Week 7 - Low Carb Bootcamp - Girding our loins and getting a grip

[BIWI]

Morning all

Having a bit of a snigger to myself, because autocorrect wanted me to tile the thread 'Girding our doings ...'

Here's the spreadsheet

We only have four weeks left. I know! Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!

There's been a bit of slippage going on, I notice - and whilst it's not all been of our own doing, sometimes it's about situations where we've reverted to 'learnt' behaviour or type.

So. Let's all pull our socks up! We have only four weeks left, but those weeks could make all the difference.

If you're worried about how the next few weeks are going to go, perhaps a return to Bootcamp rather than Bootcamp Light might help?

Whatever strategy you adopt, here's wishing us all very good luck

2.2lb off for me. Really pleased with that after a run of a few hard weeks. Hard in life as well as BC.

Plans for this week are mainly 16:8 style eating. Maybe an occasional 24 hour fast. No snacking outside of the meals I have. So make the meals good ones. And no wine til Friday when I'll keep it moderate.

Thanks for the support over recent weeks. I've been a right whinge! x

A pound down for me, currently sitting at 200. No alcohol whatsoever, without exception, for me until I hit 160. rshard and athelstane I’m glad for the company!

G&Ts are my downfall but I’ve simply eliminated the G and added cucumbers, so now when I feel the urge for a “drink” I’m having C&Ts, I guess. Anyway, it’s working at the moment and I’ll let you know if I’m struggling.

Food wise it’s all fine. Making lasagne tonight, will post recipe. Does anyone think it’s possible on thei WOE to lose 40lbs in 18 weeks?

Welcome cooper and well done to all for the losses—saw a nice 3.6 whoosh in there and some other steady drops.

@prettybird...yoo hoo, where are you?

@ilovecherries — how are your tits getting on?

@nowlook — please keep posting so I laugh more often

to all who need them

@BrassicaBabe, yaassss. Go, girl.

Well done everyone
Athelstane I loved reading your experience with carnivore. I’m hoping to feel great altho I would like a loss. Did you drink coffe/tea? That’s one thing I refuse to give up.
Were you working out at the time? I’ll take no loss on the scales if I build or retain muscle (we have one of those boditrax machines at the gym)
Starting the week with four fat streaky rashers ❤️

Marking my place on the thread and will come back and have a proper read later. --given up my phone to DD to play games on on the motorway so can't Mumsnet while
DH drives - true love if I do say so myself! --

Was down during the week but up a little today for a small loss. It's wine. I know it's wine.

Shag, rshard and athelstane, can you all be very inspiring and drag me kicking and screaming into less wine?

Welcome aboard @mrsterrypratchet! I like @shagne’s ideas of C&

Siameasy, I did have coffee still with cream, and cooked with butter, but otherwise it was just water and meat all the way. I wasn't working out, no, but I did lose some half inches here and there, so was clearly losing a bit of fat and building a bit of muscle, even though I didn't lose weight.

I did feel great on it - mentally calmer than even on this WOE - and being a right old slattern, really appreciated not having to cook or prepare food all the time. I suddenly had LOADS of extra time on my hands in the evenings because flash frying steak or liver only takes moments.

You think it's hard explaining this WOE to people, don't even try on the carnivore diet is my advice... Low carb is seen as faddy and obsessive by lots of people still, but carnivory crosses the line into unhinged, unhygienic and frankly disgusting. It's like saying you only eat raw bats dripping in gore or something. IME I could see the few people I mentioned it to completely re-evaluating their opinion of me. I kept quiet after a while

MrsTP, I have you by the hair . I've already had to tell myself off this lunchtime for whining about not having any red tonight. But I'm NOT. I have courgettes, mushrooms and short rib left from yesterday which will be delicious by itself.

If only someone could invent the wine diet. Most of us would buy in!

And this is me starting my 3rd week of no wine Sunday to Thursday. I do feel less "deprived" than I did in week 1

@AthelstaneTheUnready

Mmmm, raw bats, you say? Beats cauliflower rice into a cocked hat, I should think.

You lot are scary!

I've had some Parma ham with salad and dressing today but I'm still hungry. No food except a million cakes and sweets in the office and I don't even fancy them so it's easy to ignore. Still hungry! Roll on 5pm when I'll shoot out the door and race home to cook a beef curry!

MrsTerry is there some non-alcoholic wine you could buy to replace your cravings? I “invented” the C&T because I’d realised sooo much of my drinking is ducking force of habit.

