Week 7 - Pre-Christmas Low Carb Bootcamp - the last 3 weeks!

[BIWI]

Eeeeek!

The Spreadsheet of Fabulousness is here along with The Weight Tracker

Here's to another good week.

Four weeks left, including this one, so chance to lose up to half a stone if you're really focused!

I'm glad to see that we're all thinking about Christmas and how we're going to deal with it. My own personal problem is that I find it too easy to let things slide - well, I've already had that, so I may as well have this as well - and before I know it, I've scarfed chocolates and eaten a sandwich and start to eye up the pasta as well ...

Other people are much easier to deal with than yourself!

Anyway, I have one social event this week to negotiate, but other than that all should be manageable.

Hope you all have a good and successful week

Pisses thank you for taking the time to reply to me this morning, I very rudely ignored you in my reply

Pseudo, I am feeling the same re being at an ok weight. People keep saying I'm getting too thin or taking it too far. My bmi is sitting at 22.9 so still at the higher end of healthy. Sometimes I wonder if it's because I was so big that it's just a shock how much I've lost! Haven't weighed yet but will do on Thursday and I'm praying I'll be under the 10st mark, wedding on Saturday so fingers crossed.
Pisses as a pp (sorry can't remember who) said already it's hard sometimes to keep up with the thread, I have been exceptionally bad at it this bootcamp. Do not be derailed. You have done an amazing job so far and hopefully your foot won't take too long to heal..

Pisses sorry you're feeling ignored. I think sometimes people just pop on to shout their shit, me included, and others posts can get a bit lost. I hope you don't leave because of it, I really don't think it's intentional. Is there anything in particular we can help with?

Back to shouting my shit...

Yesterday:
B: eggs, butter
l: chicken, bacon, avocado salad, olive oil
D: pork loin, roast broccoli, asparagus, 3 x g&ts

Today:
B: eggs, butter
L: some kind of salad
D: slow cooked chicken thighs, swede mash, fried leeks

I had some cherry toms yesterday in a salad which I used to love and, by god, they were sweet. I only ate a few and left the rest at they were so awful.

Morning all. Pisses - you are my hero - one day I will have lost as much weight as you.

If anyone is wondering where the whoosh fairy is, I appear to have her here. Having made peace with myself that I'm happy with losing 2 or 3lb a month - it's going in the right direction and it's worth sticking to this woe for how much better it makes me feel in every way- I seem to have lost half a stone in a fortnight! I haven't done anything different to the previous few weeks so I don't know why but I'm not complaining! Interestingly it's coincided with DH being away with work for two weeks so I wonder if he'll notice a difference?

If anyone would like a visit from the whoosh fairy let me know what direction to send her in cos my tummy'a getting quite crepey. I need time for my skin to catch up!

Ok, after being positively angelic for six weeks I had a small helping of low carb almond sponge with 1 tbsp of cream after dinner last night (stir fry) and this morning I appear to have put on 1.5 lbs!!! So frustrating. I wish I hadn't weighed myself though.

Pisses hope you're feeling better, I agree with others who think of you as a shining example of someone who is getting it right.

charlie I know what you mean but it's probably within the range of normal fluctuation. I used to be a daily weighed but am stepping away from the scales a bit as i was getting a little to over-emotionally invested in what they said...

5 lbs on yesterday and 3lbs off this morning. I feel that my weight is bungee jumping at the minute but it is my own fault. I can see the general trend is down. Another 3 lbs and I will at a weight I would be content to maintain at. However I have discovered that my maintenance weight bounces up and down so it would be much better if my happy weight was the top of the bungee rather than the bottom if that makes sense. I am really writing this to motivate myself. I also feel that ladies like myself who wear an F cup and at an unfair advantage. If I was flat chested I would probably be a stone lighter! I have also realised that if I want to stay at this weight I will be boot camping during the week all my life. That should allow excursions at the weekend and holidays. Any excursion and the weight just piles on. Bootcamp and it starts to come off again. Have a good day everyone. Keep smiling and keep drinking the water. Also,if like me, you are going to be at this for ever find some easy meal options that you like and are easily available for lunch and breakfast. Don't go off the rails first thing in the morning, start each day motivated. Always keep some eggs In the fridge (if you like them). they keep for weeks so no excuse to run out. I have a salad from a local take out bar near my office so that is two meals organised and your day is on track. I am really just rambling on here , talking out loud to myself. BIWI is the expert here. BIWI if you have time to answer what is your advice on maintaining? Apologies if it is the wrong question for this thread.

