Hi I started this diet 8days ago. I started at 14 1/2 stone a size 18/20. I have used an app to record all my food and drink and have created varied meals (very little carbs). I have not found it particularly difficult. I have tried slimming world and weight watchers before which do not work for me. I always get frustrated as they are always spouting that if you stick to the plan you will loose weight, I always stick to it religiously and do not loose weight! I am doing this diet as my dad has type 2 diabetes which I believe led to his early Alzheimer’s.
On the 800 blood sugar diet I started well loosing a lb a day for the first 4 days. I then continued at between 0.2-0.6 a day but now my weight is increasing slowly each day. I am definitely eating a variety of foods and not using ‘fat free’ substitutes and eating below 800 calories. I am a teacher so as it is the summer break I am not a busy as usual, I have no stress or anxiety and try to go for a long walk daily ( I was doing the coach to 5 k but pulled a muscle so haven’t run in two weeks).
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Has anyone else gone through this?
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Hi Welcome to the forum, Could you give us a little more information so that we can help you.
The first point is what (in grams) is your carb intake? If you saw the TV program in the middle of the week by Dr MM you will have seen that Insulin is like a switch. – When it is triggered then your body can not access your fat stores. – Keep it low and your body will be in ketosis and can freely access your fat stores for fuel.
What he didn’t mention in the program is what level of carbs you have to be at to be in ketosis. – Some research on professional cyclists in training suggests that they can go as high as 100g a day of carbs and still be in ketosis, but for us mere mortals, especial those of us who have been overweight, and have a history of trying to control weight through calories counting alone we are likely to have damaged our metabolisms so need to be lower. Some people can get into ketosis still at 50g a day, but for many the sweet spot is 20g. a day. – The simple way to measure and calculate is to use one of the apps like fatsecret on your phone.
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So the next issue is that people often confuse weight with body composition. – When our insulin levels are high it blocks other hormone signalling systems. One of which is that for growth hormone, the hormone responsible for ensuring we have strong bones and build muscle in response to exercise. – Obviously stronger bones and more dense muscle weighs more than weak bones and limited muscle capabilities. – So as well as looking at the readings on the scale, also get used to measuring your progress based on body shape. – Learn to look for inch loss, but just to make it more complicated you are likely to find that waist and hips are the last areas of fat the body targets. – People find their faces become less bloated, their collar bones re-emerge, they even drop a shoe size before the body decides to target the fat around the waist and hips.
Hope these suggestions help.
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Thankyou. I have checked through my food diary and the maximum carbs I have had have been from chickpeas (I love falafels). I have had 120g of chickpeas, an online tool shows that at 73g of carbohydrate. No inch loss yet around the waist.
I think I will give the diet another week and see what happens. -
I have just managed to change the settings on the app that I was using to measure carbs. I did not realise there were carbs in apples etc. I can track that more readily now. I have been under 90 each day but I may need to reduce that more!. I will try and see what happens.
Thanks
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Vchurchman, swapping white and refined carbs is a good idea but not in the early days of the diet and certainly not as a regular item. So, as an example, you can have oats for breakfast but only around once a week and only 20 to 25 g – which is probably a lot less than you would normally have. Things like chickpeas and lentils are better for you but, as you found out, still very high in carbs. Try to find out the carb value of a food before you eat it, there are lots of things you can have like cauliflower mash or riced, courgette spirals instead of pasta and my very favourite is aubergine slices in place of pasta in a lasagne. If you are still wanting to eat other carbs (chickpeas for example) use them as a very small part of a meal and not very often.
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Hi, I would suggest a target of a maximum of 20g of carbs per day. – Some people can manage to discard weight at 50g, but you are guaranteed to be in ketosis at 20g of carbs per day.
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Can I ask about ketosis? After watching MM’s lose a stone in 21 days, I had the impression this would happen if we ate fewer calories than we used, even if we ate carbs. Is that not the case? (I’m still going to stay low carb, just wondering.)
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Hello, I’ve been on the BSD for just over a month now and I’ve lost 4kg. I’m wondering too what is meant by ketosis. I always thought it was something bad, but perhaps I’m confusing it with ketones.
