission ‘ to aim for a maintain fir a few days .. regroup and then pick it up again . You are very encouraging to everyone else but damn tough on yourself .

Happy weekend everyone !

I’m on 13lbs loss overall - stayed the same today as yesterday and I bet I stall here for ages as I’m desperate to tip into a whole stone lost so it would be typical to plateau now!

Bear the celeriac hash sounds lovely - pls post a recipe if it is successful!

@Maccalenny it's basically grated celeriac and onion, sauteeed in oil. You can add some chopped bacon or (my fave) chorizo sausage here. Then add a big dollop of sauerkraut once it's cooked through and let the heat of the celeriac warm the sauerkraut through. I add lots of pepper. It's simple but yummy.
I've also added grated carrot and sliced cabbage or shredded Brussels sprouts in the sauté stage, plus you can season with fennel or aniseed.
My polish ladies that I teach at college taught me

You can mix the mixture with some mince and wrap in lightly boiled cabbage leaves (just so they soften enough to wrap little parcels) as well (which is a traditional Romania/polish dish) and then fry them- but I've not tried this yet.

Day 8 for me and I'm down 8lbs!! Aim is to be in the 12s by next week. We have a very special family holiday in 10 weeks so using this as motivation to quit the white stuff, I'm a total sugar fiend. Feel so flat without it, but already I can see a huge difference in my stomach, skin and anxiety levels are better.
I haven't been sticking to 800, I'm easing myself in with an allowance of 1200 although having days where I do 800 and TRE.

I am limiting carbs to under 90g, avoiding bread, potatoes, rice and anything refined. I am not snacking at all unless desperate then its 1 tsp peanut butter and an apple. Breakfast is usually full fat Greek yoghurt with berries and hazelnuts. Lunch home made soup or eggs with a couple of ryvita (I need that crunch!). And will eat the family meal I cook but no carbs. Tonight I'm doing spaghetti bolognese but have some black bean spaghetti to try or may have it with the homemade ratatouille.

Good luck everyone, I love seeing everyone's ideas for meals 😋

@Captainbrickbeard Don't worry about 1 day! This is a WOE not a race. I went away with my mum last week and indulged in a beautiful afternoon tea, curry in the evening and drinks. But got back on it the next day with a big carbless breakfast and then a 24 hour fast!

@thenewaveragebear1983

Ooooh. I have celariac. I have onion. I have lovely chorizo sausage I can cut up.

I do not have sauerkraut but I am going to Lidl later. Could swing by a Sainsbury's as well.

I could do this!

@mumtumdocare I know you are easing yourself in, but when you do get consistently to 800 calories and half your carbs to under 50g and don't cheat for a few days, those cravings will cease as your body won't be crying out for carbs to replace what it's been used to. You'll end up feeling much better I think; works for me.

I'm really, really glad I found this thread! So good reading about everyone's experiences, struggles, tips etc and so many reminders for me too, which is great.

I had forgotten completely about drinking water being important, and it's something I very easily forget to do. I can't remember why it helps, but it's easy enough to do so I will try to remember now.

I'm 55 and last February I weighed 12st.13 and was told I had pre-diabetes. It was learning this, that for the first time ever made me actually serious about changing the way I ate. I do not want to get diabetes, my father had it and died in his early sixties (there were other factors too). But it scared me enough to change.

So, almost a year on, cutting out sugar and refined carbs and I now weigh 10st!!!! And occasionally 9st.13.

After losing the first 2 stone though, I still had pre-diabetes, though the number had gone down slightly. But I was shocked. And that's when I bought the BSD800 book, and finally understood better what was needed. I realised that it was because of all the loop holes I'd found ...low GI bread, hi fibre crackers, whole meal pasta etc, so I severely cut back on those too.

So now I'm really used to eating in this way, and just do it roughly, no counting. I don't eat pasta, rice, potatoes or bread. I usually have 2 squares of 85% cocoa choc per day, and often a glass of red wine, and cheese and nuts quite freely. And I eat a LOT of courgetti! Have found so many delicious ways to make various dishes with it.

But previously I ate huge amounts of chocolate things, biscuits, cake, croissants, crumpets, crisps, cheese balls, Cava, Baileys, in short whatever and as much as I wanted, and as well as all my meals; I really have already eaten my lifetime's worth of those foods! I look back now and cannot believe how badly I treated my body, and for how long too! A massively compulsive and emotional eater. And the longer you take piling it on, the harder it is to get rid of, so I wish I'd discovered all this earlier, I just never thought!

I am completely delighted to be so much lighter now, to have hip bones and collar bones, to feel so much better, less joint pain, moving more easily. I now do Pilates a few times a week, and I have dogs so walk them every day.

I have not been tested again yet, but I really hope I have reversed the pre-diabetes thing. Not knowing keeps me on the right eating path though.

