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Weight loss chat

A space to talk openly about weight loss journeys and challenges. Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. You may wish to speak to a medical professional before starting any diet.

Two Week Low Carb Bootcamp Bonanza Challenge! All welcome.

969 replies

BIWI · 16/07/2012 08:11

For those of us who have been here since the beginning, these are the last two weeks. And it seems like a good idea to finish with a couple of strict weeks, seeing as there has been a fair amount of slippage!

For anyone who wants to join - you are more than welcome! These two weeks will get you off to a great start if you are wanting to lose some weight.

So. Who wants to sign up for two weeks of strict Bootcamp? If you want to join/continue, put your name on the list and we can see who is there. We have a fabulous Spreadsheet of Marvellousness to track weight/weight loss, which I will also post a link to.

Here are the rules - for carnivores and then the veggie version:

The Carnivore Rules

1.Eat three, proper meals a day.
You must eat breakfast. It doesn?t have to be a lot, but you must have something. For the rest of the day, if you?re eating enough food and you are in ketosis then you shouldn?t be hungry. But if you are hungry, eat something. (Hard boiled eggs make a great snack)

2.Avoid processed food
Focus on pure, natural protein as the basis for your meals ? meat/fish/eggs. Things like sausages, ham, bacon, pre-prepared burgers etc should be avoided as much as possible. You can have them, but just not every day. Avoid foods marketed as low carb, e.g. Atkins Daybreak bars.

3.Eat lots of fat.
Eating fat helps you to burn fat. Honestly! Fry in butter, add butter to vegetables, eat salad with a home-made vinaigrette dressing (not made with balsamic vinegar though, as this is too sweet), add mayonnaise where you can (just check the carb count on your mayo first). Eat fattier cuts of meat ? e.g. pork belly, roast chicken with the skin on and/or eat the fat off your lamb chops. Absolutely no low fat/light foods of any kind!

4.Make sure you are eating vegetables and salads with your food ?
This is where your carbs should come from, and this is non-negotiable. But choose only those vegetables that are on the allowed list. You don?t have to weigh/count carbs ? this is one of the great joys of this WOE (way of eating), but if you?re new to low carbing it can be helpful to weigh your portions of veg in the early days, just so that you know how many carbs are in the sort of portions that you like to eat

*5.Be careful about dairy (apart from butter, which is unlimited). It can impede weight loss for some people. If you are still drinking tea/coffee with milk or cream, try to restrict yourself to max 2 cups per day. You may eat cheese, but don't overdo it. Full fat yoghurt is the best way to include dairy in your diet - but beware, it does contain carbs. Total Full Fat is the best.

6.You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day.
The more weight you have to lose, the more water you should drink.

7.No alcohol
If you really can't do this - at least try and restrict it to the weekend. Vodka with soda is the best thing to drink. Or Champagne, red wine or dry white wine.

8.No fruit
Really. Seriously. Honestly. None at all. Zilch. Nada.

9.No nuts/seeds
Whilst these are really good to snack on later - it can be too easy to start snacking on these - and before you know it, all your carbs have gone on nuts. Seriously - in bootcamp - don't do it to yourself.

10.No sugar or artificial sweeteners

Allowed veg

Don?t eat any veg unless it?s on this list, and try and focus on eating those that are under 3g carbs per 100g:

Veg (raw)Carbs per 100g
Mushrooms0.4
Watercress0.4
Spinach0.8
Celery0.9
Broccoli1.1
Asparagus 1.4
Cucumber1.5
Lettuce1.7
Fennel1.8
Courgettes1.8
Cauliflower1.9
Avocado flesh1.9
Turnip2
Pumpkin2.2
Runner beans2.3
Swede2.3
Celeriac2.3
Bean sprouts2.5
Green pepper2.6
Baby sweetcorn2.7 (there is some debate about this - carb counts seem to vary according to variety and where you buy from - check the packet to be sure)
Aubergine2.8
Leeks2.9
Okra3
Tomato3.1
Mangetout3.3
Shallots3.3
Brussels sprouts3.5
French beans4.7
Cabbage5
Yellow pepper5.3
Carrots6
Orange or red pepper6.4
Ginger (peeled)7.2
Butternut squash7.5
Onions7.9

Veggie Rules

Only slightly adapted from BIWI's but best to take notice of the changes if you're vegetarian.

1.Eat three, proper meals a day.
You must eat breakfast. It doesn?t have to be a lot, but you must have something. For the rest of the day, if you?re eating enough food and you are in ketosis then you shouldn?t be hungry. But if you are hungry, eat something. (Hard boiled eggs make a great snack)

2.Avoid processed food
Focus on pure, natural ingredients as the basis for your meals. Vegetarian Sausages and Burgers are ok in small quantities, but check the carb count as some can be very high. Avoid foods marketed as 'Low Carb' such as Atkins Daybreak Bars, etc.

