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Low-carb bootcamp

Join discussions about low-carb bootcamp plans, meals and progress. Consider speaking to a medical professional before starting any diet.

Pre-Christmas BootCamp 2022: Week 1

491 replies

prettybird · 17/10/2022 01:02

While @BIWI takes a well-earned break from running BootCamp after many, many years of supporting people in this Way of Eating I have, for my sins, volunteered to run the Pre-Christmans BootCamp Shock. I'll admit to only doing so for selfish reasons: I needed the BootCamp in the run up to Christmas and the accountability of running it would in turn help me to be more accountable Grin

My Big Stick might not be as big as @BIWI's but I will do my best to channel her Wink. And with the support of all the other experienced BootCampers and @FinallyHere's help with the Spreadsheet, I am sure we will see a lot of success in the run up to Christmas.Smile

Here is the link to the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness You don't need to log your weight if you don't need to but within the various tabs of the Spreadsheet are The Rules ( very important), Vegetarian Rules links to resources that outline how and why this Way of Eating works, menu plans, veg carb counters and many other resources.

I'd strongly recommend that even if you don't weigh yourself (and even if you do), you should measure yourself at the start, especially your waist. That way, if your weight loss stalls, you may still see progress in other ways. BootCamp is very effective at reducing visceral fat, which will manifest itself in a smaller waist measurement.

Anyway, on to the important stuff: here are The Rules

1. Eat three proper meals a day.
You must eat breakfast. It doesn’t have to be a lot, and it doesn’t have to be absolutely first thing, but you must have something. For the rest of the day, if you’re eating enough food and especially enough fat, you shouldn’t be hungry between meals. But if you are hungry, eat something. (Hard boiled eggs make a great snack). After the first two weeks of Bootcamp we will relax this, but these two weeks are critical in terms of helping you switch easily to a low carb way of eating - and if you start to feel hungry, it makes things much harder! Eating this way will ensure that your blood sugar levels are kept stable, which will mean that you are much less likely to experience hunger. A typical high carbohydrate diet can mean that snacking is a routine part of your day. Once your blood sugar levels are stable, by eating low carb, you should find that you no longer want to snack. But the rule of thumb here is ‘if you are hungry, eat!’. (Just make sure you are only choosing low carb snacks, of course!)"

2. Avoid processed foods.
Focus on pure, natural protein as the basis for your meals - meat/fish/eggs. Things like sausages, ham, bacon, pre-prepared burgers etc should be avoided as much as possible. You can have them, but just not at every meal, every day.

3. Eat lots of fat.
Eating fat will not make you fat. Honestly! But it will keep your appetite satisfied, and it sustains your body’s energy requirements perfectly. Fat does not provoke an insulin spike, unlike carbs which do (a lot) and protein (a little). Fry in butter, add butter to vegetables, eat salad with a home-made vinaigrette dressing (not made with balsamic vinegar though, as this is too sweet), add mayonnaise where you can (just check the carb count on your mayo first). Eat fattier cuts of meat – e.g. pork belly, roast chicken with the skin on and/or eat the fat off your lamb chops. Absolutely no low fat/light/’Lite’ foods of any kind!

4. Make sure you are eating vegetables and salads with your food.
"This is where your carbs should come from, and this is non-negotiable. But choose only those vegetables that are on the allowed list. Make sure that you focus on eating those vegetables that are under 5g carb per 100g, and this will ensure that your carb counts are kept low. You don’t have to weigh/count carbs – this is one of the great joys of this WOE (way of eating), but if you’re new to low carbing it can be helpful to weigh your portions of veg in the early days, just so that you know how many carbs are in the sort of portions that you like to eat.

The vegetable carb counter is helpfully colour-coded into green (eat freely), amber (go easy) and red (best avoided as much as possible), which will help you to make your choices."

