Hi I’m new to this. I shall be 5 2 ing and then 800 cals on other days . My diet has been carb heavy so am changing does this seem OK for 800 cal days? Breakfast Greek yoghurt fat free plus berries…lunch 3 oatcakes plus bowl home made soup …supper protein and veggies or salade. Does this seem OK?

Hi and welcome. Swap the fat free yoghurt for full fat – yes, that’s right full fat. This way of eating is full fat – butter, yoghurt, cheese, cream etc and good oils which can take some getting used to if you’ve been following the low fat everything we’ve been told is best.. If you’re doing this to lose weight and are not diabetic, the oatcakes are ok (and better than white sliced 😀). Keep your veggies to those grown above ground, with the exception of sweetcorn and you won’t go far wrong.

Lots of people use MyFitnessPal or Fatsecret, other sites available 😄, to log their intake. Good luck with following this way of eating – it really is brilliant.

I’m not really clear on what an oatcake is, but Google tells me one organic Nairn oatcake has 6 grams of carbohydrates, so those three you had for lunch tally up to 18 grams. That’s a pretty high figure, and since the source is cereal rather than vegetable, it’s not ideal for the BSD. If you don’t have blood sugar issues it may be okay for you — some people still eat small amounts of porridge, for example, on this diet — but since you’re trying to alter your high carb lifestyle, you might want to consider going cold turkey on these sorts of things. They’ll just prolong the detox period.

What’s in your homemade soup? Annie is right that not all vegetables are created equal, carb-wise. If your soup has root vegetables, that could be an issue, but even if it doesn’t, you’d be amazed how quickly carbs can add up even with seemingly innocuous veggies like cauliflower. You have to weigh, measure and count everything, at least until you get a very good idea of what the real nutrient and calorie counts of foods are. I’ve been using MyFitnessPal since I began the BSD last August and I haven’t stopped since. I know I can’t trust my estimates and guesses.