Week 3 - New Year Low Carb Bootcamp - Full Fat or Light?

[BIWI]

So we've completed the hardest part of Bootcamp. Now is the time, if you wish, to relax things a little, and to move on to Bootcamp Light.

On the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness you will - after weighing in, of course - find the rules for Bootcamp Light. However, as I know some people can't access the spreadsheet easily, here they are:

Bootcamp Light

1. Eat when you?re hungry - if you?re not hungry, don?t eat
In Bootcamp, you should have been eating three meals a day. The point of this being to ensure that you got used to eating proper meals, and so that your blood sugar is regulated and stable. Having achieved that, you can now relax this a little bit. If you find you?re not hungry - which often happens, because ketosis suppresses your appetite - then don?t force yourself to eat. But don?t let yourself get so hungry that you make inappropriate choices! Always make sure you have plenty of low carb food to access quickly, if you need to.

2. Avoid processed food
Focus on pure, natural protein as the basis for your meals ? meat/fish/eggs.
You may include processed meats like bacon or (low carb) sausages, smoked salmon, smoked mackerel, gammon - but please don?t have these at every meal or every day. As well as being highly processed they often contain undesirable ingredients, can add unnecessary extra carbs into your diet, and often include sugar.

3. Eat lots of fat
Eating fat helps to keep you feeling fuller for longer. 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 and has too many carbs), 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 the bulk 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.

Beware that some of the veg on the allowed list can be surprisingly high in carbs once you make up a portion of it ? this is because they are denser, and therefore you tend to use more ? compare, for example, 100g of onion with 100g lettuce! Keep your focus on those veg which contain 3g carbs per 100g and use these as the focus of your meals. Use those over 3g per 100g sparingly.

5. You may eat some dairy
You should aim to include plenty of butter on this WOE. Fry with it and add it to your vegetables. And if you know that dairy doesn?t impede your weight loss 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.

If you?ve been cutting out tea/coffee, you can re-introduce this ? but just be careful how much milk you end up drinking. You can end up adding a lot of extra carbs this way.

6. You must drink a minimum of 2 litres of water per day
Even if you?re drinking more tea/coffee than in Bootcamp, this is still a non-negotiable part of this WOE. And the more weight you have to lose, the more water you should drink. Water helps to flush out the ketones that your body will product ? so flushing out the fat. However, drinking this amount of water can affect your electrolyte balance; you need to make sure that you get plenty of sodium, magnesium and potassium. There is less need to worry about restricting salt if you?re eating a low carb diet. Good sources of potassium are salmon and avocado and spinach is a good source of magnesium. You could also consider supplements if you have an issue with this.

7. You may drink some alcohol
But restrict this to once or twice a week max. Vodka with soda is the best thing to drink. Or Champagne, red wine or dry white wine. Absolutely no beer/lager, cider, liqueurs, cocktails or full sugar mixers. You can drink spirits with artificial sweeteners, but bear in mind that we are attempting to avoid all things artificial!

Alcohol is the easiest source of fuel for your body, and it will use this over and above anything else that is available to it. Therefore, even if you?re following the diet absolutely to the letter, including alcohol can prevent weight loss.

8. You may eat some fruit
Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb are all fine. But please ? only once a day at the very most, and keep an eye on your portion sizes. Just for information ? these are the carb counts:

Rhubarb ? 0.8g carbs per 100g (but don?t forget you will need to sweeten this ? and not with sugar!)
Blackberries ? 4.4g carbs per 100g
Raspberries ? 4.6g carbs per 100g
Strawberries ? 6g carbs per 100g
Blueberries - 6.4g carbs per 100g (although this is a bit controversial - I have had differing carb counts from various sources - some saying as much as 12g carbs per 100g)

9. You may eat some nuts/seeds
Nuts/seeds can make a good snack. BUT it is incredibly easy to overdo it, and you can end up eating your bodyweight in carbs. As an occasional snack they are great, but keep it occasional and keep the portions to a small handful at most.

Macadamias are not only luscious, but they are very low in carbs.

Here are some carb counts ? BUT ? check the back of your packets as I don?t know if these are for raw or roasted nuts:

Pistachios 4.6g carbs per 100g
Macadamias 4.8g carbs per 100g
Pecans 5.8g carbs per 100g
Almonds 6.9g carbs per 100g
Peanuts 7.1 g carbs per 100g
Cashews 18.1g carbs per 100g

10. Avoid artificial sweeteners
The aim of Bootcamp was to help reduce the stranglehold that sugar has on us ? and to curb your sweet tooth. But it does make some things difficult, e.g. desserts at a dinner party, and it is undeniable that it can be enjoyable ? occasionally ? to eat something sweet. However, restrict such goodies. For some people, artificial sweeteners can impede weight loss.

oh no. I ate fennel without checking 17.5 carbs . oops.