5. Be careful about dairy (apart from butter, which is unlimited).
Dairy can impede weight loss for some people. If you are drinking tea/coffee with milk or cream, try to restrict yourself to max 2 cups per day. There are a lot of carbs in milk, so if you are having several cups of tea/coffee per day, you will quickly rack up your daily carb count (e.g. 1 medium latte contains more than 12g carbs!) You may eat cheese but again, don't overdo it. Full fat yoghurt is the best way to include dairy in your diet - but beware, it does contain carbs. You should choose one that’s 10% fat – most of the supermarkets have a Greek yoghurt in their premium ranges with this amount of fat.

6. You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day.
The more weight you have to lose, the more water you should drink.

This is from www.low-carbdiet.co.uk/:

Water is essential to weight loss for those who follow a low carb way of eating. The minimum consumed in a day should be:
Your Weight.........Litres
140lbs............2.5
160lbs............3.0
180lbs............3.0
200lbs............3.5
220lbs............3.5
240lbs............4.0
260lbs............4.5
280lbs............4.5
300lbs............5.0
320lbs............5.5
340lbs............5.5
360lbs............6.0
380lbs............6.5
400lbs............6.5
"High levels of ketones in the blood stream can lead to a reduction in ketone production, therefore being well hydrated could aid in keeping the levels low and ketone production ongoing. Consuming enough water can have many other positive side effects, e.g. it aids your kidneys with the processing of protein, reduces the retention of water, helps with preventing constipation, and reduces the levels of ketones released by your breath, which in turn will reduce breath odour.

However, drinking a lot of water can mean that you also need to keep an eye on your electrolyte balance. You need to make sure that you are consuming sufficient sodium and potassium. On a low carb way of eating, we should eat more salt, so make sure that you are cooking with salt and adding salt to food, if you like it.

Good, low carb, sources of potassium are spinach (raw), avocado, mushrooms, courgettes and asparagus, as well as salmon and yoghurt."

7. No alcohol.
Alcohol is the easiest source of fuel for the body to burn, so it will always use this first before it starts to burn any fat - which is why you need to restrict it, especially in the first two weeks of Bootcamp, when we are encouraging the body to stop using carbs for its source of fuel and turn to fat-burning instead. If you really can't do this - at least try and restrict it to the weekend. Vodka with soda is the best thing to drink. Or Champagne, red wine or dry white wine.

8. No fruit.
Really. Seriously. Honestly. None at all. Zilch. Nada. After the first two weeks of Bootcamp you will be able to introduce certain fruits, in moderation, but at this stage fruit is simply too carby. We are also trying to break the addiction to sweet things, so cutting fruit out is part of this process. If you are getting all your carbs from vegetables and salad, you will be getting all the nutrients and fibre that you need.

9. No nuts/seeds.
Although they are a good source of nutrition and contain lots of fat – which is great for us – they also contain carbohydrate and, because they’re so moreish, you can quickly end up eating a lot of carbs. When we move to Bootcamp Light, after the first two weeks, you can re-introduce these, but be careful and go easy.

10. No sugar or artificial sweeteners.
Sugar is an obvious ‘no no’, but artificial sweeteners are also an issue. One of the aims of this way of eating is to eat pure and natural foods, so including sweeteners is not recommended. Some people find that artificial sweeteners can impede their weight loss, and there is some suggestion that your body can respond to sweeteners as if they were sugar, by releasing more insulin - and therefore laying down fat. Given that the aim of Bootcamp is to help us lose our sweet tooth and addiction to sweet things, then it is a good idea to avoid sweeteners altogether in this first two weeks.

That's enough for now. I'll post more in the morning: in particular the disclaimer that I am not a medical professional and that if you have any concerns, you should check with a medical professional.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
Jollyholibobs · 22/10/2022 11:29

Thanks for doing this @prettybird Can I join? I missed the start. Can I just add my name to the spreadsheet?

prettybird · 22/10/2022 11:43

Welcome @Jollyholibobs Flowers You can add your name to the bottom of the spreadsheet and @FinallyHere will re-alphabetise periodically.

