Week 1 - Pre-Summer Low Carb Bootcamp - Off we go!

[BIWI]

Evening all!

I'm starting this thread now as I have to leave early for work tomorrow. and I know how keen you'll all be to weigh-in first thing, so won't want to wait until I can get round to getting it up and running

[[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103TaUddLEq2Pb4ofRgsR2sMLkvgN5qK021keqkhFj8Q/edit#gid=0
Here's the link to the lovely shiny new Spreadsheet of Fabulousness ]] for which many thanks, SayrraT.

Your name should be on it, but if it isn't, just add it at the bottom. Don't try and re-alphabetise the list - Sayrra or Wombattoo will do that later.

And don't touch the blue cells!!!

Worship sorry to hear about the school refusal, it's exactly times like that I used to turn to food. Thankfully it's a habit I seem to have broken but took a long time. Hope your week gets better.

I went to the gym this morning and feel much better for it. I'm still eating low carb but don't seem to be 'in the zone' mentally. Hopefully getting back into exercise will help all round.

Yesterday afternoon I developed a horrible headache which by evening was unbearable. I made myself a bouillon with added Lo-salt, still awful. I felt absolutely desperate. I ended up having 2 chocolate digestives, a refresher chew from a party bag, and two nurofen plus. Feeling better today but wondering if it was carb flu or too much sun. Have only been boot camping since Sunday. Anyway I am back on the wagon and hoping. I headaches today.

and hoping no headaches today

If you're feeling ill and you want a quick fix add half a teaspoon of salt to a glass of water and drink it. If you feel better almost straight away then it's an electrolyte imbalance and you need more salt, and possibly potassium and magnesium as well.

I'm following the rules and trying hard to trust the process, BUT, is it normal when you start this WOE to have a lot of anxiety around the amount of fat you are eating? I keep reminding myself that it's years of following traditional healthy eating guidelines that got me fat in the first place. Nevertheless, I know the calories and fat grams in everything, and I'm so used to 1 cal cooking oil sprays, skinless chicken, no-oil salad dressings, no cream or butter in the house, whole grains and fruit at nearly every meal, skimmed milk etc etc, that I'm feeling a lot of anxiety around the butter, cream, chicken legs with the skin on etc. I want to believe this will work, but there is a constant voice in my head going 'you could cut out carbs without the fat' or 'you could halve the calories in this if you did x'. My breakfast was delicious this morning - I was up to the loo at 4am, saw the news when I checked the time, and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up and had creamy coffee - I'm nearly 60 and I've never had coffee with cream in my life! I've just had an omelet cooked in butter with a pile of green veggies all wilted in lemon butter. It was amazing - but the voice is saying ''you could have had egg whites only and a green salad and you'd have saved all those calories'. I don't have an eating disorder, but I do have many years of the low fat/high carb healthy eating messages in my head! Please reassure me!

Morning.

I did Dukan Attack last week (so basically protein and no fat dairy) and felt ok. Yesterday, now I'm adding in fat etc I also felt a bit shaky and headachy. I drank well over 2 litres of water. Anyone any idea what is going on?

Breakfast today was 2 rashers of bacon, 4 slices of leerdammer and a creamy coffee. I also got scrambled eggs (from staff restaurant) but they were vile!

iloveberries, it's tough to get over the 'fat is bad' conditioning isn't it?

This morning when I was making an omelette with eggs and gouda full fat cheese and greasing the pan with real butter, my brain was screaming at me 'This Is Wrong!' ''This is Fattening''

For lunch I'm going to have smoked mackerel with a salad of cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce and some grated carrot. (I'm thinking there will be Vit C in the carrots) and I need some roughage.

ilovecherries it's completely normal to feel that way.

I've been on very low fat diets since I was 7, when my Mum put me on slimfast. I've been obese my whole life as a result and self loathing ever since thinking I'm fundementally a bad person for being fat.

If you're struggling you could do what I did: I came on this thread, told @BIWI she was a lunatic for suggesting people eat so much fat and decided to do the diet for a week to prove her and the rest of these loons wrong

My reasoning was 1 week isnt going to hurt and if I gain a bit of weight, so what??

I lost 8lbs that first week

15 weeks later im 30lbs down and the loons have got me thoroughly hooked in

If you're struggling, I very much suggest a book called "why we get fat" by Gary Taubes. It's a really good discussion on why carb heavy diets cause obesity and why fat is good for you.

In the meantime, here's 23 independant, double blind peer reviewed studies that put the fat is bad myth thoroughly to bed :)

Essentially, the high carb western diet was a massive experiment headed up by a guy called Keys, whos study on the subject have been massively critisized. Unfortunately it was a case of "he who shouts the loudest" and how it became the basis for dietary guidlines is still a total mystery.

authoritynutrition.com/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets/

TheWay, sounds like carb flu to me. Keep drinking, have plenty of salt too and it will pass.

I'll give those a go, thanks Jiminny.

Had a second breakfast of bacon, fried egg and asparagus. Feeling slightly better but not great. Trying to trust all of you saying it will pass!

Could someone please add my weight to the spread sheet? My new phone and I are having a little disagreement...