Why is baby corn not allowed? my Tesco packet says its 2.8 per 100g, I thought that was okay.

Well apparently I haven't been doing as well as I'd thought what with all this baby corn yesterday and fennel today.

Postbellum, thanks for your reply.

I've just searched to see if I can find details of the book and cam across http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1191047/the_mother_who_exposed_the_links_between_obesity_and_common_chemicals.html this article.

The gist of it is that there are many new chemicals incorporated into the food chain almost daily in the forms of pesticides, additives etc that the body is bombarded and can't deal with them. So the body gets rid of these by storing them in the fat cells.

I'm not that good at understanding the 'science' behind things but I read this stuff years ago and it's always in the back of my mind. It could well be more woo stuff but the book was very interesting.

Yes I'm also interested in the affects of slipping in and out of ketosis.

As once Bootcamp is finished, I'm likely to stick more or less to the WOE (have been eating quite low carb since I last did low carb, but not in ketosis - have been maintaining rather than losing weight; would have the odd slice of toast (never more than one)/bowl of pasts/pizza/roast potatoes) but probably not quite low carb enough to be in ketosis because I really really like wine

The link again. Sorry.

pregnantpause Oh nooo me too! - I had fennel on Monday, thinking it was low carb - argh! That'll teach me to check the list.

Baby corn varies WILDLY with carb content listing

Skandi, thanks for replying. I've heard about charcoal tablets too. I think they can also help cleanse the colon really well by removing stuck stuff, so that we absorb more of the good stuff. I'd be interested to see how you find them.

I hope they help.

Hi can I join? I'm a bit behind you, currently day 11. It's going well, except was ill over weekend with evil fever and sore throat and barely ate (bit of avocado on sat, few mouthfuls beef stew on sun) but did drink loads of hot honey and lemon which obviously has loads of carbs. Now appetite pretty low, don't know if because of illness (now just a cold) or ketosis.

Does anyone know

1. does the honey and lemon at the weekend mean I need to start bootcamp again?

1. have been entering food on MFP to keep track, and it keeps telling me my calories are too low, will too few calories stall me at this stage? I'm eating well, plenty of fat, not hungry, green veg etc.

thanks all, have read whole thread and love all the inspiring stories!

I would like to know about being in ketosis and breastfeeding.

Mumat. I have read that toxins which are stored in your fat as opposed to your liver (if your liver cannot cleanse them out), are there because of the glucose insulin response and your body stored it as fat immediately rather than letting your liver and kidneys cleanse it out. So if you use this fat for fuel then it should come out as waste

There are things the liver and kidneys cannot remove eg heavy metals.

I am not sure of the exact science on this as I am not a medical type person and human biology at school was a very very very long time ago!

Gosh. Just thinking about it, I read that book over 10 years ago. I read the primal blueprint about 2years ago and Atkins at some point in between. More recently I've started to read this john briffa book and the Kathleen de maison book too.

I've had all this knowledge in my head, but I have continued to eat all the crap I've been eating. That's just mad! I tried to go primal a couple of years ago and lasted only about 6 days. I just didn't know what to eat.

I have often felt like I have some self sabotage mechanism and that was why I kept doing it to myself.

I read about six months ago on MN about sugar addiction and that was the first time I remember thinking oh, maybe this is actually a problem. I tried to cut out sugar but failed miserably.

I even lurked on at least 3 of the previous bootcamp threads thinking about it but doing nothing.

I can't believe i'm actually in week 3 of a plan that so far seems to be working and is finally making me experience the combined wisdom of all those books.

diets just always left me feeling a bit bamboozled.

this woe just makes sense but don't know why it didn't click earlier. I think it must be down to the BIWI factor and the amazing support on here.

For the first time in I don't know how long I am enjoying food, not craving crap, and don't feel like a failure or rubbish about myself. I am not daunted by the fact that I still have about 2.5 stones to go either. This started as yet another attempt to lose weight but it's about more than that now.

Sorry for the long post, but I feel like I've just had a eureka moment, which I wish I'd had years ago.

pregnantpause - where did you get that fennel count from?! According to the veg count I have, it's only 1.8g per 100g - are you sure you didn't misread the figure, and the decimal point was in the wrong place?!

Baby sweetcorn is a difficult one, and carb counts vary - I don't think we ever got to the bottom of it, other than to think that maybe they vary by variety? If it says 2.8g on your packaging, though, I would go with that.

Thanks for Briffa questions - I will collate and see what I can do! Keep them coming as well.

Thanks skandi, again :)

I'm curious about how the body works in terms of getting the stored fat and using it for energy? Also, if the liver and kidney couldn't deal with it before what is different about the process when stored fat is used?

If it just gets wee'd out then that's brilliant.

I also did biology at school too many years ago and loved it. Sorry if I'm being a tad lot boring, I'm just genuinely interested to know.

