New Year, New Start Boot Camp: Week 1, Now we get down to it in earnest

[prettybird]

Stepping in to BIWI's big shoes and with a loan of her Big Stick, I take a big gulp and lead the first Boot Camp of 2018.

Here is a link to the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness If your name is not on it, because either it got lost in one of the many copy and pastes, or because you "signed up" after 0732 on Friday, which was when SayrraT produced the spreadsheet, you can add your name add the bottom and at some point it will be re-ordered alphabetically. NB: there is no obligation to add or your name or to weigh-in weekly - this is for those that find the weekly weigh-ins useful for motivation or accountability

These are the Rules for Boot Camp. They are also on one of the tabs of the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness (SoF).

You need to follow The Rules for the first two weeks of Boot Camp. This gives your body a chance to "fat adapt" and for you to learn to eat because you are hungry, not because you crave carbs/sugar. As you get used to this Way of Eating (WoE), you will be amazed to find how often you are not hungry. You will find your fat stores give you sufficient energy.

For newbies, it is important to eat 3 meals a day - even if it is just a nominal breakfast/bulletprooof coffee (coffee blended with butter). Otherwise, you may find that hunger - or habit - will lead you to fall face first back into carby twatdom and then you need to start that process of fat-adaption all over again. Some of us who have now been low carbing for a while have found that we can follow 16:8 fasting or even the occasional 24 hour fast - but this is not something to be done in the early weeks. Don't try to restrict your fat because you think you are having too many calories, as they are important for the process of encouraging your body to change the way it uses its fuel.

So, here are the Rules. After 2 weeks I (or whoever takes over the next stint of the BIWI Replacement Programme ) the rules will be posted for Boot Camp Lite. Many of us who are still actively trying to lose weight tend to follow "full" Boot Camp during the week (maybe with extra berries and nuts) and then allow a small amount of alcohol at the weekend).

1. Eat three proper meals a day.
"You must eat breakfast. It doesn’t have to be a lot, and it doesn’t have to be absolutely first thing, but you must have something. For the rest of the day, if you’re eating enough food and you are in ketosis then you shouldn’t be hungry between meals. But if you are hungry, eat something. (Hard boiled eggs make a great snack).
After the first two weeks of Bootcamp we will relax this, but these two weeks are critical in terms of helping you switch easily to a low carb way of eating - and if you start to feel hungry, it makes things much harder! Eating this way will ensure that your blood sugar levels are kept stable, which will mean that you are much less likely to experience hunger.
A typical high carbohydrate diet can mean that snacking is a routine part of your day. Once your blood sugar levels are stable, by eating low carb, you should find that you no longer want to snack. But the rule of thumb here is ‘if you are hungry, eat!’. (Just make sure you are only choosing low carb snacks, of course!)"

2. Avoid processed foods.
Focus on pure, natural protein as the basis for your meals - meat/fish/eggs. Things like sausages, ham, bacon, pre-prepared burgers etc should be avoided as much as possible. You can have them, but just not every day. Avoid foods marketed as low carb, eg. Atkins Daybreak bars.

3. Eat lots of fat.
Eating fat will not make you fat. Honestly! But it will keep your appetite satisfied, and it sustains your body’s energy requirements perfectly. Fat does not provoke an insulin spike, unlike carbs which do (a lot) and protein (a little). Fry in butter, add butter to vegetables, eat salad with a home-made vinaigrette dressing (not made with balsamic vinegar though, as this is too sweet), add mayonnaise where you can (just check the carb count on your mayo first). Eat fattier cuts of meat – e.g. pork belly, roast chicken with the skin on and/or eat the fat off your lamb chops. Absolutely no low fat/light foods of any kind!

4. Make sure you are eating vegetables and salads with your food.
This is where your carbs should come from, and this is non-negotiable. But choose only those vegetables that are on the allowed list. Make sure that you focus on eating those vegetables that are 3g carb per 100g or less, and this will ensure that your carb counts are kept low. You don’t have to weigh/count carbs – this is one of the great joys of this WOE (way of eating), but if you’re new to low carbing it can be helpful to weigh your portions of veg in the early days, just so that you know how many carbs are in the sort of portions that you like to eat.

