Summer 2023 Boot Camp, Week 1: Here we go!

[prettybird]

19 June is just about upon us and here we are at Week 1 of a 8 week Boot Camp. Are you ready? I'm posting this on the Sunday so that those of you who are early risers can get stuck right in

I'll start a new thread every week.

It will take me a few posts as I blatantly copy across from @BIWI ‘s excellent introductory posts and I’m doing this on the app which makes it more award.

First off the major caveat: I am not a doctor, nor a dietican. This Way of Eating works for me and has done for many others. I’ve followed BIWI on these Boot Camps for many years and there is a lot of support but if you have any medical issues or concerns, you need to make your own choices. You need to be particularly careful if you are pregnant or breastfeeding (in which case follow Boot Camp Light), diabetic or if you are taking any medication, as you may need to liaise with your doctor regarding dosage. I'll post a follow up post with more details.

The Spreadsheet of Fabulousness is here @FinallyHere is Spreadsheet Monitor and most weeks will post the link in one of the following posts after my OP as I usually post via the App and links can be a bit hit or miss. I'll do a link but it might not work for everyone also, if you experience any problems with the Spreadsheet, tag @FinallyHere and she will work her magic on it!

And so to the rules. These are the rules for the first two weeks. After that, we do relax things a little:

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!)

Experienced Boot Campers may follow intermittent fasting (IF) (16:8 or similar) and therefore not have breakfast or another meal but if you’re new to this Way of Eating, wait until you’ve got used to it before starting on IF.

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, which you'll find on the spreadsheet.

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 originally came from www.low-carbdiet.co.uk/ but although the site is now defunct, there are other sources which advise similar quantities of water.

It does of course go without saying not to drink the entire amount in one go: you should spread it out over the day.

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.

The water is really important - any time I’ve noticed myself stalling, I’ve noticed that my water consumption had dipped. I like to think of it as helping to pee the fat away

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. On the spreadsheet, you'll find a nut carb counter, which illustrates just how much they vary in terms of their carb counts.

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 us off and running. I'll follow up with a few Housekeeping posts but I think that's plenty to get started with.

Thanks for the feedback prettybird. Regarding not having to worry about calories, I think I really, really need to get it into my head that, for me, this bootcamp shouldn't be about shorter-term weight loss at all. It should be about normailising my relationship with food by allowing me to eat gorgeous satisfying meals and eliminating the intense cravings for constant snacks. And secondarily about improving my strength and energy.

I would really love to lose half a stone or so. But that desire is at least partly to do with depression/low self-esteem etc and I prob should try to forget about it. And in any case, last time I bootcamped succesfully at least a third of the weightloss, possibly half, occured after the bootcamp had ended, when I was still following bootcamp-lite rules but had absolutely no sense of 'dieting'/restricting.

I think that, for me, it would be better to see weight loss as a kind of unintended additional benefit of eating well, and of eating with self-kindness.

I definitely appreciate the lack of calorie counting. I did LCHF a few years ago and it was so freeing because so long as I chose the right kind of food I ate what I wanted. Very quickly my tastes changed and I didn't want bread or potatoes or anything like that. I found i enjoyed food so much more. And I lost 3 stone.

I fell off the wagon at Christmas that year and never got back on it. I put the 3 stone back on and have spent a few years dithering.

I came to the conclusion recently that I can't do it on my own. It's much easier to low carb when you can follow discussion on here, keep being reminded, know that people are cheering each other on. Already a few days in I'm finding it easy to say no to carbs - watched my family eat chips with the meal last night and I just had everything else - thoroughly enjoyed my extra veg!

So I know I just need to stay in this chat!

@Eanair23 I know what you mean about the texture . That's why I do like the occasional pork puff and I really should make myself some cheese crisps from either exploded baby bells (a quarter in 4 silicone muffin trays, microwaved and left to cool), piles of grated cheese baked or baked slices of chorizo or Salami Milano.

Great that you are motivated to continue this WoE. Remember to that your skin and energy will improve also because of all the water and fat you're having. You'll be positively glowing.

@Random789 - I often find that climbing back on the wagon and getting properly back to this WoE in itself improves my mood and attitude to life.

it would be better to see weight loss as a kind of unintended additional benefit of eating well, and of eating with self-kindness.

That is absolutely the right way to think about it

@MilsonandJim - I also couldn't do it on my own, which is why I ended up out of desperation volunteering to run this Boot Camp

I'm now used to not eating potatoes - will quite happily prepare oven chips or roast potatoes for others and not feel tempted in the slightest. I allow myself one roast potato at Christmas and one of the first new potatoes from the garden - but I often don't finish them.

