Week 3 - Pre-Christmas Low Carb Bootcamp

[BIWI]

Well, doesn't time fly?!

We've already completed the two, hardest weeks of Bootcamp.

So now, things get a bit different.

During the next 3 weeks, you'll be doing strict Bootcamp during the week, but at weekends, you can relax into Bootcamp Light. This means that you can introduce some fruit - in the form of berries - and some nuts/seeds, albeit occasionally and in moderation, and some alcohol - again, in moderation - and restricted to clear spirits with zero calorie mixers, and/or dry wines

As ever, here is the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness

I sense that you're all coping really well, although it's also evident that there a lot of practical and (particularly) emotional challenges that are rearing their heads.

Stand tall and stay tough!

This WOE is not a very forgiving one, so it's important that you stick to the rules as much as you possibly, possibly can. I know that real life gets in the way sometimes, but the more you can resist all those obstacles and challenges, the better.

Here's to another successful week!

HOWEVER

I do need to warn you, if you're new to low carbing/Bootcamp, that weeks 3 & 4 are very, very challenging. Your body is in the process of transitioning from burning carbs to burning fat; you have lost a lot of water weight, emptied your glycogen stores and have started burning fat. The next two weeks you need to see as consolidation weeks - you may not see much movement on the scales while this is happening.

DON'T PANIC!

You know that it works, because you've lost the weight in the first fortnight - so just KOKO (keep on keeping on), and all will be fine.

This is, though, the reason why - on this Bootcamp - we're aiming to stay strictly Bootcamp during the week. To give us the best chance of losing as we can.

Very good luck to all of us

This week's recipe is a fish one - seeing as how we've had a meat one and a veggie one!

Baked Marinated Salmon

One salmon steak per person

Marinade:

1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 tbsps sesame oil
2 tbsps light soy sauce
juice of a lemon or lime
black pepper
sprinkling of dried oregano
sprinkling of dried chilli flakes (optional)

Mix together.

Put salmon pieces into a (non-metal) dish, pour marinade ingredients over them
Leave to marinade for at least 30 minutes
Wrap pieces in foil and bake in a hot oven for 15 minutes

This is lovely served with stir-fried veg - so typically I'd do finely shredded cabbage, baby sweetcorn, mangetout, pak choi. I sometimes also serve it with Bare Naked Noodles

I have a rake thin modelly type friend who gets the shakes if she doesn’t have three pieces of white toast with marmalade, with a sugary cappuccino when I have breakfast with her

She is like that because her diet is so high in carbs - her blood sugar is constantly rising quickly, which means lots of insulin being released, which sweeps all that sugar out of her blood stream, leaving her hungry and shaky. If she was eating a higher protein/fat and lower carb diet she wouldn't be having those peaks and crashes!

Just reading back over the responses to @pinknsparkly advice.. @StuntNun and @BIWI thank you so much for the thoughtful and comprehensive responses! It's part of the change in mindset which makes this approach a way of life rather than a 'diet'. If you have that nagging doubt that it isn't healthy to eat so much butter / cheese / meat it makes it so difficult to maintain, in previous attempts I would lose a bit then return to 'normal' eating. Not this time.

Well said, both!

Thank you @averywittyusername!

It also, though, makes it fairly obvious why I keep telling people to read the resources on the spreadsheet. It's important that everyone understands the science behind what we're doing/recommending. Especially so people don't think we're a bunch of charlatans!

I was accused, on r e d d i t (avoiding the algorithm there!) of using these posts for product placement and that poster couldn't or wouldn't believe that I don't make any money out of this. (Said poster obviously didn't realise I was on the sub, reading and replying to their posts).

I wish!

Anyone want to buy any magic diet pills?

@averywittyusername it's possible for wheat to cause issues rather than gluten. In which case other sources of gluten would be okay. In terms of hypothyroidism then low carb can cause issues in the long term, i.e. after months of eating low carb. Some people with hypothyroidism do better on a slightly higher daily carb intake, for example adding in healthy carbs such as fruit, higher carb vegetables and pulses. However that can also limit weight loss if you're very carb sensitive, in which case a weekly or fortnightly carb refeed, where you eat one high carb but healthy meal per week, will let you maintain production of thyroid hormones. Examples would be a baked potato or a small portion of rice, not a license to eat a box of doughnuts or anything! If you're getting your thyroid hormones tested then keep an eye on them over time to work out whether they're affected by your diet, or watch out for symptoms worsening, especially cold sensitivity.

@BIWI

I have a rake thin modelly type friend who gets the shakes if she doesn’t have three pieces of white toast with marmalade, with a sugary cappuccino when I have breakfast with her

She is like that because her diet is so high in carbs - her blood sugar is constantly rising quickly, which means lots of insulin being released, which sweeps all that sugar out of her blood stream, leaving her hungry and shaky. If she was eating a higher protein/fat and lower carb diet she wouldn't be having those peaks and crashes!

That’s interesting, BIWI, and when I ate like that (as a teen) I would get those huge peaks and troughs too.

A few general points I'd like to raise....