203

Onwards and downwards

Can we take vitamin tablets?
I usually take a Well Woman tablet every day..

styled as long as they are sugar free :)

Is there a limit to how much fat we can have?

nosock no limit at all on fat.. i challenge you to try and eat too much

Point being, fat kills appitite so it's almost impossible to over eat it without added carbs :)

@Nosocksevermatchup no limit on fat by grams, calories etc... when you're eating low carb, eating fat will make you feel full so it's self-limiting
Also, when you're not eating carbs you need to get your energy from somewhere and that is from fat.

ilovecherries there are four distinct stages of coming to terms with fat. The first is feeling guilty because you have been brainwashed know that fat is bad. The second stage is anger that the healthy eating advice is not only wrong but probably made you gain weight in the first place. The third stage is revelling in being able to eat delicious foods such as butter and real salad dressing and no more cutting the fat off bacon. The fourth stage is when you start to find fat irresistible, often when you are near your ideal weight and you need to up your fat macro. When I'm at my maintenance weight of 132lb I get around 70% of my calories from fat.

If you ever find yourself thinking that cutting carbs and fat at the same time is a good idea then look up rabbit starvation. It's not a pretty picture. It's nothing to do with cruelty to rabbits by the way! It's what happens when your diet consists of mostly lean protein. This way of eating works and there is a wealth of information out there explaining exactly how and why it works. Gary Taubes' Diet Delusion and Nina Teicholz's Big Fat Surprise both explain the science in a clear but accessible way.

Jiminny I do think Keys gets a bit of a rough ride. He was trying to reduce the rate of heart disease and his theory, while wrong, seemed to make sense at the time. But at no point did he say to take the fat out of everything and replace it with sugar and while you're at it start selling highly processed foods that are hyper-palatable because they contain both fat and sugar so they're incredibly easy to overeat. It is such a shame that his ideas gathered so much momentum that it's all but impossible to turn it around. My skinny 14-year-old DS1 comes home from school with home ec recipes calling for margarine or low fat cream cheese or reduced fat beef mince. I just flat refuse and send him in with proper ingredients.

I feel the same cherries but I have done BC 2 years ago (well 8 weeks out of the 10). I do know it works but after years of doing things like slimming world it does feel odd to eat so much fat. However, I refuse to believe that I will be consuming more calories eating this way compared to my 'normal' diet. I know we don't have to worry about calories on BC. I can easily eat a massive plate of pasta for example. I mean HUGE. I kid myself that because it's low fat that it will be OK . Clearly it isn't and is loaded with calories.

Also, it's interesting that the slender people I know who enjoy their food and love to cook all unconsciously low carb/eat healthy fats. Maybe not as extreme as we are doing right now but they just do it naturally. They love their grub but don't consume the vast amounts that I can. Or could. Hopefully that is a thing of the past .

Thanks everyone for your reassurance. I will order those books recommended. It does feel scary when it's so against mainstream messages - I know my GP would be highly critical of this, and the nurse who hands out nutrition advice at the fat clinic is all about bloody muller lights and low fat everything. I'm normally quite obedient and compliant when it comes to doing what the doctor says so it feels a bit daring to be doing this. But interestingly - normally I'd be gnawing my arm off by noon after my 'healthy' low fat breakfast, whereas I still feel comfortably satiated. I know I'll probably want to eat sometime in the next couple of hours, but I'm not clock watching.

ilovecherries Hopefully you are feeling reassured. I felt the same as you prior to starting my first BC and asked BIWI lots of sceptical questions. On the spreadsheet of fabulousness, one of the tabs at the bottom says low carb resources. As well as other things, it has a list of books about LC. I especially enjoyed the John Briffa one. BTW, don't be so sure your GP will be against it, the tide is slowly turning and the dietary advice around type II diabetes/ pre diabetes is shifting the LC way. I think you will have to change your user name soon to something like ilovebutter

interestingly - normally I'd be gnawing my arm off by noon after my 'healthy' low fat breakfast, whereas I still feel comfortably satiated.

Me too.
After my cheese omlette this morning (plus dab of butter) I'm not hungry at all.
Usually I'm reaching for the biscuit tin by mid morning.
I'm slowly getting my head around the fact that low fat (high sugar) products aren't as filling and satisfying and you get hungry quicker and end up snacking more.

Stunt, i agree to an extent, but the man started his 7 countries study with 27 countries, but excluded 20 countries from his data because they didnt show his satfat heart hypothesis. He decided on his results before the epodemiologial study... for a scientist that's pretty much the cardinal sin. More than that, he presented his results as causal, when its well established that epodimiolgical methodologies cant proove causality, you need a clinical trial to do that.

I agree though that this should have been addressed at the time and he should never have been listened to!

So glad the hounds are back.

cherries is the nurse overweight by any chance? 😀

Sympathies to all with carb flu. I've been there. Really enjoying the recipe sharing. If anyone has ideas for a vegetarian replacement for the super simple pork/fish/chicken with buttered vegetables you're all eating, I'll be grateful. Time isn't my friend.

At my work we have a brag board for the little day to day achievements we usually wouldn't mention. Today I am putting my food restraint on my mental brag board - my youngest was awake screaming from 2-3am then up at 5.30am so I have had less than 5 hours of sleep, and I'm already sleep deprived and ill. Normally that would prompt a carbtastrophe at about 7am where I'd eat everything in sight. Today I stuck to BC plan. Huzzah me 😃.

Tonight I might try frying some tofu in spices a la Rose Elliott and doing that with buttered veg.