Summer Low Carb Bootcamp - The Questions Thread

[BIWI]

If you have any questions, just ask them here. From experience, the chat thread moves so quickly, posters' questions often get missed.

Picking up on some that have already been asked today:

Can we eat dairy in Bootcamp?

Yes you can, but be aware that for some people dairy can impede weight loss. Butter is fine - you don't have to worry about that, and yoghurt is apparently better tolerated than milk, cream or cheese.

Cheese is a great low carb food and it's lovely to not have to worry about being able to eat it on the basis of it being a fat.

Milk can become quite carby quite quickly, so if you're having several cups of tea/coffee a day, you need to keep an eye on this. If you can, it's best to have your tea/coffee black - or to substitute cream (double) for the milk.

Cream can be used in cooking (always double, as it has a higher fat content), but again be aware that it might be an issue for you.

The best way to find out if it's a problem for you is to keep a food diary, and then you will be able to see the impact of dairy on your weight loss.

BIWI and Willie - just wanted to say well done and thanks for all the effort you both put into this.

This questions thread was a brilliant idea.

BIWI, I have a few questions please.

1. Bernstein says no carrots because thy are sweet and thus carby. But lots of recipes include them. including your coleslaw. How can I get around this? 2)Bernstein says no tomatoes. I can't seem to find the recipe for the bolgnaise sauce, which doesn't use toms. Please could you link or print it? 3)I am frightened of my old meals, how to re-creat them, what to use instead: such as my old spag bol and my old curry. No rice or pasta. What else could i use instead? Shall I use courgette ribbons. what about the rice replacement?
2. Bernstein says no onions. I can't make any meal, any curry or any spag bol without onions. This is a nightmare for me. I saw you recommending shallots. What shall I do here?

Many thanks.

Rice substitute: try grated cauliflower, lightly fried in butter with some salt and pepper - very delicious!

Er, I am afraid I have some more.
1)I am not allowed lemon juice or peppers and lot sof recipes include that. what shall I do?
2)BIWI's shirataki noodles link, @ Wai Yee Hong is sold out - any other sites, recommendations?

Which supermarket sausages and tomatoes, exactly do you recommend? I saw you said tetrapack for toms, but I am really sorry (idiot) I am not sure which ones you mean?

Oblomov - Carrots and tomatoes are slightly up on the carb scale from leafy green veg but I don't think they're a no-no. Probably just not for every day. Sainsbo's Basics tetrapaks of toms are the lowest in carbs and smaller, younger carrots are apparently lower in sugar (which seems counter-intuitive but I am reassured it's true!)

Peppers, aside from the bitter green ones are a bit on the high side for the first couple of weeks. Lemon juice is also high, but you don't need much to make an impact on taste so I do use it sparingly quite often.

Shallots are great (and the echallion or banana ones are much more manageable than the fiddly little ones) or leeks are good onion substitutes too.

...shiritaki noodles are also known as konnkaku noodles and lots of Asian supermarkets stock them. There's another branded one called Miracle Noodle that Holland and Barrett sell but it's more ££ for the same thing.

apols, konnyaku

Oblamov in my experience, chilli and curry both go really nicely on a pile of finely sliced iceberg lettuce (needs to be iceberg so it's nice and crunchy). It's especially good with a really hot topping because it's cool/refreshing so you get the crunch and the cool together.

Oh, and Ocado do bags of ready-peeled-chopped-and-frozen shallots which are a bit of a godsend if you can afford to splash out on them. Cause they are bloody fiddly otherwise!

Thank you very much.

Oblomov it sounds like Bernstein is a lot stricter than bootcamp with respect to some of the carbier veg. I do eat some of those things but in small quantities and not every day. If you wanted to be really strict and exclude carrots, onions, peppers, tomatoes etc, then I think it's doable but possibly less easy to maintain as a way of eating long term.

