Jan ’20 – Week 1 Low Carb Bootcamp – Here we go!

[StuntNun]

Welcome to the January 2020 Low Carb Bootcamp. I know some of you have already started eating low carb so please share your good experiences to give the rest of us some inspiration as we begin our weight loss journey.

Make sure you’ve read the ten Low Carb Bootcamp rules. There are some shopping list and meal plan suggestions on the preparation thread.

If you need recipe inspirations then there we have hundreds on the meat recipes thread, the poultry recipes thread, and the vegetarian recipes thread. Note that vegetarians may include small quantities of legumes, nuts and Quorn right from the start to make sure they’re getting enough protein. There is also thread of low carb products people have found in the shops.

We weigh in every Monday so add your starting weight to the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness. If you’re on a mobile or tablet and can’t get the spreadsheet to work then please post your entry on this thread and someone will add it for you. Some people choose to record their starting weight as 100 if they don’t want to share their actual weight. I also urge you to make a note of your waist measurement as sometimes we can lose inches without losing pounds on this way of eating. Some people like to have a goal pair of jeans or a dress that they can try on throughout Bootcamp so see how the fit improves over time. Others like to take ‘before’ photos that they can use for comparison later on.

If you have any questions or concerns then please do ask. Bootcamp has been running for nearly ten years so we have lots of expertise to share with you.

Nice one Rshard I sometimes take a pack of pork scratchings to the cinema if it's around a meal time but it does amaze me how a lot of people seem to be incapable to going two hours without eating. When I went to see Rise of Skywalker last week the guy in the queue in front of me spent £27 on snacks and drinks for him and his small child! What film did you see?

Ooh Summery good call on the hollandaise. I might make some and try and make eggs benedict without the bread. In Wetherspoons they do eggs benedict with black pudding as well as bacon; has anyone found a low carb black pudding in the shops?

Get well soon Motherofdragons I assume it's real flu not carb flu. Look after your health first, you need to keep your strength up.

Harveywoo can you link to the menus of the restaurants you're going to do we can give some specific help? I had ramen without the noodles last week and there were lots of things like meat or fish with a small amount of vegetables or sauce. Japanese food is low in fat so you might find you need a snack afterwards to top yourself up. For Indian food I always go for lamb tikka which doesn't usually have a sauce. Cauliflower, aubergine or okra bhaji are possible side dishes although they will have onion and tomato and may be thickened so they might be carbier than ideal. The pub might be easiest as you could have steak or a half chicken and swap the chips for a salad - no-one will ever say no to this request. Or get a sharing platter or Ploughman's lunch and skip the bready bits if you've got the willpower even they're right in front of you. My worse eating out failure was even I asked for a salad instead of chips and they brought both. I just couldn't resist the chips when they were right in front of me. Although chips are my kryptonite so I didn't stand a chance.

Apologies for the typos, the autocorrect on my phone seems to have gone even crazier than usual. It keeps capitalising odd words, making words plural and adding an extra "a" in every so often. It's driving me berserk!

Morning all, sorry I went awol yesterday, it was another tough one mentally but my client meeting actually went really well so bollocks to shit HR and onwards we go

I actually forgot to eat lunch yesterday. Baring in mind the day before I’d had a cream coffee and a yogurt all day, yesterday I still wasn’t hungry, so I had a cream coffee in the morning but then didn’t eat again until 7pm and even then had to force myself. I did however have a big meal of pork (with all the cracking from the joint as DH doesn’t eat it) and flgv covered in butter.

My weigh in yesterday showed a 3lb loss overnight, so I fully expected to weigh in today and be back to maybe 1lb lower than I was before shit hit the fan.. but..... nope.

I weighed this morning and instead, I’ve lost a further 3

That means that in 2 weeks of eating to boot camp rules (although skipping meals is definitely NOT in the rules and not something I want to continue) I’ve lost 13.6lbs . That can’t be actually real, so I imagine I’ll fluctuate back up to around a 7lb which seems a lot more realistic and still amazing.