Yesterday, I had gained 2lb so decided to weigh today. Today, I've gained 3.

My greatest sin over a pretty triumphant family birthday weekend was a mindful lapse: eating must of a baked apple with cream, so that i could join DS for pudding (apple crumble for the boys) as he'd been increasingly commenting on me not joining in. I'm sure that's not the only reason, but it does feel pretty harsh. Im back at my starting weight. Im joining Tanukisan in the 'it's not fair'fair' club.

I've lost 4.2lbs this week which I'm pleased about as I had a small gain last week and a STS the week before. Feel like I've caught up at last.
And the best bit.... I've now lost just over a stone - Yippeee!

Bitchy I stick to Monday weigh ins as it's the day I started weighing on so it's just easier to track my progress, plus I have a sneaking suspicion that if I started weighing in on Tuesdays the scales would play the same trick on me . I just count the lower Tuesday measurement towards my next weeks loss.

MrsKoala I will PM you the cheesecake recipe as although it's lc it's not strictly bootcamp friendly due to the sweeteners.

Pisses you have done and doing so well that as somebody posted before (please don't fell ignored, I don't have time to read back and check who) you appear confident and rather being one of our local gurus than a person in need of support
I feel your pain. Foot injury is nasty especially when you enjoy running. I killed my knee last year then fall pregnant and put on weight. I think no running for me until my weight becomes double numbered again(in kgs, and im 6ft, don't panic). Frustrating.

Hooray! At last, a loss: 2lb down. I cut out cream and cheese (though dairy is not usually a problem, perhaps I was having too much), upped my fat and water intake. Although I've not yet gone down a dress size, I noticed this morning that my love handles are gone

Thank you all, it means allot.

I know its a bit ‘my diamond slippers are too tight' of me to moan but as I’m get closer to maintenance its still hard, especially when I’m ill and a bit broken. Its lovely that I’ve been of benefit not just to myself and am more than happy to help if I can, but do worry that its a bit overbearing or arrogant.

Apart from that we all have bad days, tried, stressed, overworked, overwhelmed… I don’t really want to get into it, but will say that its better to be honest than lie to yourself or others, hence I posted.

Stunt - your an absolute rock, thank you. The foot will heal, probably just tissue damage, doesn’t feel like a break (done that a few times before) but has probably scuppered my planned Dec running goal. And yes I need to tweak my amounts as well as introduce some proper re-feeds and stop arsing about.

Now me moaning and my problems. 1. Is anybody having same experience and what to think about it. During bootcamp and a few weeks before I stopped eating anything with gluten. I was tested for coeliac disease before when had IBS problem (not anymore on LC ) and it came negative. As I am rather stubborn I had something with gluten only twice when forced by social occasion. And both times i felt really dizzy, sicklish and sort of close to faint about two hours after. Coincidence?

1. Loose skin after weight loss. I read that it is an issue when you have to lose a lot lot of fat but what with more "average losers". Plenty of ideas here e.g. cocoa butter, gellatine etc but is there any hope?
2. This Xmas I decided to go back to my roots and opt for more LC friendly drink option www.thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/165043,Polish-herring-and-vodka-consumption-fall-together. Is the herring consumption so low because I am too lazy to travel to my nearest Polish shop For those sceptical vodka goes well with gherkin in brine or salo - cured fatback.

Pisses I don't think people always realise how hard it gets as you get closer to target and sometimes you start to feel a bit out on a limb because everyone just assumes you are totally sorted. Sorry about the foot. To try and put a positive spin on it, maybe the enforced rest and time to rethink will actually push those last few pounds off. Sometimes we get so focussed on a single point that our body starts to work against us and stubbornly holds the weight. I know when I have worked especially hard to get to a mini target I often fail only to have several pounds disappear the day after the event! Do you do other stuff or are you mostly a runner?

Rybka13 You can be gluten intolerant without being coeliac. At one time the medical profession didn't believe you could but its been shown to be quite common. The blood tests are fairly unreliable anyway and give false negatives from time to time.

I had been having various problems and a locum GP suggested trying an exclusion diet. I soon realised that I was intolerant of both wheat and gluten. My own GP did the blood test but, even though I queried it, told me it was OK to stay on the diet when I had the test. Found out later that I should have been eating normally for at least 2wks prior! Needless to say it and I flatly refused to have a gastroscopy just to get a diagnosis of something I could fix with diet!