Alternatively, she'll be along shortly and will insert you in the correct row Smile

OP posts:
Backstreets · 22/10/2022 12:52

Lunch was a poached egg in an avocado half with flaky salt, and it was delicious! No big plans today so have done some DIY and shopping, and intend on making a soup for next week's easy option :)
Feel like I've shirked a little on my water but the day is still young!

humancalculator · 22/10/2022 13:03

Breakfast was 3 rashers of bacon, shallot/mushrooms and spinach all cooked together in the bacon fat and a fried egg. But I was STILL hungry, so had a small bowl of Greek yoghurt. Lunch halloumi and salad. Water, water, water and coffee.

ZiggZagg · 22/10/2022 13:06

Good afternoon!

No plans here today either so have just done some washing and tidied around.

Just this minute had some Greek yogurt and an 1l down on my water!

Steak with celeriac and leek mash for tea Smile

Hope everyone has a mmm fabulous day!

PopSingersFearOfThePollenCount · 22/10/2022 13:06

Happy weekend all 😀 Great tip on the buttermint tea, I found some in sainsburys today for £1.75 a box. Currently making broccoli and stilton soup and will be having Nigella's cauliflower and cashew curry this evening (easy on the cashews in my case)
I've hit a 1 stone loss milestone today, thank you so much to BIWI and LittleBird for making these threads. Blows my mind how simple this is!

UnOeufIsEnough · 22/10/2022 13:06

Had a sneaky weigh this morning and things are going in the right direction!

Plan for the day:
B: scrambled eggs and avocado
L: can't quite make up my mind what to have!
D: slow cooked Goan pork with tomato, spring onion and coriander salad and raita.

PopSingersFearOfThePollenCount · 22/10/2022 13:07

Oops sorry prettybird, getting my bird mixed up!

ZiggZagg · 22/10/2022 13:08
Grin
ZiggZagg · 22/10/2022 13:12

I also love chai tea, with a tiny splash of milk, it's delicious and also satisfies a sweet craving funnily enough even though it's supposed to be spices.

Also had a sneak peek at the scales today, looks like an amazing first week loss for me, hope it sticks!

@prettybird what is the position on squirty cream? DD has some for her hot chocolate and it looks quite low carb, 0.5g for a 12.5g serving, which I reckon is a squirt into the mouthful Grin

Frenchpoodle · 22/10/2022 13:13

@FinallyHere Your post yesterday really resonated with me. I’m very much a quick win person, so waiting for the scales to shift can see me losing motivation.

I love the idea of thinking of the immediate benefits instead - the joy of home cooked tasty food, having more energy and hydrated skin are great motivators and could really keep me on track. Thank you for the inspiration.

This morning I had a lovely long lake swim and just had lush lunch of avocado and bacon salad with vinaigrette.

Dinner tonight is a treat of curry goat (one of those restaurant delivery services). It comes with a green slaw and I’m going to make myself some extra sautéed spinach to go with it (to keep me off the plantain 😋)

prettybird · 22/10/2022 13:22

Squirty cream (Autocarrot tried to change that to "squirt team" Grin) should be ok. Just check that there's no added sugar. And what is its fat percentage?

And don't go crazy with it in case dairy stalls you Wink

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Skiphopbump · 22/10/2022 13:23

Does anyone else have a goal for this bootcamp?
I started at 269lbs and would love to get under 250lbs which means a loss of about 3lbs per week. I think it’s doable if I stick to the rules.

prettybird · 22/10/2022 13:38

@Skiphopbump - that might be a bit challenging. After the initial "whoosh", the weight loss tends to average out at 1-2lb a week (with a few stalls and whooshes on the way Wink), which is healthy. So it depends on how much of an initial whoosh you get (which I don't include in the average rate of loss).

Do you have an intermediate target that you could give yourself, with the higher target one to say "it would be nice but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't get there" ?

I started at 12lb 12lb - but that already included a 5lb whoosh from the week before Blush - so my target of under 11.5 stone by Christmas is, ie 17.5lb is challenging enough. And so far this week, I've not dropped Shock (despite running the Boot Camp helping me to keep focussed Confused) So this weekend I'm concentrating on water, water, water Grin

And if I only get to close to 11.5 stone, I'll still be happy, as that will still be a tremendous achievement Halo

My current "small" target is to get to 3 digits - ie 12 st 9lb.

