Jan '23 Low Carb Bootcamp: we come to the end of the first half!

[BIWI]

Morning campers

Here's the spreadsheet

So this week marks the end of the first half - doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!

Remember that this week is still renowned as a tricky one in terms of weight loss, so if things have slowed down or stopped (or even reversed) for you, don't panic. Just KOKO - remembering the water, fat and veg in particular.

Re the statins @MotherBuckets, I'm not a medic - so if your GP has advised them, it would be irresponsible of me to warn against them (especially with your family history). But as you say, it will be interesting to see what happens as a result of low carbing (although it will be difficult to attribute any improvement to either diet or medication, I suppose). And hopefully your results will be good @Jenasaurus

@JanieRead - apart from the noodles! - why don't you list out for me your menus over the last few days, and let's see if there's something we can spot that might help you

Thank you @BIWI @StuntNun @TangledWebOfDeception for the straight talk and guidance.

I just lost a long reply when I went to attach my picture, so I'll keep it short here. Thank you for any thoughts.

@BIWI your concerns, I'm 18:6 eat when I get home, coffee gave me up (aches, lows) decafs not bullet proof with mct rather a blob of butter as opposed to cream, 4lb down but now 3 up, die-off (carb fed) pathogens in GI, hope the food answers anything else.

How odd, we have a hellishly strong chilli here tonight, my bad for going all in OTT with the fresh chilli's. It's for the teenagers, they're tougher than me.

@FinallyHere I wish you very happy feather shaking, it sounds devine and lots of fun!

I missed of the total column it 1812 cal

@RedDiamond if you can bear to leave it a day or two it'll taste less 'raw' spicy and be a richer warmer sort of spicy (normally i make chilli a couple of days in advance and it's very noticeable the difference in the flavour).

Can someone tell me what bullet proof coffee is please?

I realised I haven't posted any meals for a while: I find it helps me to be accountable, so I'll try to get back on it.

B: nothing
L: omelette cooked in butter with cheese and ham. Green salad.
D: chicken in satay sauce, asparagus, avocado.
S: cheese

I'm out for the day at a convention tomorrow. I've just made myself up a lunch of cold meat, cheese, salad, mayo etc, because I'm sure all the food on offer will be carby. It's taken me a long time to get used to thinking ahead about food, but I'm finally managing better.

OMAD?

@DryWhiteagainW

Bulletproof coffee: coffee whizzed up with ghee/butter/oil.

OMAD: One Meal a Day (I think, unless there’s another meaning I don’t know about!)

Both sound hard core.
thanks for explaining Tangled

@TigerYiger I would log for another couple of days since food consumption is supposed to vary day to day. Just from your first day's data I suspect that your calorie intake is a touch too high and you should cut your fat intake by around 100-300 calories per day. Be very careful with OMAD as well as it is renowned for stopping weight loss. The best approach to OMAD is alternating lunch and dinner on consecutive days and having one day per week with at least two meals.

Don't try bulletproof coffee @DryWhiteagainW it's coffee blended with MCT oil (refined coconut oil) and butter. Each bulletproof coffee is at least 400 calories and has a very low nutrient density - the exact opposite of Bootcamp's whole food emphasis. Bulletproof coffee is part of Dave Asprey's Bulletproof Diet which is a modified fasting diet beloved of coders and Bitcoin enthusiasts. You need to buy special "mold-free" coffee as well as the special purified MCT oil.

As for my food/drink today:

Not quite good enough on the water! 1 litre

Bit heavy on the coffee/decaf with double cream - 3 cups, 1 tbsp in each

(not worried though as that, a splash of milk in 2 or 3 cups of tea and a little bit of grated grana padano is all the dairy I’ve had)

L: tinned mackerel in oil, on a bed of salad, dressed with olive oil and lemon

D: Pasta sauce (minced beef and mushrooms) had with roasted fennel and garlic, topped with a little grated cheese

And some of the meals I’ve had. None are recipes as such, just simple foods that broadly go together.

Grilled cold smoked mackerel and scrambled eggs with tomato and cucumber

Beef curry with roasted squash and cauliflower

Korean broth with spring onion, red pepper and fluffy eggs (with chilli flakes, sesame seeds and sesame oil)

Ham and egg salad plate

Leftover chicken breast, from our Sunday roast, on a bed of cabbage salad.

StuntNun don’t worry I don’t think I could stomach that it sounds awful. I like a good old fashioned fresh coffee with milk. Then a black one and then at least 2ltrs of herbal teas !

B. 2 boiled eggs
L. Cauliflower and coconut soup with chicken
FFGY
D. Slow cooked gammon with leeks, lots of jus, kind of like a soup, with 2 desert spoons FFGY to make it creamy.
slice of cheese.

@StuntNun I really appreciate your thoughts and time looking and will made adjustments. I'm not hardcore, just made the mistake of calling my drink the wrong thing. A blob of butter blended into coffee isn't awful, its exactly the same as latte in texture and has zero carbs. I don't trade bitcoin

I have taken myself, doing keto by myself, from an asthmatic and chronic eczema sufferer to inhaler free and clear skin - for two years now. Symptoms of insulin resistance also. Slim for the first time ever since puberty.

A mixture of 18:6 and or one luscious meal always worked for me for all this time, but I seem to have have messed up my system/metabolism/hormones by being back on the sweet stuff for a big burst over Christmas, so again thank you for supporting me with my struggle here.

