S-G I haven’t seen the Dr yet…cannot get an appointment until the 25th, and I am not prepared to see a different GP. I think she will be very interested, when she saw me 3 months ago, she wanted to know about the BSD as I told her I was using it! She even told the Diabetes Nurse not to talk to me about diet…which she couldn’t help doing…..was very patronising and told me that, on no account was I to cut carbs…on the contrary, I should be eating them at every meal!!! I have kept a very detailed diary of my food (calories, carbs and protein), weight, activity, etc. I hope never to see that nurse again, but expect I will have to.

My ‘treat’ meal out will not involve bread…but I might give in to a very few chips!

Wow Pootle what an amazing weight loss in three months ⭐️⭐️👏👏👏 I bet your Doctor will be astonished & very impressed with your achievement!
Margaret xx

Pootle, I hope you do see that nurse and can say ‘told you so’, but I’m sure you wont and the doctor is on your side. Your results say everything about this diet that any medical person needs to know – it works. Good for you.

Good morning!

So great to read all your positive posts it’s put me on the right track for getting back into the swing of things.

Well done S-g and Pootle , great results. Love your long term goal setting idea s-g.

Sunny hope you’re having a good trip. We came back yesterday as you were leaving!

Wendy sounds like a great summer with wonderful family time. Sometimes we have to just go with the flow to enjoy those occasions to the fullest extent.

Welcome to the newcomers and returners. This is definitely the right place!

Julia …. buffets! I’m with s-g here. I avoid buffets whenever possible and eat from a menu. Sometimes it’s not the ‘hunger’ monster but the ‘just fancy a little bit’ monster that wins at a buffet for me! Afternoon tea is simply, we just avoid them!

Margaret don’t worry too much about general anaesthetics and age/fitness. They tend to use sedation and spinal anaesthesia now for lower body surgery. I’ve had two extensive hip surgeries with that method and couldn’t tell any difference!

So to me. Home from lovely family time in Portugal. Naturally after 15 days AWOL I have a little extra baggage, 5.2lbs, to be exact but that will be soon be gone. I’m going to set out some short and long term goals following s-g’s lead. I have to be realistic as we have another trip planned at the start of October. No point in setting myself up to fail so my first short term goal will be to lose this holiday gain before our next trip. I will work out my longer term goals later today.

Hope everyone is continuing to do well.

Hi everyone, I didn’t get weighed today because I lost a fair chunk yesterday and didn’t want to be disappointed if it had blipped up as it can day by day. So will leave it for a couple of days.

Verano, was that about me getting a sandwich and throwing the bread away 🙂 Still do that, or eat the meat out of a sausage roll. I expect a buffet to be full of fresh cheeses, meats, salads and maybe some fruit, not stodge, stodge and more stodge. Went to an event recently at a chateau and it was a buffet so I thought great – posh nosh on a buffet (as above). When it arrived it was either in bread buns (burgers) or deep fried with batter or breadcrumbs. When I told them I couldn’t eat it they said I should have told them beforehand. So lesson learnt. They did do me some chicken bits without the batter and then ask if I would like some chips to go with it 🙂 People, really.

I envy you and your trips and I was saying to hubby I would like to just pack a case and go off somewhere whenever we felt like it. But we have 3 cats and it is a military operation getting everything sorted. However, that is working in my favour as we have had nothing in our diaries except for a few quiz nights from beginning of September to end of December when we visit family again. Great for my long term plan. I took my inspiration from Mel Robbins in a podcast about if you really want something, make it into a project with a start and end date and work towards that goal. She say 6 months is good so that is what I am doing. 3.33lbs per month adds up to 20lbs. No more messing with 2lbs on and 2lbs off and so on. So I am also being grateful to be able to concentrate on me and my needs and goals.

Have a great weekend and keep on keeping on…

Thank you Verano regarding your surgery reassurance to me. S-G you are doing so well with your weight loss now. I need some of your determination to rub off on me🤔 My husband & I went up to London yesterday for lunch with friends & I have been trying to eat much fewer lower carb calories today but will find out when I weigh tomorrow 🤔
Keep on going everyone 👍
Margaret xx

By the way SunnyB thanks for your suggestion that I might be under eating good fats & protein & I have been increasing my protein intake & having more kefir!. However as I had feared I gained another 0.75lbs when I weighed today & seem to be going backwards this month & in fact since last January have gained 8lbs rather than at least losing that much🙁
I’m not happy about this but still want to keep trying to lose as much weight as I can before Christmas. I hava a bowls final celebration lunch tomorrow & must do better next week.🤞
Margaret xx

Just a quick drop-in for Margaret. Can I suggest a complete “back to basics” approach?

No more guessing portion sizes even for good stuff … weigh and measure everything going on your plate, stick to as near 800 cals as you can each day and similarly, decided your acceptable level of carbs a day and try not to exceed it. And no “just one/just a little won’t do any harm” excuses.

We can all get complacent about the size of portions and little “off-piste” treats/exceptions, but by going back to basics and reminding ourselves what “normal” portions/eating on the BSD looks like, we can reset. The exercise might only be necessary for a couple of weeks, to get you solidly back on track.

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone.

S-G, you’re right; I’m quite the lurker. I am rather shy and easily discouraged so I tend to stand in place rather than take action… but I would like to change that. My two biggest challenges right now are my severe insomnia, which leaves me so exhausted that I struggle to even think clearly, and my traumatic brain injury that prevents me from taking short turn memory to long term storage, which means I forget most everything including my goals and determination.

