Week 10 - New Year Low Carb Bootcamp - The End is Nigh!

[BIWI]

So we start our final week!

Here is the Spreadsheet of Fabulousness

We will have one last weigh-in next Monday.

Hope you all have a good week!

The dairy thing doesn't surprise me in the least BIWI,, as a HV I was rather unflattering,y referred to as "the poo nurse" by my colleagues because I am interested n children's constipation, I have seen research before about large quantities of milk in the diet causing constipation and it's amazing the number if parents whose children have become little milk guzzlers with resultant constipation.

Some good stuff here about Coconut Oil.

Jake When DS was little he had a spell of being constantly ill, he caught one thing after another, was constantly on antibiotics and had such dark circles he looked like a little panda. The consultant he was sent to told me he felt like a victorian because he banged on all the time aboutconstipation being the root of all evils!

Well I have just had my excitement for the day and made a 999 call! I live on a busy road and was just turning out to drive to the town centre when I was passed by a horse! No saddle, bridle, etc and nobody with it, just trotting along an A road all on its own. Apparently the police had had several calls so I'm assuming the police will have found it and returned it home safely. Then came home to find a very unkempt man shouting and twirling around in the road right by the end of my drive. By the time I had parked the car and weighed up if it might be safe to approach him, he had run away

Busy day, Viper? Were the runaway horse and the whirling dervish connected in some way?

What an afternoon Timid!

Jake, glad you are working things out & feeling calmer. Enjoy some lovely LC food :)

Just added some more photos to the food thread, its going a bit quiet :(
photos here

Had chinese beef & veg for dinner. The oyster sauce was 20 carbs per 100ml, I used 100ml between 5 of of us, so hoping I didnt do too badly. It was delicious and well worth the 4g carbs!

I used a drizzle of Kecap Manis (sweet soy sauce) on something the other day Black, same reasoning as you that for the few carbs involved it was worth it!

Our tea was quite boring tonight as DH was going out and I couldn't really be bothered so we had leftover celeriac dauphinoise with chicken thighs and veg from the slow cooker

Evening all,

Glad you are having a better day jake, sorry things have been so difficult.

Congrats to the top losers!

Lavender how is DS? It sounds like a very frightening night. We nearly went to A&E last night with DD, she just would NOT stop screaming and we were starting to panic as its so out of character. 4 hours of screaming (from 7pm-11pm) in appalling distress (with intermittent bouts of feeding which were the only non screaming bits) and slapping her own ears/jaw and she finally went to sleep for an hour, which did seem to mark an improvement. But it was a farking awful night. Up and down every hour or so for another 20min + session of screaming misery Poor little love is absolutely exhausted. We dosed her as best we could with calpol at various points but she ended up wearing most of it. Pretty much 100% certain now it is a really nasty bout of teething, but we have never had it this bad. Still, after 2 days of almost complete food refusal she's eaten some stuff today. I am appalled by how carborific it was... mainly sultanas, baby crisps and oatcakes, but better than nowt, and she rejected all the sensible stuff like cheese, yog, blueberries! Still she ate a little rice, veg sauce and chicken for tea so a tentative whoop...

Today DH and I have definitely felt the need to be fueled by food rather than sleep, but have been almost entirely low carb bar two scotch pancakes (oaty not wheat which I like to think is slightly better... reading Wheat Belly atm) that were too good hot not to eat, but the rest of the batch was for DD.

Otherwise
B Eggs scrambled with spring onions and cheese, bacon. Greek yog with almonds, few seeds, 6 blueberries
S The aforementioned scotch pancakes, liberally buttered!
L Green salad, coleslaw, cheese, parma ham. Greek yog with few almonds
D Chicken breast stuffed with cheddar and butter, wrapped in parma ham, on pesto-y courgette spaghetti with mushrooms, topped with parmesan and a tomato and mozzarella side salad.

I have bought some licquorice tea today, inspired by you lot, looking forward to trying it.

PIL on way to stay for the weekend as its DH's birthday on Sunday. We are getting takeaway curry tomorrow night, so just going to peruse the menu shortly and work out what to have.

Houseguests are a whole new issue when low carbing though aren;t they? I feel a bit rude not having choccy biscuits, ice cream, etc in the house but we can't or we would finish the packets after guests have annoyingly opened them only to eat 2 biscuits.... And fretting about whether they will find the meals "incomplete" or be hungry, or suffer carb withdrawal in my house !

Ack, sorry for essay like post!

Splittheteaagain - I know what you mean about having guests.

Also, guests + alcohol = total disaster.

