Hello, I started this week, only doing the Med style as still trying to get my head around calorie counting which I have never done?

I am doing the med diet all day perfectly though I think my portions may be too big? and too much natural yoghurt/fruit not sure, but everyday so far I have caved in to my enormous sugar cravings and have had chocolate, I am so upset that I cannot just get going on the diet.
Also is it really hard to do the 800 a day part of the diet as I have no idea how you count calories in fruit etc?
Any advice however small would be so greatly received.
Many thanks,

Alli

Hi Allione, the cavalry will be along with further tips! It is a positive that you are enjoying a med diet (so presumably have dropped naughty white carbs already). On fruit, ignore all apart from berries (go for raspberries and blueberries). If you do not yet have, get some digital scales; you can easily find nutrition info on the web to work out. If 800 seems too much, maybe go for 1000 to start with. And presumably your yog is full fat! You will soon really not miss white (or brown) carbs! And go for above ground rather than below ground veg. And easy on tomatoes! All the best as you join our merry band!

If you haven’t really done it before it may take a bit of time to get used to, just keep trying.
1. Counting calories- most packaging lists the calories, but if it doesn’t have packaging (ie fruit) then google will know. There are some good apps out there for tracking calories too.
Start with just recording how many calories are in the foods you are currently eating, then review which items you can adjust to reach a calorie target you are aiming for.
2. Chocolate cravings- how do you feel about making your own chocolate which is made with more fat and no sugar? Google Keto chocolate recipes.
3. Don’t worry if you don’t work it all out straight away, have patience and work out one thing at a time. Sometimes it requires a bit of trial and error anyway.
4. I was already used to a low carb diet so I found doing the 800 was surprisingly easy to get into for me, but I don’t know how other people have found it. The first 3 days were the hardest but after that ketosis kicked in and the cravings and hunger went away.

If you must eat chocolate then go for the 70% and only have a couple of small pieces. If you are the sort of person who has to eat the whole bar then you might struggle but the very dark chocolate is much more satisfying so you might manage on less. A further suggestion is that you eat everything you would normally but just leave out the white carbs and have a little bit more veg with the meal. Tonight I am having bolognaise without the spaghetti and a few cauliflower florets to pad it out.

Thank you so much for your advice much appreciated.

Hi, I would suggest having scales on your kitchen worktop so you can accurately measure portions of any ingredient for meals you make at home. –
Also if you have a smart phone load up one of the apps in which you can log everything you eat, and it shows you the totals of carbs, protein and fat for that day. I use fatsecret. Some people use notepad or a spreadsheet if they don’t have a smart phone, but smart phones make it easy as they have a database of most foods so you don’t have to go to the internet to look up the carbs, protein and fat in each item. ———- Just get into the habit of logging everything you eat initially so that you can start to see patterns.
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You mention that you are eating chocolate in an evening, are you at home in an evening, or do you work in a place with chocolate in front of you?
If you are at home, first thing to do is not buy any chocolate when you go shopping so you don’t have any temptation on hand. Then make up a list of other experiences you enjoy, a long soak in the bath, time to read, time to cuddle up with the family cat or dog (or your partner).
If the problem is munching on chocolate while you watch TV I found that having something to do with my hands, knitting, helped me break the habit of snacking in an evening when I settle down to watch TV..

Hi Allione,
Don’t give up.
You can EASE into this diet. As you do it (even imperfectly) day by day it will start to become easier.
Just thinking about it and keeping the idea in your head is a good starting point.
You can start with cutting out all the obvious carbohydrates — all the “white stuff” — rice, potatoes, pasta, flour, bread and sugar — that’s going to cut out a LOT of garbage from your diet.
You can start there — it is a great starting point. I started just cutting out white carbs and that was a huge learning experience for me!
I recall my first breakfast wherein I ate an omelette with cheese and coffee with heavy cream and thought it was SO weird. No toast? No fruit? What the heck? And all that fat! Heart attack on the way!
Aaaah, but then my body starting to respond to the low carb diet and the less carbs I ate, the better I felt. So I cut out more carbs, like excessive fruit and sweet potatoes and grains and felt even better.
Then I started to eat much less, and skip meals. Then I tried fasting, and I had to learn how to do that too — I got to 16 hours, 18 hours, 20 hours and finally 24 hours (I haven’t gotten past that!).
The whole thing was a GIGANTIC learning experience for me — I had absorbed the low-fat, high carb mantra of the current medical/health establishment. It takes a lot of mental upset to see how wrong that is for some people.
I am, and you probably are too (it’s why we get fat so easily), insulin resistant. For whatever reason (and it could be related to events while you were in-utero) we have heightened background levels of insulin.
Insulin is your “fat storage” hormone. It works to store energy in your fat cells and it is very slow to release that energy. As long as your insulin is high, you can’t mobilise those stored calories. The only solution is to lower your insulin levels so you can use that stored energy.
And the best way to lower insulin is to lower the amount of carbohydrate in your diet.
So start there, and add in as you get stronger and you wrap your head around it all. You don’t have to do it all today — your body is going to start responding and you will start noticing how much better you are doing — and that will lead to a virtuous cycle —
This does work. Don’t give up.

Hello Alli,
Lots of sound advice already posted in reply to your plea. Here’s my contribution:
I never went cold-turkey, rather I eased myself into the BSD – even after a few days (which saw little weight loss) I started to feel good. Yes, there will be wobbles while you adjust to the new regime but you will develop strategies to help you cope. You mentioned that you’ve never calorie-counted before… well, neither had I, and I still haven’t! Some people like the discipline of keeping records of calories, what they’ve eaten because it keeps them focused and they may well achieve greater weight loss as a result – for me, that way felt too regimented (I only ever recorded my weight regularly in a spreadsheet). I knew that I ate too much anyway so I stuck (reasonably well) to the quantities in the recipes and topped up with veggies. And water. And tried to keep myself occupied to avoid thoughts straying to food. And don’t buy the wrong stuff in the first place – avoid temptation once, i.e. in the shop. Don’t be afraid to try something different, you may surprise yourself and find a new favourite, and it keeps things interesting.
You can do this without too many gadgets, too – I don’t have a smartphone, don’t have a food processor (I like my cauli florets steamed, never blasted to smithereens to produce fake rice), I never felt the need to buy a spiraliser…
The BSD is very adaptable – stick to the principles even if you can’t follow everything (I don’t get on with 5:2 fasting, that only leads me to evening pigouts). Stick with it and find things that work for you.
Good luck,
Rose

I agree with the advice not to give up.

It sounds as though you’ve made some positive changes to your diet – that’s great! Try to concentrate on what you’re getting right for now, and gradually do more of that.

Allione: Keep reading and rereading sections of The Fast Diet book. Dr Mosley himself caved to his chocolate cravings/ addiction so you are in very good company! He also gives guidance on how to physically avoid your trigger foods. Get all chocolate out of the house, do not carry money with you, walk or drive the long way around to avoid a certain shop or vending machine.

For accurate calorie counting, ideally solid foods would be weighed (cheap kitchen scales), and liquids would be measured (set of kitchen measuring cups). Yoghurt can be measured either way, so check the container.

You ARE getting going, you HAVE got going. “I am doing the med diet all day perfectly”.