3.Eat lots of fat.
Eating fat helps you to burn fat. Honestly! Fry in butter, add butter to vegetables, eat salad with a home-made vinaigrette dressing (not made with balsamic vinegar though, as this is too sweet), add mayonnaise where you can (just check the carb count on your mayo first). Absolutely no low fat/light foods of any kind!

4.Make sure you are eating plenty of vegetables and salads with your food ?
This is where most of your carbs should come from, and this is non-negotiable. But choose only those vegetables that are on the allowed list. You don?t have to weigh/count carbs ? this is one of the great joys of this WOE (way of eating), but if you?re new to low carbing it can be helpful to weigh your portions of veg in the early days, just so that you know how many carbs are in the sort of portions that you like to eat

5.Be careful about dairy (apart from butter, which is unlimited). It can impede weight loss for some people. If you are still drinking tea/coffee with milk or cream, try to restrict yourself to max 2 cups per day. You may eat cheese, but don't overdo it. Full fat yoghurt is the best way to include dairy in your diet - but beware, it does contain carbs. Total Full Fat is the best.

6.You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day.
The more weight you have to lose, the more water you should drink

7.No alcohol
If you really can't do this - at least try and restrict it to the weekend. Vodka with soda is the best thing to drink. Or Champagne, red wine or dry white wine.

8.No fruit
Really. Seriously. Honestly. None at all. Zilch. Nada.

9.Beware of Nuts and Seeds.
Nuts are a very good way to include more fat and protein in your diet, however some are very high carb (e.g. Cashews). Stick to small amounts of Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Dried Coconut, Walnuts, Seeds and Peanut Butter, but check the ingredients, many supermarket brands have sugar added.

10.No sugar or artificial sweeteners

OP posts:
BIWI · 19/07/2012 08:26

Ducks Sadly, corn on the cob is one of the most carby things you could have eaten! According to the Carblife website carb counter, a whole cob is about 11.6g carbs.

You aren't allowed any fruit on Bootcamp because it is too carby, and it is sweet - and the whole point of the two weeks of Bootcamp is to break the craving for sweet things/your carb addiction.

Fruit contains fructose - which is what the body converts, via the insulin release when you eat it, to fat.

We are aiming to reduce the carbs in our diet (note: we are not cutting them out), so that instead of having a diet that is carbs:protein:fat, we are moving to fat:protein:carbs.

When you eat carbs, your blood sugar increases, and your body releases insulin to deal with this blood sugar. Any excess is turned into fat. If you constantly bombard your body with a high carbohydrate intake (i.e. with any of the easily digestible/accessible carbs such as potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, sugar and fruit), the amount of insulin you are having to produce is very high, and ultimately results in the laying down of fat, rather than the body burning it for fuel. In other words, you are producing too much fuel for the body to use, so it has to store some of it - and it's stored as fat.

If you keep your carb levels low, your blood sugar levels are much more stable, the amount of insulin produced is much less and the chances are you won't need to store any excess fuel as fat.

(That's a very, very basic description of the process - I am no scientist nor a nutritionist!!!)

After the first two weeks of Bootcamp - which are intentionally strict! - you can move to Bootcamp Light, and then you will be allowed some fruit - berries are the best option.

The reason you won't be losing much/will be gaining is that if you're eating fruit still (as well as corn on the cob!) then your carb levels will actually not be that much lower than they were before you started.

Why don't you list for us the meals you've been having over the last few days, and we'll see if we can help you more.

OP posts:
BIWI · 19/07/2012 08:30

Welcome, MissPricklePants! Not having access to food storage isn't great. I think I'm right in saying that John West make sachet/pouches of tuna, which could be useful. Or take a tin of tuna (with a can opener).

Bottled/pre-prepared salad dressings are usually a no-no as they tend to contain a lot of sugar and/or artificial ingredients. But you could easily make your own and decant it into a bottle. 5 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of wine vinegar, salt and pepper will make a very good, basic dressing.

OP posts:
BIWI · 19/07/2012 08:31

MrsHP - well done on the match win! And just think how many calories you will have used with all that dancing!

OP posts:
Jins · 19/07/2012 08:55

Cautiously reporting a lb off today. Obviously it may go back on tomorrow but for today at least I am marking a loss

Jins · 19/07/2012 09:04

On the fruit issue there is a theory that the foods that you find the hardest to give up are possibly ones that you are intolerant to.

