Ok I am feeling ill prepared and also don’t want to have a complicated first week with 800 calories. I don’t want to go out and buy a load of groceries and would love to use up my healthy stuff first. I see recipes and that we are aiming to have 800 calories but is there a formula I can use on my fitness pal. Carbs? Protein? Fat? I would rather just count each day.

Help please and thank you.

I have MFP set to 10% carbs, 60% fat, 30% protein. That is a stringent carb baseline of fewer than 20 grams a day. I stuck with it for 14 months, lost 200 lb and continue to keep to that strict carb count today even thought I’ve been in maintenance since September. I am insulin resistant so I have to keep carbs that low or I will certainly put on weight and lots of it, not to mention get the diabetes diagnosis I barely managed to avoid.

Depending on your circumstances, your blood sugar situation, how much weight you need to lose, you can be successful without taking so drastic an approach. I would not advise more than 50 g carbs a day, however, as many people find that to be the sweet spot that keeps you in a fat-burning state.

When you say healthy stuff, what do you mean precisely? Because, for example, I had lots of whole grains, pulses, legumes, oats in the house, things that doctors had told me were good for me but that proved to be way too carby for my system. Vegetables like beets, tomatoes, onions had to go, and so did almost all fruit except for a few (like 4 or 5) chambered berries now and again.

A lot of us didn’t bother with the recipes in the book and used MFP or Fat Secret to modify and calorie/carb count our own recipes. Whatever works for you, just as long as you weigh, measure and count everything so you know what the reality of your intake is.

Good luck!

Thank you

I am really just wanting to lose 20lbs and kick my sugar addiction and yo-yo dieting. I am worried that I will not be able to keep up my running with such low carb.

Fat is a better energy source than carbs, actually. There’s just a lag time of fatigue or achiness during the immediate detox phase, ie, carb flu. They are not necessary to keep you running. They are not necessary period. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate, unlike fats and proteins.

Anyway, your weight loss goal is modest so I imagine you can achieve it largely by cutting the sugars and simple carbs (wheat, cereals, grains, sugar, starchy/sweet vegetables, fruit). Best of luck to you.

My husband is an ultra runner (in his spare time) and he says carbs are not that useful for that kind of running as you physically can’t eat enough to keep your glycogen replenished over distance. So as Esnecca says it’s about teaching your body to release the fat quickly.

He regularly does 4 hrs training runs on empty stomach, so it is achievable once you get used to it. He eats when he gets home. He’s not a BSDer by the way.

When I go to the gym I eat yoghurt and seeds about an hour before and that’s enough. I do weight and resistance training twice a week.

This is great to here. I really only want to lose 15-20lbs. I am not diabetic but have a horrible problem with over indulging on food and feel like it is getting worse as I get older. I am honestly feeling overwhelmed with the plan. I was going to start today but instead decided to track points on Itrack bites. I am a gluten free pescatarian. I am a bit lost on how to get carbs so low. Do you count veg for your carbs? Help!

You count everything for carbs and calories. Weigh and measure your ingredients. Enter them into tracking app like MyFitnessPal or Fat Secret to tally up the carbs and calories. It’s easy once you do it, I promise. You just have to take the time before you eat to plan a meal or menu. Since you eat fish, you’ll have no problem getting enough protein and healthy fats to support your exercise program.

Don’t panic. This is not rocket science and you can totally handle it. Start simple and take a meal you normally eat, weigh everything out so you know the facts about how much of it is in a serving, then enter into a tracker. It will do all the math and you can see the real cost of it in cals and carbs. If you need to modify it because it’s too high in carbs — some vegetables will shock you with their carb and sugar counts — reduce the ingredient amount or find a substitute. Green onions (scallions) are lower in carbs than white or yellow onions, for example, so use them instead. Replace sugary tomatoes with cooked greens (turnip, mustard, kale, chard). Replace regular beans with black soybeans which are much higher in fiber and protein and much lower in carbs.

No fear, deep breaths, calm your roll. There are people on this forum who have done the Fast 800 for months. You have easy access to their expertise. If you need ideas to modify specific dishes to be more BSD-friendly, just post here. Between the lot of us we should be able to come up with something that works for you.

Thank you so much for your kind words. I guess I am going on this panic because we are going away to a hot country in 6 weeks and I feel horrible and don’t want to feel like this. I am so use to wanting quick results and i need to get rid of this mentality. Thank you I will sit down know and try to plan a few days and go from there.

I hear ya. I had such an enormous amount of weight to lose quick results were very important to me too. An hour of planning now will pay off ten-fold in the coming weeks. It will also help ground you as you see the data emerge and can figure out how best to arrange your menu. Once you have some meals calculated and counted, it’s a simple matter to use the good things in the house, get rid of the foods that trigger your addiction and move forward towards your health and fitness goals. You can 100% do this. 🙂

Initially, it does feel daunting, trying to get your head round the BSD, but it will quickly become second nature and you’ll be amazed what you can achieve in the 6wks you have before you go away. Don’t worry, we have your back!