Morning everyone, I'm enjoying reading this thread, noting recipes and seeing success, very inspiring.
I'm not doing very well so far, although I am down a kg from what I am managing.
Long story short, I'm a spoony, with a handful of disabilities on top, and I've got a major clear up task that I'm struggling with.
I'm fine for a LCHF lunch, just throw cold stuff on a plate.
DP cooks most nights and he's definitely not on board yet. It took him ages to get his head round me not eating meat, I'm a pescatarian but mainly vegetarian, and I had to keep repeating "I'll eat what you eat, minus the meat" 😁
I would normally prep food for dinner in the morning, but I'm prioritising the clear up, and can't stand in the kitchen at the end of the day.

I should be completely on board with it in a few days so will lurk and read in the meantime, and thanks to @prettybird for the thread.

Morning. Post viral tiredness meant I fell asleep last night before posting my day's intake. For breakfast I made a shake with avocado, cucumber, spinach, water, dash of lemon juice half spoon of protein powder and a concoction of supplements I am taking for recovery and also as I come off HRT. The shake was surprisingly good and could become a regular. Lunch was a cloud bread sandwich with a slice of goats cheese and a few grilled peppers in oil. Dinner was half tin of salmon with mayo, some feta with cucumber and olive oil and some black kale seasoned with oil, garlic and salt. I also had a couple of coffees with a dash if double cream. I increased my water but could still do better.

Life gets in the way sometimes @CherryogDog - do what you can just now and learn from everyone else's experience. for while yore dealing with the clear up. Would it help if you showed your dh the recipe threads? Would show him he can still eat "well"

@Goodiewhemper Sorry you're suffering from post viral fatigue You're doing well on the food front and at least you're acknowledging that you need to work on your water. It really does make a difference

Out of interest I just did a wee on a ketostick (unopened packet from an 'I'm-going-keto' impulse purchase 2 yrs ago).

Went deep purple instantly...this WoE is definitely working!

@Goodiewhemper I have a similar smoothy, spinach, avocado, cucumber, courgette and pak choi, its nicer than it sounds.

Someone mentioned Chinese restaurant eating yesterday, I have taken to having Egg Foo Yung if we have a takeaway, omelette with beansprouts and meat/fish/veg of your choice, its really nice.

@HedgehogHill - congratulations but it also illustrates you're drinking not nearly enough water! Take that as a reminder

One of the reasons we don't recommend ketosticks is that you should be drinking so much water that your pee would be too diluted.

I'd been meaning to post this anyway but as a rough guide, your pee should be very pale I always look - and if it's noticeably yellow, then make sure to go and have more water

If I do a keto stick I always do it first thing when the wee isn't so diluted, I did one on Monday as "background" but tend to forget.

Question - people have been mentioning 10% fat yogurt, I haven't had much luck finding any, is there a particular one? I am also thinking about making my own, which I've done in the past but the straining to thicken it up gets a bit messy.

@EvenmoreDisorganised - interestingly, my pee is usually more concentrated in the morning But that might be because we don't flush if we go to the loo during the night, so the colour might not be indicative

I get my 10% full fat Greek yoghurt from Lidl. Be aware though, they do two types: "Greek style" (in a taller tub) and a flatter one that is simply "Greek yoghurt" ie, genuinely from Greece. Also, make sure to buy the full fat one (top and side has dark blue) rather than the light version (light blue) and the zero fat version (pink) - they're usually all mixed up on the same tray. I think Aldi do similar. There is actually a whole thread on the various Greek yoghurt choices

@EvenmoreDisorganised Waitrose has two 10% Greek yogurts, their own brand and one called Kri Kri. Sainsbury’s, M&S and Morrison’s also do one as well under their own brand.

Fage is available in most supermarkets, but I like the M&S full fat GY, tastes creamier than most.

I’ve had an awful morning, third day in a row in the office (how did we go 5x a week before?) and my daughter is teething so sleep was in very short supply last night. No time to have breakfast at home so panic bought some Arla Protein yogurt and boiled eggs with mayo from Co-op. The yogurt isn’t strictly compliant but it was either that or not eat breakfast.

I had my BUPA health assessment this morning. Doing pretty well all things considered except for body fat - a whopping 39% despite being at the top end of normal BMI.

Came in to find our group secretary has made amazing lemon drizzle and chocolate chip biscuits for her birthday. I’m exhausted and willpower is very low so I’m currently hiding at my desk with black coffee and water trying to avoid them 😅

If I remember right, the Tesco own brand GY is 10%. The Fage they have in tesco is only 5%.

Thanks, those of you who have posted green smoothie suggestions. I'd love to read more of those. I'm off shopping today and I think I will plan for a couple of smoothies.

Thanks all re yogurt, the Fage I looked at in Waitrose was only 5%, and I couldn't find anything over that in Sainsburys the other day, might have to look a bit harder. M&S sounds nice.

@Porridgeislife sorry things have been hard, we have had loads of chocolates in our kitchen at work this week too (no WFH here), it is hard when they are right in front of you and even more so when it's home baked things.