5. Be careful about dairy (apart from butter, which is unlimited).
Dairy can impede weight loss for some people. If you are still drinking tea/coffee with milk or cream, try to restrict yourself to max 2 cups per day. There are a lot of carbs in milk, so if you are having several cups of tea/coffee per day, you will quickly rack up your daily carb count (e.g. 1 medium latte contains more than 12g carbs!) You may eat cheese but again, don't overdo it. Full fat yoghurt is the best way to include dairy in your diet - but beware, it does contain carbs. Total Full Fat is the best

6. You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day.
"The more weight you have to lose, the more water you should drink. This is from www.low-carbdiet.co.uk/. Water is essential to weight loss for those who eat low-carb. The minimum consumed in a day should be:
Your Weight----Litres
140lbs-----2.5
160lbs-----3.0
180lbs-----3.0
200lbs-----3.5
220lbs-----3.5
240lbs-----4.0
260lbs-----4.5
280lbs-----4.5
300lbs-----5.0
320lbs-----5.5
340lbs-----5.5
360lbs-----6.0
380lbs-----6.5
400lbs-----6.5
High levels of ketones in the blood stream can lead to a reduction in ketone production, therefore being well hydrated could aid in keeping the levels low and ketone production ongoing. Consuming enough water can have many other positive side effects: aids your kidneys with the processing of protein, reduces the retention of water, helps with preventing constipation, and reduces the levels of ketones released by your breath, which in-turn will reduce breath odour. However, drinking a lot of water can mean that you also need to keep an eye on your electrolyte balance. You need to make sure that you are consuming sufficient sodium and potassium. On a low carb diet we can eat more salt, so make sure that you are cooking with salt and adding salt to food, if you like it. Good, low carb, sources of potassium are spinach (raw), avocado, mushrooms, courgettes and asparagus, as well as salmon and yoghurt."

7. No alcohol.
Alcohol is the easiest source of fuel for the body to burn, so it will always use this first before it starts to burn any fat - which is why you need to restrict it, especially in the first two weeks of Bootcamp, when we are encouraging the body to stop using carbs for its source of fuel and turn to fat-burning instead. If you really can't do this - at least try and restrict it to the weekend. Vodka with soda is the best thing to drink. Or Champagne, red wine or dry white wine.

8. No fruit.
Really. Seriously. Honestly. None at all. Zilch. Nada. After Bootcamp you will be able to introduce certain fruits, but at this stage fruit is simply too carby. We are also trying to break the addiction to sweet things, so cutting fruit out is part of this process. If you are getting all your carbs from vegetables and salad, you will be getting all the nutrients and fibre that you need.

9. No nuts/seeds (unless you are veggie: check the SoF for veggie rules)

10. No sugar or artificial sweeteners.
Sugar is an obvious ‘no no’, but artificial sweeteners are also an issue. One of the aims of this way of eating is to eat pure and natural foods, so including sweeteners is not recommended. Some people find that artificial sweeteners can impede their weight loss, and there is some suggestion that your body can respond to sweeteners as if they were sugar, by releasing more insulin - and therefore laying down fat. Given that the aim of Bootcamp is to help us lose our sweet tooth and addiction to sweet things, then it is a good idea to avoid sweeteners altogether in this first two weeks.

Woo, an NSV to report. I can get my size 10 jeans on and they are proper jeans with a button not the elasticated waist stretchy jeggings I have been living in since dc3 was born over 2 years ago

It was me who posted about not wanting to eat the filling out of sandwiches. I'm sorry. I've just gone back to work after 6 months off with a cyst in my brain and it's quite overwhelming. It's hard enough with people asking me stuff all the time ( my thought to speech is still a bit slow) without explaining something else. I've got some little packs of olives and peperamis, some pickled eggs and sachets of mayo for if I get caught out again so I shouldn't have to eat another sandwich

Jings, this thread has moved quickly! (See what I did there? )

Yesterday's food was:

B: 2 boiled eggs and some Babybel

L: bought from client building's cafeteria –big meatball, lettuce salad, red cabbage, chicken thigh pieces in sauce w/mushrooms, couple of pickles and something else I can't remember. I also got a Vietnamese pork spring roll in a moment of weakness but didn't eat it because I didn't want to sabotage myself.

S: Babybel and the last piece of Fathead Pizza

D: porkchop fried in butter and olive oil and some other bits.

This morning I had omelette for breakfast stuffed with shallots, lardons and mozzarella cheese. Lunch will be at the client site again but I think I may go to a corner shop for soup instead. I really hate the food at the cafeteria.

Not sure about dinner tonight, probably just soup as OH is really sick and I want to keep things easy. We were supposed to host dinner tomorrow night but I sent an email this morning to cancel it. He's coughing like a horse and I'm going to push him to see a doctor about his chest today or tomorrow.

That said, we now have 8 large aubergines and about 1.5kg of mozzarella in our fridge. :/ I think I may bake a large aubergine lasagna for clients/coworkers next week and take it into the office.

