Week 5 - Pre-Christmas Low Carb Bootcamp - the end of the first half

[BIWI]

Morning all

This week sees the end of the first half of Bootcamp. The last two weeks may have been tough going, as you might have seen weight loss slow or even stop.

But this has been an important transition period, as your body has been switching from burning carbs for fuel, to burning fat. So from now on, the weight loss you will see will be entirely fat. And hopefully from week 5, you should see the scales showing a weekly loss too!

By now, hopefully, you have also have become a bit more accustomed to low carb eating, so that it's becoming a bit more of a habit. Once things are habitual, it's a lot easier to stick with things, as they're more routine.

Anyway, here's the spreadsheet for this week's 'confession'!

Frozen cauli rice (sautéed never steamed) is a good freezer staple to go with a ready meal curry, plenty of those are relatively low carb, just read the packet carefully.

@rayna37 Your comments give you away as good cook, as someone who hasn't cooked since before lockdown I'm in awe a bit

Always have frozen cauliflower rice, Ocado do a bag of four which is lovely

Pretty shit day for me today. Found out that what I thought was about £2k credit card debt of my DH is actually over £30k. Some of it goes back 7 years and we've actually amalgamated debts into our mortgage during that time. So pissed off

@Oneborneverydecade OMG! How did you find that out? And how did he manage to run up that amount of debt without telling you?!

oneborneverydecade I'm so sorry you're going through this

I've had some experience of this and it's just awful... not least the betrayal of trust. I'm sure you feel like you've been punched in the gut but when you can think clearly there is a lot of good advice out there re problem debt. Stepchange or Citizen's Advice are a good place for your DH to start to sort this out.

Hopefully you have someone irl to talk to, it was a massive relief for me when I eventually did. I was ashamed on his behalf I think

Oh my god @Oneborneverydecade you poor thing. That’s a horrible shock.

My half sister ran up 22k on credit and store cards when she couldn’t cope with it all a charity stepped in and organised a more manageable repayment plan for her. Is something like that an option?

He's a pretty high earner and awaiting a promotion so it's perhaps not as bad as it could be. We're going to have to seriously cut back our spending for a long time.
I'm most frustrated because I spent money frivolously thinking that we could afford it, and he never said a word.
I don't know where it went, not on anything big although he is generous with birthdays and Christmas. I think he's spent a lot of time borrowing from Peter to pay Paul
Thanks for the kind word

Sorry to hear that oneborn, I hope he’s able to sort it out quickly

Really sorry to hear this oneborn. Must have been an awful shock.

@Oneborneverydecade

He's a pretty high earner and awaiting a promotion so it's perhaps not as bad as it could be. We're going to have to seriously cut back our spending for a long time. I'm most frustrated because I spent money frivolously thinking that we could afford it, and he never said a word. I don't know where it went, not on anything big although he is generous with birthdays and Christmas. I think he's spent a lot of time borrowing from Peter to pay Paul Thanks for the kind word

That's good in one sense as there's not an underlying addiction to unpick too. Can you take control of the finances? Or even do out a budget for him/the household and have a monthly finance "meeting"? It's crap that this falls to you but it's a necessary evil if he needs to learn to manage better. It helps with paranoia about whether it'll happen again too...

@earlgreyhot yes definitely to taking control and a monthly budget. I hadn't thought of a meeting but that's a great idea thank you. I am concerned about trusting him going forward especially as he only owned up to one loan 30 mins after our initial conversation

My h is similar @Oneborneverydecade he thinks he has loads of money because he earns a lot, but we have a big mortgage, 3 kids, expensive holidays etc. Every few years I remortgage for a better deal and end up incorporating about £8k he’s racked up on his credit card and he promises not to do it again. The last time I took over everything and now we have a certain (generous IMO) amount to spend each each month and I set up a minimum payment for his CC from the joint bank account. It means he never forgets and makes late payments affecting our credit (like before) and I can see if it’s creeping up. Every month I do a budget of all the things which need to come out of our account -we are doing lots of work so each month it varies but it adds up. So he knows where all the money is going. I also ask if he has any big expenses coming up. It seems to have helped a lot. Although it doesn’t stop him occasionally having a hissy fit about why does he earn so much and have no money (Last night he stripped that he had no access to his own money because he couldn’t go and buy a £12k motorbike on a whim if he felt like it ). I hope you can talk it thru and put stuff in place. Often it’s the not talking about it which then leads to this kind of thing.

