Blood sugar diet and fast800 thread 20

[thenewaveragebear1983]

Thread 20, can you believe it?

[quote thenewaveragebear1983]@UsuallyJustLurk we have a recipe thread too, see the link in the opening post and please everyone feel free to post on that thread your recipes/meals/ links and also any good fast800 friendly products/meals you can grab while you're out (now people can actually go out!!) [/quote]
Brilliant, thank you! Totally missed that link so will check it out

Thank you for the welcome, everybody. And without more ado, I have a question. Do people eat their exercise carbs? That is, when they exercise, do they deduct carbs burned in exercise from total carbs eaten during the day?

(I should emphasise that if I've learned anything over the past 15 years or so, it's that I can't outrun my fork, so I don't make exercise an integral part of losing weight. For me at least, exercise may be the cherry on top, but it can't be the cake - only more sensible eating can be that. Er, perhaps that wasn't the most well-chosen of metaphors in this context, but still.)

I have been pondering this because today I had a slice of sourdough toast and some home-made baked beans for lunch. I made the beans yesterday, and felt I had to try some before freezing them. Once I added the butter for the toast, which looking back I didn't need, it was just over 600 cals.

Partly to compensate, partly because I enjoy it, and partly because it had stopped raining, I went off to the woodland after lunch and spent two hours splitting firewood with the axe and lugging logs around. The 400 cals I estimate I burned doing that helped me offset the big lunch, the Hungarian Goulash from the Blood Sugar Diet recipe book for supper, and 50g of cheese as "dessert". So I ingested - is it only me who thinks that's a horrible word? - 1,200 cals and burned 400 in the exercise, leaving me at 800 net for the day.

At least, that's how I see it, but maybe others take a stricter approach to these things and don't reduce carbs for the day by the amount of carbs burned in exercise?

OW

@outwest I think will be interesting having a man in here because we women are often governed by our hormonal fluctuations and they really do affect our insulin control and carb cravings. It will be interesting to see if you experience anything similar. With regard to exercise, I exercise a lot, every day without fail. It's a rare day when I Don't hit 10k steps and I run/circuits/ yoga 6 days a week. I don't eat my exercise calories per se but i do have more cals daily (you'll notice I have 1200 not 800). I have been doing this diet a while though and am almost at target. Yesterday I ran a half marathon and yes, I did specifically allow a glucose based supplement (love hearts 💕) but generally as a rule i don't fuel for runs, in fact i explicitly run fasted. I think you need to experiment with your own metabolism and see what you find: nothing wrong at all with trying out extra cals on your workout days if you find it improves your performance or recovery. However, be very mindful of over estimating your calorie burn; I burned 1700 cals yesterday on a 22km run, and I could eat that in MacDonald's in 20 minutes so....

(Also if you're interested in exercise and low carb, look up Tim noakes, he explains it way better than me)

In short, which I know is a wishy washy answer, it's a trial and error thing. Be mindful as well that fatigue during exercise is often as a result of dehydration or low salts and not low calories; you can deal with this by using a sugar free electrolyte rather than carb loading. If you find you're starving after a workout, eat protein and fat rather than carbs, and rehydrate. (I was 4lb lighter after my run yesterday than when I started and that's almost entirely water)

That’s so interesting bear
I don’t do much exercise other than a daily dog walk and given I’m sat about a lot of the time I don’t include these.

@thenewaveragebear1983 It would be interesting to compare notes about cycles, but so far I can only say that haven't really noticed any significant ebb and flow of cravings, which in itself might be indicative of a difference. Small sample size though.

I haven't really been feeling cravings, or feeling hungry. That might be partly because I find the recipes in the BSD diet book and the Carbs and Cals book surprisingly palatable and satiating. In past bouts of calorie restriction I used to have a 200-calorie meal replacement shake at lunch and a "normal-ish" meal in the evening. That typically meant that I ended up with 1,500-1,700 calories, against a TDEE of probably a bit over 2,000, so losses were slow.

This time I have replaced both lunch and dinner with the recipes in the book, and stuck religiously to 800 calories, without paying much attention to carbs. That has worked really well. My weight is down 14kg since I started the diet in early May, which is very motivating. I'm looking to lose another 5kg or so, while playing it by ear. If I can keep going at this rate I'll need to be thinking about maintenance within a month - but there be dragons...

