May '19 Low Carb Bootcamp - week 1

[BIWI]

So here we are!

Lots of us signed up this time, so inevitably the thread will move very quickly. Please, though, take the time to read the whole thread!. Although this is a place where you can post your daily menus, or your thoughts and questions, please don't just do this, but read what other people have posted too.

A bit thank you to the very lovely @AthelstaneTheUnready who has set up the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness.

The Spreadsheet

If your name isn't on there, don't panic! Just add yourself to the bottom of the list. Don't worry about trying to alphabetise it - that will be sorted out for you. (And if you're on the spreadsheet but don't want to be, don't worry - if you don't post on it your name will be taken off)

Here's a brief recap of the rules:

1. Eat three proper meals a day
2. Avoid processed foods
3. Eat plenty of fat
4. Make sure you are eating plenty of vegetables and salad
5. Be careful about dairy (apart from butter which is unlimited)
6. You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water a day
7. No alcohol
8. No fruit
9. No nuts/seeds

10.No sugar or artificial sweeteners

The full rules are here . They're supposed to be stickied at the top of the Low Carb Bootcamp topic (along with the recipe threads), but for some reason they're stickied at the top of page 2!

Remember that after the first two weeks we can relax some of this, and move on to Bootcamp Light, which means that you can add some fruit (berries mainly), alcohol (in moderation) and nuts and seeds (again, in moderation), but the point of the strict initial phase is to help push your body into burning fat for fuel rather than carbohydrate.

And remember - if you cheat, you will only be delaying this process from happening!

Good luck to everyone. Any questions or problems, just shout!

Wow this thread moves so fast.

Great to read everyone's meals and progress. I access Mumsnet on my phone and I can see the spreadsheet but can't edit it, does anyone know how to get around this ?

Last night the kids went to bed late as we were gardening, them my friend called about a holiday we are planning just as I had finished cooking so I actually sat down for my dinner at10.45pm ! I had roast pork and veg. I'm hanging this morning. But really reduced my coffee intake and feeling good. My husband had also been eating the same as me feels crap, he's got a cold as well but he's got headache and just feels exhausted.

Hope everyone had a good low carb day xx

Hi. I’d like to join you. I’ve lc before. I’ve tried opening the spreadsheet but when I go to the App it isn’t showing. Any advice?

Good luck everyone.

Day 3 and struggling

As a Vegetarian (occasionally eat fish) who doesnt eat eggs, drink milk or eat Yoghurt, I have no idea what to eat for Breakfast.

My normal non LC go to is a Flapjack made with Peanut Butter, Bananas, Oats, Blueberries & Nuts and despite researching Pintetest I can’t find a low carb alternative.

I got through yesterday, but went to bed quite hungry and had leg cramps all night.

Does anyone have any vegetarian / non egg based, breakfast ideas I could try please.

What about stir fried veg, red peppers, fine beans, shallots etc.

flyingsouth how about chia seed pudding with almond milk? Could add flaxseeds and other seeds maybe? No idea how low card it would be but surely it’s high fat at least?

Hi to everyone joining this morning 🥗

Have you all read the rules? They really do help you to understand what’s what.

The spreadsheet names have been locked so no one can accidentally mess them up as has happened in the past.

Just @ AthelstaneTheUnready if you liked to be added. Tell her your weight or if you’d rather be put down as 100. (Being on the spreadsheet is optional).

VeryLittleOwl car trips are a bit of a trigger for snacks. We really shouldn’t need to eat snack or eat from habit/boredom, but could you try low carb things as a kind if transition? Cheese, salami, pork scratchings etc

As for the baking. That’s a big ask! Can you not buy posh biscuits or ‘home made’ ones from a farm shop etc?!

FlyingSouth

I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t eat eggs and I TRY not to eat too much cheese when low carbing as I think it stalls me.

Things I have for breakfast:

An avocado with seeds, oil drizzled over and a bit of cheddar or taifun basil infused tofu (I buy it at Waitrose near the dips and prepared salads. It’s ready to eat. It’s firm not squishy). Often with a handful of fresh spinach on top.

Or Farge Total yogurt (worth a try if the only reason you don’t usually eat yogurt is taste or texture).

Cauldron sausages, mushrooms, avocado, spinach.

Once the first two weeks are over I’ll sometimes have berries with cream. Peanut butter (check carb count as it varies a lot) on cucumber, celery, —a spoon—

Cheese, basil tofu, tomatoes sliced up with, basil & oil.

Lots of people have left overs, but I generally keep those for dinner and as my dinner options are limited anyway, I try to make breakfast something different.

It’s limited.

Scrambled eggs and bacon this morning. Having a tea with milk now but will try and make it the only milk today.