*stropped not stripped, that would be very strange indeed.

[quote Oneborneverydecade]@rayna37 Your comments give you away as good cook, as someone who hasn't cooked since before lockdown I'm in awe a bit[/quote]
Thanks that's lovely. I do feel this is the foodie's diet. I cooked lots during the first lockdown: toddler DS meant I couldn't just read/watch tv/exercise/DIY which would have been my preference when furloughed but we did eat well. I totally get for others right now, cooking's the last thing they have time for.

oneborn that must have been such a shock. I'm so sorry!

Just keeping myself accountable here. Lunch

Dinner

On the other hand @Oneborneverydecade, if he's a high earner, presumably he's pretty competent at work? So why should you have to take over the budget/finances?

I agree, though, that you need to have a really good going over the finances and get him to work out a plan for how it's going to be paid off, and then have regular meetings to monitor progress. But you shouldn't have to take responsibility for that - it's his mess and he needs to grow up and deal with it.

(Sorry if that sounds harsh )

I know I've not posted since monday, have an assessment due tonight and another next thursday which I'm behind with the work so trying to grab study time in between looking after with the little ones with only snatchets of downtime here and there!!

Despite the lack of time or skeep I'm still sticking to bootcamp so really proud of myself!

B. Fasting
L. Bulletproof coffee but only because I was running out the door late taking DD to her very 1st nursery class 🥰 I did have a cheese and onion omelette when I got home.
D. Not had it yet, itll need to wait until the assessment has been submitted. Deadline is 11.59PM

I'll catch up with the thread after.

Just checking in. DS is very stressed and needing lots of support and I've also been dealing with leaky pipes in the house so been too busy to think about food very much. That is a sentence I never thought I'd write! Been good with food today - skipped breakfast because the plumber was here. Lunch was avocado and crab pate and celery sticks with boursin. Dinner was beef casserole cooked with swede, leek, carrot and onion and served with lots of green beans.
If hungry later I might have some berries with creme fraiche and almonds. But it's getting late so probably not.

What are you studying Buffy? (If it’s not too outing?)

Oh no Oneborneverydecade, what a shock! I hope you're ok - that sort of thing is bound to wobble you

Takingontheundead I'm jealous of your dinner, looks lush in the pic. I made what I thought would be a lovely spinach and ricotta bake tonight. But it was bleugh - the eggs I added for stability made it go all scrambled

Dinner disaster + PP comments on freezer food has made me long for some low-carb ready meal backups; does anyone have any more suggestions?

@mrskoala thank you, that all sounds very familiar. Neither of us are particularly good with money but this is something else. I'm going to follow your lead and take more control.

@biwi I agree in theory but I just don't think I can trust him enough atm and that will add to the stress

@incurablycurious I'm okay thank you. Maybe because the reality of clawing back all of that money hasn't hit. I'll koko though

Thank you everyone and apologies for derailing the thread

Oneborneverydecade what a horrible shock for you, hope you can work through it and find a good way to pay it down. I suspect that you are not alone in this situation, as credit has been so easy to come by for a long while, especially if your a high earner. I remember a friend telling me that the only time she had debt was as a high earner as she relaxed to much with money and started to spend her bonus in anticipation rather than when it was in the bank.

For people asking about ready meals, we had a Charlie Bingham Thai Chicken meal tonight, I needed to cook it in a pan but it was all prepared
Charlie Bigham's Pan Fry Thai Green Chicken Curry700g it is carb 1g per 100gs. I served it with buttered cabbage, green beans & broccoli .

It was lovely and really easy