• you can just exclude carrots, just have coleslaw made from cabbage
• lemon juice is quite easily excluded, can you replace it with the zest for a lemony flavour if needed?
• leeks are another good substitute for onions as well as those suggested above
• if you can't have tomatoes at all, then bolognese sauce it basically out. But there are lots of other things you could have instead on the recipe thread, and save bolognese for a treat

It took me ages to move away from the idea of recreating carbier dishes in a low carb way - sometimes it works, but sometimes it's just a poor substitute for the real thing. So it can be more satisfying to make a 'naturally' low carb meal rather than a low carb version of something else. That said, low carb versions are often delicious too so don't avoid experimenting.

Oblomov

I'm afraid I haven't read any of Bernstein's work, although I know that his diet is for diabetics, and is pretty strict. But to answer your questions:

1. Bernstein says no carrots because thy are sweet and thus carby. But lots of recipes include them. including your coleslaw. How can I get around this?

Carrots aren't as high in carbs as you might imagine, although they are pretty dense, so you don't get much 'for your money', as it were. The coleslaw recipe uses finely grated carrot, so doesn't actually use that much. One portion of the coleslaw gives you 6g carbs. You could, as Willie suggests, leave the carrot out, or cut down the quantities.

As long as you're not eating them that often and making sure you're not eating a lot, personally I wouldn't worry too much. Maybe leave them out for Bootcamp but reintroduce them in Bootcamp Light?

2)Bernstein says no tomatoes. I can't seem to find the recipe for the bolgnaise sauce, which doesn't use toms. Please could you link or print it?

I don't know of a recipe that doesn't use tomatoes! I've scanned through the recipe thread but there's nothing there I'm afraid.

3)I am frightened of my old meals, how to re-creat them, what to use instead: such as my old spag bol and my old curry. No rice or pasta. What else could i use instead? Shall I use courgette ribbons. what about the rice replacement?

If I'm having Bolognese, either I just have the sauce with grated Parmesan on top, or I boil some finely shredded white/green cabbage and use that in place of spaghetti. I tend not to substitute anything for rice - so if I'm serving curry, I just have the curry on its own with whatever veg we're having

4. Bernstein says no onions. I can't make any meal, any curry or any spag bol without onions. This is a nightmare for me. I saw you recommending shallots.

Onions are very carby - they have a fairly high carb count at 7.9g carbs per 100g, and they are also quite dense, so you can end up using a lot of them, thus increasing the carbs quite significantly. Shallots, by comparison, are 3.3g carbs per 100g, so much better.

Because I don't know about Bernstein's plan, I can't really advise you any more than this - personally, I can't see that having carrots or tomatoes occasionally will be a really big deal - but as a diabetic, if you have to restrict your carbs significantly and/or to a specific amount of carbs every day, then I can see why he would counsel you against these veg.

That said, if you're not eating things like rice/pasta any more, then your overall carb count will be a lot lower than previously.

Are you doing Bootcamp or Bernstein? Bootcamp - whilst it seems strict - is a lot more relaxed than Bernstein because we don't weigh/count things. Having the allowed list of veg, with the instruction to focus on veg/salad that are 3g carbs per 100g, and making sure that you are getting your carbs mainly from veg/salad will ensure that your daily carb count is low enough to lose weight. Whether or not it is low enough for you to keep your diabetes under control is something I cannot promise.

Courgette pasta is great with bolognaise sauce

Strips of courgette either julienne style or flat with a potato peeler and fry olive oil. Yummy!

Shredded Savoy cabbage fried in olive oil until crispy is delicious.
I have instead of pasta.

oblomov hello again! I see that most of your questions have been well answered by others. Having read Bernstein, and it having given me the confidence to low carb these are my thoughts. Obviously I am not medically trained or anything!

For me, I find that bootcamp and bernstein pretty much go hand in hand. The reason that Bernstein counts carbs particularly for type I diabetics is so that you can adjust your insulin control. By counting carbs he suggests that you keep your meals roughly the same size (eg 6 carbs at breakfast, 12 at lunch and 12 at dinner every day). By keeping your carb counts similar for meals you should hopefully be able to adjust your pump and insulin requirements accordingly. Others not reliant on insulin don't need to count as they don't need to adjust an insulin dose.

