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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
ditavonteesed · 18/10/2022 07:20

@ListenLinda it's was something about the texture that did for me, but like I say others like them so worth a try.

ListenLinda · 18/10/2022 07:36

I’ll give them a try. I don’t get on with cauli rice so hoping this is a good alternative 😂

TaffyandTeenyTaffy · 18/10/2022 07:47

Yesterday I had bacon, mushrooms, cheesy scrambled eggs for breakfast, and then baked salmon and green beans with a salad garnish of chopped cherry tomatoes, pepper, spring onion, cucumber all mixed with mayo for tea. Drank lots of water and green tea through the day too.

Not the best start as I hadn't planned to start this WOE until yesterday morning but pleased that I didn't snack. I'm used to IF 3/4 days per week so eating breakfast threw me a little.... and I only realised I hadn't eaten lunch as I started cooking tea!

sheepdreams · 18/10/2022 07:57

Hi all

lovely bright sunny day here in N Yorkshire.

Forgot how good leeks, cabbage with butter and black pepper tasted until yesterday when I had at teatime.

Breakfast for me today will be 2 slices of ham with coffee and cream.

Lunch: Cheese, tomato , little onion quiche, salad leaves.

Tea: Steak with Mediterranean veg drizzled with a lot of olive oil.

Water and coffee.💦

Im off for a run tonight so hoping I can manage it with adjusting to low carb.

hope everyone has a good day.☀️

mimosa1 · 18/10/2022 08:07

Oh hells bells, joining AGAIN and planning to stick to it this time. Thanks @prettybird for running this.

Rshard · 18/10/2022 08:12

Also a bright sunny day in Derbyshire.

am in the office today so taking advantage of being able to grab a salad and roast chicken from a local sandwich shop. They do Greek salad, hm coleslaw plus leaves, so lovely.

Happy Tuesday all

WitchWand · 18/10/2022 09:34

Hi All,
Lovely to read you and get back on board both with familiar and new people. Thanks a lot for running this @prettybird and hope you enjoy your break @BIWI .
Here, checking in at 68.1kg ( 10 stone 10 lbs). I'd like to be been down to 63 kgs for Christmas. So, less carbs, less wine, less dairy and fingers crossed, here we come !

PopSingersFearOfThePollenCount · 18/10/2022 09:37

Hello all. Checking in for week 1. I am still a few pounds away from my goal and had a bad weekend due to lots of socialising and drinking so need to KOKO. Really enjoying this WOE so far and have been so surprised by how rough I feel if I have sugar. I thought I was quite healthy before but you realise sugar really is in everything!

Lolojojonesi · 18/10/2022 09:38

Hello everyone! Managed to get my weight logged - thanks @ListenLinda.

Yesterday went fine, though I think I'm eating too much, portion wise but hopefully will start to get less hungry/full of cravings soon. Had
B - two baked eggs, no sugars soya milk coffee and left-over green salad;
L - tinned mackerel (surprisingly nice) and avocado halves with cream cheese;
S - raw mushrooms from the fridge
D - roast chicken with green beans/broccoli in olive oil , full fat Greek yoghurt for afters.

PopSingersFearOfThePollenCount · 18/10/2022 09:42

Meant to sad, thank you PrettyBird for captaining the ship 🙂

debka · 18/10/2022 09:55

Morning all! Slept so well last night I missed my morning run- I struggle to sleep past 6 normally so waking at 7:45 was an unexpected treat!

Greek yoghurt for breakfast this morning- and I need to focus on getting more water down me- so easy to just make cup after cup of tea.

StuntNun · 18/10/2022 10:17

@venusandmars and @agnesmartin you can make your own chorizo / salami / pepperoni chips by microwaving slices on a paper towel then allowing them to cool, or they're even nicer warm. Much cheaper than the M&S ones. My particular favourite is eight slices of pre-sliced chorizo on a piece of paper towel microwaved for 40 seconds then add a small piece of brie to each one and microwave for another 20 seconds so the cheese melts. Absolutely divine!

@humancalculator poor sleep always makes me hungry as well. If you're new to Bootcamp then it will take a few days for your appetite to die down; at the beginning your body is wondering where all the carbs went!

@Porridgeislife lattes are very carby; a flat white is a better choice. Or some coffee shops will do you a black Americano with what they call "pouring cream" which is whipping cream.

@MrsTerryPratchett I can't eat the konjac noodles either as they're pure fibre. Those low carb "breads" made with coconut flour or flaxseed make me really bloated as well.