Gluten affects loads more areas that just your gut. People tend to think its just a case of getting the runs if you eat it but I know to my cost that its far more generalised than that. I'm not an expert, but I'm wondering if the problems you describe point more to the effects of wheat rather than gluten itself. You can be affected one or both. Have you experimented at all with eliminating just wheat?

Hello all.

That turned out to be a looong meeting. But have just caught up with all the posts, and losers and gainers.

Pisses it's awful when an injury disrupts your exercise. I hope you heal quickly. I increasingly realize how much I rely on exercise for my mental, as well as physical, well being. So its hard when we can't do it.

I know I tend not to reply to posters because I don't feel I have much knowledge about this WOE to offer. But I'm immensely sympathetic, Mojangles and Tanukisan about your stubborn scales. It does just feel so unfair when one does everything right and then gets no reward. Hopefully the whoosh fairy is hovering just around the corner.

I'm finding it fairly easy to stick to this WOE (with the odd mindful excursion into good quality carbs) but I am slacking on the water drinking. Must get back to a good 2.5 litres a day. Onward and downward ...

Pleaseandthankyou the thing I realised about maintaining is that there isn't one weight that will be able to maintain at. That might seem simplistic, but it's the truth that your body weight will naturally fluctuate, regardless of your diet.

So, my best advice to you (and anyone else who is approaching maintenance) is to have not only a target weight in mind, but also a 'cushion' that you're happy with. So, if your target weight is 10 stone, perhaps you have a cushion of 5lbs. As long as you keep an eye on your weight (weekly or fortnightly weighing), you can make sure that you keep under this. If your weight is regularly up at the top end, then you know that this is a real weight increase rather than a fluctuation, and you can take steps to deal with it.

Dr Briffa's advice is to low carb 80% of the time, for maintaining, I think. Obviously, though, you need to know what that means for you and how well that's going to work, given that we all respond differently to different levels of carbs.

But as a guide, it's likely to mean being a bit stricter during the week (80%) and then a bit more relaxed, if you want, at the weekend (20%).

The most important thing though, which you allude to, is to make sure that you are enjoying your food, and this WOE - it shouldn't feel like a diet, or that you're deprived in any way. Make sure that you widen your repertoire of meals and snacks to guarantee this.

You can't expect to go back to the way you were eating before when you reach maintenance, because the way you were eating before is what made you put on weight!

And to all those who are struggling with weight loss, it's absolutely the case that weight loss isn't linear. It's a bit lumpy actually! So you are likely to stay the same for a while, then suddenly drop a lump of weight.

No idea why!

But remember we're in this for the long haul - it's a marathon not a sprint.

Thanks biwi

I'm having black farmer sausages and scrambled eggs for tea. Lunch was tuna mayo and salad.

Not been feeling great today, and I've decided to work from home tomorrow. Going to look up some low carb soups today, the shop-bought ones all seem a bit carby.

anote I've been slacking off on the water too . I think it's harder now the weather is colder.

Miffy it looks like it is an intolerance then. I had full exam including gastroscopy and colonoscopy, bioptats taken and who knows what else done just to be told it must be IBS and deal with it. After elimination of all grains and starting paleo/primal all problems disappeared. The amounts of wheat products I ate recently were tiny so no IBS just warning lights with all that sickness etc. I think I would stay lc then

Hi all,

I haven't posted for a while but I'm still plugging away and slowly losing 0.5-1lb per week. I tend to have a pattern of strict weeks where I lose about 3lb then shaky weekends where I put 2lb back on. I know the overall trend is still downwards, but I need to get better at socialising and eating out without slipping up.

I've been slack with the water too. I want cups of tea now the weather has turned!

Right. The final push to see if I can do 1/2 stone before Christmas! I'm not too worried about Christmas food but I do like a drink (and was 9 months pregnant last year so would like to make the most of it this year). I also have a weakness for mince pies and custard but I've really lost the taste for sweet things. Perhaps some sort of mincemeat crumble and cream? Hmm....

Hi all, I had blood tests for coeliac last year too, though in my case i was tested because of malabsorption. They were negative but since BCing I have found I feel awful after eating gluten. Not just cramps but sweaty and dizzy too.

No weight loss this week but definite inch loss as I had to discard the trousers I put on for work this morning as they were falling down.

Thanks BIWI. I just need to keep focused. There is absolutely no point in losing weight to put it back on again.

The meatballs were lush, BIWI. However there were significantly fewer than I anticipated. This is due to the fact that most of them slid off the baking tray as I opened the fridge to rest them. They kind OF spattered onto the tiles in an unsalvagable way.