Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
28
Baystard · 20/06/2023 20:34

Congrats on the job interview @prettybird

I might slide to BC lite next week but for now I'm enjoying strict BC and having a bit of a reset. Today I've eaten eggs, butter, sour cream, FLGV, cheese and clotted cream.

Random789 · 20/06/2023 20:36

Slightly worried I may have eaten too much, largely because I have had four coffees with cream today.

B: Two boiled eggs mashed with butter
L: I small jar of cockles (I know, weird. BAnd slobby. But I didn't really feel hungry so I went into snack mode.
D: Chicken and broccole stirfry with oil, soy sause and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. Was still hungry so had a piece of slicedemmenthal.

Went for a small run (15mins). Just about managed to drink 2.5l of water.

Random789 · 20/06/2023 20:38

The typos! "sause" Blush

Rogue1001MNer · 20/06/2023 20:38

Evening all.

Thank you for the recipe link. DH (main cook) is perusing it and finding things he wants to cook, so that's fab.

Breakfast - left over Greek salad
Lunch - left over chicken cooked in cream n tarragon w cauliflower rice n asparagus
Dinner - rocket/avocado/prawns w a 1000 island dressing.

Is hellman's ok?

Quite a lot of water - definitely better than yesterday, but no yet had the 3l I'm supposed to have. I struggle with this. It's a LOT!

Nice to read how everyone else is doing

Rogue1001MNer · 20/06/2023 20:40

FLGV

⬆️⬆️ What's this?

prettybird · 20/06/2023 20:43

I'd meant to do an acronym list Blush

FLGV = a Fuck Load of Good Veg Grin they're not all green Wink An essential part of this WOE Grin

OP posts:
SummerSazz · 20/06/2023 20:57

prettybird · 20/06/2023 18:52

Can I just remind people (as @Andi2020 pointed out), that if they are now on Boot Camp Light, they should say so (ideally including "and why" Wink) when they're describing what they're eating/have eaten. It's important for newbies to understand that it is important to be strict for the first 2 weeks.

@SummerSazz - I seem to recall that like me, you started early (actually even earlier than me, iirc) so you've gone beyond the first 2 weeks so are now allowed berries. So I don't need to get the Big Stick out Grin

I did put BCL at the start of my post but sorry it wasn't clear enough 🙈

prettybird · 20/06/2023 20:57

@Baystard - I haven't actually got an interview yet: I was just told I was his strongest candidate (reputable recruitment company that specialises in technology, professional services and public sector) and that he'd therefore be putting me forward.

Even if I don't get an interview, it's done wonders for my confidence Smile

OP posts:
ilovecherries · 20/06/2023 20:59

prettybird · 20/06/2023 14:21

@EvenmoreDisorganised - I'm not the expert, as I have my coffee black (@ilovecherries is the one to ask Wink) but I think that most Costa etc shops will have some pouring cream if you ask. It'll probably be single rather than double cream but it's still better than milk! Wink

You make it sound as if I’m a cream guzzler 😂. I have one coffee a day - more makes me jittery - and pre-covid I worked a lot in coffee shops so I tended to have it there rather than at home. I just ask for an Americano with pouring cream. All the chains and most independents give it at no additional cost.

prettybird · 20/06/2023 21:00

I just remember your confidence at ordering it - I was in awe Wink

OP posts:
prettybird · 20/06/2023 21:01

Mes culpa @SummerSazz Blush - I'm trying to keep up with so many posts and respond to them as appropriate. Sorry Blush

OP posts:
prettybird · 20/06/2023 21:21

@ListenLinda - the wee habits are a killer, aren't they Grin - but you can break them.

@MilsonandJim - you rescued yourself from the Big Stick Grin You know that we've got you, you can do this. Halo

@TheOnlyMrsW - I've been extra strict now for 10 days now and my kidneys are finally starting to settle down now so that I'm not running to the loo all the time. And more importantly, I'm stopping waking up multiple times during the night Shock - down to just once and last night, come to think of it, not at all unless I went in my sleep Confused

@LadyBird1973 - that is the wonderful thing about this WoE - the way it reduces your appetite, yet you can still enjoy tasty food.

@Rogue1001MNer - you do get used to the water. Maybe get 3x1l bottles and use them to keep tally, drinking regularly over the day. I use pint glasses of water (every second one an electrolyte one, to help me keep count) but also every time I go to the loo, i have 1-2 glasses of water. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy! WinkBlush

OP posts:
Porridgeislife · 20/06/2023 21:28

Managed to scrape through today. Was in the office but had a seminar this morning. Fortunately clocked it last night and had breakfast at home first - scrambled eggs and salmon.

I was incredibly hangry by lunch (late due to meetings) and got chicken and salad from my favourite place in the City - Assenheim 56. Normally they have grilled vegetables as well but they’d run out today. I wasn’t convinced I’d be full on chicken and salad so grabbed some eggs and mayo from Tesco to have as well.

Dinner was a beautiful crustless quiche and garden salad at home. Perfect for this muggy heat. Recipe here https://www.recipetineats.com/crustless-quiche-ham-and-cheese/

Now trying to drink the rest of my water as I was just too busy today!

Crustless Quiche - Ham and Cheese

Crustless Quiche with ham and cheese smells just like Quiche Lorraine when it's baking! Low carb, super quick and easy - 5 minute prep.

https://www.recipetineats.com/crustless-quiche-ham-and-cheese/

EvenmoreDisorganised · 20/06/2023 21:35

Thanks @ilovecherries - I only have coffee about once a week and always decaff (even one cup of normal makes me jittery), I will ask for cream next time I’m out and see what happens.