Dr Briffa says something about it:

Sometimes, food addiction is related to something known as food intolerance. Here, the body can react adversely to a food, and this may give rise to all-manner of symptoms and conditions including weight gain, eczema, arthritis, migraine and fatigue. Interestingly, some people seem to be drawn to eating the very foods which they are sensitive to. For instance, a penchant for bread and pasta can be a sign of a sensitivity to wheat. Children who love milk or cheese are normally sensitive to dairy products. Whilst it may seem strange that we should be drawn to eat the very foods that are worst for us, this type of food craving is really no different to other forms of addiction to agents more readily recognised as ?unhealthy? such as alcohol or nicotine. The good news is that elimination of the offending foodstuff(s) from the diet almost always leads to an end of the craving within three or four weeks.

www.drbriffa.com/2000/11/07/understanding-food-cravings/

I am definitely intolerant to FOS which are found in raw fruit and veg. I can't say that they've ever caused cravings because to be honest eating an apple was always a chore that I did because my GP said it would cure my IBS Angry so it is possible to be intolerant to fruit.

I think in the early days of low carbing you become very aware of how your body reacts to things and I always think a craving is telling you something. It's either something you need or more often something you don't need.

However if you go down the route of low carbing with fruit you are not low carbing.

If you stick strictly to the plan for two weeks and find that it's intolerable then I'd recommend finding another weight loss method that you can follow

MissBeehivingUnderTheMistletoe · 19/07/2012 09:10

Morning all

Am finally under 9st (just) which is a big mental barrier for me Smile. Had not lost anything for a couple of days probably due to 2 slices of bacon at breakfast and too many cups of tea Blush. I miss tea though. Is fruit tea allowed?

emmak86 · 19/07/2012 09:20

So this mornin ive gone for a black cherry yogurt Grin and im going to try some baked cheddar crisps, after finding the recipe in the recipes thread amongst a few others! And some sort of salad is on the menu for lunch! Smile

BIWI · 19/07/2012 09:25

Step away from the black cherry yoghurt!

Seriously. There will be way too many carbs in that yoghurt.

OP posts:
emmak86 · 19/07/2012 09:47

Oh!! What yogurts can i have?? Im getting some massive headaches lately! Wondering if its because im not having all the sugar! Anyone else have the same?? X

ProfYaffle · 19/07/2012 09:50

Hope you don't mind me butting in about the fruit thing.

I've been low carbing for a few weeks now, have been lurking on these threads and now feel I'm into my stride after a few rookie errors!

I grow and forage a lot of fruit. What this has made me realise is that access to year round fresh fruit is a very modern phenomenon. eg, I've been eating loads of strawberries for about 2 weeks but now the crop has finished there won't be any more til next June! Nothing else will be ripe until Autumn and even then it'll be finished after a few weeks.

It's only really when sugar became cheap and accessible to all (Victorian era maybe?) that preservation of fruit became possible in jams/bottling etc and even more recently that we've shipped fruit in from around the globe.

Dr Briffa talks about the need for us to eat the foods we've been eating for a long time in evolutionary terms. Personally I think we've evolved to only eat fruit as a very small part of our overall diet. For me, I've decided that I'll eat fresh fruit I've grown/picked myself while it's in season but I won't be consuming shop bought fruit.

Incidentally, does anyone know how carby quinces are? They're not sweet so I'm hoping they'd be OK.

OHforDUCKScake · 19/07/2012 09:59

Thats been really really helpful thank you. In that case Im writing off this week and start again on Saturday (I really want eat these cherries that Ive bought!).

Basically meals are pork, mixed frozen veg (broccoli, carrots, cauli) and butter fried (theres a name for this I dont know what it is though) leeks, and the last two nights corn on the cob whoops!!!

The above meal has been the same but pork will become chicken or lamb, veg the same. Sometimes mashed carrots instead of leeks.

Lunch is chicken and peppers and lettuce. Or tuna salad. Snacks is chicken or pork scratchings.

BUT BUT BUT (and this bit I LOVE) I need to shout this; I DONT WANT TO EAT IN THE EVENINGS! Bejesus! For the first time Im not hungry in the evening. In fact, I still have the nice 'full from dinner' feeling at 9pm or later. Amazing!

Also, I may have screwed up by eating corn on the cob and fruit, but there is a difference in my mood. I wasnt unhappy (by any means!) or negative before, but I definitely have more get up and go than before and generally up beat all day rather than knackered half the time.