If it helps at all, my friend wanted to lose a stone and inspired by me (🤗) didn’t go the full BSD but cut out bread, rice, pasta etc and potato and sugar and when I last saw her was three weeks in and lost 1/2 stone. Plus her daughter had told her how great she looked that morning. She’s cut down, but not out, wine and milk.

So even then without counting she’s going great guns. She’s a gardener so she gets plenty of exercise.

Hi Jenn Jenn,
With this diet you can lose 8 kilos in 6 weeks pretty easily if you stick to it – I did it last year – unfortunately I went back to my old ways and regained it all plus another 2 kilos. It did take 6 months to regain though.

I find having a pre bought but very good quality soup (like Pitango) which is around 250 calories is great for lunch as it fill you up, a boiled egg for breakfast and then you have 400 calories left for dinner. For me its great to have some ready meals for when I am too busy to make meals and thus keep the calories under control. Sounds like you have a great goal to work for!

Would advise avoiding bought ready meals, as they tend to be high in carbs, but by all means ‘mass’ produce some meals and freeze them for use later. Similarly, it is better to make your own soups, so you can be sure to keep the carbs under control. Looking at the carbs per serving of the suggested Pitango soup, they seem pretty high to me, with even the Green soup coming in at 13g carbs, as it has potato in it. As I said before, not all calories are equal.

Pitango add sugar and/or corn starch to every soup mix except for the Super Greens ones, so it’s not just the high carb count of the vegetables that’s a concern. When buying pre-made foods, it’s important that you check the ingredients. Avoid anything with added sugars and starches. It’s a challenge, to be sure. I had to search high and low to find a chicken broth that didn’t have sugar on the ingredient list. Boullion is even worse. I’ve made chicken broth at home a thousand times, and at no point did it occur to me add sugar, even before I cut carbs. Processed foods use it constantly to give their bland product a flavor boost.

Hi, Essie. I’ve found this brand of chicken broth available at Stop + Shop. No sugar. “Pacific Chicken Broth
Low Sodium Free Range Organic”. Have I missed something on the nutritional label? I order through Peapod
delivery service, and have been using it for my homemade soups. I steer clear of any premade meals, too.
Premade soup is a repository for sodium and sugars for a flavor boost. If I’m going to add salt, I want it to be
of the sea salt variety for the trace minerals. I do wonder about this specific brand, though. Thanks, as always,
for your opinion 🙂

No sugar grams per serving, Allie, but cane sugar is the third ingredient after chicken broth and chicken flavoring. https://www.pacificfoods.com/organic-low-sodium-chicken-broth That’s such a common phenomenon I can’t even tell you how many quarts and cans of broth I left in the store after reading the ingredients. It was an extremely frustrating experience.

I finally found one brand that does not add sugar, Saffron Road, which makes ready meals and broths according to Halal principles. Their artisan roasted chicken broth is not only free of sugar and carbs, it is intensely flavored and just plain delicious. By far the best premade broth I’ve ever tasted. My local Stop & Shop carries it in the organic foods section. It’s probably on the same shelf as the Pacific brand. https://saffronroad.com/our-products/artisan-roasted-chicken-broth/

Brilliant and phenomenal as usual, E! Thanks so much, you continue to be my “pied piper” when it comes to
sourcing. I know that you had to look up the Pacific brand in order to render an opinion. I’ll be looking out
for the one you recommended, as usual 🙂 🙂 🙂 Genius!

Hm ok so maybe not Pitango soups – I didn’t look at the carbs:-(

Aww shucks, Mizz Allie. Tweren’t nuthin’. 😉

Lucyjane, there are a lot of pitfalls in prepared foods, but it’s not impossible to find something that works. It takes a little doing, though. A lot of us have found that the carb count and sugar/refined carb content has more of an impact on weight loss than calorie count. People have upped their calories but kept their carbs low and still showed steady losses. The other way around doesn’t happen often. Look at everything on the label, most especially carbs and ingredients. Calories are the third most important, in my experience.

If you don’t have any blood sugar issues that may not apply to you as starkly as it does to me, but avoiding sugar and starch is one of the tenets of the BSD.

Hi Jenn Jenn
How are you getting on? I’ve started on the same day as you and already 7lbs down.
I batch cooked a lot on Monday night for this week and going to continue doing that every weekend. So so surprised that I’m not hungry, although do think I am now experiencing Carb Flu 🙁
Good luck!

Essie, I just had a “penny dropping” moment today, thanks to your post on chicken broth. Maybe it will be helpful
to others, too. As you know, we eat very few prepared foods. The few things I do use are chicken broth, canned
fire-roasted tomatoes, greek yogurt and black soybeans (now!). Because of J’s cardiac issues, I always check the
nutritional panel for net carbs, sugar and sodium. I realize that I also need to carefully check the entire ingredient
list as well. Once a perfectionist, always a perfectionist!
thanks!