Thanks BIWI for the recommendation for those tablets - will check out and see if they have any in my local health food shop. If I could just counteract the initial lethargy and muscle weakness I’ll be more inclined to stick to it this time!

I’m 2lb down and weeing loads.

I think today will be a repeat of yesterday as I have leftovers (no one else in the family is joining me). So:
B: scrambled eggs and a bit of ham
L: tuna mayo with olives, capers and anchovies, with either salad or courgetti
D: salmon with some sort of veg

The next couple of days are a challenge - my 10th wedding anniversary tomorrow. I’ve bought steaks and I’m going to make a creamy sauce, but will have to try and resist wine. And off to an Italian restaurant on Saturday - they do lovely salads and a nice tuna dish so it’s not all pizza/pasta. But wine again. And tiramisu.

But I’ve been on a pattern of healthy weight loss weeks and weight gain boozy weekends for some time now and I have to crack it sometime. Wish me luck!

@FlyingSouthWithTheSwallows what about 'toddler tapas':
Carrot and cucumber
Sausages or Quorn pieces
Small portion greek yoghurt (within dairy allowance for day)

@ChippingInLowCarbing I'm somewhat similar but driven by high blood pressure rather than diabetes (although was in prediabetic range a couple of years ago). At a routine appointment it was discovered that my blood pressure was in the range that would be term hypertensive crisis. They wouldn't let me out of the clinic without a bag full of medication (and a barrage load of other tests). The meds worked to bring my blood pressure down but at that point my dr and I fundamentally disagreed. Me: I want to reduce and reduce my medication, hopefully to nothing, what the best way to do that? Him: this will never go away, your blood pressure will probably increase over time, but don't worry there's lots more we can give you.

I read and researched everything I could about blood pressure control, I was more active (think 10,000 steps and gentle swimming rather than spin classes or ultra marathons!). I ate beetroot every day, drank hibiscus tea (still do), used daily meditations specifically aimed at reducing blood pressure, followed dietary advice. It worked to some extent, I lost a bit of weight, and reduced one of my meds, but my blood pressure fluctuated a lot.

Then I read some research about lchf and blood pressure. There wasn't a boot camp on at the time (or it was in its final week) so I did it alone. It has been quite incredible, I've lost 2 and a half stone (which is very nice but not the primary driver) and my blood pressure is normal, normal, normal, with no medication I still can't quite believe it sometimes, and have to check!

I went back to the doc a couple of times as I was reducing my meds, but despite the evidence he was sceptical, sucked his teeth and said "hmmm?" Last time I saw him to get 'high blood pressure' taken off my active medical status he was convinced that it was his advice about the Mediterranean diet that had made the difference

I can't seem to add myself to the spreadsheet. I've just weighed in at 189.2

Goal is under 170 (169.9 )

As expected really so at least it wasn't a nasty surprise. If I can do this I will be 'not overweight' (according to BMI) for the first time since puberty. Been maintaining around this level (apart from pregnancies) for years now after a 'big weight loss' in my 20s, but now is the time to get the last stone and a half off.

Moving house in a month or so to new part of the country so good goal to avoid taking the extra 1.5 stone with me!

Regarding the High 5 tablets, I just stocked up from wiggle.com which I find usually has the best deals but they've gone up by about a pound a tube since I last bulk bought them last summer!

Flyingsouthwiththeswallows if you can have any of the "non-milk" milks try making lower carb porridge (as a meat eater kept for bootcamp light): 2tbsp each ground almonds and ground flaxseeds, 1tbsp each chia, mixed seeds (sunflower, sesame, pumpkin), with a bit of coconut oil and dollop of nut butter; vary quantities and ingredients as you like.

@AthelstaneTheUnready : please would you add me to the spreadsheet. I've just weighted myself hoping that a lot of it is water

@MrsTerryPratchett I'd heard that ibuprofen could cause an insulin release and wasn't compatible with keto, but since Sunday I've been dealing with a bad muscle sprain and I've been taking every painkiller possible (alternating ibuprofen with cocodamol) and I'm still in ketosis and have lost a pound.

I have looked and looked and can't find any reliable evidence that painkillers are a problem (although they put an extra load on your liver). Maybe someone else knows otherwise?

@FlyingSouthWithTheSwallows I love soup for breakfast. Particularly Vietnamese Pho, lemongrass, chilli, coriander - a zingy start to the day!

@VeryLittleOwl re: the leftover biscuit mixture: as an extreme measure when you have taken all you need for your biscuits, immediately squirt in a dash of washing up liquid, or a sprinkle of salt - then you'll not be ABLE to eat it!