Because of PCOS, I’ve never lost more than about 2-3lbs in a week even in the first week of diets so I know my body can’t just misplace almost a stone in weight in 11 days, it’s not possible. I’m so confused

The biggest change is that usually after a couple of hard days, it would have been a takeaway and shit talk night for DH and I last night to give my head a wobble, but I’m just not craving carbs or sugar at all. I have a love affair with chocolate hobnobs, so at the very least it would be hot chocolate and hobnobs for dunking, but instead I was quite content with fruit tea and a slice of cheese

Back to (hopefully) normal eating patterns today, I’m going to order some of those pork scratchings, they look lush!

Morning campers

Logging in today with a big on my face. I'm usually a daily weigher but I've not weighed at all since Monday and today I'm 5lbs lighter than Monday. I love this WOE!

Today

B: fried egg, 3 bits streaky bacon. Coffee with cream
L: leftover seafood and broccoli rice, FF yogurt with vanilla
S: boiled egg, s&v pork scratchings, mini cheese (only if required)
D: roast chicken breast (skin on, yum) with FLGV

teapot Well done! That's amazing

rayna organuary I like the sound of that.

I love corned beef MsAwesomeDragon I think I'll add it to my shopping list.

Are you the first to have a LCBC dream speckleddot? It's not unusual for bcampers to dream (or have nightmares) about carby foods

Thanks stuntnun! The cinema is expensive enough without spending £27 on snacks. We saw 1917, it was superb!

Nice work on the scales teapot and sayyra!

I don't see any reason why your weight should go up again Teapot. Be warned though that weight loss usually stalls in weeks 3-5 so you can expect your weight to plateau for a short while before it starts moving downwards again. Don't be disheartened, this is a perfectly normal and expected part of going low carb. The stall that occurs around weeks 3-5 is driven by hormonal changes in response to lower levels of insulin and it's caused by water retention. You are still burning fat during the stall (assuming you're following the rules) but it doesn't show up on the scales. It's one reason why we suggest measuring your waist as well as your weight. Often even the scales aren't moving you're still losing inches.

Blimey, half a stone off since Monday!

Big scrambled egg bowl for breakfast because I have court today and I might as well be in the Sahara desert for all the food options there.

Breakfast fail. Porridge with Greek yoghurt. DH thought he was being helpful by making it when I was in the shower and I didn't have the heart to reject it.

Lunch is a chicken salad and dinner will be a bacon/mushroom/tomato/broccoli fry up.

@MrsBertBibby bloody well done!

Morning everyone! Congratulations to all the losers out there! My NSV (non scale victory) is sitting in bed with DH watching tv last night and not partaking in the tub of Ben and Jerry's. He can eat whatever he wants and stay slim aargh. Good job I'm rather fond of him...

@Harveywoo do you eat fish? What about miso cod at the Japanese restaurant ?

@CheddarGorgeous training dh was one of the big changes as him knowing what I was eating and why really helped.

@BIWI yes real flu. I had my flu jab but it's going round my office. Ironically I run the flu campaign at work.

I'm not craving sweet stuff or carbs (or anything) but I'm worried I'll feel better and want to devour everything in sight. I have salmon for tea tonight and I'm going to try to eat it all.

I've lost 4 lbs since Monday, which is amazing. I'm not even feeling hungry. I always feel hungry when I change my diet, so can't quite believe I'm not.

@ stuntnun okra bhaji, genius, thank you they do it so that’s a win for the Indian meal out and I’ve found a butterfly chicken with garlic butter added as an option for the pub. Will ask for veg not chips (I’m the same, if they’re in front of me I’m done for ). So the fairly short lunchtime Japanese menu is the problem one, link below:

www.arigatodining.co.uk/menu/

I would normally go for the squid or the tori no karaage which comes with leaves and lime then chicken katsu I’d ask for no rice/ noodles but all of those are lightly breaded. Hmm, advice welcome please!
Thanks so much for the support it makes all the difference to not change my WOE alone!

