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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.

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

487 replies

prettybird · 18/06/2023 22:54

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

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 Confused also, if you experience any problems with the Spreadsheet, tag @FinallyHere and she will work her magic on it! Grin

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 Wink

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. Grin

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FinallyHere · 19/06/2023 12:03

@OldandTired66 np, I read your list as XL v Google sheets, so only did a double take when I read your update.

It's a 'thing' apparently, the brain supplying what you expect to see. Only one reason I'm rubbish at testing things. 😁

prettybird · 19/06/2023 12:13

I'm officially weighing in at 12st 4.5lb. I started strict Boot Camp last Saturday and have lost c5lb since then Smile - but I've actually lost over half a stone since getting back in to the Boot Camp Way of Thinking as I saw 12st 12lb on the scales in early June the exact date of which I'm in denial Blush

That means I've had my initial "whoosh" so can only hope for an average of 1-2lb/week hereon-in.

My initial target is to get back under 12st. The target for this Boot Camp is challenging to lose a stone - to get back to where I'd got to on the January Boot Camp.

My very stretch target is to get under 11 stone by 11 September, before going off on holiday.

OP posts:
prettybird · 19/06/2023 12:25

@Okaygoahead - you'll have been 2nd after me, as I identified the issue of it being Read Only when I tried to put in my weight Grin - so once it was corrected, was able to check it (plus identified an issue with the date format of column B: the initial start date. But the lovely FinallyHere sorted it quickly Flowers and then posted the new link while I went off to bed Grin

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prettybird · 19/06/2023 12:28

@SquirrelSoShiny - this WoE is harder for Vegans because of not eating eggs, but not impossible.

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prettybird · 19/06/2023 13:15

As I glug down another pint of water, I'm reminded that I need to point out the importance of electrolytes. You're drinking so much water it's easy to lack them. This can present as headaches or - perversely - unassuageable thirst Confused. It's one of the reasons why we say it's important to add salt to your food but you also need magnesium and potassium.

You can buy electrolytes to add to your water but be careful about added sugar. Someone else will come along and say with ones are good (I think it's the Zero ones and you can get them in Decathlon) but I do a quick home made version, which is in every 2nd pint glass of water I drink (which also helps me keep a tally), I add a generous shake of Lo:Salt and a squoosh of lemon juice.

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Lucienandjean · 19/06/2023 13:21

I lost a lot of weight in 2022 (over 50lbs) but my weight has definitely stalled recently. I've had an operation recently and I ate a lot of carbs in the aftermath! Now I'm back eating mostly low carb but letting too many exceptions creep in - meals at friends' houses, coffee shop coffees with too much milk, a bit too much fruit....

So I need boot camp for the encouragement and accountability. Hoping to listen to the reminders to drink more water too!

Posting meals because it helps me focus.
B: nothing (long term IFer)
L: tuna mayo, hard boiled egg, salad with oily dressing
D: this will be salmon baked with a knob of butter, broccoli, tomato salad.

Somehow I need to drink 4 litres of water 💦 too...

prettybird · 19/06/2023 13:31

We'll help keep you accountable @Lucienandjean - just keep posting and we'll encourage you Smile. You did so well in 2022 - it would be good to maintain/regain that momentum. I used to like cappuccinos in cafes but now I find them too milky Shock I've trained myself to enjoy Americanos, which I order with a "large glass of water".

I've just had my "lunch" of 5 left over roasted asparagus spears and a bowl of FF Greek yoghurt and double cream with a pinch of cinnamon. Halo

Tonight's meal will depend on how I feel when I get back from pre-season rugby training: either cold chicken with buttery baby sweet corn or scrambled eggs with shallots and tomatoes.