In the past I have happily eaten exercise carbs, but so far with the Blood Sugar Diet I haven't made that a focus. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

I couldn't agree more about the tendency to overestimate calories burned. When I lived in the city, I found that gym machines in particular are awful albeit flattering liars. Today I did two hours of steady work, half of it splitting rounds (cardio) and half of it carrying logs about (resistance). With the aim of being conservative, I entered it in MyFitnessPal as 45 minutes of chopping wood. Basically, if I come home from a multi-hour session in the woods with all my clothes drenched in sweat - sorry, TMI I know - and deeply fatigued, I think it's safe assume 300-400 cals. I don't count things like walking the dog at all.

Long post, will try to be more concise.

@outwest do you have a Fitbit or similar device? My Fitbit is not especially fancy but what it will do is track heart rate increases so when I do circuits for example if I log the time (eg yesterday 7-8) it will then register my heart rate increase during that time and equate some calories to it. (But yes I agree, hideously flattering, there's no way an hour of circuits burns 450 calories!) if you don't have one, but do a fair bit of exercise or even just lead a busy life, it's maybe a good thing to stick on your next birthday/Xmas wish list. I love mine.
With regards to your exercise calories quandary, one thing I will always say is that be led by your body; you may be ok eating 800 (bear in mind that 800 is less of your tdee than for women, some women only need 1500 to maintain) but some days you may not. Trust me you will know when your body is crying out for food. It's not designed to be a hideous punishment so if you're hungry, eat, but eat the right foods. If you find, like I did, that every day you're hungry and not managing, then redesign the plan to work for you (in my case, more daily calories allowed) but at the moment it sounds like it's working well.

Pre-weekend weigh in for me, 10.7.2, which means I've bobbed around that mark all week really. A little disappointing considering I've eaten well and exercised a lot this week, but I won't grumble much. We did drink last night and that may be causing a slight bit of water retention? Anyway, plans in place for today and hurrah, the sun is shining again so I'm heading out for my run soon.

I’m static 10.2.6 and have floated around the 10.3 and 10.2 for the last 5 days. I think these last 2-3 lbs are going to be difficult especially coming out of lockdown, meeting friends for picnics & even booking in pub lunches. We’ve a pub lunch today, which I’m very much looking forward to but just know that’s not going to help with those last 3lbs!
I need to do something about my tummy despite it being a lot flatter it’s incredibly wrinkly! Wonder if wrinkle creams will work?

Thank you @thenewaveragebear1983, you are so right about the primacy of personal experience over theory, especially when "theory" incorporates so many conflicting or divergent ideas. Can't help feeling that nutritional medicine is currently at the same stage that surgery was in, say, the 17th century, before we had an understanding of germ theory, or anesthetics, let alone antibiotics. We have so far to go. The whole "fat is bad for you" debacle is proof of that.

I do have a basic fitbit, and in the past I have had an assortment of Suunto and Polar devices, back into the mists of time. (If I remember correctly the first one had a little hatch on the side, into which you inserted a tiny lump of coal.)

Anyway, the fitbit has been a mixed experience for me, partly due to charging problems. I no longer do cardio like running or treadmills, but I did use the fitbit for some activities, mainly long walks in hilly terrain, where it functioned well most of the time.

More generally, I have found that when you're doing work that involves carrying heavy things, anything attached to your wrist tends to get damaged because those items (e.g. rounds of wood or logs) push or scrape against it when you pick them up. Also any band tight enough to give a good contact tends to be uncomfortable / get damaged when putting a lot of force through wrists and forearms, such as when training with weights, kettlebells in particular, or using an axe to split wood. But YMMV.

Not too sure about circuit training. If it includes reasonable weights, maybe you get the "afterburn" effect posited for resistance training by some researchers, so might be better than vanilla cardio? But I too would think that the 455 cals is optimistic. Don't know why these devices do it - equivalent to vanity sizing, but for exercise?

One fitbit device I use daily and that has worked really well is my Aria scale. I know it's not cheap, but I heartily recommend it. Like another poster to the thread, I weigh myself daily. It does fluctuate, but it keeps me honest, and the data goes straight to the cloud, just like it does with a fitbit HRM. Means you can gaze at charts later in despair/elation, as applicable.