@m0therofdragons I know. He's not too bad but still occasionally picks up low fat stuff from the supermarket and will cook "just a few" roast potatoes "just in case". The bastard is a 6"1 ectomorph who can pretty much eat and drink anything he likes and drops a stone every time I try low carb when I struggle with half that while being much stricter

Some great ideas for flavouring water here - thank you. The cucumber sounds really nice. I'm being 'quite' good. Away skiing at the moment so a Diet Coke is the lesser of the evils as the air is very dry at the moment here. So I share a 33cl with DP & ignore the vin chaud, beer, hot chocolate & all its variations. I just balk at paying €4 for a 25cl bottle of water and I can't be arsed to take a rucksack. I'm going to change my mindset today & buy water

Thank @Mimosa1, I do like fish, not tried miso cod, is that sort of a salty herby crust?
Oh husbands, bless them. Mine is slim as a rake too and almost sobbed in disbelief when I refused to put baked beans with the eggs and sausages he’d made last night , thinks I’ve lost the plot. Ben and Jerry’s avoidance is true willpower, I salute you!

Dh has always been skinny with no effort but he had an operation 3 months ago and was inactive for 2 weeks. He's still not fat but he's carrying a bit more weight than normal. He's aware so wants to eat what I eat when I get going properly... he'll almost certainly have a sneaky sandwich though

Thanks @StuntNun, I just can’t wrap my head around 13lbs, where did it go??

Food today:

B: creamy coffee
L: Italian wedding soup
D: low carb chilli, buttered flgv

Ordered some pork scratchings, I’m
Craving crunch so they might just do the trick

I must drink more water today so I’m aiming for 4L to get my self back in the swing.

Morning folks!
Dinner last night was pork steaks fried in butter and olive oil with soured cream, leek and mushrooms and celeriac chips and today's lunch will be leftovers of the same.

B- creamy coffee, egg mayonnaise and celery

Yesterday all went well apart from the coconut macaroon that I absentmindedly ate whilst working from home in the afternoon. Thankfully, it was the last one - must pay more attention!!

My kids are lower carb than typical just because DH and I both are. For example we don't have dessert and the kids are used to that. It was my DS1's birthday last week and DS3 commented that he wished we had more birthdays so he could have cake more often. He was utterly gobsmacked to find out you can eat cake even when it isn't someone's birthday!

Thank you to the person who recommended Halloumi to add fat to a curry. Though I didn’t put it in that dish I did use the idea last night in a chicken/ratatouille dish, the Halloumi was so good!

4.6lbs down since Monday!

Good morning everyone. I have 0 appetite at the moment, but am not feeling 100%. Anyway, posting food for accountability (which may or may not get eaten!).

BF: Egg mayo and cucumber slices.
L: Cheese salad.
D: Thai green chicken curry with cauliflower rice.

Lots of water and coffee, herbal tea.

teapot cheese crisps give a salty crunch (just melt a pile of parmesan in the oven - but keep an eye on it, it burns quickly). Or kale crisps. Finely shredded kale, massaged with oil, salt, pepper, paprika and cooked in the oven till crispy. Or I'm sure someone will advise on the exploding babybel in the microwave...

I sometimes get these seaweed thins They're an acquired taste, but I take them on picnics if everyone else has a bag of crisps. An acquired taste but 0.4g carb per pack.

Looking after a friend's dog so lots of nice walks over the next few days. And the puppy is a well-behaved sweetheart with the best recall ever!

B - boiled egg with butter, creamy coffee
L - left-over cheesy veg bake from yesterday, with corned beef (thanks to whoever mentioned that)
D - salad Nicoise

I went for the celeriac dauphinoise - a good comforting dish for a January evening. The celeriac was a more assertive vegetable presence than the potatoes in usual version, but not at all in a bad way. Thanks for all the tips yesterday.