Week 1 - Autumn Low Carb Bootcamp

[BIWI]

So here we are! Over 160 of us signed up!

Here is the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness for you to enter your first weight

If you aren't on the list for any reason, just go to the bottom of the list and add your name - the lovely Willie will sort out the alphabetisation later.

From experience of previous Bootcamps, the chat thread can move very quickly! So, if you have a specific or particular question, please post it on the questions thread I will do my best to check it as often as I can, as will other seasoned Bootcampers.

If you have a really burning issue, please feel free to PM me and I will do my very best to help you as soon as possible.

And if you're looking for inspiration for things to cook, here's the recipe thread

Here is a brief reminder of the rules:

We do not eat any of the following during Bootcamp:

bread
rice
pasta/noodles
potatoes
flour
pastry
sugar
chocolate/sweets
biscuits/cookies
crisps

And here are the ten rules of Bootcamp:

1. You must eat breakfast.
2. Avoid processed food
3. Eat lots of fat
4. Make sure you are eating vegetables and salads with your food
5. Be careful about dairy (apart from butter, which is unlimited)
6. You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day
7. No alcohol
8. No fruit
9. No nuts/seeds

10. No sugar or artificial sweeteners

More detail/explanation of these rules is on the spreadsheet ? look at the tabs at the bottom.

One final word from me ? the disclaimer! I am not a doctor, a scientist, a dietician nor a nutritionist. The advice that is given here is based on my own experience of low carbing, as well as the reading I have been doing over the last few years.

If you have a medical condition, or you are taking long term medication, please take advice from your GP/consultant before starting to low carb.

Good luck everyone!

Purple list exactly everyone you had to eat and drink errr day nod the day before and see if we can help...

SORRY I'll try again!!!

List everything you ate yesterday and day before and see if we can help...

Ok.

Tuesday

Bf greek yoghurt with few drops vanilla essence and a flaxseed muffin.
Lunch half a chicken and cheese frittata, cucumber sticks and mini tub of philladelphia cream cheese (half fat as that's all I had. Ff is on shopping list)
Tea large salad with dollop of mayo and an omlette with pork bits in it. I didn't like the pork so I left most of that but ate most of the omlette.

Wednesday
Same as above apart from tea
I had a cheese omlette for tea but that was forced as in pain and really not hungry because of that.

Drinks - mix of still water, sparkling water with few drops natural lemon juice, diet coke (but not much)

I do feel slimmer I think but I have 5.4lb to lose to get to my holiday goal weight in 4 weeks and panicking a bit.

I also exercise several times a week. Have cut this down from every day as was getting obsessed.

I know I need to lose the diet coke but its really not much. I will cut it out completely and take headache tablets when I get caffeine withdrawal

And I have a shopping list ready from going through recipes so can get all that today.

Thank you.

Hi de Hi Campers

So checking in as been a bit naughty this week - birthdays and all - sorry BIWI but have not been able to resist the wine and a few nuts

Yesterday a bit better though only 2 spritzers

B: omlette with cream & bacon
L: left over homemade meatballs in tomato sauce with courgette, buttered leeks and pak choi
D: Pork steak fried in herb butter with celeriac, leek and mustard dauphinoise.

Now - someone talk to me about celeriac crisps - just slice on the old mandolin then fry? oven bake?....... are they even allowed?

Hi de Hi Campers

So checking in as been a bit naughty this week - birthdays and all - sorry BIWI but have not been able to resist the wine and a few nuts

Yesterday a bit better though only 2 spritzers

B: omlette with cream & bacon
L: left over homemade meatballs in tomato sauce with courgette, buttered leeks and pak choi
D: Pork steak fried in herb butter with celeriac, leek and mustard dauphinoise.

Now - someone talk to me about celeriac crisps - just slice on the old mandolin then fry? oven bake?....... are they even allowed?

ooh random double post - sorry

Keep going Purple.....it truly works!

I was 196lbs in January and am currently 174lbs. This WOE is unforgiving as little cheats show straight away. Stop with the diet coke! It ain't worth it!!

You would be better with coffee with cream for caffeine.

Fat and water.
Fat and water.
Fat and water.

It will come off but ditch the sugar!

Purple - caffeine can stall weight-loss, I dont know why this is but it does. Another reason to ditch the diet cokes! Your meals look ok but there is not much veg there - cucumber and a salad. I'm glad you are getting used to FF yog and FF cream cheese - and you are frying in butter/adding oily dressings?