For crunchy low carb snacks I love M&S pork cracking crisps (from their 'just add' range). Rather high in protein, but 24.9g fat and 0.1g carb per 100g. Topped with pate, yum, yum, better than pate on a biscuit any day.

I also like ITSU crispy seaweed thins. A 5g bag has 1.6g fat and 0.4g Carb. It's equivalent to 7.5g carb per 100g, but it was an good picnic option for me when the rest of the family were eating bags of crisps.

So food today:
B - avocado with olive oil and grated cheese
L - egg mayonnaise, salad
D - thai green chicken curry with broccoli and spinach

Hey everyone! What a beautiful day ❤️☀️🌺

For those who are asking about what to have for breakfast, I have actually eaten many a breakfast of leftover dinner or lunch meals before I settled on my routine of no breakfast. It sounds strange because we’ve been conditioned to think of breakfast as a special meal category with special breakfast foods, but I found it quite palatable.

I’ve had curry, veg lasagne, stir fry, any number of things. It’s actually just as delicious for breakfast as it is for dinner. If it was spicy I used to have it cold to make it a bit more mild and that was good too.

Ohhhh I could definitely get on board with spicy soups for breakfast!

Morning! 3lbs down but I have an almighty headache! 😫

Oh, spicy soup sounds great!

AthelstaneTheUnready someone up thread suggested tagging you in regards to the spreadsheet. I can’t seem to locate the spreadsheet via Googlesheets never mind add to it

Could you add me @147lbs please. Thank you in advance.

venusandmars. That sounds awful and all too familiar! But well done for getting off the meds. Once you’re on them they like you to stay in them for life. I’m sure it’s more stats related than health related.

I had a similar thing again last year too, I had an emergency appendectomy, when I can around they had a pump in my right arm and another drip in my left arm. Nurse wanting to shove me back in the ward, surgeon/consultant/doctor saying definitely not policy is blah blah AND I want her right here. It was a bit of a freaky way to wake up! They were pumping glucose and insulin in plus antibiotics. Very long story short, my BG was very high and my BP was very high (232/97). The meds were making me feel ill, the oral meds were continually incorrect, it was a total nightmare and very stressful. I ended up being in a week because of it all. They gave me a bag full of meds when I did leave (BP still 223/96) and instructions to see my Dr. I was ill with the antibiotics, diabetes and BP meds. I had the meds changed loads, nothing was agreeing with me, it was all making me ill. I stopped taking the diabetes meds after a few days and we still could not get the others sorted. They were knocking me out, making me feel nauseous etc. I came off all of them cold turkey. A few days later I saw my Dr again and I thought she’d go mad, but she didn’t. She said as long as things were going in the right direction it was fine, but she wanted me to monitor my blood pressure on their machine. It was coming down so I stopped & bought a home BP machine. It was at a pretty good level and so I stopped that too because the fluctuations were stressing me out and it was just making me feel like a patient when I wanted to feel fitter and healthier. It was ALL really horrible and I have NO desire to go through that again. Ever. Within a short while I got my BG down to reasonable level (only slightly over normal) and my BP down to high but not terrifying with diet & exercise. I CAN do it.

I don’t know what my BP is now, but it is what it is. I’m doing what I can with diet and exercise and I’m not going to take meds. I get whitecoat syndrome, but I’ll check it on machine they have next time I’m in there.

It should be enough to keep me on the wagon, but I’m a stupid Carby Twat with no sense of moderation.

Writing it all down is helping me through this horrible phase of getting back into LC.

...

Moving house in a month or so to new part of the country so good goal to avoid taking the extra 1.5 stone with me!

Good idea. Hopefully you’ll move far enough away that it’ll never find you again!!

Hey Ninkaninus yes it is beautiful out there!

I was just thinking the same about breakfast. I have a relatives who are Turkish and they eat soup, feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, meats. None of the sugary carby stuff we have.

I've just had mushrooms fried in butter with chilli flakes then cracked an egg over them. Was delish! will have to think of a spicy soup next

Let's hope so Chipping!

Today I'm feeling hungry despite having breakfast of eggs and mushrooms.

And a colleague had brought a carrot cake in ! I am trying really hard to be strong and resist - I just wish it wasn't next to me 😥

But I'm going to have another coffee and fill up with water, wish me luck

I baked a carrot cake for my OH yesterday. With mascarpone icing.

I gave him a slice and the rest of it is in the fridge. I’ve not even looked at it once.

@3brightstars3 imagine it's got colleague's hair in it somewhere... or she probably licked her fingers while baking!

I left my lunch at home and won't get out of the office until 3.30pm. I'm actually starving myself rather than following bc! This is not good. I will make sure I plan better tomorrow. I am drinking a lot of water though.