Cholesterol
Eating a low carb high fat diet will generally improve your overall lipid profile - that's the combination of HDL, LDL, total cholesterol and triglycerides that are used to assess heart disease risk. However sometimes your LDL cholesterol will rise when you go low carb and that will also increase your total cholesterol level so it might look like things are worse. But at the same time your HDL (the "good" cholesterol) goes up and your triglycerides (the amount of fat in your blood) goes down. There's also a ratio of total cholesterol to HDL that should improve on low carb. So it's really important to look at all the test results and not assume that because e.g. LDL has gone up that it's bad. Because if your triglycerides have also dropped them overall your heart disease risk is reduced.

Diabetes / pre-diabetes
Cutting carbs is unquestionably the right approach for treating, reversing or preventing diabetes. All of the damage to the body in diabetes is caused by uncontrolled glucose levels. If you don't eat much glucose then it can't do the damage, it really is that simple. If you are specifically trying to treat or prevent diabetes then I highly recommend introducing intermittent fasting 16:8 once you've been low carb for a few months. This is where you eat all your meals within an 8-hour window and fast for 16 hours between dinner and breakfast. A lot of people skip breakfast when they do 16:8 but you can still have three meals within your window if that suits you best. It's the 16-hour fast that's important, not how many times or how many calories you eat in your eating window. Fasting improves your insulin sensitivity, again limiting your blood glucose levels.

Low fat / calorie-controlled diets
I don't want to give the impression that I'm against these because I'm not. I don't believe that everyone should necessarily eat the same diet to lose weight. For example we all know that person who eats a terrible diet but stays thin. Some people have great success with calorie-controlled methods. My brother uses an activity tracker and tailors his calorie intake to his energy expenditure each day to maintain his weight. However that wouldn't work for me because I am already insulin resistant so I would be driven insane by hunger if I tried my brother's approach. For me, I need to cut carbs and keep my insulin levels down by skipping breakfast to maintain my weight.

Health benefits
The biggest advantage of BIWI's Low Carb Bootcamp is its simplicity. It you follow the rules then you will lose weight, you won't be hungry while doing so, and you don't have to weigh out foods or count calories. It will work for anyone and it will work for you. The other massive benefit of Bootcamp, and I would argue that this is more important than the weight loss, is the improvement to your health. You will be less likely to develop diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia. Even your teeth and gums will be more healthy as your sugar consumption is so low. Over the years we have seen some amazing health benefits on Bootcamps for example people with PCOS managing to conceive at last, IBS clearing up, arthritis and other autoimmune disorders improving. So you might have come for the weight loss but you'll stay because you feel so much better.

@BIWI

You're very welcome *@Learningtofeminist*!

I take it, from your post, that the IVF was successful?!

Yes it was (second time around) .

Please can I be added to the spreadsheet? It was really helpful for me last time being able to log losses.

Was absolutely knackered yesterday but that could be more to do with the baby going through a nocturnally hungry phase... Also didn't manage to stay off alcohol as we'd had friends over at the weekend and my husband poured me a glass of leftover champagne (I can resist a lot of things but champagne that's already been opened... no chance )

For those of you who might be interested in combining intermittent fasting with Bootcamp, @StuntNun started a thread about it here which you should find very helpful

Thanks BIWI, I have hopped onto the IF thread.

Sorry @BIWI ignore my earlier message, I figured out how to add myself

Really interesting stuff, thanks so much all for sharing knowledge, lots of reading to have a look at.
I had a full cholesterol test just before bootcamp (using Thriva) as it had been going up over lock down. I’m next having a test on 29th December, so will be a perfect anecdotal guinea pig to see if there is a shift for me going LC.

@Learningtofeminist Congrats on the baby, how lovely! I well know the IVF process and the associated weight gain. Unfortunately no baby at the end for us, but it brings me great joy to hear of others success, particularly because I know what a fcuker of a journey it can be! Good luck on the LC and hope you enjoyed the champagne

That’s true @ShagMeRiggins- although I think I had the famous 5 p’s (prior planning prevents pisspoor performance) in my mind!

Thanks six Ps, alypoos

Geez, my thumbs are clearly on holiday.

That was meant to say “that’s six P’s ayooplass

Also, before I catch up on the thread, I want to say StuntNun’s post is a thing of beauty.

I want to take it home and sleep with it, honestly. Or maybe it should be added to the spreadsheet somehow. So. Much. Knowledge.

And I do have a question, StuntNun. You mentioned the whole “eat less, move more” thing has basically been disproven. Could you explain why, and how, and by whom? Or a link of some kind.

I see this all the time, usually written by the WWII generation (who had to eat less and move more because the world was different then) and it has always made me cross.

Eat less, specifically, is such stupid advice. Of course portion control is a factor in obesity, but it truly depends on what you eat.

Reminds me of the “breast is best” mantra. Is it really? Is it always? Is it not also dependent on the mother’s diet? (I breastfed, by the way, but I loathe simplistic slogans that ignore the complexities of human life and seem designed to happily make others feel like failures.)