4lb is a good loss - you don't have much to lose so will not see huge weight drops like some, but it is a healthy, sustainable loss. You should see the whoosh-fairy well before you go on holiday! Keep going!

After a hungry and stiff night (was back at Pilates and Taekwon do yesterday) have just had a creamy omelette with Brie, mushrooms spring onions and sliced quorn fillets. Eating Brie on a diet feels a bit mad and I am making sure I don't go bonkers with it.

Tonight it's soya mince shepherd's pie with cauliflower mash. Excellent!

On the downside my ketosticks are refusing to budge. What am I doing wrong???? Yesterday I didn't drink nearly enough water - I find myself anxious about leakage on a Wednesday when I know I'll be kicking, jumping and bouncing around. I'll make up for it today...

Thanks captainmummy I am frying my chicken in butter and having full fat mayo with salad.

What veg is good to have? I love carrots but know they are restricted. Salad is easier to do as I wash it in advance and then just have to plate it up.

Im going to have a last diet coke today then make sure I have plenty of headache tablets as I will need them. Will stock up on fizzy water and maybe get some pure lime juice to add to it.

Hopefully by Monday I will see a difference.

Corrie - can't help with Ketostix, I don't use them. I just find that if I'm not huingry, I'm eating enough fat and drinking enough water, i will be in Ketosis. (also Skint!)

Purple - have you looked at the allowed veg on the spreadsheet? Anything under 3-5g/100g is good - I tend to stick to salad, cauli, broccoli, beans, cabbage, cucumber and occassionally tomatoes.
Good luck with ditching the coke! Withdrawal headaches are a sure sign they are not good for you! (same with sugar...)

I weighed myself this morning and have put ON half a pound. How can this be? I haven't wavered once. I am a bootcamp supremo. Why do I weigh more today than yesterday? Help!!!!

BIWI did you see my cracker recipe up-thread? It's really good.

Yesterday's eating for anyone who wants to help answer my question was:

B - scrambled eggs and smoked salmon
L - lettuce, 1/4 avocado, 2 radishes, cucumber, vinaigrette, piece of brie
S - 50g Total ff greek yoghurt with a tbsp of flax meal mixed in
D - Thai green curry (I made the sauce myself, so I know there were no hidden sugars etc) containing coconut milk, tofu, spinach leaves, konyaku (asian noodle-type yam which is zero carb)
I snacked on 2 or 3 of the low carb cheese crackers I was experimenting with (see recipe above), but I know that equals less than 2 grams.

My wee smell like nail varnish remover so I think I'm definitely in ketosis.

So why have a I PUT ON weight?!?!?!?! I have lost 3" off my waist, though.

Courgette ribbons fried in butter briefly so there is still some bite.

Thinly sliced cabbage (savoy or white) microwaved with butter.

Coleslaw (recipe in the Übercamp tab of the spreadsheet): cabbage, small amount of finely grated carrot, spring onion, mayonnaise and vinegar, plus salt and pepper and leave to marinade for a bit.

Cauliflower roasted with olive oil and cumin and coriander.

Mashed neeps with plenty of butter.

Thinly sliced leeks braised on butter and then some cream bubbled through them.

Mashed celeriac with cream.

There's a wee selection of tasty veg.

Starry - this why we don't/shouldn't weigh every day! The scales can be annoyingly mercurial - but it doesn't mean that the weight is going back on. Keep going, weigh once or twice a week and you will notice the downward trend!

Starry - 3" off your waist is mightily impressive. I'm sure the scales will start showing it too.

Starry Coconut milk is quite high in carbs - 11g in half a tin on the one I just looked at. That could be the problem. Otherwise it might be water retention, totm etc. 3" off your waist is bloody brilliant!

To the people who are worried about weight loss... I start this WOE on the last bootcamp and have pretty much stuck to it completely. I stay the same for a few weeks now then lose 3 pounds in one week. At the beginning I didn't lose anything at all for the second and third week. I have lost 1 stone 10 pounds now with what feels like minimal effort. Don't weigh every day (or if you do don't worry about the small changes.) Definitely recommend looking at inch loss rather than weight.

Good day yesterday:
B - left over lamb curry from the night before
L - salmon fillet and salad
D - Tomato, avocado, mozarella and prosciutto salad with a drizzle of pesto
2 coffees and a tonne of water
Topped off with an intense bootcamp session in the rain!

Purple - ditch the diet coke!