I used my fitness pal. Obviously not the most accurate. I will however bow to your knowledge on it (not least because it means I can relax about what I've eaten today)
I've checked the packet in the baby corn and 2.8 is used. Thanks Biwi

pregnantpause just checked the SoF, and Fennel is on there at 1.8 - though perhaps it's one of those things that varies?

It has got me thinking though about what I will do after Bootcamp - am very happy on the WOE and don't mind not having bread/pasta etc but don't want to be worrying about the exact carb count of stuff like fennel, and also really like lentils and pulses and beetroot and stuff that is too carby for staying in ketosis, and also don't want to be worrying about what family/friends might give me going out.not to mention the wine i.e., I would definitely either not be in ketosis, or slipping in and out.

Definitely interested in what Briffa has to say about maintenance rather than loss (guess I had better get the book as it's probably already in there).

at the BIWI factor!

I think we all need some kind of 'eureka moment' before we fully commit to a diet, mumat39. I so identify with what you've said - reading all about it, buying Slimming magazine, talking the talk - yet never actually doing anything about it.

For me, two things converged. I had been low carbing on and off (more recently very off!) for about 8 or 9 years, and gradually seeing the weight pile on because I wasn't doing anything about it. November 2011, trying to buy a suitable little black dress for a Christmas party, finally made me face up to just how big I had got. I was horrified and disgusted with myself - to make matters worse, I knew exactly why I had piled on the weight!

At around the same time I started to read more about low carbing. I can't remember what the trigger for that was. And I came across Dr John Briffa's book "Escape the Diet Trap". It was a revelation. Not only endorsing low carbing as a way to lose weight, but also the long-term health benefits. That was my 'eureka moment'. I knew, from that point, that it was up to me to take charge again of my eating and thus my life.

Fennal also given at 1.8g here

mumat39 i meant to ask, how are you finding this WOE with your dc's allergies? is it going ok? hopefully as you're enjoying it so much any extra work in the cooking department isn't too onerous?

Pregnant pause, I think some of the entries on MFP could have been entered by someone. On it, there is a bar code reader, so if you scan the pack using the mobile phone mfp app, assuming it has a bar code, then hopefully it should come back with the correct details. Apologies if you've already tried this.

Welcome, pyjamalover!

I think it probably would be a good idea to return to Bootcamp, as the honey and lemon will probably have knocked you out of ketosis. The reason for the two week period is to ensure that our addiction to sweet things is broken but, more importantly, to shift the body from carb-burning to fat-burning.

I'm sorry that you've been so poorly

You don't need to worry about counting calories on this WOE. That said, I'm a little concerned if it says you aren't eating enough - you can usually expect to eat more calories on a low carb WOE (way of eating).

Just to be sure, can you list out your meals for the last 3 or 4 days, so we can see if there's anything you need to tweak?

I am guessing though that if we are not in ketosis but still not eating many carbs, and exercising sufficiently, and not spiking our blood sugar, that our bodies would just use up the glycogen rather than storing it?

Off to do some homework and order The Book.

sorry if that was a Bum Steer Pregnant Pause, I'd go with the packaging count if it's low! [considers adding baby corn to shopping list]

Just had buttery leeks, courgette ribbons and 2 fried eggs for lunch. Yum. Chances of me ever cooking that for myself for LUNCH before this way of eating = zero.

Just played squash. Will not be able to move tomorrow....

Thanks everyone about lovely puppy comments

I have just made a lovely beef stew in the slow oven and given the new mum all the off cuts of beef...think she was even more pleased with that than with the puppies (well she is a greedy labrador!!)

On the whole maintenance issue...maybe when there are lots of us trying to reintroduce some healthy carbs (but avoiding being obsessive and counting every carb gram for the rest of our lives ) we could have a Bootcamp maintenance thread...?
what do you think?

With another thread our evil plan to completely monopolise Mumsnet will surely succeed...Mwahahahaha!

Good plan, cathy! (A maintenance thread, that is, rather than monopolising MN!)

And those of you who have reached maintenance can help and advise the rest of us aspiring to get there!

BIWI, I don't think you realise just how amazing you are!

Willie, I'm actually eating more than I was before. I was surviving on shop ought sandwiches, biscuits and ready meals. I used to eat sandwiches and biscuits standing over the sink. Dd is anaphylactic to wheat and some other foods so the sink was better than a plate at catching crumbs. The only thing I'm eating now that is not safe for dd is mayo, but as that isn't crumbly and I make sure I wash my face and hands afterwards, what I'm eating is actually safer for her. Since starting this and with the advice from here, we've also started having Sunday lunch together with roast and veg. I haven't had the potatoes or gravy, but had all the lovely veg. Dd asks most days 'can we have a joint lunch on Sunday?' This is the first time we've had a family meal together. It's truly brilliant! As I get better at cooking I'm sure we'll be able to have a few more family meals together too.

Willie, thanks for asking