Hello! I am seven days into the 8 weeks, following very strictly for now, and having a blast! I’m able to keep up with all of my usual activities (though I find myself getting a little woozy when I do heavier weights), and the cravings seem to be disappearing. I’m actually surprised at my ability to ignore them (hooray for herbal tea and black coffee!).
I haven’t lost any significant weight yet (less than 0.5kg) but I’m sure that will come, and my waistline has diminished by a couple of cm.

My question is about bean thread, aka cellophane noodles, those very thin East Asian noodles made from mung beans. I expect I’ll get a little tired of spiralled zucchini after a few weeks 🙂 The BSD recipe book has a number of recipes or suggestions for replacing wheat noodles with Konjac noodles, but I can’t find these readily, whereas bean thread is everywhere. I am wondering how bean thread fits in with the BSD?

Buena suerte, amigos!

I’m sure you will be posting good results soon Rob Bear and any loss is a step in the right direction, so stick with it.

Just checked nutritional values for cellophane noodles online and it seems they come in at 161 calories and 39.57g carbs for just 100g cooked cellophane noodles, so I would say these are best avoided. If you consider most of us try to limit carbs to 50g or less per day, you can see these noodles wouldn’t leave a lot of options carb-wise for the rest of the day. My advise is not to seek direct substitutes for the foods you used to eat, like pasta, noodles, potatoes, etc. but to get used to eating differently – for instance my dinner plate will most often consist of a protein source and either salad or veggies with nothing mimicking a carb source like pasta, rice etc.

Konjac noodles would be fine but they are quite pricey – you can get them online and in health food stores, like Holland and Barrett. Have occasionally used konjac products, I think the rice is more palatable, but it’s a matter of personal choice.

Hope the above helps a little and best of luck at next weigh-in.

thanks Sunny B, that is excellent advice. I’m guessing Holland and Barrett is a UK chain? I’m on the other side of the planet, but in any case it doesn’t matter, I agree with your advice of not trying to substitute, especially not during the 8 weeks of the f/t BSD. I’ve really enjoyed learning new recipes and new ways of creating a meal (I enjoy cooking).

Sorry, yes Holland & Barret is here in the UK. I’m sure you could get the konjac produces online, but I’m pleased you are thinking outside the box as far as substituting goes.

Veggie patties/fritters are a good option, they can be made with a couple of eggs, lots of veggies – chopped chard, spring onions (scallion), grated courgette (zucchini), watercress, spinach, with the addition of any herbs or spices you fancy to ring the changes and if you have the calories spare, you can add some cheese to the mix as well. Just make a batter with all the ingredients and fry off on small patties. I make the small – about a tablespoon of mix per pattie – and they come out at around 38 cals with 1g of carb per pattie. They can be eaten hot or cold and added to lots of different meals too. It’s fun tweaking the recipe and adding in different flavours.

Hmm .. 4 months late, I see ! Ah well, hope this is still relevant to some.

As a pasta substitute I have discovered Black Bean Spaghetti ! Yup, it’s from beans, it is black and it is like short-ish and skinny spaghetti strands. Cooks in half the time of your standard kitchen pasta. The secret (to me at least) is in the nutritional values which were a revelation. Namely, per 100 gms of the product : protein 45.3 gms; carbohydrate 14.3 gms, fat 5.3 gms, fibre 19.6 gms. Impressive stuff !

I find 50 gms is quite sufficient, for this 180 lbs male here, and it can be garnished with whatever you would normally garnish any other type of pasta. The taste is pleasant enough but is more likely to be swamped in taste by any garnish anyway.

Where did I get it ? From my local Sainsbury’s. It is marketed by Explore Cuisine. Suitable for vegans. I think it was £3 for 200 gms. Not bargain basement thus.

I now stand by to be blown out of the water by experts on here that declare, for some obscure reason, this stuff is BSD heresy !

Macloud