I’m cooking? Time to have a drink.

I’m at the pub quiz? Time to have a drink.

It’s the weekend? Time to have a drink.

It’s sunny out? Ooh, yes, a drink would be nice.

What I’ve found is if I can resist at those key moments, I’m often uninterested later in the day/evening. So instead of one drink leading to another leading to a buzz, I have the one C&T to hit that Habit Moment then see where it takes me.

It’s very, very early days for me, but I can honestly say I’m not craving or missing alcohol, more specifically its effects (the good and the bad).

ShagMe have you tried the Seedlip non-alcoholic gin? It's alcohol- and carb-free but tastes similar to Bombay Sapphire only a slightly stronger flavour.

I've been eating low carb since 2013 and I find alcohol is disastrous for weight loss and can even contribute to weight gain even when you're eating healthily. If you don't want to cut it out entirely then I strongly recommend limiting your intake, for example to one or two days a week or to a set number of units per week.

Sorry for the cryptic message earlier. Akin to those attention seeking Facebook posts that are designed to elicit a lot of "You ok hun?" responses. Very poor of me.

Anyway, after being super super disciplined in food, water and exercise I weighed myself on Saturday and I had GAINED weight - back to MORE than my starting weight .

That prompted a major "fuck it" meltdown over the weekend, which was pretty much an end-to-end junk food and alcohol blur. I really don't mind self denial, I really don't miss alcohol but to have NO weight loss at all, in fact to GAIN weight tipped me over the edge.

I also have not achieved that magic aversion to sweet things - you know when people say - oh, I just can't eat flapjacks any more, they are too sweet - I can eat flap jacks all day long and still want more.

I weighed again this morning and I am exactly my starting weight . I have stopped wallowing in self pity, given myself a kick up the arse and I'm starting again tomorrow. No idea what the fuck is going wrong.

[sigh]

Well done to all the losers.

Unexpected that sucks could it be tom? Well done for coming back

I don't think so, but I'm 45 and my periods are a bit all over the place.

I do have some NSVs but I tried on my "target" dresses and I can tell I'm not where I want to be/have been before.

@UnexpectedItemInShaggingArea

You've had an epic fail at vaguebooking: you're meant to say you'll PM anyone who asks if you're OK, hun.

@nowlook that's the word I was looking for! I had a four hour round trip plus a three hour meeting today so I genuinely couldn't update until this evening but I needed to be publicly sad this morning.

Just shaking off the last dregs of self pity now, while looking at the bastarding flapjack DH insisted on cooking this weekend

Athelstane I’m encouraged by the mental wellbeing aspect. I’ve read two different accounts from females who’ve said meat-only cured their bipolar. Now I’m not afflicted but I’m already enjoying a much more relaxed feeling on this diet and hoping for even fewer f*cks to be given on carnivory!

Lmao at raw bats. Thing is, this WOE challenges convention. I don’t fancy eating bats but thats only because it’s not the done thing. I’m now interested in foraging and wondering about insects 🙈

I feel your pain, Unexpected- but as you've said, it's back on the horse and KOKO

have a unexpected - it's really alarming to find out just how far off piste you can go when feeling fuck-it, that's for sure. I'm going to join you in the kick up the arse/grrrrr attitude, but with wine for me. Really lost the plot there recently, so today is also a new start for me - the first day of many without (hurrah!).

Siameasy, that's faaaaaaaar to far out for me, insects. Bleurgh. I don't care how many times Ray Mears says 'hot crispy locust'. No. None. Uck.

I read plenty of personal stories/reddits/history before giving carnivory a go for a month, and there are enough people doing it to have amassed some science and evidence. I was worried about not getting proper nutrition, but was convinced by all I read - and by my own experience - that meat does in fact provide all you need.

I do do some non-meat foraging (no raw bats for me, thank you) - I often use nettles for soup, dandelion leaves for salad, the wild garlic's just coming up here, you can even keep the bloody ground elder down by eating it (quite nice wilted in butter) which is what the bloody Romans introduced it for in the first place.

However, dinner tonight was an absolutely gopping cauliflower and broccoli cheese. Not sure where I went wrong.

Hmmm, I think I need @prettybird to come along and reassure you that I am in fact perfectly normal, and not some woo, Wiccan, ageing hippy addled by drugs and living in a hedge. I work for a bloody monopolies economic and competition regulatory body, have a mortgage, and am in bed by nine usually. I'm sensible goddammit.

Sorry for all the 'bloody's am just grumpy because I can't have wine