HI everyone, I started this WOE yesterday. Ive got the book & the recipe book. Started with my 1st meals yesterday. Im craving stuff like mad but I am super determined not to give in!! My wife is a feeder & eats nothing but crap unless I cook but she works shifts. Ok, so my fears, 1. I wont stick to it. 2. It wont work for me. Im 49 next month, I suffer from high blood pressure, which is well controlled with meds, in fact it was my annual blood check that flagged the high blood glucose, which scared the piss out of me & got me onto this diet. So I way 100kg but im just over 6 foot & broad shouldered (thats me story & im sticking to it 😉 ) I am doing fasted cardio most mornings, currently Shaun T T25 workouts. Yesterday I didnt train but did a 12.5 mile brisk walk instead. I am pescatarian, so Im going to have adapt some of the recipes, does anyone know if it radically changes calories if I use quorn instead of chicken?? Ive put a couple of fotos of myself in shorts on facebook to enlist support (very embarrasing) but also to hopefully help motivate me to keep going & see results. Im awiting the results of my 2nd blood test, so cant give any blood glucose levels as yet but I have invested in an awesome set of scales with an app that measures weight, BMI, water, subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, muscle. Im going to do checks once a week.
Nice to meet you all, thankyou & good luck everyone!

Hi TheKevster, welcome to the site and the best thing you could do for your health. This diet, if you stick to it, will certainly get your BG into normal range so dont worry too much about your forthcoming results. Whatever the news you can better it. As for the quorn and chicken question, I dont know the answer. You need to look on the packaging and compare the cals and carbs with the chicken. Quorn is plant based so might be a different carb value. On this diet, when it is for your BG and BP you need to cut the carbs quite drastically, i.e. no starchy white carbs like rice, pasta, bread, flour, breakfast cereals or processed foods. If you can crack that you will do okay but dont worry if you have to take it slowly, it is a hard ask.
I also do Shaun T but I do the 30 min cardio blast on the Abs programme which is quite easy (I am a 67 yr old woman) but it gets my heart beating up to around 165 so much be doing some good 🙂

Hi. Welcome. 48 yr old been on this Way of Eating since Jan last year.

Like you – I am 6’2″ ex rugger broad shoulders was 17.5 stone (110kg+) did a lot of cycling which I used as a justification to eat and drink whatever the hell I wanted.

BP was marginal for years but had crept up and GP wanted to medicate. The BSD was my last chance to get my BP down.

Amazingly I saw an improvement of my BP within ONE WEEK of the BSD. I followed 800 calories for 6 weeks (and stayed off the booze as well for that period) I lost well over my 10% (down to 15.5 stones). I continued to lose weight more slowly just following the rules no calorie counting and have now levelled out around 14stone 2lbs – 90kg.

Feel (and look) so much better for it.

My advice – it’s not as hard as you imagine. Retraining your body, a reset; I honestly didn’t feel as hungry as I expected to. The cravings seemed more manageable. I planned a weeks meals in advance and shopped accordingly. Green and black tea to fend off the hunger. Enjoy what you can eat and try not to miss what you can’t. A few times when the hunger was too much I snacked on plan – nuts. Not very often but as MM says better to snack on plan than undo all that good work.

You will notice differences even after a week. Good luck and let us know how you are getting on!

Hi Kevster and welcome.
My hubby was a lot more overweight when he started (also 6′ ex-prop but age 54 and nearly 22st starting weight) and also on BP meds. As Freester has also reported, his BP started to drop dramatically, and within 2 weeks he was off the 5mg amlopidine (added at the beginning of Lockdown 1), and a few weeks later his Ramipiral dose was dropped from 10mg to 5mg and his BP is holding steady at ~120/75-80.
In the first few weeks, I was taking his BP every morning, as the drop was that noticeable.
I would recommend taking your BP readings frequently when you first start the BSD as you may need a med review with your GP sooner rather than later.

Hi Kevster and welcome,

Just to answer your Quorn question – I’m not veggie but I do eat quorn sometimes, it’s basically no different calorie wise to chicken (if you’re using the quorn chicken pieces), very slightly higher in carbs but negligible. For comparison:

100g raw chicken breast – 105kcal, 22g protein, 0g fibre and 0g sugar (net carbs)
100g Quorn chicken pieces – 100kcal, 13.8g protein, 7.1g fibre, 0.7g sugar

Personally I find quorn more filling than chicken so I would probably eat less of it than the chicken – a standard portion from a pack of quorn chicken pieces is 75g and I would struggle to eat that with plenty of veg etc., but I wouldn’t struggle to eat the same amount of chicken – chicken is more water dense than quorn so loses a lot of water during cooking so what you weigh raw (and id always suggest weighing raw rather than cooked) will weigh less once cooked, quorn on the other hand acts like a sponge so will weigh more once cooked.

Lauren

thankyou for the support, ggod for you doing the workouts! Its easier to stop than to carry on, so I keep exercising regularly so I dont lose it!

thank you so much for the info on qourn, makes things a lot easier!

Hi RubyG,
I currently take 36mg of Candesarten Cilexitil with 5mg of Amodopine, so its great to hear your hubby did so well. Ive kinda resolved maself to being on meds for BP but was NOT gonna be diabetic, silly i know. If the BP drops too & stays down, then that would just be a great added bonus, im focussing on blood sugar & getting rid of my belly! Many thanks for the info, support & encouragement. 😉

Hi Freester,
many thanks for your encouraging words. It is a bit daunting, I didnt realise how much crap I actually ate!! I thought i was quite healthy but apparently not. Got lots of cravings for sweet stuff, if I want desert, i have a wee bowl of greek yoghurt with sum fresh fruit but trying to keep that small. I also snack on a small handfull of plain nuts, pumpkin seeds & sunflower seeds. I have to make this work. Many thanks.

Hi Kevster, my hubby has been on BP meds for nearly 6 years, and until the Amlopidine he seemed content to have his BP controlled through meds. His annual blood tests, however, showed his HbA1c had slipped into the pre-diabetic range, and he too wanted to avoid going further down that road if at all possible. He started on the BSD late Oct 2020, with the full support of his GP. He has so far lost 3st, is definitely losing his belly fat, and his BP is so much improved. The theory is that his HbA1c will be back down again too at the next test.
For 8 weeks he stuck religiously to 800cal and <50g carbs per day, and didn’t have any alcohol at all. Since the new year, the 800cal hasn’t been strictly adhered to every day, but the <50g carbs has been. He has had the occasional whisky (and will tonight for Burns night).
It’s so worth it, hang in there!