Week 8 - Low Carb Bootcamp - Last Three Weeks!

[BIWI]

I'm starting next week's thread a bit early as I have to be up and out of the house at sparrow's crack tomorrow.

Here's the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness

And don't forget the weight tracker

It may seem like we're nearly at the end, but still the chance to lose up to another half a stone, if you can lose 2lbs a week!

Hope everyone has a good week. Mine is a bit of a minefield - out tomorrow night to celebrate both of my DCs' birthdays, and then out on Thursday with some MNetter friends, and I don't think we will be drinking sparkling water!

Good luck everyone.

Why do you want to do low fat, Kefy?

If you're bloated, then this would suggest that you're suffering from water retention, the cure for which is to drink more water.

When you say you're off Bootcamp, what do you mean? Have you gone straight back to eating carbs?

I want to do low fat to see if I can get my cholesterol levels down a bit. I had some pulses, fruit and nuts over the weekend and have had heartburn and a feeling of being "large", which might be partly psychological.

But do you know if going low fat is actually right for you, with your condition? (Apologies, because I know nothing about it)

From experience I know that low fat alone (even a vegan diet with no sources of "good cholesterol", such as nuts) cannot get my cholesterol levels under control. It also, however, seems that the cheese, cream and full fat yoghurt that I have been having recently (and which I would have typically avoided) have not helped.
I have developed a totally different attitude to diets in the last couple of months, having listened to you, read the books etc. Knowing what I know now I find it hard going back to my previous woe and feeling good about myself. I need to find done happy medium that works for me due to this genetic condition. Since I relaxed the rules a couple of days ago all I am thinking about is food!

It's hard, isn't it? Good luck and I hope that you find something that works for you

Thank you, BIWI. I feel I need the rules to have a sense of being in control. I might try sticking to a light version of the bootcamp but with limited dairy. I need a few days to digest all the info and have a good chat with myself.

Everything Hello, your evil twin here Good to see you back again.

Had just gone over my 3 1/2 stone off mark then had a horrendous weekend food-wise so will now clamber back on the wagon and try to undo the damage.

Lovely tea tonight though. Bacon lardons, onion and garlic sweated in butter, add sliced green pepper and chicken pieces, add mushrooms, sprinkle with a chicken oxo and when almost cooked add a splosh of cream. Turn into an ovenproof dish, top with Aldi frozen cauliflower cheese and bake. Yum!

Thank you Everything and Crabby - electrician in the house as we speak, so fingers crossed he'll have it sorted soon.
Thank you for your kind words about my boys too, Crabby

Had Chinese last night - had beef and vegetables with almonds, no rice. Finished it just now for lunch, with added butter-fried courgette, mushrooms and cauliflower, in tiny bits to simulate rice. VERY nice. We are very lucky with our Chinese take away, it's a "clean" one, no MSG or unnecesary ingredients :)

3lb down overnight, looks like this extra carb weight wont take long in going.

Ah, there you are pisci :)

Crabby, where can I find a link to your blog? Im on a new laptop, and lost all my bookmarks from the last time I bootcamped.

Thumb, hope you have electricity now!

Kefy and Crabby if you're thinking about a low GI diet then make sure you're clear on the difference between GI and GL. Glycemic Load takes the quantity of the food into account as well, for example carrots are high GI but low GL because you would have to eat a plateful of carrots before you consumed a lot of glucose. Also bear in mind that the GI and GL values you get are for that food eaten in isolation. So for example putting butter on toast reduces the rate at which your blood sugar goes up. Personally I think GL is most useful for insulin-dependent diabetics because they can monitor their blood glucose to see the effect the food has on them. If you are going to stop bootcamping then my advice would be to continue to avoid refined sugar, reintroduce higher carb vegetables and fruits, and experiment with adding back in white rice, wholemeal pasta and wholemeal bread. I have found that I can't really eat bread at all without my IBS coming back, although a small amount of wheaten bread seems to be okay. Potatoes and rice don't give me any problems (apart from stalling weight loss). I haven't tried pasta yet but I anticipate that it will cause similar problems to bread. If you can continue eating clean then your health will benefit. I know for me there's no going back to the 'healthy' way of eating I had before where sugar was fine in moderation and every year my weight was creeping upwards and my health was slowly getting worse. It has been a very enlightening journey to find out what a difference diet can make.

Week 9 chat thread here

Well I have stayed the same, I think I had lost a lb or so until yesterday but did eat some carby food which won't have helped.
We travelled to Melton Mowbray for father in laws birthday. He wanted to go to a garden centre for lunch, there wasn't a whole lot of choice for a low carber.
He made me a huge smoothie with lots of fruit for breakfast so I HAD to drink some of it. At the garden centre I had Cajun salmon salad which as lovely but then ate a dish of Eaton Mess which was also lovely but carby.
But if you could see what I could have eaten.
There were cream teas, pies, chips etc so really I ought to be congratulated
When we got back to father in laws house I did turn down some chocolate birthday cake. He then made us ham and cheese rolls to eat on the way home but I managed to avoid those, munching on a packet of pork scratchings instead.

Onwards and downwards! Good luck everyone

Everything - yes I do, thank you. :) We discovered that the culprit was (sorry!) the pool pump, which was on the same circuit as the living room, back bedrooms, laundry and oven. Bizarre!

Stuntnun - if you cook your pasta al dente, it will reduce it's digestibility a little, and therefore it's GI. Wholegrain pasta is lower GI than white, but not much - and adding a cream-based sauce will also reduce the GI because the fat slows the absorption of the carbs, as you said. Are you sure you don't have a wheat intolerance issue, btw?

On the GI front etc., cold boiled potatoes, as you'd find in potato salad, for e.g., are quite low GI, because the potato starch becomes what is called "resistant starch", and it's much harder to digest than the original starch that was in the raw potatoes.

Morning :)

Weighing in tomorrow, find Monday morning is daft and I forget.

Am keeping on keeping on, and the trend is my friend.

Hope for a good week for all, and good luck