12 week journal

Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)

We have not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you are have any health related symptoms or concerns, you should contact your doctor who will be able to give you advice specific to your situation.

posted by CharlieTHH
on 2 Feb 2021 at 09:57

Journal to BSD

Hello. I have started the BSD yesterday and want to keep a journal for myself, to reflect back and for accountability. I have lost weight over the last year, but have started focusing a lot on health this year with exercising and eating healthy foods.
I hope I can inspire others, and feel free to join in on the 12 week journey. We will be feeling great by start of summer in May!

Stats
SW: 115 kilo
CW: 95 Kilo
GW: 65

Day 1
Calories – 850, 20g carbs
Exercise – Leg day, alive program week 1, day 1
posted by CharlieTHH
on 3 Feb 2021 at 09:07

Day 2
Weigh in: 95.4
Calories: 860, 22g carbs
Exercise – Pull day, alive w1 d2
posted by CharlieTHH
on 3 Feb 2021 at 18:42

Day 3
Weigh in: 94 kilo
Calories – 889, 24g carbs
Exercise – Push day, alive w1, d3

Goal for tomorrow – dont go over 800 calories
posted by WindyJulz
on 4 Feb 2021 at 09:50

you are doing great Charlie!

I wouldnt worry too much about being slightly over the 800 – anywhere between 800 and 900 is spot on!
posted by Stilltrying
on 4 Feb 2021 at 10:33

Hi guys,
Sorry I dont know if I’m posting this in the right place! I’m 5 weeks in, going well so far, but I’ve realised I’m struggling with keeping a low carb intake. I’m aiming for under 25g carbs a day, but how on earth do I make up 800 cals with healthy foods with such a small carb intake? Vegetables and fruits seem to have such a high carb content 🙁
Any suggestions would be much appreciated! X
posted by sunshine-girl
on 4 Feb 2021 at 14:01

Hi stilltrying, I have been on this diet for nearly 5 years – mainly for health rather than weight loss . I have been asking that question and never had a satisfactory answer. I can manage to get down to around 35 but tend to be around 50g and it keeps my Blood Glucose steady and I manage to lose weight. If I go lower I dont get enough calories. If I go for more protein or fats I lower the carbs and up the calories but I miss out on a lot of the great veggies. My view, unless anyone can tell me different, is that at between 35 and 50 is good enough. Only thing I can suggest is to look at the fruit and only have it infrequently i.e. when I have the ploughmans from the book I only have half an apple. The rest of the time I stick with berries. I refuse to cut back on things like carrots and tomatoes for the sake of a few extra carbs.
If there is anyone who has any ideas that dont just quote numbers, but actual practical menu advice and food choices, then I will be happy to try.
posted by WindyJulz
on 4 Feb 2021 at 15:08

I think looking at fruit is the right thing… for example a pink lady apple has 19g of carbs. I have certainly reduced my fruit intake and upped veggies. Red berries far better than apples but even then in moderation.
Im with sunshine-girl though, 30-50g is good, anything below 100g carbs is considered low carb so below 50g is good..
I’m bad for cheese and mayo so think thats why i manage calories ok…… protein, veg and cheese or mayo and i tend to hit all the markers……
posted by JGwen
on 4 Feb 2021 at 16:57

Hi Stilltrying.

I would suggest installing an app like fatsecret on your phone and logging everything. You will start to see patterns and can look where you can shave some carbs off if you try to enter food before you eat it.

There are lots of recipes online nowadays for keto meals, just don’t fall into the trap of adding artificial sweetners. They raise insulin levels even though they have no calories.

The reason for the 20g target for carbs is that if you are insulin resistant you will have a high background level of insulin and you have to be at around 20g of carbs to be in ketosis. some people can achieve ketosis on higher levels of carbs. – Its the being in ketosis,
which means you are burning fat as your fuel that is the most important point. If you do that then your body will not reduce your metabolic rate when you keep calories low. If you have raised insulin levels so your body can’t make up the calories it needs from your body fat and you don’t eat enough calories to provide the fuel for the day your body will slow down your metabolism.