OP posts:
Skiphopbump · 22/10/2022 13:51

@prettybird yes I did have an initial whoosh of over 8lbs which isn’t included in the 20lbs as I started the week before bootcamp- maybe I just need to set short term goal of getting into the next 10s of lbs bracket at a time. My medium term goal (6 months) is to lose 50lbs by March when I’ll be having my hba1c checked again. Any thing beyond that seems to distant as I have so much to lose.

prettybird · 22/10/2022 13:55

I think it was @mimosa1's boss who told her, when she was worried about the length of time that some training would take, that in a year's time it would still take that length of time, so why not start now Smile

I saw a meme recently that articulated that beautifully simply - I'll need to try and find it again.

OP posts:
DurhamDurham · 22/10/2022 14:05

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend so far, I've spent ages reading all the updates and it's so inspiring. It's a great bootcamp so far!

I'm off out to lunch but we're going to Rio which is a Brazilian BBQ place so it's going to be easy to stick to Bootcamp since I'll be eating all the meat and salad bar Grin I'm not bothered about having a drink so I'll be sticking to some sparkling water and I'll be too full to even think about dessert.

Mercedesbenz2022 · 22/10/2022 14:35

Today , after some Christmas shopping I made @venusandmars velvet soup
it was delicious , I made from memory (!) , and added tarragon. Dp liked it too .
evidence below !

Pre-Christmas BootCamp 2022: Week 1
Sunsnowsun · 22/10/2022 15:55

i made the butter chicken curry as recommended, it was fabulous, thank you for the recipes, I did it in my instant pot and had to tweak it a bit. It has reminded me how important it is to try new recipes to keep on track. The other thing I realise is that reading the thread prompts me to drink more water 💦

I will be trying the soup once I’ve been to the shops.

Baystard · 22/10/2022 16:04

I'm enjoying hearing how everyone is getting on. Trying not to think of a goal as such as I tend to reach the goal and then lose focus and slide back into poor habits. I don't know if it'll work but keeping doing what I've tried before wasn't working, so I'm giving it a go. I'll try to weigh less often too but I find that difficult as I'm just as likely to find my small trousers fitting and take that as permission to stop eating healthily.

Spicy lamb burgers tonight, they're very fatty but I'll have them with salad and mop up all the lovely fat. They're also very salty (by accident, I got my recipe muddled) but that's OK as I've had a headache today and some salt might be the answer.

Does anyone know if any types of mint in the garden aren't edible? I want to make minty lamb burgers next time and I have a huge pot of mint that DMIL gave me but I don't know what variety it is. I don't know if the exact variety matters though.

ShagMeRiggins · 22/10/2022 17:49

Hey y’all—hope everyone getting on well, sorry I haven’t been around but…life.

I’m about to start cooking Spaghetti Carbonara for my family (my favourite pasta dish, little bastards learned to love it from my Genaro/modified and awesome recipe), and as I can’t find a way to do it properly with “courgetti” option, I’m going for an evening meal of Thai Beef Salad.

More cooking for me, but sticking to this Way of Eating (yay, me!).

Two things—PLEASE TRY TO DRINK ALL YOUR WATER and I can already feel a flatter stomach (which is absolutely my problem area).

Another problem area is my pancake area, but that’s age, lack of fitness, and nothing that can be improved with this WOE! Hmm

ZiggZagg · 22/10/2022 17:54

Oh hello @ShagMeRiggins , I was wondering if you would be joining us! We missed your water reminders Grin

Skiphopbump · 22/10/2022 18:29

L - scrambled egg
D - halloumi and salad, Greek yoghurt

Canthinkofaname79 · 22/10/2022 18:40

B - low carb toast with cream cheese
L - bits of chicken and homemade tomato soup
D - homemade creamy chicken curry with broccoli and green beans.

ditavonteesed · 22/10/2022 18:41

@ShagMeRiggins dare I ask what your pancake area is