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Goodiewhemper · 19/06/2023 13:39

Ah man this popped up on my active threads and it must be a sign! I have been faffing around for a few weeks - gradually reducing carb intake and doing a slowish reset. I have lost about 2kgs but I haven't established proper habits yet. I have been setback by shingles in the past two weeks but maybe boot camp is what I need!😁

prettybird · 19/06/2023 13:42

Welcome @GoodiewhemperFlowers

You can add your name to the bottom of the list of names on the weigh-in Spreadsheet and @FinallyHere will re-alphabetise periodically Smile

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Lucienandjean · 19/06/2023 13:51

Thanks @prettybird. I trained myself to drink macchiatos, and gave up the lattes and cappuccinos! But I've let things slip. I need to get back to the basics of this WOE.

prettybird · 19/06/2023 13:58

@Lucienandjean - that's what I've been doing for the past week and it really does help to re-set.

I started early because a) I was desperate GrinBlush and b) my dad gets back from South Africa on Saturday after an extended holiday there and we want to have a nice meal with him on Sunday with a particular wine. So I needed to get the first 2 strict weeks out of the way Grin

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venusandmars · 19/06/2023 14:00

Perfect timing for this new bootcamp. I'm just back from a long holiday in France, followed by a weekend of visitors. I have now STOPPED my pain au chocolat habit and need to stop the french wine habit too. However I did manage to stick to intermittent fasting on holiday and I was delighted not to put on any more weight. I'm going on holiday with my very skinny sister in September so hopefully that will keep me motivated and on track with this woe for the long term.

It will probably be an odd week of eating because I'm having surgery tomorrow to remove a very tricky impacted wisdom tooth. I doubt I'll be having anything solid for a couple of days after that, but I've got some lovely soups ready - some from stock made from the carcass of a duck which will be both fatty and nutritious.

Long term bootcamper and I/F so no breakfast for me today, just rooibos tea before a yoga class.
L - boiled egg with butter, ham, salad with mayonnaise
D - left over bouillabaisse served with creamy cabbage

Left-overs: once I'm into this way of eating I usually find that my appetite is smaller and therefore I often have left over low carb food. Left overs are great for breakfast (soup is my favourite) or if I'm doing I/F I have them for lunch.

prettybird · 19/06/2023 14:13

Welcome back @venusandmars Flowers

It will be good to have your positive contributions on this Boot Camp!

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BIWI · 19/06/2023 14:13

<waves from La Belle France>

Good luck everyone! And especially to @prettybird and @FinallyHere for keeping you all on track Grin

Wifi is a bit dodgy here so probably won't be here very much, but I'm sending you all good, losing vibes.

ilovecherries · 19/06/2023 14:26

FinallyHere · 19/06/2023 08:49

Welcome @YappyCamper, you are welcome 😀

It took me a good few goes to get started, too and I'm forever grateful to BIWI, Prettybird, Stuntnun et al who have supported me

My breakthrough came from @ilovecherries who mentioned that she had kept bootcamping right through a holiday (planned long before joining the bootcamp) because she felt so much better in the way of eating (wow) I did the same, stuck to bootcamp light and had a lovely holiday.

Not only that, but there was no terrible remorse on the last day and when I got home and I lost one kg into the bargain. Unheard of for me at that time. Instead of having a big ice creme on the first day, I said I would save that treat for the last day. When the last day came, the ice creme just didn't seem that appealing anymore.

Feeling good about my food choices seemed much more appealing.

Soz, that turned into a bit of a long post. Welcome to this bootcamp and enjoy.

Someone call? 😂. Yup, I just never stop basically. 6 years and 6 stone now - I started 21 May 2017. Bootcamp saved my life. I just don’t deviate, rarely even think about it. I did put on a covid stone (and a half) as my daughter had to shield and we were very dependent on deliveries, but that came off again as soon as I got back on it. I find now I can tolerate small amounts of beans in stews/chillis etc, the odd cappuccino and I don’t actively avoid things like carrots, peas or sweetcorn any more, although I don’t eat a lot of them. But otherwise my diet is unrecognisable these days. And it wasn’t that so are unhealthily before - pretty standard low fat/high carb diet with lots of fruit, which I don’t eat any more except for berries. Me and veggies are best buddies though.

