Low Carb Bootcamp - our final weigh in (but ongoing chat thread)

[BIWI]

Morning all!

Another wet and dreary day. What happened to summer?!

Anyway, for its final outing, here is the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness

It's not the end, of course - and I know many of you are keen to keep going until whenever the next Bootcamp starts. So post here for all the usual chat, banter, recipes, etc.

White chocolate as well.

What's the brain over binge book @cheeseisthebest?

Here it is.

12.8 this morning so that's 10lbs since the beginning of June I think I started. Was weighed at the docs yesterday and for the first time in a few years she said "that's fine", not "hmm don't let it creep up any further"

Sadly my blood pressure was really high so couldn't get the HRT I was there for.

Anyone that can reassure me that eating all this animal fat and salt isn't affecting my blood pressure? Also I have palpitations which are really annoying, not skipped beats but just a pounding heart.

Going to make the cheese muffins this weekend. And shopping today so will try and make myself something treaty like the fat head pizza.

Meant to say I'm really stressed atm so that's probably not helping the BP!

@Bryonyshcmyony you really, really need to do some reading about low carbing. That's the only way you can be reassured.

Yes, low carbing is good for lowering blood pressure.

And the palpitations are probably because you're keeping your carbs too low by, you know, not eating enough veg! It's a well-known side effect of low carbing - it also indicates that you may not be eating enough salt.

see here for a more detailed explanation

So you need to be eating plenty of veg and salad and keeping your salt intake up, along with the other key electrolytes magnesium and potassium - which you should be getting from the supplement. I assume you did buy one/are taking it?

BTW stress levels definitely impact on BP. You could, also, be suffering from White Coat Syndrome. I have this, so last time I had my BP taken the GP got me to wear a 24 hour monitoring device, which showed it was actually fine.

Yes they offered me the 24 hour thing but I thought I'd just be stressed for 24 hours so am doing my own readings.

I have the electrolytes you recommended.

I've actually got something really stressful to do next weekend and I'm worried about it. I might wait until Monday 19th to start measuring

I’ve just had a really stressful morning. Had to do something in work that I hadn’t done for a long time and had loads of customers depending on me. This is the culmination of all the meetings about networks and firewalls etc I had weeks ago.Let’s just say I got it sorted in the end and gloss over the hour of sweaty palms

I think I need to do some reading too. It’s coming up to three months, I haven’t deviated, I’ve drunk all the water. I have lost some weight but gave so much to lose and I seem to be stuck I think I might be eating the wrong quantities or too much dairy.

Week of "holiday" decorating has meant I have eaten a bit off plan due to the utter misery of DIY but going ok. Update below to join in the bathroom banter- love the new floor but my frosted steel paint is clearly lilac so off to choose a replacement now, disappointingly. Done wonders with freshening grout and sealant and looking forward to choosing new bath mats and hand towels for the finished look. My en-suite needs replacing soon but this update should tide us over in here for a good few years decade hopefully.

Love the floor . Despite my courage for the walls and tiles, I wasn't courageous enough to go for a patterned floor

Oh I like the lilac!

I don't dislike the lilac as such but I don't think it goes with the floor. Two grey tester pots on drying both seem an improvement, will pick one in the morning and get it done. Lots more to finish in DHs office too, needs to back up and running by Monday!

Pork belly and slightly carby veg tonight- butternut squash, red onion, lots of garlic and a sprinkling of pine nuts. Kale too. Probably no wine as more DIY once DS is in bed!

I don’t like the lilac with that floor @Rayna37 the grey colour on the right is my preference but both are an improvement. What accessories are you going with?

I've just bought some dark blue (French blue?) towels and mats, and off to the naice garden centre for a pot and plant that I might keep alive for a month or two! Will post a finished shot when all sorted- by the end if the weekend hopefully!