I usually do intermittent fasting so I didn't have breakfast yesterday as usual but then had an unexpectedly busy day and didn't get lunch either. Before Bootcamp there's no way I would have made it to dinner but it's remarkable how much more in control my appetite is now. I had a mahoosive dinner of two quarter pounder burgers topped with bacon and melted cheese and a large salad (little Gem, cucumber, baby plum tomatoes, black olives and red pepper) dressed with homemade vinaigrette. It was lovely! I won't be as busy today so lunch will be liver, bacon, mushrooms and onions well shallots as they're lower carb and dinner will be tarragon chicken and loads of veggies, probably courgette, green beans and leek all in plenty of butter. I'm salivating just thinking about it all!

brookln · 18/10/2022 10:51

@Porridgeislife hello fellow mum, my little one is 16 week so pretty similar to yours Smile

Today was okay, I did intermittent fasting before pregnancy plus low carb, so I'm back into it now (bub is formula fed). I'm back to my pre pregnancy weight of 60kg but would like to lose a couple of kgs and maintain it. Low carb really helps me to shift cellulite, too.

L - tuna with low carb (5gr) wrap, Mayo and spinach
D - homemade soup of mushroom, asparagus, leek
Snack - two boiled eggs
Water - really needs to improve. It's my weakness 😬

@Stokey for crunchy snacks you could use celery? Cucumber? I also do crackers from seeds.

ChimneyPot · 18/10/2022 11:10

Can we have low carb bread in first 2 weeks? I have some lovely tools in freezer but. It sure if they are allowed.

Our is unexpectedly off today so on an emergency run to buy some.
plan for today
L- broccoli and Stilton soup and maybe a spinach and cheddar omelette
D- meatballs with lots of veg in sauce with cauliflower rice

Lucienandjean · 18/10/2022 11:18

I'm late to the party this time. I've been away on holiday, getting home later today. So I need to do my low carb shop and I'll start in earnest tomorrow, with a weigh in.

I know I'll have put on a few pounds since the end of the last bootcamp - I fell off the wagon seriously on holiday - but I also know it'll all come off again once I'm back in the low carb groove.

ZiggZagg · 18/10/2022 11:19

Good morning campers!

I'm in the office today and proud of my preparation Halo

Lunch- Spicy Vegetable soup with a SLCR and 2 chunks of cheese with avocado for "pudding"

Dinner- Steak with cheese and mushroom sauce with FLGV Smile

Only 1l of water currently but can make mindful choices to increase this throughout the day!

Backstreets · 18/10/2022 11:34

Lunch today was a cheddar waffle, parmesan cubes, olives and cherry tomatoes. Am a vegetarian but thought I'd try to forego the almond flour options at least for a week, we'll see how it goes!
Struggling a little with water intake, solidarity with those of you who have to drink a small pond a day.
That said - went on the scales just for a look and it is satisfying to see the water weight just slide off you :)

Rocklobstershell · 18/10/2022 11:54

Hello all - day 2 and 3lbs down - hurrah!!!

B boiled egg with salt. Coffee with cream
L chicken breast with mayo and avocado
S gammon and eggs with veg

Nagging sugar cravings yesterday so much so that I found myself brushing my teeth loads then realised my sneaky subconscious was trying to leech the sweet taste of the toothpaste sweetener! 🤦
Did have markedly more energy when putting toddler to bed though (normally a huge energy slump trigger for me).

venusandmars · 18/10/2022 12:54

@Rocklobstershell interesting, I have a couple of brands of toothpaste that I can't bear to use because they are so sweet. I am now so used to non-sweet things and I really notice when they are added. With toothpaste it's a bit of an oxymoron of advertising, isn't it? 'Actual' sugar is bad for your teeth, but we'll add sweetner to your toothpaste... (maybe so you keep your taste for sweet things and then need to brush your teeth more often? cynical)

Glorious, sunny, autumn day here! And I've got chicken legs in the slow cooker for dinner - I'll take the skin off them and crisp it in the oven which sort of undemines the energy saving part of using the slow cooker Hmm

sushinelove · 18/10/2022 12:57

Just seen this, can you add me to the sheet and I'll get started from tomorrow?
Had been wondering if there was one coming up

pinknsparkly · 18/10/2022 13:18

Afternoon all, I'm starting a day late after driving the length of the country yesterday with a toddler 😄Looking forward to getting back into it! Just had coffee for breakfast, chicken soup for lunch and will have some sort of meat and buttered veg for dinner (haven't got much in today as we were away for a 4 day weekend, and I need to do a food order for tomorrow). I'm 1.5l in on the water front.

FinallyHere · 18/10/2022 13:39

Added you @sushinelove

Skiphopbump · 18/10/2022 13:41

I’ve been in A&E since 1 am with severe stomach pains. It’s happened a few times and I usually treat at home with strong painkillers but the GP said I had to go to A&E the next time it happened. I’m waiting for a CT so will still be here a while, The tea trolley came round and I was offered a sandwich, I chose cheese and just ate the filling.

ditavonteesed · 18/10/2022 13:52

@Skiphopbump hope everything is ok, well done on the will power.
I'm out for a couple of days. I'm a tooth down from this morning and feeling rather sorry for myself. I'll jump back in in a couple of days. Sorry for the very early fail.

sushinelove · 18/10/2022 13:57

@FinallyHere thanks. Am a few pounds up from the end of the last camp and could do with getting back on track again. This is just the motivation I needed

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