If you put your tub of coconut oil in the microwave to often, watch out for metal on the label! My KTC tub has silvery embellishments which the microwave did NOT like....

Pretty is that the gut health granola? I just made a batch for DH, it's finally persuaded him that coconut oil is flavourless.

*to soften

I was thinking about the 'trust me, I'm a doctor' that PrettyBird was talking about last night. Have just watched on playback and while it does demonise butter in their (small, short term) study I'm making an assumption that they added butter to the participants diets without altering anything else. So presumably that moved their diets to high carb/high fat. I'm wondering if that could have impacted the result? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? I actually shouldn't watch these programmes because even 8 months in, they generate a bit of a high fat wobble in me.

Oh bless Queen’ sorry to hear about your recent illness. Wishing you well on your journey back to full health

Thanks stuntnun for the kale chip recipe link

OldBooks - I've made up the recipe myself to be full of energy for him and better than the Chocorice that he'd otherwise have

It's rolled perished oats, lots of chopped nuts (Brazil, almond, pecan, walnut), ground almonds, flaxseed and/or the Co-enzyme Q10 that you can get (flaxseed/linseed with ground walnuts and almonds and Q10), generous amount of olive oil, a not so generous amount of maple syrup, some large spoonfuls of coconut oil and 2 lightly beaten egg whites. Mixed together and roasted until browned. Then stir through some dried fruits including cranberries and blueberries (although I've not been able to find the latter recently).

ilovecherries - I agree re the butter. It's because they didn't change the rest of their diets and were still filling up on carbs

Thanks prettybird and littleladylawyer - I am going to leave them there for the rest of the day to show I now have the superpower of being immune to sugar and will suggest he brings me a nice slab of gruyere instead. (Git).

Just noticed an autocorrect typo: I did of course mean "rolled porridge oats"

Hey everyone,

Just realised I've forgotten my lunch so I'm popping out to see what I can find at Tesco's! Its either that or a Nando's chicken salad.

prettybird I saw that and genuinely thought you were using some kind of artisan extra mature perished oats!

Prettybird was asking about fats and the currently known effects on health are as follows:

Saturated fats (animal fats and coconut oil) are health-neutral, i.e. they are neither good nor bad for you.

Omega-3 fats (found in abundance in oily fish and in smaller quantities in other fish, shellfish and eggs) are beneficial to your health and should be eaten twice a week.

Monounsaturated fats (olive, avocado and nut oils) are health-neutral, again neither good nor bad for you.

Polyunsaturated fats (sunflower oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, margarine) cause inflammation when consumed in excess. It is the ratio that's important here so the pro-inflammatory effects only occur when you're consuming these types of oils in large quantities.

My take-home message on fats is:
1. Use as much animal fats, olive oil, avocado oil, and nut oils as you like when preparing your meals.
2. Minimise your use of vegetable oils, i.e. don't use them for cooking at home but don't fret when you're eating out and can't easily avoid them.
3. Eat more oily fish.

Cherries don't wobble on the high fat part of LCHF. Instead get angry that we've all been lied to about diet and health. You're overweight because the establishment got it all wrong. You diligently followed the healthy eating advice for years and all it got you was bigger and more unhealthy. Now you're eating healthily, probably, for the first time in your life. I have a vivid childhood memory from the 80s of my dad being pissed off because he had accidentally bought low fat yogurt at the supermarket. That was the start of the slippery slope. For a short read have a look at Gary Taubes's New York Times article What if it's all been a big fat lie? It was written in 2002 but it's still 100% accurate today. If you have a bit more time then please read Nina Teicholz's Big Fat Surprise: Why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet. Both Taubes and Teicholz are journalists, they aren't scientists with a vested interest in a particular scientific theory. Their work is meticulously researched and referenced. Taubes's Diet Delusion is another good read but quite heavy going, I prefer Teicholz's style and her book is more recent.

Thanks Stunt, that's a helpful reminder. I've read both these books back in May when I was having a 'this cannot to serious!' moment and was reassured by both. Would def recommend them to anyone new to this process. It's funny though the games your mind can play, and how a few minutes of listening to a doctor or dietician spouting about the dangers of saturated fats and the benefits of rapeseed oil can tip one back into years of fat phobic conditioning. My GP is hugely supportive about this (because of the weight loss!) , but that's because I've only mentioned the low carb part of the equation. I'm not sure what he thinks I actually eat, I suspect he imagines LC, LF, HP. The surgery waiting room is plastered with low fat messages and I really can't face getting any scaremongering rebuttals. At nearly 60 lbs down, and in better nick than I've been for decades, I know it's working. I just wish I could switch the low fat noise off!