Infuriating.

@StuntNun and @BIWI - some good info there re cholesterol. I should clarify that my good cholesterol is usually on the higher side and brings my total levels up. A few years ago the 'bad' cholesterol was higher than usual so I decided I needed to lose weight and exercise to avoid statins (I also ignored GP's advice to use Benecol products). I know that I lose weight most effectively on a LC diet so that's what I did, combined with exercise. It could be that the exercise was more effective than the diet, but my LDL levels lowered fairly significantly using this combined approach and my GP was happy for me to carry on doing what I was doing. (Unfortunately I reverted back to a high carb; high sugar diet and undid all my good work - but happy to be back on track now)

This woe of eating is also good for my blood pressure.

A few years ago I had catstrophically high blood pressure. Got a lot of medication and standard diet advice (low fats, wholegrain carbs). My bp stabilised, and I lost weight, but it wasn't until I discovered lchf that things really improved. I now take no medication and my bp is really steady.

Food today:
B - coffee with cream
L - cold chicken and kaleslaw (fine chopped kale, cabbage, sliced mushrooms and mayo)
D - roast pumpkin and walnuts

@ShagMeRiggins

There's a good explanation of why 'eat less/move more' doesn't work here

For a more considered and detailed explanation, I really recommend reading this book : Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson

@StuntNun re Fasting, if I have a mug of tea with a dash of milk outside the 8 hour eating window, would that defeat the object? If so, are there any benefits of eating solely within say a 10 hour window?

Slightly random question, has anyone found that their BO changes on this way of eating?! I'm not sure if my smelling slightly different is part of this woe or connected to the slow recovery of my taste and smell post Covid. I haven't experienced this with previous bootcamps though. Trying not to be paranoid there's something wrong with me

BIWI thanks for the eat less, move more links. Also literally laughing at the suggestion on R E D D I T that you’re somehow profiting from running Bootcamp. Unless you have some whiz of a deal with health book publishers and avocado distributors. WTF?!

colouringindoors I’ve never noticed a change to my body scent, nor has anyone commented on it. But we might be at different stages in life and I don’t know your hormones. What I do know is that with LCHF it’s important for me to maintain top dental hygiene (should be a given, generally). Regular attention to brushing twice daily and using toothpicks—those rubbery ones that I’m sure have a better name.

Last night I ate leftover Pot au Feu (peasant food of the gods) and will do so again tonight unless I dive into leftover IPD moussaka.

The moussaka was lovely but really eggy for our children. I’ll try to modify it next time because it’s worth keeping.

Also, can’t remember if I’ve reported back on the non-alcoholic vodka, but it tastes a lot like spiced cucumber water. However, a lot of it (when stupidly used as a mixer) emanates a real alcohol vibe!

Speaking of cucumber water... WATER WATER WATER. Keep it up, drink some now. If you feel thirsty you’re probably already a bit dehydrated!!!

@ShagMeRiggins Jason Fung's Obesity Code has a thorough debunking of the concept of eat less move more, with multiple studies referenced, and is well worth a read. It is common sense though. Our bodies aren't simple machines that we can trick into losing weight. If we eat less then the body will conserve energy, for example by slowing metabolism, generating less heat, minimising repair. If we move more then our hormone systems will demand more food. We all know or have been the dieter that was doing so well and had lost weight that week but then blew it all by eating three Mars Bars in one go. The idea that we can override all of the body's hormones and instincts and defences against starvation with willpower alone is wishful thinking. It might work for you if you're very young, metabolically flexible, haven't been overweight for long. Or if you have an eating disorder. And if you are determined to be successful and you do manage to lose weight then you're likely to put it back on again because it's unsustainable in the long term. Whereas on Bootcamp we will tell you this isn't a diet, this how you have to eat for the rest of your life. Yes you may be able to have cheat days or introduce more carbs when you're doing weight maintenance. But you're never going to be able to go back to the way you ate before because the standard recommended low fat diet is what made you put on weight in the first place.

thanks ShagMeRiggins prob peri menopausal so could be that, just timing weird. Teeth good thanks

[quote colouringindoors]@StuntNun re Fasting, if I have a mug of tea with a dash of milk outside the 8 hour eating window, would that defeat the object? If so, are there any benefits of eating solely within say a 10 hour window?[/quote]
There are different approaches to fasting. I water fast so I only have water and electrolytes during a fast. Black coffee and black tea don't break a fast either. As soon as you add anything else then it isn't a pure water fast but that doesn't mean it won't be beneficial. If it's below 50 calories then it's still a valuable fast so you could have a cup of tea or coffee with milk or a herbal tea or a cup of bone broth without going over that. Some people allow themselves cream (a bad idea in my opinion) or coconut oil and/or butter in their coffee. These are useful crutches to get you used to fasting, especially if you are new to fasting or trying to extend your fasting window. Over time you shouldn't need to keep using them and it's a matter of choice whether you continue with them. I'd rather have a cup of tea with milk and manage to keep fasting for longer than to try and brazen it out on just water and ultimately shorten my fast.