@Bryonyshcmyony I've been eating this way, with loads of animal fats and salt, for eight years and the when my blood pressure was checked last month it was 101/68. Not bad considering I'm 45 and both my parents have high blood pressure. In fact it's quite likely that eating low carb is why my blood pressure is so good. It's renowned for lowering blood pressure right from the very start. Palpitations can have a number of causes: dehydration, lack of salt, lack of magnesium, and keeping carbs too low. Make sure you're drinking enough water and adding in electrolytes. Also get plenty of veg to make sure you're not in deep ketosis. One of those things will sort it out.

@Rayna37 I think cadet grey would be my colour of choice with that floor .

cadet grey example

I’d look for silvery cool leaved plant colours too. I think anything warm undertoned is going to clash terribly. I might think about a very acid yellow geometric accent but I’ll need to cogitate on it for a while...

Or Ochre...

Food:

2 egg omelette with spinach broccoli and cheese
Lo carb roll and butter

Aubergine tomato and mozzarella pasta sauce, I had mine on cauliflower rice with more broccoli
Greek yogurt with blueberries raspberries and cream

Made myself a vodka and soda but didn't drink it all

I'm in a real quandary now.

Thankfully after a very thorough (internal ) ultrasound, there's definitely no underlying gynae cause for my massive bloated belly.

Slight vaginal wall prolapse and rectocele the diastasis recti I knew about but Dr is now putting it down to slow digestive transit caused in part by dodgy fascia in the abdomen thanks to pregnancy.

But that means investigating the low FODMAP diet properly to identify triggers and to combine that with low carb leaves me very very limited options.

Eg none of my usual carb replacements / FLGV eg cabbage / leeks / mushrooms / cauliflower and limited aubergine which is another favourite.

Cream and yoghurt also out as are ground almonds and flaxseed (in the quantities you need to make muffins / rolls).

So I'm thinking I may need to move off low carb for a few weeks whilst I get all of the FODMAP stuff eliminated. Then when I've worked out which of the massive list sets me off I can review again to see if it's sustainable.

Any advice / thoughts??

Eating out particularly hard now eg tonight had a choice of naice curry street food or posh burger van but curry was out due to onions and garlic which left me with a low carb but uninspiring and not very filling slab of meat (but less burger) for £8.00 or a low FODMAP portion of chips... I went for the chips but now am torn!

@Rayna37 I like that colour. OK it's just from a photo and might look different in real life, but I think the lilac brings out the warmer tones in the flooring. It draws my attention to the pinkiness in the grey and feels soothing on my eyes. Otherwise it might look a bit grey and white and clinical... But love the floor.

@Bryonyshcmyony a long post on blood pressure...

2.5 stones heavier than I am now I had catastrophically high blood pressure, of the kind that they might hospitalise you for. And a family history of high blood pressure.

Fortunately, I responded well and quickly to medication and my bp dropped to 'very high' levels. All the advice that I was given was generic: stop smoking (I didn't smoke), eat more veg (I already ate loads), avoid salty foods...

I analysed the advice with a good friend who is also a nutritionist, and she said that it was great advice if your diet was made up of pizza, coke and ready meals, but it didn't fit my way of eating and living.

The combination of meds I was given brought my bp under control, however I'm a bit of a nature creature and I want to take as few artificial remedies as I can, so I researched and experimented to see what I could do to minimise my reliance on medication. I read everything I could find and worked out what felt pertinent to my own situation.

I started by following the extreme version of 'lower your blood pressure' advice: no salt, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy. Meat in small quantities (so essentially a heap of veg with meat as a condiment). I lost weight, my bp dropped a few points. However it felt restrictive and a bit joyless, and not particularly sustainable for life (given that I'm a foodie who takes delight in visiting fabulous restaurants and cooking and eating well at home).

