Hi everyone,

I’ve been doing the 800 calorie BSD for ten days now (no cheating) and have added two strength training sessions a week. I’ve lost 3 kgs so far but my blood sugar is not much improved at all, and I am constantly hungry, which is making me bad-tempered!

Any suggestions to alleviate the growling stomach?

Thanks!

Hi Kate C,
Welcome! Do you mind sharing what you have been eating to make up your 800 calories? We may be able to assist better then and suggest some tweaks. It could be that you are eating too many carbs and/or not enough protein. Also, over how many meals per day? If I try to eat 3 small meals I get ravenous and don’t feel at all satiated, but if I eat just one meal per day then I feel l have had a substantial meal and tend to do much better. One meal a day can be a bit extreme for someone just starting out though. I’m sure others will chime in as well.

Hi Kate C
Great start – 3kgs down and no cheating over the 10 days – that’s a flying start. I also did the BSD 800.
When I first started BSD I pretty quickly went from 3 meals a day to 2 meals a day, maybe 250/300 at lunch and 500 for dinner. It just meant I could feel full after my evening meal. I usually had a couple of coffees in the morning instead of breakfast.

I found myself eating a lot of red meat – not something I ate so it was very odd – but I think looking back it was my body telling me I needed more protein, so completely agree with arcticfox. I’ve also read that eating more fats also helps with satiety although not easy when you’re on 800 cals.

I tried to stick to the couple of meals a day but if I was really hungry – usually for me in the evening – I’d have a very small amount of yoghurt which did the trick. Alternatively, late on I’d have a mug of tea (I never quite gave up my splash of milk) which just took the edge off my hunger. I know I’ve heard other people say they build in a small snack allowance at a particular time of day – a small cube of cheese, a few nuts. Others have a boiled egg to hand e.g. to have when coming in from work to avoid picking when making dinner. The first few weeks are definitely harder while your body’s adjusting. Keep going it definitely gets easier. – and it’s so worth it.

As far as your blood sugar levels there are a few things.
Like arcticfox, I wonder if you might be having too many carbohydrates. If my memory serves me right, I’m not sure the BSD 800 book puts as much emphasis on lowering your carbs as some of MMs later books. For lowering bgls it really is key. If you don’t already, it’s worth keeping track of the amount of carbs you are having daily along with your cals. (I use fatsecret.co.uk – it’s free – there are others e.g. myfitnesspal). Then, if your bgls aren’t lowering just start lowering your daily carb intake until you see your bgls begin to go down. Also, the other thing I found was that even when my total daily carbs were low I might still have too many carbs in one meal so I’d suggest spreading them out across meals. Finally, I found some of the recipes at the back of the BSD book itself a bit too carby for me, e.g. the beetroot falafel – generally the ones with pulses in them.

Having said all that, my blood sugars were very high on diagnosis (T2 diabetes – hba1c over 100) so you may not be affected in the same way – but the principles are generally the same, I think, if you are concerned with lowering your blood sugar levels.

One last thing about testing. I wonder when you test? If you are only testing your fasting blood sugar levels ( first thing in the morning before food) you might not get a true picture. Something called the dawn phenomenen (sp?), where glucose is released into our bodies to get us going, can affect this first reading. It was the last of my numbers to drop and I’ve read of that being the case many times. I generally tested first thing but also immediately before and two hours after each meal. If the 2hr bgl reading is over 2 points higher than your pre-meal reading the meal has been too carby for you. It not only means you can adjust your meals but you can see the trend in your blood sugar levels over time. (Only advice if you want to test, that is, not everybody does).

Well, this was only going to be a quick post – oops. It’s always difficult to know what to write, so Kate, if I’m teaching grannie to suck eggs, my apologies, oh…and also for calling you grannie!