Week 2 - Jan '25 Low Carb (Dry) Bootcamp

[BIWI]

Morning

I know that for some/many of us, this is actually only week 1, but as there were some valiant people who started last week, it is now week 2!

As ever, here's the spreadsheet

Just a reminder that if you're using your phone/the mobile app, you'll need to download the Google Sheets app to access the spreadsheet. And when entering your data, only add your weight and - for fear that @FinallyHere will have a coronary, don't touch anything else!

Good luck everyone.

A ball of mozzarella is my go to snack if I'm out and find myself getting very hungry. It's a quick find in most supermarkets!

I think I mentioned the Shakshuka…. So glad everyone is loving it!

Yesterday was good and all yummy:

• scrambled eggs and mushrooms in butter
• last of the Christmas terrine / pate (from a local posh farm shop and v low carb) with (sounds odd but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!!) my personal fave of fried iceberg lettuce (my mum used to do this… iceberg quartered and then fried as a whole quarter in butter, turning to brown each side)
• air fryer chicken leg plus large large salad and stir fried cabbage

Today harder… I commute to my office in London (2 hours each way) 2 days a week, so wake up at 5.30am and am out of the house 6.45am to about 9/9.30pm. I take a packed breakfast for the train (was doing low carb bread with sliced boiled eggs, but today had batched cooked a baked omelette for the whole week with goats cheese, lardons and random veg), then need to get lunch and dinner in the office / on the go. It’s always hard! So today….

• 3 big chunks of the homemade omelette
• lunch in the office restaurant is great - fab salad bar (enough good stuff any only higher carb element was some grated carrot) plus grilled chicken breast with skin on
• dinner so hard as I battled with delayed trains and a station grab as running late… two boiled eggs, a supermarket side salad plus a splodge of sandwich filler tuna mayo, pret a manger chicken laksa soup

There are better train options if I leave the office early and get a take out from a nearby place which does hot grilled chicken and salad, but… I’m always running late! I need to plan better for this so all ideas welcome.

@BIWI or anyone else, can I ask about low carb bread etc? Does the body recognise the “trick” or is it simple science about amounts of carbs (anlbeit not counting, which I totally agree with) and therefore it doesn’t matter where the carbs come from so long as the total is low?

Also.. (sorry!) if carbs are kept low, how important is it (or not) to up fat and protein intake? Presumably the calories in / out nonsense science still matters so there must be a limit to adding fat given the high calls? If say had a v low carb soup of blended green veg (or for arguments sake lettuce!), with no major fat intake, is that even more effective for losing weight?? Or does upping fat to be used by the body help beyond the (totally understandable) fact that fat and protein are b satiating (which is good enough reason for me!)? Sorry - I expect this is all on the spreadsheet that I’m failing to access and I also appreciate there’s no need to really get the science of it works (which I know from experience it does)

Lovely filling chicken, cabbage and red pepper stir fry for dinner. With ginger, garlic, chilli oil, soy sauce.

I cooked some gammon in the slow cooker to have as meals and snacks for any hunger pangs

I've been looking up low carb bread recipes for a bread maker and there is one on here MN so I'm going to give it a try once it's something I feel I need but I'm ok for now.

I'm definitely going to make egg wraps as PP or possibly what I've seen on a low carb recipe thread which have some great recipes on.

Is pumpernickel bread ok ? @BIWI I like it and vaguely remember it being possibly ok. It's very nice with just butter or Camembert on.

@legallyblond I am very supportive of understanding the science and I find it quite frustrating talking about this woe with those that have been brainwashed by the nonsense that you reference. The first time I read several books, which BIWI put on the prep thread I think. I was really captivated by the books by Jason Fung who is a nephrologist (kidney specialist) who started his research to help his patients. Michael Mosley's approach isn't strict boot camp but based on the same principles and Gary Taubes explains the science well but long windedly IMHO (although I think it is him who debunks the restricted calorie diet soundly.)

The short answer though is that yes you need to eat the fat and drink the water and if you don't, you don't lose as much weight. #bringonthebutter

Better day today as I made myself late by going back for my forgotten brought lunch.
B - creamy coffee
L - cold roast beef, hard boiled egg, babybel, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, hm coleslaw and extra mayonnaise (left a bottle in the fridge at work for emergency fat addition in future)
Snack - slices of saucisson sec, cubes of cheese and pickled cornichons
D - pan fried pork fillet with mushroom sauce and ts broccoli roasted (air fried) in butter.
Almost made my water target, must try harder.

I'm going to London for an interview tomorrow afternoon so plan is to make brunch at home before I go and hopefully make it to dinner time but perhaps with emergency babybels

I know the basic science of it all but it takes too long to explain simply without someone jumping on board to correct the fact I'll have shortened it all

But basically you eat carbs - your body breaks it down into glucose which our cells need for energy

When you cut down on carbs your body uses the reserves in your body. It breaks down glycogen in your body into glucose which our cells need

Any excess glucose from what we eat ends up being stored as glycogen in the muscles, and it can also be stored as lipid in the fat tissue

It is this that we are trying to access to lose weight.