@prettybird I feel your pain re work clothes too, I have just been invited to a properly formal work-related event in a couple of weeks and have nothing to wear, our normal dress code is very casual, shorts, jeans, leggings, tee shirts. I’ve never actually worked anywhere that requires business dress and only had suits for interviews, the last time I wore on was probably about 1999.

@Random789 I love those little jars of cockles and mussels.

Eaten a proper meal tonight, chicken curry made with coconut milk and curry paste, a big green salad and a big dollop of yogurt.

I have been doing keto based eating on and off for 6 months or so now, but even when I have a good long run at it I still get massive food cravings late afternoon around the time I leave work, I really don’t get any improvement through low carbing, which is annoying. I know the answer is supposed to be more fat at lunchtime but even if I take cheese to snack on it seems to happen and then I just want to eat anything I can get my hands on the minutes I walk in the door. So I have been out and bought some of the aforementioned cockles, some ham and some pate this evening so I can try those out.

FinallyHere · 20/06/2023 21:35

@prettybird

There is an acronyms tab on the SofF

prettybird · 20/06/2023 21:49

I've ordered a couple of dresses just in case : I'd already saved one of them to think about buying for our trip to South Africa. Only difference is that I've ordered them in a 14 and I was hoping to buy them in a 12 Blush

https://www.weirdfish.co.uk/p/women/dresses/i/simmee-organic-wrap-dress-deep-sea-blue-19371

https://www.weirdfish.co.uk/p/women/dresses/i/tallahassee-organic-jersey-dress-deep-sea-blue-19762

Still, it means I'll be able to assess if I like one or both of them Grin

Summer 2023 Boot Camp, Week 1: Here we go!
Summer 2023 Boot Camp, Week 1: Here we go!
OP posts:
SummerSazz · 20/06/2023 21:57

Love those dresses and no need to apologise @prettybird. You're doing a fab job!

I'm off to legoland tomorrow so will make some crustless salmon & Philadelphia quiches in the morning to take for snacks then have a big salad at the pizza place for lunch. Luckily I'm not a huge 🍕 fan so won't be too tempted.

prettybird · 20/06/2023 21:57

@EvenmoreDisorganised - it might not be very sociable although it's not something I've ever noticed/been bothered by but how about some boiled eggs for lunch? Or an avocado with a little pot of olive oil to tip into the hole left by the stone.

Some cold roast chicken thighs/legs with skin on will also be filling.

OP posts:
HappiDaze · 20/06/2023 22:10

@prettybird I have a dress that exact cut but from Boden a few years ago. I love it but the pattern is quite dated (it's got bees 🐝 on it) actually I wonder if I have a black one at the back of my wardrobe I bought for work. It's a size 16 but because the material is thick stretchy jersey it still fits me. I love the pockets too.

My stomach was playing havoc with me today.

Would that be because I've cut out carbs?

I usually have toast and marmalade for breakfast and hummus and pita for lunch filled with salad

HappiDaze · 20/06/2023 22:13

It's called the Phoebe dress. No idea if they still sell that style.

Random789 · 20/06/2023 22:14

Hope the cockles hit the spot, @EvenmoreDisorganised

That crustless quiche looks delicious. Will def try this.

prettybird · 20/06/2023 22:23

Your stomach could indeed be reacting to this WoE @HappiDaze - just as any change can affect it.

You also need to be aware of the risk of "Carb Flu" which some people suffer from as they make the transition to fat burning. I never really suffered from it but many people do. It's short term, so just keep drinking the water (and in particular electrolyte fluids) and maybe take some paracetamol.

Wrap dresses suit me because I've got good boobs - but I also quite like the plain cut dress. I like that they've got pockets: I got a nice loose linen dress last year from Woolovers which has patch pockets (too casual for work purposes imho but I might be wrong Wink) and it's the first time I've had a dress or skirt with pockets and it's great Smile But there again, I've bought very few clothes bar jeans that wear through between the thighs Blush for over 10 years as we've not had a steady income and have been living of savings for most of that time Shock

OP posts:
TheOnlyMrsW · 20/06/2023 22:34

Crustless quiche looks lush @Porridgeislife , definitely one for the list! Also @EvenmoreDisorganised's curry - DC is home tomorrow and normally will only eat jar curry but might try that instead as a change

@prettybird I've been doing ok for "visits" in the night so far, started a version of BC last week with lots of water, but during the day it's a wonder I've been getting any work done 🤣

Andi2020 · 20/06/2023 22:36

Just caught up on this evenings posts
Well done everyone for completing day 2.
I always have to run to toilet every couof hours if I get of my chair( office worker) I have to go straight to toilet.
Get up several times at night to bathroom.

Good luck with day 3

Post your food this is important for @prettybird to guide you and plenty of water.

prettybird · 20/06/2023 23:58

I had FF Greek yoghurt with some cream and a pinch of cinnamon for lunch (16:8 IF as I'm an experienced BCer), 3 cherry tomatoes and some slices of Emmental and salami Milano for snacks (which I probably "needed" out of habit Blush) and then 2 Lidl pure pork sausages (low carb) with buttery microwaved baby sweetcorn for supper. (3 veg done for the meal Shock: sweetcorn for me, baked beans which he dealt with for dh and peas for ds, who also had chips)

Plus all the water Grin

I have baby sweetcorn left over for lunch tomorrow Smile

Another friend (another former work colleague), the one who had put me in touch with the recruitment consultant after herself being out the the job market for c10 years has told me "You'll be great at this!! I agree it can feel strange getting back into the swing of things but big breath, big girl pants on and go for it!" Grin Given that I 'm a stone than when I saw her in March, they're bigger pants required than she realises Wink

I really must get over this severe case of imposter syndrome Shock

OP posts:
Swipe left for the next trending thread