Hello, I live in London, UK, am 39 and weigh 14st 7lbs. I’d like to lose at least 3 stones. I’ve recently read the book and am excited to get started.
Did everyone just start the diet straight from the book? Or did people sign up to the 12 week plan online?
What are everyone’s favourite breakfast ideas?
Does anyone recommend shakes or should I stick to the food ideas in the book?
Thanks in advance.
Also, how much water is everyone drinking on the diet? Thanks

HI,

I read the book at the end of last year and started 1st January. Other than commenting on here I didn’t sign up to anything. By Easter I was just inside the healthy weight range for my height, so eased up and am now losing more slowly by following the maintenance plan and being a bit stiricter now and then. I think for me this is best as I’m learning exactly what I can eat and not gain weight. If I’d just stopped the diet, I think I might have restarted some of my bad habits.

Personally I wouldn’t opt for shakes. They might work well, but are expensive, I prefer real food and unless you stay on them forever you’ll have to adapt to a new way of eating once you stop, so to me it makes sense to do that from the start. Everyone is different though.

My favourite summer breakfast is full fat natural yoghurt and strawberries and blueberries. I saw elsewhere that you don’t have time to cook in the morning, but tipping fruit onto yoghurt doesn’t take long. Alternatively, maybe you could make it when you get to work?

The reccomendation is to drink around 2 litres of water, in adition to whatever is in your food. If you do have shakes maybe you wouldn’t want so much.

Thanks for your reply! Yes yoghurt and fruit would definitely work for me!
Also, I just downloaded the two day plan from the website and one of the meals is minced beef lettuce taco – do you know what fat level minced beef I should use for that? We can buy 5%, 10%, 12% and 20% fat minced beef in the UK so I don’t know which one! Thanks

Btw, it seems that a longish period between your last meal one day and your first the next day might be beneficial, so unless you actually feel hungry, having breakfast later, or skipping it and having just two meals and perhaps some healthy snacks is fine. (I mention it, because it was news to me and I’d been ‘making’ myself eat first thing, believing three meals spaced out were the best thing to do, even if I didn’t actually want to gulp something down before rushing out for the day.)

Sorry, not sure. I’d go for the 10 or 12% as that’s what I’d buy anyway.

Generally we should go for the ‘normal’ full fat versions of food – regular full fat milk, yoghurt, cheese etc, not skimmed, semi-skimmed, low fat, reduced fat, fat free or any of that nonsense.

I like little gem lettuce leaves for ‘sandwiches’. They’re great with egg mayo, ham and tomato, cream cheese …

Hi, I started back in October 2017, I started by cutting out the ‘big carbs’ bread, sugar, pastry, pizza, rice, chocolate etc. – Then I used an app on my mobile phone (fatsecret), to log everything I ate so I could cut carbs back further. – I didn’t join the online plan, but have appreciated the help from people on the forum throughout my journey so far. I wouldn’t advise you to buy any shakes, this is all about learning to follow a new Way of Eating (WoE) which in time will become the norm for you as you realise you feel better and have more energy without the carbs or the extra weight. – By the way, I am down 90lbs so far, I haven’t done just one round of the 8 week program, but did a couple of rounds and then just got into the habit of eating low carb, and less cals than I was burning each day.
I would suggest joining either the one week or 4 week (zoom) challenge, where people set themselves targets for weight loss, and report in each week. Both threads have a mixture of newcomers and longer term members of the forum.

Stop spamming it’s pathetic.