It's hard isn't it? My DD has just been taught at school that starchy carbs are important and we should eat plenty of them (secondary school so food and nutrition lessons, not just a mention in assembly). She can't understand why I am cutting them so drastically, so I'm hedging a bit and saying it's all about balance and that we as a society tend to eat too many, especially the sugar types. It's tricky to say school are wrong especially when it is still the official line of the NHS.

Thanks stunt for the science!

Can I ask a question about electrolytes? How do I know if my electrolytes are “in balance” as mentioned up thread?! I occasionally feel a little shaky, was wondering if it was to do with electrolytes.

Will a cup of hot Bovril do the same job as a cup of boullion?

Saw a friend today who started LCHF on my recommendation. After a week the difference is already noticeable!

Cherries remember that your GP and any other NHS professionals you see have all been taught the party line that "fat is bad". Also your GP is unlikely to have any thorough training in nutrition so they may not have the knowledge to understand the biochemistry behind low carb diets. I thought Atkins was a load of bollox until someone explained about insulin and then the light dawned. The scientific evidence and consensus is mounting and eventually there will be a paradigm shift to a new understanding of nutrition. This has occurred on numerous occasions in the past. Think of Pasteur's revolutionary theory that disease was caused by infectious micro-organisms. It had the establishment in uproar because everybody "knew" that living organisms just spontaneously appeared. They had known that for 2,000 years since the days of Aristotle and Pasteur's theory was initially ridiculed. A more recent discovery was that H. pylori caused gastritis. Before 1982 it was assumed that no bacteria could survive in the human stomach and that the stomach ulcers were caused by spicy food or stress. Needless to say, the medical establishment were slow to be convinced and one of the researchers actually drank a beaker of H. pylori culture to make himself ill and prove that this was the cause! (He did get the Nobel prize later which probably made up for it.) Before the 80s they were treated with bed rest and bland food. Now peptic ulcers are cured with antibiotics.

Princess if you're feeling shaky mix a little salt (and a squeeze of lemon juice if you have it) into some water and drink it. If you feel better straight away then it's likely that electrolyte imbalance was the cause.

Afternoon all.

Clotted cream - oooh, I'd forgotten about that, must get me some. I used to sprinkle it with this (one spoonful is about 0.6g carbs, and it gives a lovely chocolaty flavour).

All been going according to plan this week, meals yesterday:

B - cheesy omelette
L - salmon fillet with coleslaw
S - spaghetti bolognaise with Zero spaghetti
snack - pork scratchings

And today:

B - cheesy omelette
L - prawns, mayo, lemon juice, lettuce, cucumber

Going out for dinner tonight, to Ask Italian. Pasta, pizza..... Anyone know what they do that's nice/low-carb?

Stunt It's shifting slowly, a diabetic consultant I know it's advising the diabetes uk low carb (not necessarily high fat) and i was definitely advised moderate low carb by the nurses when I had gestational diabetes

Tesco's lunch success!
I walked there and back instead of driving so got in 6,500 steps, and picked up a salad with egg&spinach protien pot and a mini tub of garlic mayo.
I was half tempted to buy a hot whole chicken from the rotisserie counter and just eat that!

Hi CointreauVersial I went to an Ask recently while low carbing..

They have a chicken, pancetta and avocado salad that should be good to eat as it comes. Or they have a few meaty main dishes (pork belly, chicken etc) that come with green veg and potatoes, so you could just not eat the potatoes.

Cointreau someone upthread mentioned pork belly at Ask Italian.

It certainly is RangeRover, I've had a few customers on my program that said their GP told them to try low carb!

stunt I am a convert to lchf as you know. And evangelise to the point of being a bore outside of bc.

I've posted my blood results from when I started lchf on another thread and am due to have a repeat test so it will be interesting to see what difference this woe has had on my lipid profile and liver function over the last year.

I am a little anxious however. HeartUK and Diabetes UK are both still advocating whole grains and pulses and a low fat diet with saturated fat the absolute devil for cholesterol and heart disease. I have high blood pressure so also worry about my salt intake. for that reason I don't drink as much water or eat as much salt as bc recommends.

Why are the official medical establishment ignoring the new science propounded by the few? What do they know that we don't? am I fast tracking to an early grave?

I know the diet industry have a vested interest. but this is the medical profession!

I suspect if my latest results show a worsening of cholesterol et al then my GP will kybosh this woe for me. I feel and look so much healthier so hipe this doesn't happen. I am happy to eat this way for life.