Jan ’26 Low Carb Bootcamp - week 3 - full-on, light or hybrid?

[BIWI]

Morning all!

Spreadsheet as per:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gsWvWpGzTSJld1avBi9-uLJveFZes9Qa2ORKthPMl8E/edit?gid=1415293539#gid=1415293539

So as I posted in the last thread, you now have a choice. You can move on to Bootcamp Light, which means you can add in:

Some nuts and seeds
Some fruit - mainly berries
Some chocolate - 70% cocoa (and higher)
Some alcohol - clear spirits and sugar-free mixers, dry white/red wine.

… all in moderation and not at every meal time! Try to avoid the sugar-free mixers as much as you can, if you’re drinking spirits, given how artificial they are.

You can stay on full-on Bootcamp if you want to, or if you feel you’ve been slipping a bit too much recently - as long as you make sure you’re eating plenty of vegetables and salad, for good nutrition. You may, though, want to consider a hybrid - Bootcamp during the week and Bootcamp Light at the weekend.

It’s up to you.

Just remember though, that weeks 3 & 4 are infamous! It’s not at all unusual to see weight loss slow or stop. If this happens to you, don’t panic but just KOKO.

Good luck to us all

Afternoon all! I'm a bit ratatouilled-out here having made a big load of it last weekend so had it every day to get through it, but agree it's worth making your own if you can. Had definitely lost its shine for me after portion 4. Having said that, I had been pretty on plan this week other than a monster craving that hit me on Friday. I'm a huge chocoholic and hadn't had any until last Friday, when I went and bought a dark chocolate green and black bar and ate an entire half of it. Wrong on every level, but I did feel remarkably perky afterwards(!) Have been back in plan since then, even forgoing my weekly Saturday latte by way of recompense.

I'm deliberately not weighing, but also don't feel any different this week. I suspect I might be stalling but am hopeful I'm just before a whoosh so will KOKO. Had the Chinese chicken drumsticks from fast 800 recipe book for lunch which we delicious! Looking forward to doing those again.

Happy Sunday and keeping my fingers crossed for you that the scales make you smile tomorrow. Even if they don't, this is still a really good option for our health (in my personal opinion) so stick with it!

Had a lovely lunch out, a favourite French restaurant. Smoked trout with salad and celeriac remoulade; then hake with mussels and saffron cream, loads of broccoli and french beans.

However tonight is haggis night! So a sort of haggis nachos thing. Tortilla crisps and refried beans are in everyone else's meals. For me there's some crispy fried protein bread, a rather small amount of haggis, and of course cheese melted on top. Then sour cream, avocado salsa and jalepenos.

Tomorrow I have to go to a funeral (friend's parent) and I've got lots of social and driving responsibilities taking other elderly relatives there and back. The 'funeral tea' will be sandwiches and cake so I need to avoid that as much as possible. I plan to have eggs for breakfast and have a creamy coffee to accompany me for the first part of the journey. Then it should be easy to wander around the wake with one half eaten sandwich or sausage roll and a cup of tea. If I feel obliged to accept cake, I'll find someone to chat to and 'lose' my plate on their table when I wander off to speak to someone else.

These things just have to be navigated.

Then dinner will be a lovely chicken and vegetable soup. Sort of Asian style as I have bok choi and corriander and beansprouts.

Breakfast - cottage cheese and black coffee
Lunch - salad and prawn mayo
Dinner - roast pork plus roast broccoli and cauliflower. I did have a bit of gravy as it would have been too dry otherwise but not half as much as I would have had previously. Unfortunately I can't stomach cheesy/creamy accompaniments to a roast.

I have made my next three days breakfasts and lunches to take to work. Overnight non-oats (FFGY, berries, seeds and nuts) then salads with different protein/mayo mixtures. I totted up all the different plants used and found it was more than the 30 we are told to aim to have for our gut microbiomes (about 20 salad components, 4 berries, 4 seeds, 4 nuts) albeit some in very small quantities.

Great work on all fronts Sprinkles! I’ll confess I generally don’t skip the gravy either; it’s not every day and I know as long as I’m avoiding the actual toast/cake/chips/pudding etc, the small less than perfect infringements won’t worry me. I had fantastic roast pork, bought a crackling joint half price today, the bonus of a mid-Sunday shop!

For delicious gravy you really don’t need flour or thickeners.

Make a trivet for your meat/chicken - onions or shallots, if you like a carrot, perhaps some celery. Drizzle with olive oil and season. Put your meat/chicken on top, and then add some water to the roasting tin. You could also add wine or lemon juice for some acidity.

When the meat/chicken is cooked, take it out of the roasting tin and leave it to rest, covered with foil/a tea towel.

Pour the juices from the roasting tin along with the vegetables, and purée them, using a stick blender. Taste to check the seasoning - but it should be delicious enough as it stands, and thick enough with the veg, to provide you with a beautiful gravy. With no flour.

Ideally yes but we didn't have any carrots, and we have an onion hater in the family so that wasn't going to work for us, so stock and flour were used but as I said, I hardly had any.

Over the weekend I’ve been having a bit of Brie and some salad leaves all rolled up in a slice of chicken (repeating as many times as necessary), and hard boiled eggs. Dinner tonight was gammon with cauliflower cheese. The kids had peas, I had asparagus.

Week 4 thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/low_carb_bootcamp/5481543-jan-26-low-carb-bootcamp-week-4-coming-up-to-half-time