Then simultaneously I read a book by Ranjan Chaterjee, and read about low carb. Number one was 'find time for yourself'. If you can't reduce the constant level of stress then no diet, pills, exercise will ever really help. Number two: what you put into your body. Fewer unnatural ingredients, eat a rainbow of natural colours, less alcohol, minimal processed food. Number three was move around more. Doesn't have to be long distance running or some drastic shouty army bootcamp, just do a little more, and a little more and a little more - things you enjoy that make you feel good, gentle swimming or nice yoga, or tennis. Number four - the importance of sleep: good habits about not drinking late, or watching intrusive TV, or working till you drop...

I'd add in a fifth pillar which is about community - having family and friends who absolutely have your back and support you in what you are doing. If those who love and care for you can't allow and enable you to have time away from dc, work pressures, family responsibilities then they are not allowing you to take the essential first step. If your family will not listen when you say 'no sugar', if your partner sulks if you won't stay up till 1am watching nightmare movies...

Anyway, I discovered all of that alongside low carb high fat. It seemed counter intuitive (with regards to the traditional food messages we'd been given for years) but as a biochemist I could understand the metabolic benefits.

Long story short, and the combination brought my bp right down. However it was a hard journey on my own navigating information of the web, judging what might be right and what was down right cranky. Monitoring and measuring macros...

Finding bootcamp simplified all that for me. 10 rules. Not necessarily easy rules to follow, but simple and straightforward. A way of life and a way of eating that I can follow. I know when I go off plan, and I know what I have to do to correct it. I notice that when I'm off plan my bp rises and I need a little (very small) amount of medication. When I'm totally on plan my bp stabilises and I drop the meds. I also make sure that I add in to my diets those things known to be good for bp - hibiscus tea, some beetroot (even though it is higher in carbs).

And I don't reduce salt. Some of the high bp, so reduce salt advice comes from research where people ate a diet full of processed food (high in salt and sugar).

However, for me, the process started with reducing stress, the good eating came second to that.

The plasterer is coming tomorrow (due to take two days) and then the tiler comes on Monday.

I've pretty much decided on the navy blue colour for the walls, but I've decided to leave it until Monday before buying it - so I've got a chance to see the tiles up. I wouldn't be able to paint until Monday evening at the earliest anyway, to allow sufficient time for the plaster skim to dry.

I'm going to get more nice white fluffy bath sheets but am going to wait to see what colour bath mat and hand towel to get. Probably navy but might get a green colour.

...I'm hoping that having a new luxury bathroom will reduce stress and give me the excuse allow me to pamper myself

@FusionChefGeoff my two cents would be that on low carb you've already ditched quite a few high FODMAP foods so it would be simpler to combine the two. How long do you have to strictly limit high FODMAP foods before you can start reintroducing them? Also dairy isn't completely out as you can still have e.g. aged cheeses and creme fraiche as far as I now. Are there options for including low lactose versions of other dairy products? I think you can still use garlic oil for flavouring as the FODMAP present in garlic isn't fat soluble. I had to follow a heavily restricted diet when breastfeeding my DS4 since he was allergic to dairy, eggs, soya and coconut. I ended up eating only meat, vegetables and olive oil. I'm not saying it wasn't hard work but it was doable because I knew it was only temporary. With the FODMAP diet you will be able to reintroduce some of the foods once you know you react to them. I also believe the gut can heal so that foods that used to affect you don't any more, especially if consumed occasionally rather than daily. I'm dairy intolerant but I can cope with milk, cream or yogurt without symptoms so long as I'm not having them all the time. I do think it's important to support the gut in your case. Look into prebiotics. I know the primal community were raving about resistant starch a few years back. I use fermented foods to support gut health such as sauerkraut, fermented pickles, and kefir (you can get/make water kefir.) Bone broth is also good. There are lots of low carb fruits and vegetables you can still have on a low FODMAP diet such as courgettes, salads, celery, spinach, strawberries and raspberries. You could also consider reintroducing some of the slightly higher carb but still healthy fruits and vegetables such as carrots and melon. All in all I don't think it would be too restrictive, especially if it's only for a few weeks to see how much difference it makes to you.