Why am I finding it so hard to even make a start with the BSD? It is maddening, I have bought the ingredients to make a start on the diet several times only to fail miserably, always tomorrow! I feel an absolute mess, I know how good I could feel, I used to lose weight years ago on 800 cals a day and know its easy when your heads in the right place! I hate myself every dam day for not having the backbone to just get through one day, guess Iv got myself into such a pit that climbing out is not easy! Help me any please, advice?

Desperate!

Hey Tripplebellybuster – firstly, stop beating yourself up it’s counterproductive, constantly feeding into the negativity you seem to be building up around yourself. It would make anyone struggle to make a start, if they couldn’t see any way forward. Have to say even the nom de plume you have given yourself, speaks of how down on yourself you are right now. Secondly, forgive yourself for being human, after all, in that respect we are all the same, we are all fallible. Find something positive about yourself – no matter how small – and use that to start building more positivity in your mental dialogue.

My advice is to ignore what has gone before, start that positive dialogue with yourself and make a small change – even if it is just for one day, even if it’s just resisting an extra carby treat, or not having potatoes with your dinner. Or you could make that your first personal mini-goal – to do the BSD for just one day? From there, a second day might prove possible. But whatever you decide, please make tomorrow your new start – close your eyes, hold your nose and just jump in!

Take a look at the ‘Review, Renew and Refocus ……’ thread and the ‘Spring or Fall, a Challenge for all …..’ thread – the folks on these will gladly support you as you make a start. The challenge one is for those of us who find the idea of eight weeks a little daunting, it runs for four week until early September, but being a little late to the party won’t matter at all.

I believe you can do this, now you just need to convince yourself. Hope to see you on board properly soon – best of luck.

Finally here’s a little quote that might help (or not):
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Ralph Waldo-Emerson (1803-1882)

I agree with SunnyB. As your own experience indicates, 99% of tackling a big task like this is mental. Slicing and dicing yourself, hating yourself, thinking vicious things about yourself is only going to make you feel weak and helpless and drive you to emotional eating. Stop the cycle of self-abuse. When your thoughts wander in that direction, don’t give in to them, don’t agree with them. Stare them down and stop them.

Then just make a meal. One meal with the ingredients you’ve bought. Weigh and measure everything, tally up the calories and carbs (I use MyFitnessPal). Focus on the details. Let them fill your head instead of the lies and self-sabotage. Enjoy the physical experience of delicious and nutritious food. When that’s done, enjoy the mental and emotional rewards of having already achieved a goal that hours earlier seemed so frustratingly impossible: making a start.

If you haven’t gotten proper ingredients lately, I bet there are still some things you have in the house that can work. Tell us what’s in your fridge and pantry and we can come up with something. I live for that kind of BSD problem solving. It’s fun! Let’s inject a little joy and positivity into your day, shall we?

I know exactly how you feel. I spent the first week doing bsd then not doing bsd LOL! i find what helps is saying to yourself, “just for today”. Take it one day at a time, if I’m flagging I promise myself I’m just going to get it done today then will see tomorrow. I also had to say to myself “no-one is making you do this, you chose to” it’s easy for me to start feeling resentful about it and have a little whinge in my own head (not saying thats you, thats def me). Figure out what is putting you off getting it done, fear of restriction? Are you tired? And remember this is only for a short time, instead of thinking of it as 8 weeks or 12 weeks, maybe as everyone said just promise yourself 1 day of the week. And if you want to go further say two weeks. agree with sunnyb and enesca. Chop this up into manegable bits. Also look at your eating patterns and work with that. I have one meal and space for a snack apple/cottage cheese. It works for me, do you need three meals, do you need to feel full at the end of the day (i for one can’t sleep if I feel really hungry before bed). Do you need breakfast but can take or leave dinner? It may be easier and more satisfying to have two meals instead of one.

And also this is hard, if it were easy there would be no-one overweight, so give yourself a break. If it makes you feel better, on the first day I tried I ended up stuffing half a block of cheese and a whole bunch of tortillas down my throat, whilst guzzling coke (at midnight I think). I’ve been doing this for about 2 and 3/4 weeks and during that time I have basically only actually done BSD for 2/3 of the time. But I am down almost 10lbs and have just managed 6 days on plan since last blip. It’s ok to not get it how you want, main thing is to try again. It does get easier xxx

Loadsa hugs!!!

You mentioned buying the ingredients to make a start on the diet, and I am just wondering if this is the right way for you to think of it. I approached the BSD like a skittish horse, changing as little as I could from my former way of eating at first, so mainly just leaving out the white stuff, and controlling portion sizes of the rest. I also started with just 2 800 days a week, with the rest at 1600 calories working up gradually to the full 7 days as fasting got easier and easier to do over the months. I had an awful lot to lose though, so always looked at it for the long term rather than a quick fix. If you give us an idea of what you like to eat we can have a go at seeing if we can make your own current diet work with the BSD rather than throwing everything out and starting something completely new which may be causing you problems.

