I know this works – I lost 12 kgs in Aug/Sept. crept back since to being 10kg down from start. (10% of body weight). And off blood pressure meds. I need to loose more for healthy BMI but every time I try and get refocused I blow it.

Today I was perfectly on route to 800 cal and then the supermarket cookies fell into my hands and from there to my mouth. That is the story of January – almost but then…

I just can’t seem to get the starting oomph I did in the summer, despite having having more belief in this way of eating than I did then. Humans – we are a weird lot!

Some foods I cannot imagine eating again if put in front of me (mashed potato, pasta swirls), some I don’t care about (rice, white sliced) and the stuff that calls to me – fancy bakery bread, salt and vinegar posh crisps and cookies….

Do others have a mix of reactions to the banned items – some scary triggers while others are just a ‘shrug’?

Now if only I could apply all I know and actually get going properly… sigh.

Avila – well done for maintaining your 10kg loss since September. The 2kg you had put back on is highly likely to be water weight and will go very quickly.

I am very similar to you – pasta, potatoes and rice pose no threat at all to me and I am not even tempted by them.

In some ways I am lucky because I had already been quite damaged by this horrible disease and the future wasn’t looking good. So I have two choices. Choice 1 is to eat theTesco finest cookies (that I used to absolutely adore) – the results of which would lead to insulin injections, eye injections, numbness in my right foot which had been getting worse at each annual review leading eventually to foot amputation (thank you Panorama for spelling out that particular scenario so graphically) because – as all of us sugar/carb addicts know so well – one cookie is never enough.

Choice 2 is no cookies or anything with sugar or bad carbs. The result is no diabetes, no retinopathy, no eye injections (my particular phobia), no insulin injections. There are many more fantastic benefits. The joy of wearing size 10 clothes, the complements I am receiving for my weight loss, the increase in energy and feeling of well-being – I could go on and on. So as you can see I don’t actually need any willpower to choose option 2.

But – and it is a big but – I know that taking that first mouthful of the cookie or any other sugary item could very quickly lead to disaster. My feelings towards the sweet stuff are very ambivalent.

I feel that I would be disgusted by their sweetness but I have a long track record of one bite leading to a million more so I am not sure what would really happen. I still look at the displays of cakes when I am queuing for my coffee and wonder what they would taste like. I sometimes do pick up a packet of biscuits or a cake and am disgusted by the huge amount of carbs there are in the packet but again I wonder what they would taste like – it feels like I am handling some really dangerous material so I put them quickly back on the shelf.

So what I think I am saying in a very long winded way is that I do understand why that packet of cookies fell into your hands and then into your mouth because that has happened to me so many times pre-BSD. My feeling is that for some of us the sugar addiction is very powerful and will always be a trigger. For me the only way I can easily deal with it is not to have even one mouthful – ever. I am really really envious of the people on this forum who can eat one biscuit from time to time and it doesn’t lead to a carb fest.

Hi Avila
You sound just like me! I was all set for a great start in January, managed about 3 days then found some forgotten Christmas chocolates. I chocolate led to 4 days of eating crap. Got back on track for a few days and then a bad day at work and I’m giving in to the carb/sugar cravings again 🙁
I lost over 2 stones on the 5:2 and kept most of it off but I’ve still got a lot more to lose. I know this way of eating makes so much sense and I get so annoyed with myself for not sticking with it. I’ve got no problem with the 800 cals, its getting away from sugar that’s hard.
Your 10kg loss and getting off meds is a huge achievement!!! I’m sure you’ll find your motivation. Every day is a fresh start and the first day of the rest of your life 🙂

For me, it’s boredom that encourages me to eat the wrong stuff, or, more usually, far too much of the right stuff!
I try to reason with myself that it will take a couple of minutes to eat it, which I will enjoy, and then I will have the rest of the day to feel miserable and disappointed with myself. Is it worth it?
And I try to remind myself that there is much more to life than food! It’s only a small part of the day. So I sew/sing/walk the dog/ read/look at the fora/ garden/have a bath. Whatever.
Chin up and crack on.
It works for me. Well, most of the time!
Best of luck. 😀

Hello everyone,
I relate to so much of what has been written on this thread. Lost my mojo for a while and am having a bit of difficulty getting back on track post-Xmas. A cold hasn’t helped but things are slowly getting back to normal so I’m hoping that I will get back into the BSD routine to reach my ultimate target after a few months of stagnation and, more recently, weight gain.

I took my foot off the pedal around Sept last year – instead of ploughing on to my target I relaxed when my clothes were fitting nice & comfortable again. For me, buying a whole new wardrobe wasn’t an incentive – I was quite happy just to buy a new belt so a couple of pairs of the baggier trousers were still wearable. With the benefit of hindsight I should have continued and then when the Xmas gains came along they wouldn’t have bothered me so much.

I had a a rule last year – avoid temptation once: in the shop, i.e. don’t buy the “naughties” in the first place. Worked fine – but I have realised that while I can resist things at full price, I am a sucker for a reduced price. Now I am having to retrain myself that “bargains” are a false economy because I have a tendency to eat the evidence to get it out of the house! The rule has been supplemented with another: nothing from the remaindered shelf unless it fits in with the BSD.

Good luck all.

Hi all! This thread is super relevant — it’s that sweet mix of motivation, logical intelligence and some other unknown quality that gets us into the BSD — which mix can be messed up by a lot of things, including holidays and just stepping back for a bit and even cookies on sale in the store!
I’m just six weeks from my one year mark so I am thinking a lot about how I have been able to stay on track for so long — first time EVER in my life that I lost the weight and kept it off — and I did the dumbest thing day before yesterday… Here it is:
My husband is out of town and it is cold right now in California and I have a cold and I was working in the garden too long and got really cold and got inside and decided to make chocolate chip cookies. I haven’t made cookies for almost a year (if I want a cookie I go out to have it at a coffee shop and turn it into a big deal) and so I made them, big ones, and ate four of them. I immediately felt just terrible, physically and mentally, but went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night feeling burpy and overfilled and wired. Sugar high, gone bad!
So I went downstairs, at 2 AM and threw the cookies all in the sink and covered them with water. Then I went back to bed.
The next day I just went back to what I KNOW is best, and today I feel fine.
But, note to self: you just can’t can’t can’t eat sugar anymore. And don’t waste all those good butter cubes in some cookies you are going to drown in the middle of the night!!😜

Thanks all,

Depression shouts for the sugar and for the no think foods. Maybe need to take one battle at a time – still aiming for BSD principles but not beat myself up if depression self medication is a big pack of salty crisps. I know the seasonal effects of it will ease in a number of weeks, then can refocus.

Reduced stickers at the supermarkets – yes yes yes that is me, if it is such a bargain then… Though some are good. Last week I got a huge punnet of cherry tomatoes for 5p – yes for the price of a carrier bag! They had loads of them to clear. Tonight the co-op had packs of 3 leeks for 20p, I brought 3 of them! Have just made ‘Supermarket Sweep Soup’ with the various bargains…