Hi,

I am new to this whole way of weight loss. I have used another form of weight loss for 2 years, but I seem to have come to a halt. My GP has recommended this way to try and aid my weight loss and help my symptoms of Fibromyalgia (high pain scale right now). Truth is, this is the complete opposite, from what I have read, to how I have been dieting for the past 2 years so I feel like I am in deep water and new territory right now. I am determined to give this a go, but I need some serious help and guidance if anyone would be willing to help me please.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Hi Jen and welcome to the forum. Yes you’re right, this way of eating (woe)is totally different to what we’ve been told to do in the past. But I can assure you it works. Have a look around the forum and you’ll get lots of advice. Use the search box for anything specific. Everyone on here is friendly and helpful. There are people who have been doing this for years and are very knowledgeable. If you have any questions then just ask. Someone will know the answer. Perhaps give us an idea of what you eat in a typical day and see if it needs tweaked at all.
Good luck

Thank you, well….. ha ha it will probably need a lot of tweaking.
Typical day i either have no breakfast or a bowl of granola, lunch is either a salad – lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions, cucumber and spinach with some type of meat (not processed), a wholemeal wrap with the above but less or a homemade soup, normally tomato. Dinner can be meat, chicken or pork with fat removed and veg, a pasta dish – bolognese or tuna, a rice dish, chilli, curry or something similar. that’s really about it, very rare occasion an ice cream or a small piece of cake, a low fat pack of crisps, fruit like bananas, pears, oranges, a low fat babybel if I am peckish, but I do try to eat cold boiled eggs or chicken breast if I am really picky in between meals. I have 2 cups of coffee a day with milk and half a sugar, the rest of the day I drink black coffee.
Is there a start up shopping list guide anywhere for cupboard essentials? I have plenty of meat and vegetables in all the time as I don’t allow my family to eat processed, but I realise I need to lose the chips (airfried never deep fried), pasta, bread and rice. Also, I don’t like cauliflower rice but I do like broccoli rice, is this ok?

Thanks, sorry for the long message, but I want to make sure I have it right before I go wrong.

Hi Jenm
Welcome aboard. I think many of us have struggled along with other diets on here and found ourselves getting very frustrated about the lack of progress. The good news is the works.
My top tips would be
1) use an app like my fitness pal to log your food, certainly at the start.
2) start by keeping carbs under 50g and see how you get on, some people have to go as low as 20g, it depends on your blood sugars. You’ll soon find out what levels work for you.
3) Ditch the granola most are very high in sugar.
4) A good lower carb bread is Ryebread – I have a slice a day with an egg for breakfast. Having said that I get good results in 50g of carbs and be careful veg and salads contain more carbs than you think. If you need to go lower then you might struggle with the bread.
5) Drink 2-3 litres of water a day, black coffee and tea counts too. There are all sorts of tips in forum on how to spruce up your water.
6) Up your ‘healthy’ fat uptake. It leaves you feeling fuller. Lots of people have full fat milk or even cream in their coffee. A small portion of nuts and avacado are good example.
I hope that helps to get you started. If you haven’t read the BSD book then you should. It also has some starter diets and recipes in there but for me it helped me to understand what I needed to do and why I was doing this. Welcome aboard and like Scottishgal says just shout up if you need any help, we are a friendly bunch abs have all needed help at times.

Hi Jenm,

Doesn’t sound as though you’re going to need to make massive changes and it appears you’ve got a good grasp of what to do. It does seem to go against everything we were told in the past – but then the old advice didn’t make us all slim and healthy, did it?

Broccoli is fine, so you could have that in place of cauliflower rice.

Don’t be tempted by anything ‘low fat’. Nothing reduced fat is better for you than the regular version, as the fat will have been substituted with sugar, thickeners and all kind of high carb and/or chemical stuff. With this woe fat isn’t the enemy – although of course you need to stick to small portions whilst losing the weight.

Foods which are naturally low fat, such as vegetables are fine. It’s just stuff which has been messed about with you need to avoid.

Thank you so much for the replies!

So that is another GP recommending this diet, and not just for diabetes. Many people have found great improvement in health such as diabetes control, BP, cholesterol, PCOS, acne etc etc the list goes on.

Can I add to the list. I suffer with Rosacea and try skin is much calmer.