I don't mind being told if boot camp isn't for me. I'm very glad to have realised coffee was making me unwell and to have dropped the cream, for me that's a huge huge NSV.

I'm not a nutter, hardcore or do disgusting things. I'm a single parent to two lovely teenage boys and I'm a bit worn out probably. I'm certainly not up for vilification.

Morning all, just checking in as having a hectic week with not much chance to post on the thread. I am still firmly on the wagon though, even though some of the challenges I've been facing would easily have sent me off the rails in the past.

Today I'm planning on:
B: Greek yog and cream
L: shakshuka
D: cod topped with a cheese and ground almond crust, green veg, butter

Oh wow hold on a minute! I occasionally have a bulletproof coffee and it gives me tons of energy and keeps me going all morning. Didn't realise it was a socio political marker 😅

Fwiw I'm in my late fifties and the most boring vanilla middle class woman out there 😅

I'm still koko despite a very slow almost non existent loss and tummy issues. Yesterday had a tuna salad roll and some rollitos. Then dd2 came home from uni for a couple of days and requested fish chips and mushy peas. After doing that, buying dd3 gluten free fish in batter I couldn't be bothered to make myself anything complicated so had a piece of smoked cod loin fried in olive oil literally on it's own 😅. Tummy feeling slightly better today. On the road today so lots of coffee and I think steak tonight.

Oh and scales showed a 3.5lb loss in total this morning. So feeling a bit more positive.

One thing I did do last night is drink wine - end of dry Jan and dd2 being home. Have realised that wine brings almost nothing positive to my life, except oiling the wheels of social interaction! Feel rough this morning, spent 20 quid on two bottles- we drank one last night. If I didn't have three big social occasions in the next 6 weeks I think I'd bin it altogether.

@Lucienandjean the chicken satay looks good, it reminds me that I keep meaning to make some. I only have beef available though - so you think it would work with beef?

@TangledWebOfDeception those plates have so much colour and diversity and look so appetising. Are there others in your household who eat that too? The rest of my household wouldn't eat any of those dishes unadulterated so I end up cooking things that are either LC adaptable (but we still get stuck in a rut since whilst they are things that can be readily adapted there aren't as many) or I make my own meal separately and inevitably to avoid too much extra cooking it's veg with omelette.

@Baystard I think it would work. Try it with the beef and let us know if it's nice!

@TigerYiger

I don't mind being told if boot camp isn't for me. I'm very glad to have realised coffee was making me unwell and to have dropped the cream, for me that's a huge huge NSV.

I'm not a nutter, hardcore or do disgusting things. I'm a single parent to two lovely teenage boys and I'm a bit worn out probably. I'm certainly not up for vilification.

I'm sure you're not a nutter! And please don't think you were being vilified.

You asked about why your weight loss had stalled/reversed and, with the information provided, we were trying to give you an answer.

It's very often the case when this happens that it's because people aren't following Bootcamp rules, which is what we were pointing out. In no way trying to vilify you!

@Greatly I suspect Bulletproof coffee has far outgrown its creator and origins now as lots of people have them and don't bother with the special coffee beans or the purified MCT oil. They're not encouraged on Bootcamp because they are high calorie but low nutrient density so we've had people having two Bulletproof coffees for breakfast then not really eating properly for the rest of the day. So it not that they're not allowed, there just one of those things - like creamy coffees - that can potentially cause problems for people.

I, too, used to drink one - just coffee and butter - every so often (but haven’t in a few years now). But there’s not a lot of argument for having two of those daily, tbh. IF you’re looking at the nutrition/healthy/whole foods side! But if it really matters to you and you feel you need it daily then of course that’s your shout!

OMAD is notorious for only working as a weight loss strategy for so long - it seems that once a certain tipping point is reached, it no longer works. It may be that you’ve messed things up over Christmas, in which case patience for a month or two may be needed, or it may be that your body has reached that point. In that case, as @StuntNun said, if you can mix things up again even slightly, it usually helps. I can understand the temptation to stick with a strategy that has worked so well in helping you to get much better than you were, but it could very well be that your body has now sorted itself out enough to not need that specific strategy anymore and at that point it can become counterproductive as many have found who’ve done OMAD for extended time.

Well done @AllTheBlackCoffee on staying firm through the challenges! I’ve managed too, except I seem to have developed a penchant for picking up one or two —maybe more— Emma Bridgewater things when I’m bored/stressing /sad. I’ll be curtailing that habit quickly! Going into No or Low Spend for 2023 now that January is up (I prefer to buy twice annually in sales) so no more frivolous shopping for me!

@Baystard I do make an effort to make sure our meals look nice on the plate - it helps with really appreciating the good food we’re eating, plus the broader the mix of colours the better for nutritional intake. It’s just me and DH so I cook a carby food for him. My girls are grown up now but when they were little one would have happily eaten everything and the other was a bit more picky.

I'm really not sure why coffee with butter is frowned on but a black coffee with cream is fine. I mean,we are encouraged to eat butter in this WOE, so why does it matter where you have it? I have a bulletproof coffee every now and again then eat properly later.

@Greatly I’ve done that before! Just a piece of chicken or fish, nothing else. I think especially if your stomach’s a bit iffy, something very plain like that seems to work best anyway.

I’m supposed to be making curry and dal today but I’ve not put the lentils to soak and I can’t make up my mind on what meat to use...so I may bump that to tomorrow and just do us a cooked breakfast instead!