What we have been doing is making a low carb meaty stew and serving with cauliflower rice or roast chicken with braised cabbage and salad. You could serve small potatoes for guests if you like. My parents love the notion of low carbing so they just eat what we eat.

We tend to have chocolate in the house from unwanted gifts so that can be used with guests.

Made a sort of pad Thai with the no carb noodles tonight - pretty good though think I overdid the nam pla... Served with pork marinated with soy, garlic and chilli.

Am going to have the chicken tikka (comes with a salad) and also a vegetable side dish I think. And be strong regarding the naans etc well I might have a bite of DH's but that is all

You see Yama I don't feel very comfortable yet serving guests the "fakes" like cauli rice, courgette pasta etc. Though swede/celeriac/turnip is fine as they are frankly more interesting than spuds.

My parents are fledgling low carbers and keep phoningfor advice
But the best bit is, my dad (type 2 diabetic) says that since reducing his carbs his eyesight has improved all the way back to "as good as when I was a nipper". He is thrilled, as am I.

Menu for PIL this weekend:
B Posh looking smoked trout, scrambled eggs. Can also offer greek yog, blueberries, cereal, croissants from freezer
L Chachouka with chipolatas, green salad
D Takeaway curry - they can get their fix of naans and rice and cobra here!

B Fry up of bacon, eggs, mushrooms. Can also do beans, fried toms if wished or the yog/cereal/croissants as before
L Cheeses, ham, green salad, tom & mozzarella salad, coleslaw
D Fish pie topped with sliced turnips, broccoli, sprouts.

Hope they like it!

Split - they will love it! Lots of lovely food on offer.

Your Dad's eyesight improvement is so encouraging. My Dad texts quite a lot asking how I do x or y. Nice to be able to offer advice to the people who brought us up. I look forward to the day when I'm phoning my dc asking for advice. It will mean I've brought them up properly.

Sorry have not posted at all this week, or updated the spreadsheet / please don't delete me Willie! Put a couple of pounds on in Paris but have been good since and lost it all again and more. Two pounds down from two weeks ago - yay! But yet more parties this weekend for my birthday (big family do) so might put today's weight down as Mondays and then get back to über camp next week. I love a good über camp!

Sorry Jake and Lavender that you've been having a hard time.

Welcome back custy! Was on a low carb thread with you a couple of years ago (under a different name) and you were always v inspirational and your stick was even bigger than BIWIs - yay that you are joining again! Looking forward to having you on the thread (if I ever get the time to get on it myself - got the temp job, hence why all so frantic).

spiltthetea we had a similar teething episode a few weeks ago, it was so frightening, my poor ds2 was in torment and had a large swelling on the side of his neck and swollen gums. I'm not surprised you nearly went to A&E, they are in such pain - I dont remember ds1 suffering like that.
your menus look lovely, what is chachouka?

kitchenfairy i work in an office and the main thing is to be prepared - esp if there are no supermarkets near work; there really is nothing LC in corner shops unless you like gnawing on polish sausage. I make sure I have something in case of hunger - nuts/cheese slices/ham/total yog/double cream for coffee. I batch cook at weekends and put portions in microwavable containers, during winter things like LC shepherd pie/moussaka/meat loaf with veg and in summer salads featuring avocado, fried chicken, mayo etc. The main thing for me is my food not looking too weird - we have a communal eating area. A good staple I mentioned before for unobtrusive munching whilst working is chicken strips dipped in egg/parmesan and fried. I eat that on the train on the way in.

I have put on 1.5 lb in the last couple of weeks so now 4.5 lbs above original target - action required. Could be due to eating potato rosti & apple pie with ice cream on Sunday at mum's plus eating lashings of double cream at every opportunity lately. Decided to cut down dairy and see (have really cut down on nuts now I'm not snacking all day cos of the BAB so I think these were not having an effect).

I tried eating a tsp of coconut oil today - felt a bit sick for about an hour. Is that normal?

B: BAB 2 hb eggs with butter; 3 rashers streaky bacon; 1 almond flour pancake, half slice ham
L: tuna mayo in romaine leaves
S: 3 slices emmental (lunch was a bit light); 4 tsp peanut butter
D: seared tuna steaks with wasabi butter sauce; chinese style cauli rice with egg and prawns; broccoli stirfried with chili

the sauce I made tonight for the tuna steaks was out of this world divine - heat 2 oz butter, 1.5 tb soy sauce, 1tb wasabi paste, whisk and pour on fish..omg

Spilttheteaagain, I hope teething has calmed down. DS is slowly getting better. It's his birthday today though, so we have had to cancel everything.