That first holiday came a month after starting BC. I’d lost just over a stone iirc, and was desperate not to undo the magic, so I just kept on going. Didn’t spoil the holiday at all and it was great to come home with no holiday regret. The only vaguely hard bit was at the airport and on the plane but basically I ate before I got on and had a square of dark chocolate with my coffee.

FinallyHere · 19/06/2023 14:38

lovely to hear from you @ilovecherries & thank you again

EvenmoreDisorganised · 19/06/2023 14:42

Lucienandjean · 19/06/2023 13:51

Thanks @prettybird. I trained myself to drink macchiatos, and gave up the lattes and cappuccinos! But I've let things slip. I need to get back to the basics of this WOE.

What is a macchiato? I have got myself down from latte to flat white, but it is still fairly milky. Can't stomach black coffee though.

Lucienandjean · 19/06/2023 14:45

@EvenmoreDisorganised a macchiato is an espresso with just a touch of foamed hot milk. It's enough milk to take the edge off the bitterness but a tiny amount compared to that in a flat white or a cappuccino.

prettybird · 19/06/2023 14:47

You're an inspiration to us all @ilovecherries FlowersStar

Good to "see" you Smile

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Baystard · 19/06/2023 14:52

Thanks @prettybird and @FinallyHere

I'm not expecting a whoosh but I'm not too bothered - I've been on the wagon since 20th October and it's definitely getting easier. @LadyBird1973 I'm not sure if it's a coincidence but since I started hrt my ability to stay on the wagon is significantly better, fingers crossed it helps you.

@Skiphopbump @ListenLinda @mimosa1 the use of clothes as a guide is a great idea. Don't do what I'm guilty of though, and assume they only now fit because they've stretched I have obviously never rewashed a pair of jeans just to disprove this Grin

FinallyHere · 19/06/2023 15:03

yeah, @Baystard sometimes the smaller size just creeps up on you.

When I complained (to my lovely hairdresser) that the white bootcut jeans I had been sooo proud to wear, were looking a bit ordinary, the problem turned out to be that I needed a size smaller.

Such a great feeling when the size goes down, not so great in the other direction.

HappiDaze · 19/06/2023 15:12

I'm jumping on because you're at the beginning of this boot camp

I've RTFT

I've lost weight like this successfully in the past but now pain meds, life and now HRT meds have been my excuse for piling on the weight

I had a lovely large salad for lunch then found this thread so it's meant to be that I carry this on and be strict.

I'm off on a walk so I force myself to move properly as much as possible. I'm a size 18 and a large one at that at the moment. I'm happy to reach size 14 to fit back into my favourite summer dresses.

ilovecherries · 19/06/2023 15:17

FinallyHere · 19/06/2023 14:38

lovely to hear from you @ilovecherries & thank you again

I pop in quite often to read but rarely post as I think I sound a bit boring and smug ‘yeah, I did it, never stopped, it’s still working’. It’s hardly innovative or inspirational. I’m still insulted by the NHS BMI app that still wants me to get to a lower BMI because I’m in the upper half of normal. The whole point of averages is that some data points need to be above the line, surely. Anyway, I find myself raging at it ‘have you no consideration for how far I’ve come, you idiot!’

But yes, this worked for me when nothing else had. I was desperate when I found bootcamp, it was my last stop before bariatric surgery. If I stopped, would I put the weight back on? Yes probably, just like every other weight loss programme. But for me, it’s sustainable. I don’t think about treat or cheat days because for me that’s not a helpful mindset. We had dinner out the other night and my treat was that I asked for garlic prawns on top of my steak. That was more of a treat than a huge pudding that would have made me feel bloated and sick. People often say to me that life is too short not to eat the cake/bread/bottle of wine/ whatever. My internal response is that life is too short (and mine would def have been shorter!) had I continued to eat the way I was before.

HappiDaze · 19/06/2023 15:20

Thanks @ilovecherries it's always great to hear words of positivity on this journey

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