It all depends if you have a lot of weight to discard. If you have only a little, then its not such an issue, but research has shown that counting calories but not carbs for 6 months has a dramatic impact on metabolic rate, which is probably why the official advice is not not follow the BSD for more than 8 to 12 weeks at a time. – If you have a lot to loose then you can either play safe and do the research on meals to get under 20g or use some system to measure for ketones to identify your personal carbs limits.
posted by CharlieTHH
on 5 Feb 2021 at 07:30

Hey everyone
My quick stats
Day 4
Weigh in: 92.6
Since start of Fast 800: 3.4 kilo
Calories: 833, 22g carbs
Exercise – Was gonna be yoga/walk, but had a full rest day as was feeling emotional.

I find keeping my carbs low is easy enough because I decided to follow Keto. I dont enjoy keto overly much, because I love vegetables and fruit. And I dont think its particularly healthy in the long run, but you cannot deny the effect. You feel 0 hunger and fat melts off. So I figured if I was gonna do such a hard challenge as Fast 800, I might aswell take it all the way and go strict keto, keeping my carbs 20g. So no fruit, and only low carb vegetables such as mushrooms, and tons of broccoli.

I use myfitnesspal to track everything. Ive always done that. Its a fantastic, and free tool.
My daily diet looks something like this

2 eggs, little oil (before gym)
1 protein shake (after gym)
Dinner from keto websites aiming for 500 calories. Things like fat curries, or cream based stews. Server with broccoli. Can be fancy and serve with cauliflower rice or other stuff but I honestly just love broccoli.
posted by CharlieTHH
on 5 Feb 2021 at 18:47

Day 5 end

Weigh in – 92.5
Calories – 800
Carbs – 27
Exercise – leg day
Hunger feelings – do not feel hungry
Mood – the last 3 days I have been unbearably down, with crying. Unsure if from keto, 800 calories or completely unrelated. Hoping it’ll pick up.
posted by CharlieTHH
on 7 Feb 2021 at 17:41

Day 6
Weigh in – 92 kilo
Calories 838
Carbs 23
Exercise – Upper
Mood – Shit

Day 7
Weigh in – 91.7
Calories 859
Carbs 25
Exercise – rest day (cleaned a lot)
Hunger – Still going strong
Mood – Picked up today!
posted by JessKirkpri1
on 8 Feb 2021 at 02:22

Hi Charlie,
Welcome and Well done! I’ve done the Fast 800 last year and lost a little weight and also reduced my medication needs but I’ve been tending around 1200 since then and mostly maintaining. I’m ready to jump back in and look forward to watching your journey.
posted by CharlieTHH
on 8 Feb 2021 at 18:44

Day 8
Weigh in – 91, woo woo 5 kilos in one week!
Calories today been 869
Carbs 40 gram which is too high for what I’m aiming for but I’ll see how it affects scales tomorrow. Can cut 12g by not having my broccoli
Exercise today was a killer leg session
posted by florob85
on 8 Feb 2021 at 20:27

Charlie can I ask how much broccoli you are eating for 12g carbs to go by omitting it?? My calorie app lists 50g raw broccoli as 13 calories and 1.2g carbs, so you’d need to be eating 500g to get 12g – this is a huge amount of broccoli, almost an entire head! I’d suggest you could still have a decent portion of broccoli and keep your carbs low – I had 50g Brussels sprouts and 50g broccoli with my dinner tonight and that was plenty – over half my plate was green veg.
posted by MerryMelba
on 9 Feb 2021 at 01:00

Yes – I agree Flo! Charlie – it might be helpful to look at the Dietdoctor pages = https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto/vegetables which shows net carbs for 100g serve of vegetables.
That site has some great info and recipes. When counting carbs it is important to remember you only count NET carbs – Which is carbs minus fibre. How carbs are listed on packages varies depending on where you live. Here’s an explanation from online: “..The difference between net carbs and total carbs. Net carbs are simply carbs without fibre, and total carbs include fibre. Put simply, net carbs + fibre = total carbs.
Nutrition labels in Australia and New Zealand list fibre separately to carbs. That means that “carbs” on the back of the pack are always net carbs. In comparison, most nutritional labels in the USA and Canada include fibre in the total carb content. People in the USA will generally need to deduct the fibre from the “total carbs” to get “net carbs”.
Keep the broccoli 🥦🥦😉
posted by CharlieTHH
on 9 Feb 2021 at 06:01

I count carbs on my fitness pal, and it was there broccoli was 12g carbs for 200g of broccoli, which was a bit much. I normally have that with my meals but this meal was very filling.