I’m not that good at following recipes and I can’t persuade my husband to join me in this diet. However, it would be helpful to know the calorific value food such as nuts – I love them but can eat lots at one sitting (which is obviously not so good). Is there an App you can recommend, please? -
Squidge
From a technical point of view, many people will go in and out of ketosis at some point during a 24hr period no matter what they eat. It used to be most people rather than many—but that was in the days when (generalising wildly) people ate far less than they do now, had far larger gaps between meals and moved more—getting from A to B means expending energy. So ketosis is nothing special, it just means that you’ve used up all your glycogen stores and your body needs to break down your fat stores for energy.
In our times of plenty and readily available carb sources, ketosis is a rarer thing because many people eat very frequently and keep their glycogen stores topped up.
Generally speaking, most people will enter mild ketosis (and mostly stay in it, rather than go in and out of ketosis) at a level of fewer than 100g carb each day. Some people need to go a bit lower, but even so, actually the vast majority of people will be in a good level of ketosis at 50-60g of carb a day. It isn’t necessary for most people to drop to fewer than 20g carb and, having read around the subject rather a lot over the last 18 years, I’ve noticed that many Keto/Low Carb researchers recommend not going too low (unless you have to) because it’s much harder to sustain in the long term. Having 50-60g carb a day makes it possible to include a wide range of veggies (and bigger portions of them for negligible calories).
But you’re right, most people will end up in ketosis simply by focusing on eating 800 calories. That’s because even if you ate nothing but white carbs for your 800 calories (a terrible idea 🙂 ) that would only equate to 200g of carbohydrate (because a gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories). Most people know (and MM advises) to put their focus on protein and vegetables instead. Again, protein is 4 calories per gram, so if you want to make sure you have decent amounts of protein, you won’t have enough calories left to feed yourself loads of carbs. The chances are that after focusing on protein, you’d only have enough calories left for fewer than 100g of carbohydrate (and probably far fewer grams of carbohydrates than that).
So, ensuring you only consume 800 calories each day will automatically make most people go into ketosis because we want maximum bang for their buck—most of us end up with a decent amount of protein and lower carb vegetables on each plate. It happens pretty much by default. 🙂
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Hi Squidge,
If you get the chance to look at Dr MM;s program again, there is a section where he describes Insulin level as being like a switch. – When Insulin is raised, then your body can only burn sugar for fuel. When insulin is low then your body can turn your fat stores into ketones and use those for fuel.
Insulin is raised in response to what we eat. Our bodies are designed to keep the sugar level in our blood stream at a consistent level, and if it is likely that the sugar level in our blood will be raised in response to something we have eaten or drunk then our body releases insulin.
Now here is the bit that may shock you, we often hear fancy terms on the sugar levels in the blood and T2. But lets look at it in a simple level. – teaspoons of sugar dissolved in the blood. in the the an adult human has on average 4.5 litres of blood, and the body tries to keep the level of sugar equal to 2 teaspoons of sugar. – The level of sugar dissolved in the blood to be classed as a T2 is an extra 3/4 of a teaspoon of sugar. High levels of sugar in the blood is so dangerous to body tissues that even when we drink something that tastes sweet our body starts to release insulin, which is why artificial sweeteners trigger an insulin response.
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What this all means is even if your keep your calories down, if your food intake causes raised insulin then your body can not access your fat stores for fuel. Counting calories short term may cause weight loss, but after a short period your body goes hang on, there isn’t enough food coming in to supply my energy needs, if I am going to survive I need to conserve energy. So your metabolic rate slows down. That is why programs like the biggest loser don’t have reunions. – There was research carried out on those who took part in one program. The only participant who was not larger than when they started. was one who regained his weight after the program so decided to have surgery.Obviously calories do count, in so much as if you are eating 3000 calories a day and only burning 2000 you will put on weight even if you are in ketosis. – But if you want to burn fat you have to keep carbs low enough for your body to access your fat stores.
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Hi Pearliewhite, a lot of us use the fatsecret app.
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Hi Pearliewhite, I think there is often confusion between ketosis (good as far as BSD is concerned) and ketoacedosis – a complication linked inter alia with Type 1 diabetes. JGwen explains ketosis beautifully above. This link to the dietdoctor website explains the difference between ketosis and ketoacedosis. Hope it helps. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/ketosis
Incidentally, the dietdoctor website is well worth a browse for background info and excellent recipes.
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Thanks for the explanation, JGwen. That makes it a lot clearer.
I think that because I’m not diabetic I thought the stuff about insulin didn’t apply to me, but I now see it matters to everyone. -
Glad to have been of help Squidge,
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Reported alanarene possible advertising.
