The Low Carb Bootcamp Continues!

[BIWI]

The other thread was almost full, so here's a bright, shiny new one.

And here's the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness

And just in case you haven't discovered it yet, here is the recipe thread. Some truly lovely recipes on here that are worth a try.

I have been doing the virtual gastric band app as well, to try to help me control my portion sizes.

I really notice the difference in how much I'm eating although I have yet to see a difference on the scales

Biwi, I am actually having cog-hyp therapy for it :) I have messed about with low carb since April because of these issues, so have sought help. I love eating LC, and get great results so need to address why I sabotage it.

Beryl, I had that app, it didnt work for me though.

Hi there, I've read this thread and most of the threads on the low carb section and am about to embark on my new way of eating!

My energy levels at the moment are awful, I'm a grumpy slob.

I have a question about oils..
Olive oil and butter are good I gather.. What about sunflower oil?
We have loads of it in the house and I normally cook with that. Should I stop using it?

Are you genuinely hungry Black or is it the craving to eat ie 'I'm sat watching TV, I must have something to eat'? Just curious.. can you turn that into 'I'll have a glass/bottle of water and then see in 20mins"?

No yoghurt yesterday and I was back in ketosis last night... wondering if that might be my problem... (I still had mayo and a tiny chunk of cheese). Will keep off yoghurt for the week and see what happens.

The only thing I've herd about sparkling water is that the CO2 creates acidity which is bad for your teeth, but not for the rest of the body

Dumper, sunflower oil isnt so good :(

Just made areally tasty lunch, omelette spring rolls! Will add teh recipe to the recipe thread.

Dumper iirc sunflower oil isn't good for a few reasons. Firstly it is omega 6 fats and what we want are omega 3s. Am on my phone, so can't explain very well, but will do some links later. The other thing is that when sunflower oil is heated, it becomes less stable, creating free radicals.

Olive oil is good, although better cold, I seem to recall that it can also become less stable when heated.

The best oils to cook with are butter or coconut oil. Coconut oil is not only stable at higher heats, it also has anti fungal and anti bacterial properties (zoe harcombe is a great believer that a lot of weight issues are to do with candida overgrowth). I think there is also a school of thought that coconut oil boosts the metabolism.

Coconut oil is also a medium chain fatty acid, which means it is used by the liver as pure energy rather than being stored :)

Anyone interested in a recipe for chocolate ice-cream that is also low carb?

Dumper here is Briffa's blog about omega 6 and omega 3

I've just made this and it is absolutely bloody gorgeous.

Chocolate and raspberry liqueur ice-cream (serves 6)

175g 90% cocoa dark chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Lindt)
175ml double cream
2 medium eggs
2 tablespoons (made-up) coffee - i.e. liquid, not granules!
1 tablespoon Chambord, raspberry liqueur (you could use any liqueur I guess - doesn't have to be raspberry)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (try and use one without sugar if you can)

In a food processor, blitz the chocolate into rubble
Add the eggs, coffee, liqueur and vanilla extract and blitz again - try and get it as smooth as you can

Heat the cream in a small pan until little bubbles form around the edge of the pan - swish it round a couple of times to make sure that the cream is properly hot, but don't let it boil

Pour the hot cream onto the chocolate mix and blitz again - let the hot cream get the chocolate melted - and then pour into your ice-cream maker and churn for around 15-20 mins, according to your ice-cream maker.

I don't have carb counts for the liqueur or vanilla extract, but the carb counts for the chocolate and the cream amount to 4.55 g carbs per person, based on this making 6 servings. The amount of liqueur/vanilla extract is relatively small, so I would guess that they don't add that much to the overall carb count.

My plan is to serve this with a small amount of fresh raspberry puree (with no added sugar) and a couple of fresh raspberries for decoration.

Well I just had a huge salad. I feel sick... think I ate too much!

I had lettuce, cucumber, mushrooms, a couple cherry tomatoes and mayo and tuna on top

I hope you had an oily dressing on that, Lewis?

Perhaps you also need to consider serving yourself smaller portions? If you're hungry you could always go back for more.

High fat levels, as well as good portions of protein will see you feeling full much quicker than if you were just eating vegetables with a low fat dressing.

mayo in place of dressing. Its taking time to learn all the rules lol

does tuna count as protein?

Oh yes, it certainly does! (And I hope you bought tuna in oil, not tuna in brine?!)

It feels really odd, doesn't it, eating this way? When I very first started doing low carb, and tucking into bacon and eggs for breakfast, DH was aghast. "I can't see how you're going to lose weight eating like that!" was his comment. And it was a real leap of faith, I have to say! But I did ...

It took me a while to get my head round even putting full fat mayo in the trolley, but now I can't bear the flavour of the low fat stuff!

it was brine because it's what I had left over in the fridge. Oil from now on!

Beryl do you need an i-phone for that virtual gastric band thingy?

I have felt sick and shaky today, like carb flu all over again, so bad I had to take to my bed. In the end I had a bag of crisps (17g carbs ) and suddenly I feel almost completely better again. I'm pre-menstrual and before I started low-carbing I would have craved carbs, specifically crisps or chips, just before my period. Could there be some hormonal reason why I might need to increase my carb intake before my period? Iirc I was the same last month and I ended up scoffing two bags of crisps one after the other like a drug addict getting a fix. I'm wondering whether this is something I should take into account, maybe by adding some extra carbs such as carrots to my diet when my period is due. Earlier in the day I was thinking about eating a banana (I don't even like bananas!) so I'm wondering if my body's trying to tell me something and I'm foolishly ignoring it.

StuntNun - that doesn't sound good. I can't think of any reason why you would need carbs to be honest. But something isn't right. Are you getting enough salt? If you needed to dive into the crisps I'm wondering if it's the salt that you needed?

What have you been eating over the last three days, StuntNun? Write it out for me so I can have a think about it.

This is interesting reading, StuntNun although I'm not sure that we should really be advocating a high carb solution. But it sounds like maybe a higher carb intake around your period could help you.

THU
B: blackberries, Greek yogurt and cream
L: lamb burger and leftover cabbage/carrot with extra butter
D: lamb curry (delish and meltingly tender thanks to Crabby), spiced cauliflower (meh) and wilted spinach

FRI
B: strawberries, blackberries, double cream and Greek yoghurt
S: Peperami
L: fried bacon and mushrooms, strawberries and cream
D: Thai green curry (beef, orange pepper, baby corn, mangetout and coconut cream)

SAT
B: 5 strawberries, double cream and Greek yoghurt
L: two pork belly strips and courgette fried in butter
S: leftover pork belly strip
D: sirloin steak in red wine and shallot sauce with mushrooms fried in butter

SUN
B: blueberries (a few), double cream and Greek yoghurt
L: salmon fillet, leftover pork belly strip and salad (spinach, cucumber and two cherry tomatoes with lots of oily dressing)

Thanks for that link BIWI, I'll see whether the same thing happens next month and if it does I'll try something more in line with the WOE. It was quite remarkable how quickly I went from feeling rubbish to feeling fine, just after eating the crisps. But maybe I could get the same effect from a banana or an apple. Given my past history of pre-menstrual carb-craving (I would gain up to three pounds every period then lose it again afterwards) and the fact that I've gone off-WOE both times since I started low carbing I think that supports the idea that there may be a hormonal or neurotransmitter-based reason for it. I haven't had any cravings for crisps apart from those two occasions.