Hi All
I have been on the 800BSD for four weeks. I have been combining with intermittant fasting; I eat lunch at 1.30 and dinner at 7.30. Lunch is usually a plate of salad veg (typically celery, tomatoes, red pepper, pickled beetroot, cucumber, artichoke and a couple of olives) with either egg or smoked salmon as the protein. Dinner is usually a piece of meat or fish with lots of vegetables. On days I do a lot of exercise I may have some new potatoes or brown rice. Mid afternoon I have a small portion of cherries (my treat). I drink one cup of black coffee each day and have a glass of diet coke with dinner, but otherwise drink water. If I have any calories left over I have some cheese after dinner. Everything is weighed and entered into myFitnessPal. Other than one day when an ingredient was missed, I have eaten fewer than 800 calories every day.
The first week I lost 4.5lb. The second 3lb, the third 1.25lb and this week 1lb. A total of 9.75lb in 4 weeks, not quite the average of 22lbs stated in the book.
My husband has been eating the same lunch and dinner – though he usually has a larger portion of protein for dinner – plus breakfast, plus a bottle of wine most evenings (don’t go there) and has lost almost a stone in the same period.
I am a 60 year old woman and six stone overweight. I am not, fortunately, pre-diabetic, but I have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my left knee, so losing weight is a priority. I do exercises each day. as prescribed by my doctor for my knee, and have a one hour session with a personal trainer each week (outdoors and socially distanced), where we concentrate on strength – lots of squats, kettles bells, weights, medicine ball etc – I don’t like cardio, but try to fit in a couple of sessions on our stationery bike each week.
Where am I going wrong?

Hi PurlySu, I dont think you are going wrong at all! Well done on the weightloss so far and more so for sticking to the 800 calories so well. Thats a top achievement! nearly 10lbs in 4 weeks is a great achievement. Better than most other ‘diets’.

How are you feeling? How are your energy levels? How do your clothes feel on you? Can you see any changes in your body?

People loose at different rates and try not to compare to your husband – men are very different, mine only has to reduce snacks and he looses weight! We are all different and there are a huge variety of people on here who have lost at differing rates. AS long as it keeps ticking I think you will get there. There are definitely good weeks and slow weeks, we have all experienced that, and its always quicker in the first 2 weeks.

Your meals sound spot on, are you having some good fats with it? Olive oil? Avocado?
Yeah, sure you can ditch the potatoes and the brown rice – try roasted cauliflower or broccoli, cauliflower rice, courgette chips and such like. The carbs in the rice and potato will probably cause you to hang onto some water which will affect weightloss a little so avoid in days prior to weighing, and they will knock you out of fat burning mode so you will use energy from them rather than fat stores, avoid them if you can.

You sound like you are doing great, keep on going, it will be worth it.
Come join us on the weekly thread, you will see everyone has ups and downs and that you are doing a good job.

Morning Purly-Su
I don’t think you’re doing anything particularly wrong, other than perhaps being a bit impatient. I would loose the coke and the cherries and the rice and potatoes, but other than that I think the main difficulty you have is your expectations. You are not at all far off what many people on here are losing. Weeks 2 and 3 are famous for being a bit tricky and you’ve just made it through those. If you read through the different threads you’ll see lots of people posting that they are having a difficult time, that it seems everyone else is losing more than them etc. This is what this forum is good for, we help each other through the difficult bits. If you join the weekly thread you’ll see lots of these conversations going on. Everyone has a bad day or a bad week sometimes. And most of us have tried losing faith in it. Sticking with 800 calories is really hard. There’s a new weekly thread that starts every Monday night. I’d really recommend joining it.

Hi Britta
Thanks for replying. Why lose the diet coke and the cherries? The book suggests ‘zero-calorie fizzy drinks if you must’, and recommends blueberries, blackcurrents, cherries or strawberries. I eat about eight cherries each day. The brown rice and new potatoes have been once a week after exercise, and within the 800 calories limit, so I don’t understand why they would be derailing my weight loss, and again the book suggests small quantities of brown rice. Other than smoked salmon and Greek yoghurt none of my foods are ‘processed’ and all of my fats are healthy ones – primarily olive oil.

I guess my expectations are based on the ‘four-week review’ chapter in the book, which suggests that volunteers who were over 200lb to start with (I started at 214lb) lost an average of 22lb by the end of four weeks and lost nearly 3 inches round the waist – I have lost 1 inch.

I will certainly join the weekly thread.

Hi WindyJulz
Thanks for replying. The brown rice and new potatoes have only been once a week, and in small quantities after exercising, all other meals have included cauliflower rice, courgetti etc. The only fats used have been olive oil, Greek yoghourt, smoked salmon and tiny amounts of cheese.

My main disappointment has been that I have lost more weight when on other diets. I have twice lost (yes, I am a yoyo dieter) three stone with Slimming World – when they did the carbs or protein, not mixed, diets – and I generally lost 2-3lb each week, eating as much as I liked of permitted foods and doing no exercise at all. So having lost only 2.25lb on this diet in the last two weeks is less than I would have expected.

The book has raised my expectations and that is why I am disappointed. My husband is a great believer in this regime and so is encouraging me to adopt it. I will continue for another four weeks and see if anything changes. I will also join the weekly thread.