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I found this documentary on Amazon Prime video, which sums up some of the current theories pretty well! It’s called Fat Fiction link: https://amzn.to/3iHJOQJ
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I hope no one minds me butting in! This is a really interesting topic and l am learning lots from all the discussions. I sympathise with not able to lose weight after trying so hard.
I am a vegetarian and find it hard to get to keto point. So this is very interesting and slightly worrying as l now feel its going to be a difficult journey as my diet mainly consists of vegetables, pulses and eggs – soya protein gives me upset tummy so l eat little tofu and soya beans. I absolutely agree with this program but how will it work for vegetarian?
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Success123
I am a strict vegetarian and lost 42 lbs following this way of eating. I simply cut out pasta, bread, biscuits, sugar, rice, etc etc. When I first started the BSD way of eating I didn’t know about ketosis and I didn’t know about fasting. By following the basic rules of the blood sugar diet I managed to lose my weight and get to goal. I struggled after two years maintenance and now am back to being strict again in order to lose 10lb which has gone on over the last year.
For breakfast I ate Greek yoghurt with raspberries and chia seeds. Lunch was egg salad or cheese salad or home made soup. I like the egg muffins from the recipe book. Evening meal was something along the lines of Omelette, roasted vegetables, Halloumi, courgette and halloumi bake, cottage pie with quorn and Cauliflower mash. I did buy the recipe books but most of the recipes were meat and fish. I did lose weight fairly slowly and it took me 11 months to lose 42lb. I’d never been able to lose weight with SW or WW slimming clubs. Turns out I was insulin resistant and so by cutting the carbs I lose the weight. I didn’t eat pulses as they can be quite carb. I was very strict and still haven’t had a glass of beer since January 2017! Now I don’t eat breakfast and do 16:8. I have read Jason Fung intermittent fasting and have managed a 42 hour fast and when I am back at goal will use fasting to help me maintain.
My advice would be to keep things simple. Cut out the nasty white carbs completely and you will lose weight. JGwen is also a vegetarian and she has lost more weight than me. Being vegetarian means we don’t have the same choices as meat and fish eaters but we can still lose the fat.
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Hi clarinetCathy
Firstly congratulations on your amazing weight loss, fantastic result!
Thank you so much for your positively encouraging reply. l have started to eat my meals once a day last three days (giving myself roughly 2hrs to eat my 800 kcal) – this has stops me constantly thinking about my next meal when eating three times a day. I do agree it’s a longer weight loss journey for vegetarian.I shall definitely follow your method – Sainsbury’s trip to load up! My family members have diabetes, l have escaped it so far but am concerned l may be next. Dr MM’s plan has shown me a way to a healthy future.
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
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Hi Success123,
One of the things I enjoy about this forum is that we are free to discuss the latest research and to discuss the pros and cons of alternative methods of getting to where we want to be. Some forums treat the Doctor who’s methods are being taught as god like and he/she is right – every other theory or any research that suggests an alternative technique is so wrong its heresy.
As CC says, I have successfully discarded over 40kg, and while I still have more to discard to get to my target dress size I am at a weight where I can live a full life.
I started off by cutting out the major carbs, which was a big change in eating styles, I had grown up with a culture where you had bread or potatoes or pastry or some other carbs to fill you up. My mother and father both grew up in households with widowed mothers who struggled to make ends meet. Cutting out processed food cut my carb intake down dramatically. And the weight loss started.
Then I started to introduce time restricted eating, I still tend to not eat until late afternoon.
Start off following those processes and then you can think about where to go next. Perhaps look at the work of Dr Fung. So you move beyond time restricted eating (which is where you have eating window during the day) and fasting where you go 24 hours plus without eating. – At the start when you are so carb focused you can’t think of how you could survive without eating each day, but in time, this will change.
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Why do you think people lose weight?
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Oh, I had a similar situation. I didn’t know whether to write something in this thread, because 2 years have passed, but I still want to share my little story. I also tried to lose weight about 2 years ago, I first of all decided to make a proper diet. Many of my friends advised me to consult with specialists from similar sites like https://medicalweightlosslehighvalley.com/. But I decided that I could do it myself, I began to carefully monitor the calories spent for the day, using a special application. It seems that the diet is made up correctly and I should lose weight, but my weight either remained the same or gradually increased, even taking into account training. And as already mentioned in the thread, it would be all about the amount of carbohydrates consumed, I reduced it to 30g and I began to lose weight. You may have had the same problem.