I try not to eat until after midday, sometimes don't even feel hungry til am well into afternoon. I also try to stop at 8pm, but sometimes have something later, cheese and wine usually. But it's all approximate for me. If I've eaten something later in the evening, then I just try to leave a really long gap.

I never, ever thought I could do something like this, change the habits of a lifetime, and at an age where it had become incredibly easy to put weight on, but seemed almost impossible to take weight off! Must read the book again I think to keep understanding how it all works, including this business of drinking all the water!

Thanks to all of you on here, I will certainly be dipping in from time to time for all the reminders.

Welcome @FantasticButtocks (love the username!)

The water drinking thing is multifaceted really. I did once find an informative article about it, but I will have to do some searching to find it again. In simple terms (i don't think it really explains it in the book so well) but basically- once you've used up stored glycogen, your body can make enough glucose to power you entirely from protein and fat (ie you don't need carbs) through a process called gluconeogenesis (literally meaning making new glucose), but in order to do this you need oxygen and water to complete the various chemical exchanges.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

So aside from the other many health benefits and diet benefits (keeping you full, preventing constipation, great for your skin etc) water is actually essential for the body to use its stored fat for energy. If you're dehydrated, you won't be able to do this, so potentially could be driven to seek out carbs for energy.

Another very interesting (to me anyway) thing that I've found out is that to do this process requires a substantial increase in oxygen- so if you do exercise fasted, you need to go at a level that doesn't leave you too out of breath or you'll essentially run out of fuel (and get a stitch) . So for my endurance (slow steady) running this is fine, but if I'm doing sprints for example (and getting more out of breath) I need glucose for fuel as my body won't be able to access my fat stores for energy. I always knew that oxygen affected stitch but I didn't realise the impact of water and now realise that maybe sometimes my fitness is impeded by being dehydrated.

Thank you @thenewaveragebear1983 that's really helpful and interesting to know. I will not be doing any sprinting and do not do the type of exercise that makes you out of breath, but I walk a lot!

I do drink tea, with milk in it, from early morning, so I guess that means a) I'm not dehydrated but b) I'm not actually fasting when I think I am! But this combination I seem to have managed has worked well so far, and now I just need to keep going!

No problem. I drink coffee from early on with soy milk and I have thought that about fasting too, although I can't face either black or no coffee! I do try and alternate with water though as tea/coffee are diuretic

I’ve enjoyed catching up on the thread, lots of people doing really well.

I weighed and have 16 lbs to lose. Looking back through my diary I have been over weight by this amount more or less all of 2019. I dipped in and out of BSD, going up and down a few lbs here or there. Party 5 weeks from today and I want to fit in something already in my wardrobe and not have to buy something in a size I don’t want to be. I hate clothes shopping anyway.

I am doing couch to 5K, today’s menu is a boiled egg for lunch, dinner is large raw broccoli/courgette/apple and olive oil salad with steak. I usually have two coffees with milk every day. Terrible at drinking water but will start logging that too, todays goal is 1litre (I know that’s a lot less than everyone else but I literally drink zero usually).

Great progress from loads of people, very motivating!

Not a weight thing but to my surprise I managed to knock nearly a minute off my PB at parkrun this morning and don't feel too bad afterwards (NB my PB is still mighty unimpressive but every little helps ...).

Hey everyone!

Had a bit of a tricky evening with stress & running around & grumpiness that I ended up with Chinese for tea, Def not Fast800 approved!

Didn't weigh myself this morning because I somehow managed to tweak my back getting off the loo! it's like I'm 90 not 44! No idea how the hell I did it but it hurts a lot! Managed yoga which helped a bit but I'm finishing my MA dissertation this weekend so lots of sitting which doesn't help!

Went for a pathetic hobble for maybe 1km and had to come home, bath & then back to my desk!

Dinner is the Chinese duck lettuce pancakes (so yum!) Which means foodwise today won't be awful at least! I did over 16000 steps yesterday so I can borrow some of those for today to hit 10k!

@thenewaveragebear1983 Agree about how hard a time you're giving yourself. You've added a new job into the mix which sounds super demanding and you're being really tough on yourself, what would you say to one of us if we had a day like that! You should say that to yourself! x

Bear thank you for the recipe...I have all those things, and some nice sausages, so that is my lunch tomorrow.

Disastrous day. 6 days this week, no weight loss, still constipated so I'm have a couple of days off as eating tiny bowls of soup, skipping breakfast and fasting for 16 hours and not losing anything wasn't too motivational.

Clean slate starting tomorrow

Ugh, I’m up a pound this morning. Feeling massively discouraged as I have been so eager to get to a stone loss and was at 13lbs for a couple of days... now back to 12lbs loss on Day 18 and three quarters of that came off in the first week. Hope everybody else has a better start to the day!