Sorry you've had a bad morning @Porridgeislife - but your breakfast sounds fine and good on you for hiding from the home baking

If it helps, I'd remind myself that I know what lemon drizzle cake and choc chip cookies taste like so don't need to try them again

Another peloton class this morning followed by what I thought was ffgy for breakfast, but reading the above yoghurt chat I’ve twigged I think it’s the half fat /5% version. Still better than toast tho!

lots or water followed by smoked salmon, avocado, mushroom with Boursin and lettuce for lunch

Steak / low carb sausage for dinner with BC approved cauliflower cheese and some green veg

It's a shame that Fage (Total) has succumbed to the "reduce the fat" official advice and dropped from 10% to 5%

I think I might have carb flu as I'm feeling quite exhausted but that said I had a very busy active few days so it all balances out.

I'll take a walk to Lidl later and check out their Greek Yogurt.

What are you all adding to it ? I like it plain but be nice to jazz it up with cinnamon etc

It does help having @prettybird voice in the back of my head telling me to drink more water, keep going, avoid the carbs.

It is hard though when people list all the banned foods they want but can't have or have had as that just makes me think about them so it's an extra burden to my WoE journey when I just want ti focus on the foods I should be eating

i haven’t eaten breakfast for about a year now. Much easier than I thought it would be. For lunch I had 2 boiled eggs, mashed in a cup with butter, grated mature cheddar, salt and pepper. I wasn’t really hungry but have a long afternoon ahead.

I have the Brooklea 10% Greek yoghurt which was from Aldi, had it with a splash of double cream this morning which was ok but not massively struck so might just have it plain tomorrow (although this does leave me with double cream to use up!).

3 cups of peppermint tea and 1l sparling water so far, along with a snacky lunch of a piece of manchego, the insides of some mini pork pies that needed using up and some cucumber.........food shopping tonight and the fridge is quite bare!

Spag bol tonight - tagliatelle and garlic for DH & DC, broccoli, leeks and mushrooms for me.

I just had a few slices of cheddar wrapped up in Parma ham and some sliced cucumber on the side for lunch

I've got boiled eggs prepared for later

I'll buy a more exciting selection of cheese now that I can and roast some gammon to have cold with it for meals and snacks.

@prettybird your cabbage carbonara sounds great - I've put it on the menu for next week. I usually have courgetti but it's a bit lacking in substance so possibly a mix of courgette and cabbage will suit me.

'putting something on the menu' for me involves me getting a pencil and writing in my paper diary unashamedly old fashioned I've got the carbonara and also golden egg curry written in for next week, and some salmon dish. There are so many great ideas on here I sometimes run out of days! For the following week (once we can have nuts) I have naan-izza written in. When we get there I'll share the recipe, but essentially it's an indian/italian fusion: keto naan base, spread with tomato masala, and topped with lamb keema, saag, and grated paneer (although I actually use halloumi).

I aslo have a carbyvore cupboard that I just don't open, it was the breakfast cereal cupboard but now has all dh's 'stuff' in it. I was going to list some of it, but @HappiDaze I hear you on the pain of reading about forbidden items and wanting them. I have no need to list things that I do not want to eat

@Eanair23 previously I didn't think I had any digestive problems with eating carbs or gluten, but my goodness on this woe I have such a quiet gut. No gurgling or rumbling. No farting. What a difference.

@Random789 I really like your phrase 'eating with self-kindness'. That's nice. I also try to eat more mindfully. I was once on a yoga retreat and we had long periods in silence, including some mealtimes. I remember eating beetroot and being astonished at the vibrancy or the colour, and being amazed at the precise sound of cutting and eating celery. And how noticing that made the food even tastier. So much better than mindlessly watching tv and stuffing in snacks!

I can't remember who has been posting about smoothies... In this warm weather I also like gazpacho: the classic red one minus the bread, of course, or this delicious green one Both bursting with flavour and vibrancy.

And in the absence of BIWI, a reminder about the easiest cheese sauce ever... 300ml of double cream warmed in a pan, stir in as much grated strong chedder as will melt, half a teaspoon of whole grain mustard and a squeeze of lemon juice (honestly this makes all the difference). No messing around with roux or trying to get rid of lumps, and perfect on cauliflower (or any veg).

And food today:

B - expresso macchiato at a meeting
L - smashed avocado (only half because the rest was over-ripe and brown ) mixed with grated cheese, chopped tomatoes, chopped mushrooms, mayonnaise. With ham and cucumber
D - going to a lovely Nepalese restaurant. I'll have Piro Ghinga - prawns in a chilli, garlic and peppers sauce, then either Poleko Kukhura (chicken with ginger, spring onion and spices) or Chicken Pudina (which is marinated in mint with coconut cream sauce) and a side of mushroom do pyaza and spinach.