The diet coke I would be careful with – I’m not the sciencey expert here but there is a connection with artificial sweetners and their effect insulin, basically makes your body think its going to get a sugar spike so insulin levels change….. someone will explain better. I ahve an occasional diet lemonade as a treat but i would certainly be careful about quantities. Can you replace with fizzy water?
If cherries are your only fruit and you arent going wild then I wouldnt worry too much about them.

The rice and potatoes are probably within the guidance of the book, but it is an area you could cut back if you wanted to. As a once a week thing, I wouldnt be too worried and you are doing it at the right time – after exercise .

You are going in the right direction. This is a way of life and a lot of self discovery comes along with it. You will find what works for you and what doesnt. You will loose at your own rate, and that might be frustrating and ‘unfair’ but as long as you stick with it you will make good progress. You’ve done well this far.

This literally just came up on my Facebook feed…..
https://thefast800.com/sweeteners-help-you-lose-weight-myth-or-miracle/

Thanks WindyJulz. I will try skipping the diet coke this week.

The other thing is to make sure you drink enough water. It really makes a difference for me. I’ve never been a fan of fizzy drinks (except water), but I’ve also read that artificial sweeteners have the same effect on your body as sugar. Other replacements are water with fresh mint and lemon or lime. I love fresh mint tea too.

It’s quite natural that your husband will lose more weight than you so don’t let that get you down. I put some information on why in this post: https://thebloodsugardiet.com/forums/topic/800-calories-for-everyone-does-that-make-sense/#post-127224

Sounds like you are doing brilliantly to me. A huge well done and keep it up.

Hi PurlySu,
Many of us have found that the Fast 800 was the start point for us to read the growing body of research into how our bodies are designed to react to food intake, knowledge which helps us maintain the discards achieved.
Our bodies have no mechanism for responding to the amount of calories eaten, it has a hormone response to the levels of carb and protein which then controls if the body burns sugar or fat as a fuel.
Its was eye opening to me to discover that the level of sugar in the blood stream of the average adult is maintained at the level of 2 teaspoons of sugar dissolved in 4.5 litres of blood. Diabetes is defined as more than 2.75 teaspoons of sugar dissolved in the blood and that level of sugar is enough to cause damage to the tissues.
When you think of it in those terms you can understand why the body is so sensitive to sugar that it responds to the taste of anything sweet as if it contains sugar and releases insulin.
Insulin is the hormone which controls if your body is using sugar or fat for fuel. – If insulin levels are high your body can not access your fat stores for fuel. – Dr Fung has done a podcast which I thought really demonstrated the importance of controlling insulin levels, but unfortunately I can’t locate that podcast. – But I think that this podcast by him has a section on his 2 compartment explanation of insulin which will help you understand why dropping the carbs would help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk

Hi JGwen.
Thanks for your reply. This last week (1lb weight loss) I ate no potatoes or rice to see if that changed anything. I am giving up the diet coke this week to see if that helps. I am not prepared to eat a completely keto diet; I have tried that before and found it too difficult to sustain, and think it is impossible with only 800 calories as fat is a large portion of a keto diet. As stated before, the vast majority of the food I am eating is vegetable, with a small portion of fruit each day.
Even before I started this regime we ate a relatively low carb diet; no bread, sweet things only on special occasions, and what carbs we had were generally resistant starch. (My husband is a long-term fan of the keto movement). So I don’t really see how I can realistically drop more carbs.

Hello PurlySu, I’ve also decided not to go keto and as a result I don’t count carbs – I eat berries, oats, sometimes lentils and beans. The carbs I eat are automatically restricted by the 800 calorie limit so I eat 30-40 grams a day on average. It works for me, but if it hadn’t, I would have experimented a bit to see what works.

I’m new to all of this but questions I’d ask would be.

Are you getting too many calories from vegetables, which, after all, are all carbs? Could you perhaps eat more meat/cheese and cut down on the veg? (Not that that sounds very healthy, but for a while would be okay I’m sure).

Have you tried to test if you are in ketosis? Perhaps the veggies you’re eating mean you’re never in ketosis and so not burning fat in the same way as others on this diet. Being in ketosis is the point of this diet over others.

Is 800 calories too many for you? Perhaps you naturally burn few calories each day and you actually need fewer to make much of a difference. The original fast Michael advised was 500 calories, so perhaps that’s where you need to be to make more of a difference.

Having said all that, it sounds like you do continue to make progress, so perhaps it’s just about being patient.

Hi Zuzuvela
Thanks for your reply. I am hoping that ditching the diet coke will help – not that I drank gallons of it, just half a pint with dinner to break the monotomy of water – I have never drunk tea and only have a cup of black coffee each day as I am hoping it helps with brain function! I don’t like fizzy water very much either, but maybe I should give that a go – although I was put off it many years ago when it was linked to osteoporosis.

Hi Jeremy Fisher
Thanks for replying. I eat a minimum of 200g of protein each day, plus some healthy fats. Any calories I have left after dinner are used up with small pieces of cheese – even 10g of Comte is a nice way to finish a meal.
I think I would struggle to cut a further 300 calories out of my diet. It is true that I am not finding 800 difficult, probably because of the bulk of veg eaten. I am not eating much of the starchy root vegetables, although we did have a lovely celeriac lasagne at the weekend.

Hi PurlySu
You seem to be eating a lot of protein – recommended consumption is .8 grams per kilo of target weight. So if your target weight, for example, is 75kg daily protein intake should be 60 grams. Unused protein can’t be stored and is converted to fat. It’s also 4 calories per gram – do you think you might be miscalculating your totals?