Hi all, I’m new to this, I’m not diabetic that I’m aware but I’m sure my blood sugars were not at a good level- anyway it’s day 5 and I’ve already lost an unbelievable 7 pounds, I’m so thrilled. My macros are roughly 20% carbs, 50% fat and 30% protein… is this ok??? I have the odd wobbly moment and I think that’s because I’ve cut out the coffee with 2 sugars 5 or 6 times a day but the odd mug of Bovril seems to help. I’m meant to be going to my usual spin class tonight but am concerned I may flake out, should I up the calories slightly on spin days- twice a week?? Thanks in advance. Miranda x

Hi MissFinch,
Welcome to the forum, there are two regular threads, the weekly, and the road trip that you will see most people post on. You will find a mixture of people on these two threads from newcomers to people in maintenance, come and join us, there will always be someone along to answer any questions you have. A lot of people only monitor the threads they have joined, so when you start a new thread with questions it may be missed.

If you have your carb intake low enough then your body can access your fat stores freely for fuel which means you don’t need to eat extra calories on the days you exercise.

If you have been eating a carb rich diet your body will have a lot of fluid stored because it needs it to process the carbs. As soon as you reduce the level of carbs in your diet your body releases the stored fluid, hence the rapid weigh loss initially. – 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg. When the water is flushing out of your system it takes with it electrolytes. Being low on electrolytes can make you feel a little under the weather, a bit flu like, the answer is to increase your salt intake to replace the electrolytes. A good quality salt is recommended rather than economy table salt. I have a little packet of salt and just lick my finger and dip it in the pot a few times a day, others dissolve some salt in a glass of water.

The BSD book doesn’t contain recommendations on the levels of macros.

Many of us started just by cutting out the major carb sources. Bread, sugar, pasta, rice, pizza etc.

Those of us who had/ have a lot of weight to loose tend to recommend using one of the mobile phone apps like fatsecret to record what we eat, to then tweak our diet to follow the following formula.

Carbs, some find they have to go down to 20g a day, others can have up to 50g a day. But you want to aim to be in fat burning mode (ketosis)

Protein, 0.6g to 0.8g per kilo of TARGET weight.

Make up the rest of your calories from healthy fat.

Providing you stay in ketosis, it appears that you can continue to loose weight without the reduction in your metabolic rate that happens if you are dieting but still eating carbs.