Morning all,
@Kimlek and @thenewaveragebear1983 I am static like you. I think I is in part to do with the fact I am ovulating- I feel bloated. Also I think that for me getting below 9.12 is tricky as it is the point I usually give up! I will be drinking tonight, but trying to keep the food good. Sometimes the weekend shake up helps a bit. If I consider over all trends I have hit 9.12 twice this week, and only once last week. Slow and steady I suppose.

Food today
Lunch roasted pesto aubergine with cheese
Dinner tofu and veg

@Kimlek collagen lift! I had 4 treatments on mine and it definitely improved and now my lady can reopen from next week I'm definitely going back to finish my course, plus may add a few extra sessions on. A bit of 'crisis healing' does wonders for the skin though, so if you have a dry body brush it really can improve things by giving yourself a good brushing, (gently but enough to make the skin a bit pink) a few times a week. And then moisturiser!

@Bestbees interesting as I’m ovulating too or at least should be. I seem to be static or slow during ovulation; put on a bit premens and during. Then lose straight after menstruation. The hormonal cycle most definitely makes a difference!
I’ll look into the collagen bear!

64.2kg this morning - hoping to break into the 63s tomorrow.
Fasting til 12, hoping to get some steps in exploring with sis and nephew and a workout later.
Dinner will be chicken curry, roasted romanesco and steamed Swiss chard. Rice for others.

@Kimlek that is exactly like my cycle too. That's why my target has some flexibility in it to allow for fluctuations.

Hello! Well as of 25 minutes ago, that's my working week done. And what a week it's done.

I'm still prepping in anticipation of hitting the ground running next week, so have just thrown out my chocolate stash.

TRE is good - I had an apple at 11.30 followed around 1ish by scrambled eggs on a wholemeal thin.

My eating and weight definitely fluctuates with my hormones. I'm peri-menopausal, so they kind of do whatever the hell they want these days.

Do any of you take supplements other than a multivitamin? I've been taking magnesium and find that really good.

This is my first day today so hello everyone I’m travelling back from a UK holiday and so far eaten lunch which worked out at just over 200 cals. Bare naked protein noodles, couple of squirts of olive oil, some vegetable stock, one large egg and a few sunflower seeds. It was very nice! Not sure about dinner yet!

I’ve decided to weigh myself once the two weeks is up.

hi all. Well 10 days in, 8lbs down so far although that has been static for last couple days so hoping for another drop in next couple of days!

Finding it not too bad and sticking to 800-900 calories per day and low carb (max 30g per day so far) plus TRE around 19hrs generally.

Really struggling with getting enough calories in though. I keep eating around 3pm which means I'm not hungry to eat a second time. I either need to eat earlier and space out meals or just fill my plate with more calories!

Hello and welcome @UsuallyJustLurk and @outwest!

Interesting chat on the do you "eat the calories you burn" debate. On another forum that I was on before I found you, there was a strong feeling that if you're on 800cals a day, you must eat if you do anything more than light exercise, and a large number of the longer term losers were adamant that their weight loss increased if they had, an extra 200 cal protein based snack/meal on those days.

I've got a friend who is a personal trainer and nutritionist, and her theory is that if you're trying to lose weight, exercise should be resistance based. Her view is that cardio is only going to be useful for your mental health, and will not aid weight loss at all (her specific audience is 40+ women). In the past, when I was trying to lose the same weight I am now, I tried with exercise - hard /endurance cardio, and it didn't work at all, because I think that unless you're an elite athlete OR have a very understanding other-half, hard cardio with a calorie deficit will leave you without enough energy to do all the other bits of living that we have to do. So I'm sure that if Chris Froome wants to shift 4kg, he can keep up with the hard cardio, but I bet he's mostly lying on the sofa the rest of the day....

Having said that, I think cardio exercise is so important for mental health (certainly mine) so I'm really interested to find a balance for me as running/cycling/swimming keep me sane, and I hate resistance training.

Just been out for a pub lunch (and my first time meeting my new work colleagues) and I managed to have a fizzy water and a starter salad (as that was the only thing on the menu with no carbs, and i didn't trust myself to order a chicken burger and NOT eat the fries/bun). I'm not going to pretend it wasn't miserable though - the food looked AMAZING!