When Blood sugar rises in the blood, insulin sends a signal to the liver, muscles and other cells to store the excess glucose. Some is stored as body fat and other is stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles. If the blood glucose level is too low, the pancreas releases the hormone glucagon

This is the absolute basics

By way of explanation to help with understanding from

www.nhs.uk/conditions/diabetes/

Causes of diabetes
The amount of sugar in the blood is controlled by a hormone called insulin, which is produced by the pancreas (a gland behind the stomach).
When food is digested and enters your bloodstream, insulin moves glucose out of the blood and into cells, where it's broken down to produce energy.
However, if you have diabetes, your body is unable to break down glucose into energy. This is because there's either not enough insulin to move the glucose, or the insulin produced does not work properly.
There are no lifestyle changes you can make to lower your risk of type 1 diabetes.
You can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes through healthy eating, regular exercise and achieving a healthy body weight.

So re type 2 diabetes

Is if you've eaten so much carbs and sugar that your natural supply of insulin just isn't enough to cope

So the opposite to this is low carbing

By not over consuming carbs and sugar your body uses what it has stored (as glycogen) to convert to glucose which the cells use for energy to keep us alive

Obviously we don't want to waste away our muscles and body completely but we can get carbs and glucose in our bodies in a healthy way not by stuffing our faces with cake, bread and pasta.

@legallyblond I'm also fascinated by the science behind this. My personal experience (been on LC since March 2024, when I found BIWI's incredible resources), is that I do have to watch how much fat I eat if I want to drop my weight (I eat around 100g a day). This kind of makes sense to me, because surely if your body has copious amounts of exogenous fat, it won't get to the point of burning endogenous fat as fuel? But my lipoedema may be making my situation very different to a normal body and metabolism! I'd love to hear thoughts and opinions on your questions. Thank you for the fried lettuce tip too!

Thank you all for the fascinating discussion of the science behind this WoE. I too am familiar with the basics and keep almost buying books to get into greater detail - largely so I can proselytise to the unbelievers - but I have never actually taken the step. It's incredibly unusual for me to more or less take something on trust. I usually research the living daylights out of anything I commit to. But this WoE is so effective for my weight loss and I feel so good on it that I don't really feel the need to probe further. But perhaps I should take another look at those books...

Yesterday went to plan with a non-lux but very delicious version of cauliflower cheese.

Today I shall eat
B: FFGY w cream
L: scrambled eggs w smoked mackerel and salad
D: aubergine and courgette parmigiana with salad

@legallyblond I'm not 100% sure why we can eat so much fat tbh @BIWI is quite expert on the ins and outs and I trust this WOE and her expertise

I'm a registered nurse so for me personally I'm eating cheese, butter and cream on this WOE to keep myself satiated and to balance out my daily nutritional requirements. I'm not going heavy on them by any means because I have a certain amount of weight I need to lose so I need to figure out what works best for me and unlimited fats is not on my agenda

I obviously covered all the science during my degree years ago where we go into depth re the chemistry and biology of cells etc during anatomy and physiology. Going into Ketosis can obviously be damaging if you take it too far hence after BC there is a good balance to maintain weight and health

I mean it's basic GCSE stuff too that DC are taught re cells and glucose and diabetes and eating healthily etc

Thank you (and to everyone else)! I do understand the glucose bit and how carbs are stored etc (and the encouraging the body to turn to stored fat for fuel) . I was / am still just interested in the high fat bit…. I’m not explaining well! Basically your body will (I think) go into ketosis “just” through semi starvation… I think if you’re low carb low calorie your body will enter ketosis. The high calorie high fat aspect certainly makes this palatable and manageable (because we’re not starving!!) I’m just super interested (and will investigate these books!) in knowing why / how the high fat / calorie additions on top of the hugely reduced carbs helps.

Not an office day for me (wfh) so no impossible station grabs for meals!!

And just for clarity, for me eating higher fat and protein is what stops me munching my own arm off!!!

I'm joining today as have been away but the spreadsheet has defeated me - sorry @FinallyHere - starting weight is 138lb

I too would be grateful for a paragraph or so on why we need to eat plenty of fat (as well as simply reducing our carb intake) in order to assist our body in adapting to burning the reserves in our body.
Is it just to achieve satiety and thereby avoid excessive carbs? I want to read a book but in the past I have picked on books that aim too hard to be inspirational. That leads them to oversell the positives of whatever way of eating they are promoting. They start to seem too one-sided and simplistic. Can anyone say which of the books kindly pprovided in the bootcamp resources is least like that?

@ReconstructionSite I agree with you about the FB low carb page. There are so many of them like that, all filled with recipes or questions about how to make sweet stuff. Replacing what they had been eating before with lots of artificial ingredients.

What we try to do on Bootcamp is to curb the desire for sweet stuff, which is (one of the reasons) why artificial sweeteners are discouraged.

