Starting Harcombe diet today

[Panadbois]

Anyone care to join?

Also need to ask, can I use fry light and Barocca? ( Not together obviously!)

Possibly caffine withdrawl. You can have Green/white tea I think? That helps because it has some caffine in it. The white tea (its like young green tea) is much milder than green. I'm not a fan of phase 2 but sounds like an ideal solution if you want to keep having bread and pulses etc and really works for some people.

I'm interested in this diet. I've just tried low carbing but found it too restrictive and too high-fat. Can someone explain - Zoe says not to eat carbs and fat at the same meal. But her recommended 5 day eating plan menu has meals with carbs and fats together - eg brown rice with something fried in olive oil. I am confused...

first 5 days are a low carb attack phase intended to deal with sugar cravings and intolerances. After this you can move on to phase 2 where you have to separate carbs and fats but can eat high amounts of unprocessed carbs on the non 'animal fat/ protein' days.

I am doing primal at the mo by the way - bit less complictaed but you cannot have grains or legumes so not as vegetarian friendly.

Thanks giraffes. I think the main thing for me is to stay away from sugar - once I start I can't stop! There's a great article in the Times about evil sugar today.

Totally agree - had a small cake today and it left me with really low blood sugar and turned me into a total grump! Good luck with harcombe

The other thing is I think most bread basically is sugar in its effect - my gums feel crappy if I eat lots of bread, i bloat and I gain weight - maybe its just a weird coincidence. Prob is I find choclate and bread really addictive and comforting

I sometimes eat that dark 100 percent rye bread. That doesn't seem to have the sugar effect.

I love sprouted rye bread yummm

Love ryebread.

Pleased to report I feel loads better after completing Phase 1 and on day 5 didn't even want the brown rice potion with the curry I made ( butternut squash curry from the recipe book - tis yum). Broke the no mixing carb/fat rules slightly yesterday as I had lunch at my Mum's but I was surprised that it was really no problem passing on the cake - I think phase 1 has really made a difference.

I'm not sure how much weight I've lost as my scales are lost somewhere (moved house recently) but think this is probably a good thing - I've tended to obsess about weight loss in the past. I think I'm better focussing on the health benefits and letting the weight loss (hopefully) take care of itself.

I'm starting properly tomorrow as it's my mum's birthday lunch today. Hopefully I won't find the 1st bit too bad as I've already been low carbing. I am not too keen on the idea of cutting out caffeine though - I don't drink much coffee but am a bit of a tea snob and don't like the idea of only drinking green or decaf .

Hope it goes well holmes - I have seen you on the bootcamp board. I have been off th waggon but am going to get back on and persevere with lc as I know it suits me when I do it right. I have a Harcombe diet casserole (Greek style beef) in the oven for tonight, which is smelling really lovely!
Happy birthday to your mum.

Thanks Frenchfemme! Lucky I'm not starting today - lunch involved a large slice of tarte tatin...

Hope you enjoyed it!

I borrowed It's all good by gweneth paltrow from the library. I was hoping it would help me with paleo but not so sure it would work, think it would be fantastic for phase 2 and 3 harcombe though (if you dont mind pictures of gweneth paltrow farting about), a lot of the recipes are vegan therefore great for the non animal days but there is also a selection of protein meals such as chicken and fish recipes which would work or could be adapted. Its actually got a decent amount of recipes in.

I'm really glad I found this thread, I was doing some reading about the Harcombe diet recently and was very interested but her website totally turned me off! Seemed very grabby and some posters came across as intolerable!! One girl who had great success, lost over 8 stone I think, went "under cover" to a slimming world meeting and poked holes in everything about it, including the "obese" leader!! It seemed so cruel and pretentious, then I looked up the girls posts and within something like a year she had gained every single stone back!!
However, I do like the ethos of "real food" and a lot of what Harcombe says does ring through, I just wonder why it isn't more popular?

I'm not sure why it isn't more popular - I guess because it doesn't fit neatly into a particular category. It's not low cal/low fat but not strictly speaking low carb either - although after going through Phase 1 I have found it's nowhere near as difficult as I thought to cut down on the carbs.

Give it a go!

I like the sound of the diet in some ways but I must admit that I find the idea of not eating carbs and fat at the same meal a bit annoying as a long term thing. Atm I am just avoiding sugars and having a small portion of wholegrain carbs every day and the weight is coming off, in spite of occasional cheating.

I have followed the Harcombe diet in the past and, having put the weight back on through going back to my old way of eating, I'm going to give it another go. I'm not a member of their forum because you have to pay, I do have the book.

Good luck Solid. Are you going to start with phase 1?

I'm finding it pretty easy to stick to, with some occasional cheating, eg had toast with butter yesterday .. umm... and a small slice of cake I've lost nearly 3kg so far - yay! I think a big chunk of that will be from the first week but I'm happy for the weight to come off slowly, so long as it keeps coming off.

Yes, did phase 1 for a few days, then my youngest baked cake and rocky road yesterday. Have guests coming round today, so will do phase 1 again from Monday.

Whats the differenve between Harcombe and other lo-carb? I just lost 2 stone doing BIWI method but want to ease up a bit.

As far as I understand, Harcombe means not eating carbs and fat at the same time. Also cutting out processed food and sugar.

There's lots of information on Zoe Harcombe's website.