Still feeling paralyzingly anxious here. Seeing the GP this morning about cholesterol test. Expecting a thorough poo-pooing of low carbing from her!

Crabby I'm in the middle of reading Dr Briffa's Escape the Diet Trap. This morning I got to the bit about cholesterol and I can summarise what he said as: "Its all bollocks, don't worry about it".

Or more specifically: he said scientific experiments have not shown high LDL cholesterol to be a cause of heart attacks or bad health. And then something about the size of the particles of LDL cholesterol ARE important, and eating low-carb high-fat leads to people in trials having more of the larger fluffy LDL cholesterol particles which is a good thing and reduces risk of heart attacks.

It was all a bit surprising as well as a bit technical. I must admit I was reading it thinking, "yes, but have you written enough here to convince MY MUM!"

I've posted before about this but, weighing myself every day, my pattern of weight loss has been: drop a pound, gain half a pound, stay the same for a couple of days, drop to my previous lowest weight, stay the same but have to tighten my belt, drop a pound.... There have also been a few periods here and there where I haven't lost anything for a week or two. I have lost 22 lb and it will be 12 weeks on Monday.

When your body uses up it's fat stores they are taken from all over your body. So say you lose half an ounce of fat from each upper arm, three ounces from your tummy, an ounce from each hip and an ounce from each thigh. As you use up the fat stores your body replaces the fat with the same weight of water. So you have lost half a pound of fat but gained half a pound of water. (This is why you feel slimmer without losing weight - the water takes up less space than the fat did.) This is so that your body can quickly and easily replace those fat stores. But because you aren't eating enough carbs to produce an insulin spike to promote fat storage, and your calorie intake is lower than your calorie use (because you are satiated) then there isn't a signal to replace the fat stores. So after a few days your body gets rid of the temporarily stored water and, whoosh, you lose a pound of weight.

Weight loss does not equal fat loss. If you are eating a relatively consistent diet day to day then you will be using up your fat stores steadily but your water levels are changing so much that your weight fluctuates a lot.

I find it helps to understand the science behind low carbing as it makes you realise that we have been sold a bunch of lies about diet as if they were unassailable truths.

Purple - you're doing really well! It's not easy moving from one way of eating to another, and you're not only switching to low carbing but also to eating meat!

You have lost 4lbs, so you're almost half way through what you need to lose. And you don't have a lot to lose, so weight loss will be slower for you.

And, to be fair, you didn't just go cold turkey, you have eased yourself into Bootcamp, so you aren't going to see a massive loss by doing that.

The one thing (apart from the Diet Coke) I might suggest that you take out of your menus is the flax. Other low carbers have reported that this can stall them.

But overall, I would say that you're doing really well. Step back from it a little, and don't stress too much about the scales. You're doing all the right things, and it will work for you

Quick post to say a massive thank you to the poster who told us about the Cali rice liquidiser recipe, life changer! Could never be bothered with the faff before but just done two caulis in less than three minutes! Amazing!

starry - I did see your lovely recipe - thank you very much! I may just have to try those today

Re your weight gain - this is the peril of daily weighing I'm afraid.

If you've lost 3 inches off your waist then it's obviously working for you. I would suspect it's just one of those things - perhaps a bit of water retention, or you're in a particular phase of your menstrual cycle?

Or maybe you were just leaning the wrong way when you were on the scales

Your body weight does naturally fluctuate, which is why if seeing them go up is unsettling then it's better to weigh only weekly

Still away on work trip yesterday but this time I behaved myself:

B - scrambled egg, salad leaves and dressing. (Plus a discussion with the colleague I was staying with about why this was my breakfast which unfortunately put her right off her toast!)

L - egg mayo, coleslaw and salad (from a deli)

D - smoked mackerel, salad, mayo, avocado

I got lots of compliments from colleagues who don't see me very often about how much weight I've lost over the summer!

I also had a sneaky weigh this morning to see if I'd messed up with the chocolate truffle/custard tart. Fortunately I am 1.5lb down since Monday morning so I seem to have got away with it. Passthe I heard your pain about not having the birthday cake; once you are well into this way of eating (many weeks) my feeling is you can have and enjoy the very odd treat. But it is important to get your body fully used to being a low-carb fat-burner first. I was really really good when I started in May and didn't cheat at all for at least 8 weeks. If you have some carbs your insulin will go up and your body will store fat (and as we're eating lots of fat that's a risk not worth taking!!) Good luck to you and to everyone here.

Great post, StuntNun - and really well done on your loss