Drank a couple of glasses of wine last night so looking forward to my bab. Ate badly yesterday as dh did all the cooking and seemed determined to sabotage me! Leek and potatoe soup, homemade meatballs with pasta, roast lamb with yorkshires etc etc. he does the best yorkshires ever and it's so hard to say no!

B- cafe creme, baby bel bought as emergency when getting ds presents.
L- meatballs and tomato sauce all homemade
D- left over above.

Too much coffee, too much creme, not enough water, too much wine ( spritzer) best not to let dh find out I put water in the lovely wine he buys:)

Fully aware my comment about not wanting wine yesterday has just been blown out of the water:)

morning - ds2 still asleep, most odd, I have early rising children

lavenderhoney hope you managed to get some rest

it's raining here so i guess it's soft play for us

hope everyone has a good weekend

Sorry for all those with sick children. It's very draining and sometimes very frightening isn't it? Hope all recover soon.

I have a sick husband which is a. annoying and b. inconvenient as I had 7 6y olds coming for DD2s birthday, plus my own 3! How will I wrangle 10 kids on my own if he takes to his bed? More importantly, what do I eat at Pizza Express? I usually have aubergine parmigiana but see that this has 20g carbs by itself! Oops!

Hope you all have a restful day

FIRSTTIMEPIG - the pancakes were great! We used almond milk instead of soya and some xylitol instead of Splenda (only because we had some left over from ages ago).

Served with bacon and a runny fried egg it certainly was a BAB and a half.

Right, I believe the kids are getting themselves dressed before we head out. Having not moved off the sofa for two days with a sickly dd it will be nice to get out. Going to Culzean Castle. Woodland walk and adventure playground here we come.

sybilfaulty - they do a salad at Pizza Express do they not?

spiltthetea - that sounds like an ear infection to me, especially with the ear slapping. DS2 used to suffer really badly from them. I would see a doctor if I were you, as often it leads to the ear drum perforating (not so much of an issue when they're little, btw).

Thanks all, DD is much better. It was me that had the rubbish night . Not sure if maybe my coleslaw yesterday was on it's last legs (end of the batch) or just a bug, but have been on the loo all night and camped by the loo fighting back sick. Lovely. Feeling a bit better now, and sipping a cup of tea whilst I contemplate getting up. I don't think I can eat eggs for brekkie though! When ill, I always go for no fat, starch and sugar, i.e dry toast with honey, or a pear or something. Hmmm. I shall see if my tea effects a miracle.

Lavender so glad your DS is on the mend.

And sybil to your DH being ill today, that is rubbish!

Mary chachouka is a new discovery of ours - from River Cottage Veg. It's a north african egg dish, bit like huveros ranchos but diff spices. Basically you cook sliced onions with cumin seeds in oil/butter until soft, then add sliced green peppers and garlic and hot smoked paprika and cook gently for another 10 mins. Then add some passata/tin toms and cook down gently until nice and thick. Then make little wells in the mix, and crack an egg into each, put a lid on top and cook until eggs are done (aiming for runny yolks, usualy about 5 mins ish). It's really delicious, kind of like poached eggs with the tastiest ketchup ever. We find that between two of us you can get away with about 1/2 onion, 1/2 pepper and 1/2 tin toms so not too carby. I often make the sauce up the night before and then warm it through and cook the eggs for a weekend breakfast, otherwise it takes forever!

Enjoy your day out Yama sounds lovely.

We did wonder about ear infections BIWI, DH used to have real trouble with those as a child, but doing some middle of the night googling suggested that it's also common behaviour in teething toddlers as the molars cause ear/cheek pain too. Coupled with the not eating and the comfort feeding it felt like teeth, and touch wood she is very much herself again now. Will wait and see.

Eating BAB of 2 x 97% meat sausages
Fried egg
reheated veggies from last night.

yum

Fingers crossed, spilt!

That egg dish sounds lovely but it also sounds a bit carby. Why not substitute the onions with shallots? They are less than half the carbs.

Well we cook it as a weekend treat, on days when have v low carb dinners planned so it doesn't bump up the whole day too much ( I realise today and the curry is an abberration, but that's due to guests). I still use onions as they are 40p per kilo and round here shallots are £3.60 per kilo and I just can't do it. So I go sparingly on onions in general. DH and I are experimenting with trying to find our carb maintenance level as we are both at target weight so testing the carbier veg in small quantities for effect is part of that really. But that's why I use green peppers, despite the recipe wanting red!

At present have lost less than a 1lb this week but have had some non low carb stuff.

I may also have over indulged on the Parmesan shortbread .

Still will weigh again on Mondau....no dairy today. Have had a BAB and will see how long I can go before I need to eat again.