Mixnmatch – that is exactly how I started. I looked at all our favourite recipes and just cut the white stuff. Your suggestion about having a go at seeing if we can make TBBs current diet work with the BSD is a great suggestion and really worked for me.

Over time I added new BSD friendly foods and have really expanded the range of foods that I enjoy eating. Husband initially added the white carbs but a lot of the time now he doesn’t bother.

I started that way too — just dove in with whatever I had and focused first on the carbs — it truly calms the appetite and let’s you see some relief very quickly from the overwhelming drive to eat.
Cutting your carbs is a really easy way to start.
The advice above is so good!
And I always tell myself, my first step to anything I am trying to improve — “stop doing the wrong thing” — it won’t happen immediately so just begin with tiny micro-steps toward doing the right thing.
You are going to get better and better at this — there IS a learning curve. Micro steps — tiny micro steps will ultimately help you get into the groove.
Keep us posted and best wishes on your journey.

Thankyou all of you for your kind words and encouragement, and guess what!! I made a start today. I had the portobello toast with goats cheese and pine nuts, absolutely yum, I drizzled a bit of aged balsamic over the top, I habitually went to go online while eating, or turn on the TV, but today I decided to just mindfully enjoy my food, chewing and savouring every mouthful. Mid morning and I am having a pot of herbal tea, and its so nice, my usual sugary coffee was getting boring to be honest, almost as if my taste buds where sick of the taste of sugar, not saying I wont be craving sugar in a few days! but I feel really optimistic and excited.

Esnecca, you asked me what is in my cupboard, believe it or not I do eat healthily by and large, my biggest downfall is red wine. My cupboard is full of nuts and seeds, dried organic apricots, whole grains, even bee pollen and liquorice powder, spirulina, raw honey, rye flour, and other non wheat refined flours, cocoa nibs, and seaweed, but then I buy french bread eat with lashings of butter, too much cheese, sugar, I eat pasta which bloats me terribly as does ice cream and cake, but I love these foods! and crips, I am on the edge between eating very healthily and have done so in the past and know the benefits very well, but I got myself into a pit over the past few years, never mind though, I have made that start!!! and I’m really pleased. but for the bad foods and wine, just about stopping the full blown benefits. Recently I have cut down on red meat, but still eat some now and then, my freezer is full of fish, some smoked salmon, peas, corn, and there is usually room for processed french stick, ice cream and sorts, I buy puddings often!!!! The problem is sugar addiction isn’t it, someone in the know said that mostly people drink alcohol regularly for a sugar fix too (unknowingly). Well, this is all for today. I will be letting you know how I get on, and thanks again for you much needed feedback.

PS I thought my username was quite positive, I mean I want to BUST my tripplebelly! lol

It is an addiction, and I think recognising that is one of the first steps to banishing the white stuff to it’s future absence in our lives or mere supporting role. I know when I have some even now on maintenance I have to be so wary of cravings kicking in, but I often find anyway that my tastes have changed away from my old favourites, and many of my BSD new favourites have stuck instead.

Tripplebellybuster, your pantry staples are healthy foods in the sense of being unprocessed, organic and weighted on the side of more complex carbs, but many of them are far from BSD-friendly. One 40-gram serving of dried apricots has 23 net carbs, 17 of them from sugar. Whole grains are still grains and therefore enormously high in carbs. One hungred grams of cooked quinoa has 20 grams of carbs. One cup of rye flour has a dizzying 65 grams of carbohydrate. Raw honey is just sugar in an unrefined form, a single tablespoon of it has 17 grams of sugar.

These foods are only keeping you addicted to carbs. The pasta and bread binges don’t come out of nowhere. You are being driven to them by the constant supply of sugar and carb-heavy foods that are billed as healthy but are just as dangerous to people like us as a big slice of chocolate cake. Your username would indicate that you carry fat around your midsection and given your physical reaction to the baguettes and potato chips, odds are your body is not processing sugars properly.

For years I was told by GPs, endocrinologists etc. that I should eat more complex and unrefined carbs because of my insulin resistance, and all it did was make me fatter and fatter. The BSD saved me from certain diabetes and a slow, painful, early death. There is nothing cake can do for you but destroy your body and mind. The taste of it is fleeting, but the cravings it sets off will keep dragging you into the abyss. You did exactly the right thing by embracing the experience of eating delicious real foods low in carbohydrates. After a while you won’t miss the blood sugar-spiking carby stuff at all. You’ll run to the bright, effervescent, satisfying variety of non-sweet foods instead.