So because of that, I'll be starting again on Saturday, now I understamd the whole fruit stuff. I may have eaten some Jelly Babies last night too. red face

Jins · 19/07/2012 10:07

OHforDUCKScake looking at what you've eaten I reckon you're lucky it's only 1lb Grin

carrots/mashed carrots (4.4g per 100g and you don't get many carrots to 100g)
corn on the cob
fruit
I'm ignoring the jelly babies

Jins · 19/07/2012 10:08

On Quince - I've found one site saying about 14g per 100g or 1 quince so quite high really

ProfYaffle · 19/07/2012 10:12

Thanks for that. I'm surprised because they're so anti-stringent tasting when raw I'd have thought there wasn't a scrap of sugar in there!

toysoldiers · 19/07/2012 10:13

Morning all.

I'm pleased I'm not the only one having a few teething troubles. Secretly a little upset that I can't even eat corn on the cob Sad

Had leftover chicken for breakfast and will have mackerel salad for lunch. Lamb chops and spring greens for tea.

Full on flu like symptoms though, including high temperature and lower back ache (kidneys).

Can I also ask about constipation. It seems to be a problem despite the veg. Obviously can't have quick dose of prunes etc.

I need to start feeling better soon Sad

HumphreyCobbler · 19/07/2012 10:13

ProfYaffle - I am doing the same regarding fruit. I am happy not to eat the potatoes that I have grown but I am not going to miss the raspberries. I am only eating the unprocessed ones though, I am not going as far as jam and jelly.

SingingTunelessly · 19/07/2012 10:25

Morning all. Smile

The scales were cruel to me this morning - did their flashing thing with a 9 then settled on 10.1. Grrr. But still another pound gone. I am absolutely loving this woe of eating though. All you fruit lovers make me smile, I loathe fruit and used to force it down while trying to healthy eat. Now I don't have to touch it whoo hoo!

Toy soldier, when I had carb flu there was no high temperature with it - wonder if you have something else going on?

Jins · 19/07/2012 10:26

For constipation most plans recommend supplementary fibre in the form of psyllium husks. Plenty of fluid will assist as well. If you get really bunged up in the early days then it's fine to take a laxative. You'll find that constipation becomes less of a problem with time.

You will be feeling rough as carb withdrawal takes place but it doesn't last long. High temperature and pain in kidneys sounds more like a UTI than carb flu to me though. Keep an eye on it.

OHforDUCKScake · 19/07/2012 10:27

Im beginning to thing that too Jins!

And Oh My God I just looked at the carb content of the red cherries Ive been gorging on and its 11.5g per 100g. Yesterday I ate 4 punnets of cherries!!! I cant help but laugh, what an eejit!

Ah well, its all a learning curve. Funnily enough I was really bloated yesterday and I couldnt understand why??? That'll be the FOUR PUNNETS of cherries then!

Onwards and upwards! So glad for this thread, thanks for your help!

Jins · 19/07/2012 10:28

SingingTunelessly you made me smile there. I absolutely loathe fruit with a couple of exceptions. I also loathe pasta and rice.

Low carbing was a no-brainer. I just don't know why it took me so long to get there

OHforDUCKScake · 19/07/2012 10:35

Does anyone find this diet expensive though? Im spening so much money on food shops at the moment. Obviously bread, pasta and pots are cheap so this mest influx for me is expensive!

Jins · 19/07/2012 10:51

Initially it felt like I was spending more but in fact when I looked at my bills it worked out less overall.

Protein is more expensive, true but vegetables can be pretty cheap. Eggs are brilliant value for money. Fish is relatively chceap too. The cheaper cuts of meat are actually better for this WOE

Where you make the savings is in biscuits, cakes, sweets, crisps, fizzy drinks, puddings and yogurt!!!!! You also don't snack as much so there's a saving. I also found that I had to take packed meals out with me more often then not so I was saving about a fiver a day on buying a sandwich, crisps, chocolate etc.

ZZZenAgain · 19/07/2012 10:58

what would you take for a packed lunch if you are out and about with the dc? I can never think of anything

ProfYaffle · 19/07/2012 11:06

Humphrey - I'm re-thinking my whole veg growing strategy. As this season has been so pants I'm more or less writing off my usual summer veg and going for over winter veg in a bigger way to try and compensate. Luckily it's all quite friendly for this woe - leeks, cabbage, kale, caulis, psb and swede for the first time (if I'm not too late)

MissPricklePants · 19/07/2012 11:08

I have just done my shop online and its cost me the same as usual, just no junk food in it. No carby stuff like pasta for me and only small bags of it so dd can have it with her meals (will be having the same meals but adding carbs to dd's). Will be hard at first as I am a carb addict! But need to do it for my health!