Because of your diabetes I would strictly carb count initially to ensure that your meals are relatively similar in carb size (whether or not you stick to roughly his 6-12-12 or something different would be up to you). You will probably very quickly get to know what sort of things you can eat at each meal and then go from there.

In terms of having your old meals, I think you need to get into just a whole new mindset, rather than try to adapt what you had before if that makes sense.

I do have carrots, onions, peppers etc..., but I am very aware they are higher in carb content and have weighed in the past so I sort of now know how much and how often I can have them, and tend to have less of them than other things.

Cauliflower rice really is the best thing ever to replace rice with any meal (curry, chilli etc...) but when we have something that would have had noodles I don't tend to bother for example we had stir fry yesterday but I had extra veg and a bigger portion rather than a usual portion served with rice or noodles.

Bernstein does advocate the use of low carb stuff (eg atkins bars etc...) and this for me is really the only difference between being a diabetic on bootcamp. For me, I shouldnt' really ever eat anything sugary at all as it sends my sugars flying and then I end up all over the place. I do tend to have as my treats some of those atkins bars for times of desperate need or as a really big treat diabetic chocolate or sweets. I don't have them regularly (and of course never too many as we all know what happens then!), but when other start to introduce maybe a small bit of dark chocolate into their maintenance, I don't think that is ever something for me I would do regularly.

I hope that makes some kind of sense, and sorry it is too long. Are your diabetes team working with you on lowering the carbs, or are they anti-it?

Oblomov

Sorry, I missed your second lot of questions!

1)I am not allowed lemon juice or peppers and lot sof recipes include that. what shall I do?

It depends on why you're not allowed them! Is it because of the carb levels?

2)BIWI's shirataki noodles link, @ Wai Yee Hong is sold out - any other sites, recommendations?

you can also buy them from amazon

If you have a Chinese/Korean/Asian supermarket near you, you should be able to get them from there. They come packed in water, not dry like other noodles.

Can I buy cooked cocktail sausages and snack on them if necessary?

It depends on the carb count - most sausages are very high in carbs

Better things to have to snack on would be cheese, hard boiled eggs or olives - if you need to snack!

You should find, once you're in the swing of low carbing, that you really aren't hungry between meals. Snacking becomes a habit as well, so you need to ask yourself if you are truly hungry or you're just doing it because it's a habit.

If you are finding yourself hungry in between meals, it's a sign that you're not eating enough fat (or not eating enough at your meals). You could also be thirsty, so try drinking some water.

I don't eat raw cheese and I hate cold boiled eggs - sorry

I need to give myself time to have a bigger breakfast.

I'll be fine, just trying to get to grips with it all. I've done no bread, pasta, potato and rice before quite easily on a number of occasions so I know I can do this :)

Thanks for answering my questions :)

Oblomov in general we don't need to count on Bootcamp...but at the beginning you may find My Fitness Pal useful for monitoring your carb intake, so that you can get the right carb counts but still have tomatoes in your spag bol/ a splash of lemon juice/ the odd carrot.

If you do use it, try and make sure the entries are British for more accurate carb counts ( the American ones don't take fibre into account), so choose Sainsbury's/Tesco/Asda etc rather than generic cauliflower. I found it brilliant when I was trying to lose those pesky last few pounds:)

Oblomov - there's also a carb counter on the spreadsheet - look at the tabs along the bottom. If it helps you, then you could start Bootcamp by weighing all your veg and entering it into the spreadsheet, which will work out carb totals for you

twinkle - you might be better buying some low carb sausages (The Black Farmer ones are lovely) and having those instead

Are they organic? Sorry to sound like a wanker but I only eat organic.

I think they are ...

hmm, not sure ...