77.5 - 2.5kg till a healthy BMI

"I'm not going to pretend it wasn't miserable though - the food looked AMAZING!"
Interesting comments @WhatWillSantaBring. I wouldn't be surprised if success on diets is inversely correlated to how socially active a person is. It takes a lot of willpower to abstain when all around you are tucking in, or knocking back a drink or two... If I still lived in the big city and were going out several times a week, I very much doubt I'd be able to keep up the diet. Now a country mouse, so not an issue.

As for exercise, I have been sold on the benefits of resistance over cardio (in my own case) for many years now.

I think you need both resistance and cardio, and they support each other. I notice the impact in my running when I am lax on my strength training, and certainly when I don't do yoga. My cardio fitness definitely supports my strength training, because I can bang out 30 press-ups without breaking a sweat whereas someone less fit is huffing and puffing after 5, so cardio fitness helps me train harder. It's also surprising how varied the views are of trainers regarding diet, and many are still very much of the view that you need carbohydrates; I've yet to meet a fitness instructor who fully supports a low carb diet, but then if you read the obesity code you'll realise that even some doctors are still supporting the 'old way'. People are coming round to 'healthy fats' now but not fully advocating the low carb lifestyle, not yet at least.

My PT At bootcamp is 24, he's about 6ft7 and he is solid muscle because since school he has been a fitness fanatic. Oh, and he's male. I on the other hand am a 36 year old mum of 3, never set foot in a gym, lifelong pcos and insulin control issues, gestational diabetes twice.... our metabolic function is surely going to be different, no?

Plus I can run 21.5km in under two hours, even on this awful low carb diet, so it must be a little bit ok....

Y'know those weighing machines in public places, like in Boots & toilets in shopping centres? Does anyone find they give accurate measurements? I don't want to buy scales for the house as I have a young daughter who is very image concious already. I'm about two weeks in to BSD & I do want to keep track of my body fat % as much as my weight. I've dropped a few pounds but frustratingly, my waist measurement isn't budging! I've been yo my local boots twice now & the bloody machine is out of order! Is it worth trying to find another one?

@Spinningdot I have never used them. I have always been worried that people will see me!

Ok, I won't lie...I'm struggling today. I'm exhausted after a crappy nights sleep and an early start, I ran this morning and have done 20k steps in total, plus my body aches all over from circuits yesterday. I hit the wall at 4pm and for the first time in a long time I ended up in the fridge! So probably quite over on cals and carbs today.

Tomorrow, bootcamp first thing, bbq lunch (which could go brilliantly if my plan of lots of salad, grilled meat, g&slimline and no dessert comes to fruition!) but we will see. I am, despite today's problems, feeling quite motivated right now so I fully intend to stick to that plan.

Wife made jam, therefore had to try it on two slices of toast for lunch. Actually, that's very similar to the excuse I used yesterday . Spent more time chopping wood this afternoon to try and offset...

Dinner more respectable - grilled chicken and steamed veg, followed by some Caerphilly cheese. Total cals consumed 1150, 350-ish total cals burned over two hours, leaving (hopefully) net 800 cals.

Should say that I'm usually pretty good at sticking to the plan - which absolutely has worked for me when I do that - and my weight is still drifting down gently, but these past two days have been shockers. Must do better.

Having my sister and nephew here is making it hard to exercise - tomorrow we are going out in the afternoon so I am going to do a workout and jog after breakfast to get it in before we go out to pick our own strawberries at a farm nearby.
Meals tomorrow:
L: poached eggs, spinach, purple broccoli.
D: Mexican beef, kidney beans, salsa and guacamole in little gem “boats” for me and wraps for the others. Sour cream and cheese in moderation!

I got my hair done! Fasted til Pub lunch. No fizzy water and salad for me. Cider as driving and didn’t think to just have a straight tonic. Sharing starters of baked Camembert, chilli jam, used the Parma ham instead of bread. Steak & salad main. Still stuffed at 7pm so no dinner but two glasses of rise in the sun and a handful of almonds. Kids walked the dog so zero exercise. I’ll do better tomorrow!