So far I havnt been looking at net carbs, just normal carbs, I got most of my carbs from vegetables. If I look at net carbs I would have consumed 25g yesterday and around 15 on an average day 😊

So far I’m fairly happy with what I’m doing. I’m not sticking to 800 that strictly, between 800-900, but I don’t feel hungry. I didn’t have any loose today but I think I’m just very bloated. Normally eat early as I go bed at 9 for work but was 8 before I ate, so was fully expecting a gain 😂
posted by florob85
on 9 Feb 2021 at 09:53

Yep so my fitness pal doesn’t remove fibre from the total carbs (unless you’re on premium). I’m guessing from the fact you’re weighing in kilos that you are in somewhere like Australia/New Zealand/Europe so the labelling is probably different than in the UK where I am and carbs and fibre are listed separately. I checked the broccoli in my app and it says that only 5g net carbs in 200g broccoli, the other 7 are all fibre so don’t count – fibre does not cause an insulin response in our body as it isn’t metabolised for fuel, it just helps our gut micro biome get fed and bulks up our stool. However I still think 200g broccoli is a helluva lot for one meal! I absolutely love broccoli and there is no way I could manage that amount alongside a meal!
posted by CharlieTHH
on 9 Feb 2021 at 12:25

I love my vegetables and always have a big portion, instead of pasta, rice, potatoes etc, so for me I have been having around 200grams of broccoli to every meal easily
posted by sunshine-girl
on 9 Feb 2021 at 12:48

Hi Charlie, I did a search on broccoli and came up with 6g per 100g so you are right with 12g for your normal portion. However, 2.4 (or 4.8 per portion) are the fibre and not counted so you are having 7.2g. You cant totally avoid carbs and this is a LOW carb diet but there are carbs and carbs. Good carbs in veg and fruit and bad carbs in starchy food, including some veg. Take a look at broccoli, it contains iron, potassium, calcium, selenium, magnesium, vitamins A C E K and several of the B vitamins including folic acid. You could practically live on broccoli so dont stop eating it for the sake of a few grams of carbs.

Just look at how you are doing, not bad eh… You dont feel hungry, you are enjoying the food, you are losing weight. 3 out of 3 cant be bad. Dont make it any harder than it has to be – imaging several months ago talking about an 800 cal diet, you would think that mad. Keep on keeping on…
posted by CharlieTHH
on 9 Feb 2021 at 19:45

Day 9
Calories 860
Carbs 16g
Exercise – biceps and back

Thanks for the help and advice guys! I do feel this is going well, even tho I’m more towards 900 then 800. I do exercise a lot and I’m feeling great. I will keep prioritising whole foods and remember to minus my fibres
posted by CharlieTHH
on 10 Feb 2021 at 18:44

Day 10
Weigh in – 90.9
Calories – 1030
Net carbs – 27
Exercise – pull

Not an ideal day, but not beating my self up over it and proud it didn’t escalate further. Weight loss slowing down, but that’s to be expected. I know that maths check out, so I’m not getting discouraged
posted by CharlieTHH
on 11 Feb 2021 at 08:35

Day 11.
I weighed in at 91.2 this morning. I am very bloated, so have bought some magnesium. Im hoping to get under 90 kilos, since its a pretty big goal for me. Would be nice to hit that in a week, which is easily doable.
Today Im having a rest day from the gym
Aiming for 800 calories strictly for a week
posted by CharlieTHH
on 12 Feb 2021 at 08:27

Day 12
91.2 again.
Had around 1200 calories yesterday, was just incredible hungry. All still low carbs. Still so bloated
Might take another rest day, not feeling too great.
But still very motivated and hype to blast today!