@legallyblond in an ideal world, low carb bread wouldn't be allowed on Bootcamp as it is very processed. This is a list of the ingredients in Heylo's Better Brown Bread, for example:

Water, WHEAT Gluten, Vegetable oil (rapeseed); OAT fibre; Linseed Ground; Yeast; Potato starch; BARLEY malt extract; Inactive dry yeast, Salt; Dried skimmed MILK ; Preservative: Sorbic acid; Thickener: Xanthan gum; Flour treatment: Ascorbic acid, Calcium sulphate, palm fat; anti-caking agent: calcium carbonate.

From their website

However, it's an incredibly useful product to have to hand if you're in a hurry (as it sounds like you often are!). That said, the price will or should act as a deterrent to regular usage.

You also asked:

if carbs are kept low, how important is it (or not) to up fat and protein intake?

There are three macronutrients: carbohydrate, fat and protein. The current NHS guidance advises that we eat them in the following proportion - high carb/medium protein/low fat. By definition if you alter that to make it low carb, then the other macros will increase. (I'll write more about the fat issue in a separate post, as it's a really important issue.)

@KittenPause I'm not sure about pumpernickel - on the face of it, it looks like a 'no'. The only examples I could find were 36g carbs per 100g - but then it all depends on how much a slice weighs, and I couldn't find that out. If you see some in the shop, have a look at the back of pack and see if they give that information.

Thank you for your explanation about fat/insulin as well - I'll expand on this later.

Just to pick up on one thing:

Going into Ketosis can obviously be damaging if you take it too far

Were you thinking about ketoacidosis here? There's a big difference between the two. The former isn't dangerous, the latter definitely is!

@lastchancesalmon those are all great sources. To which I'd also add The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, written by Drs Phinny and Volek. It's a book written for health care professionals, so there's a lot of science in there, but their writing style makes it a (relatively!) easy read.

In simplistic terms, the way I visualise/understand it is that you eat a lot of fat in order that your body knows that it has enough for energy and it doesn't need to store it.

It's why it's important to be ketogenically adapted (which is different to being in ketosis) and to drink plenty of water, as essentially we just pee the excess fat away (we don't really but I like to visualise that especially when I go to the loo again in the middle of the night ).

It's also why one of the Rules is to only eat when hungry - as the fat, along with the protein, will help keep you satiated so you actually won't want to eat. That naturally leads to a reduced calorie intake.

Thanks BIWI for the heads up on the Glucose Goddess.

It was an interesting programme - all her volunteers seemed to have their problems resolved very neatly in 6 weeks, but then again cutting out sugar and reducing carbs can have a large impact!

Some of it was very French eg having your little starter of vegetables

Here is a link to her 10 hacks https://www.glucosegoddess.com/en-gb/pages/the-10-glucose-goddess-hacks?srsltid=AfmBOopOweDfM9OQmSYupXiYcSAy2AncFMWu7JQW8kpPZXB-Pffl6GG5

@legallyblond I may go for the 5 guys lettuce option today, that was a great heads up!

@AlbertCamusflage I was still writing my post when yours appeared!

From what you've written (in the past I have picked on books that aim too hard to be inspirational) I think you'd be better off with a book that details the science behind low carbing, rather than trying to 'sell' you a diet.

There are three I'd suggest:

Diet Delusion The Diet Delusion, by Gary Taubes
The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz
and the one I referenced above, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living

The first two of these give the background to low carbing - i.e. how we came to be advised to eat more carbs and less fat (which was a huge change started in the late 70s/early 80s) as well as going into the science behind low carbing. The third book is written more about low carbing and less about the history/politics. And yes, there are lot of politics behind the shift in advice away from fat and towards carbs.

Another more science-based book is Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson, a bariatric surgeon. It doesn't set itself up as a low carb book, (although ultimately that's what he advocates), but it debunks the 'eat less/move more', calorie-counting school of thought about diet.

I missed the Glucose Goddess because someone was playing an important football match last night ... 🙄

Will catch up today.

In simplistic terms, the way I visualise/understand it is that you eat a lot of fat in order that your body knows that it has enough for energy and it doesn't need to store it.

Thank you prettybird. That does make sense, although I guess I am going to have to read more in order to find out why it makes sense.

The wonderful Cabin Pressure is on BBC Sounds again. In the first episode the simpleton Arthur asks each of the others how it is that great big heavy aircraft can fly. They all give intelligent and informative answers but Arthur's ignorance allows him to keep on asking more and more naive questions until they are all stumped about what to say, and we are kind of left with the idea that it is a miracle planes get in the air at all. This feels similar

... or like the leap of faith that Indiana Jones has to make in The Last Crusade!

Oooh, thank you so much @BIWI . Crossposted. I will download samples of all those books today and make a choice.

I tried to watch that glucose goddess thing last night but the presentational style was too awful. Also, what a strange title for the programme. It felt like she was going to be telling me to eat more glucose (which hopefully wasn't the plan).