My introduction- I am an almost 40 year old widow with a teenage daughter. I currently weight almost 270 lbs.
My reasons for joining everyone is to decrease my weight, improve my health, and positively influence my daughter while giving my self-esteem a facelift.
My marriage was a rocky one to say the least and left me with quite a shattered view of myself, not really knowing who I am, what I want, or where I belong. My daughter is likewise lost and wandering so I hope leading the way to a better path will help her in her journey of healing.
I really love the atmosphere of this forum so I’ll try to contribute more in the future.

Hi all, hope you are having a good weekend. I love it when things go right and that is what is happening for me right now. First we put out a call for a Christmas housesitter on the site we use and, after 2 false starts we have found someone who we hope is a perfect fit for us. Next we bought a new light-weight stick style vacuum and put our heavy Dyson on a selling site. Went the first day and they picked it up and paid today. That money will go towards me having my engagement ring repaired – needed 2 new diamonds (tiny ones at around €100 each) but couldn’t justify that so settled for 2 cubic zirconia at €100 for the 2.

Weight loss is going well so I resisted weighing today as we all go up and down on a daily basis. Going to try to wait until my weigh day on Tuesday. BG is going down every morning so I am still reducing the insulin dose. Down to 15 units. That also helps me lose weight as I am not pumping so much fat magnets into me.

SunshineOrange, you are in a safe space here. We never criticise or have a go at or insult anyone – we are here to look out for each other. We might sometimes give each other a little push or some advice people don’t want to take but it all comes from a good place. I am assuming you don’t have any health problems like diabetes where diet plays a big part but I am sorry to hear about your head injury. It must be difficult to cope with the combination of insomnia and memory loss – I find it very hard to sleep and often still awake at 5am but lucky enough to be able to stay in bed if I need to.

My suggestions for you are 1. Stay with us and shout out if you need any help or advice. We might have been asked a question a dozen times but we don’t mind and that even makes us quite an experienced resourse. We will never try to give you crazy ideas or sell you anything but we have all done lots of reading or watching videos we might recommend. 2. I think you said you have bought the book (can’t remember which one) and I am sure you will find a menu plan for a couple of weeks. Try to follow one or spend a couple of hours making up your own using them as inspiration. 3. Do a shop with your menu with you and don’t buy anything that will throw you off plan. 4. Write down all your goal, hopes and dreams. You can also write down how you are feeling, is the diet helping with sleep or are clothes fitting better etc. 5. Write down what you eat and drink or put in an online application like MyFitnessPal which will calculate your calories, carbs, fats etc. Also write down any exercise you do and try to get into a routine, be it a walk once a week, aerobics in front of YouTube 2 days a week. Whatever. It is all up to you and baby steps are fine. I think the lists and recording will help you remember where you are and what you are doing. So many things. Hope I haven’t overwhelmed you.

Margaret, at least you have admitted you have strayed from the plan and maybe you already know where you have been going wrong. I think you can still go out to bowls dinners or spend time with your son but plan it into your diet. When he has a bowl of potato chips you can have a bowl of carrot sticks with a hummous dip or something similar. Have a meal out but leave the bread and miss out the dessert or have some fruit or even ice cream or a sorbet. There are lots of little tricks that can build up to good habits. Don’t think any of us find this easy. I sometimes want to scream – I hate being diabetic and I cannot be on and off my plan as my diabetes is always there at one level or another. Much as it is my dream it is not going away. Pull on your big girl pants (not a comment on size 🙂 ) and crack on with a plan to get you where you want to be.

Well I think I have had enough to say for today, see you all next week.

SunshineOrange ….. great advice from sunshine-girl. Just stay with us and write down all your daily/weekly/monthly goals. Although at the moment ‘one day at a time’ might just be the way for you to go.

Thanks S-G yes time to stop fooling myself with guestimations about what amount I am eating & smaller big girls pants will also be welcome 😂
Margaret xx

S-g yes I remember the days when I was ultra strict too throwing away the bread from sandwiches etc! Must admit I’m far more lax these days although I still don’t eat a sandwich unless it’s with my low carb bread, and then it’s always an open sandwich and I do have a burger, but without the bun!

The abiding thing I remember of my pre BSD days is that ‘afternoon fatigue’. I used to think it was the normal thing to need an afternoon nap after lunch. But then lunch was usually heavy carbs with a sandwich, crisps and maybe even a chocolate biscuit! Now, with a low carb diet, I never get that afternoon slump and in fact when I wake in the morning I feel much brighter and more alert and stay like that for most of the day.

So, I guess this Way of Life has many benefits apart from controlling blood sugar. Losing weight I guess is the primary benefit for many but there are others, well for me at least, include feeling much brighter and alert despite getting older, eating a far better diet with virtually no UPFs and being far more aware of how food can, and should be, our ‘friend’ not our ‘foe’. I’t comes back to the old saying we should ‘eat to live not live to eat’!

this is i think such a good things to see and i cant wait to try it now ekotogel

Hi everyone
Well to be honest speaking French is a lot easier for me than struggling with a pretty rough week back ! I think I knew what to expect with carb withdrawal but I reckon it was a bit more than that .Headaches yes, but feeling weary and really out of sorts for well over a week … ? Ok I had a month of excesses when family were here but I didn’t expect to feel so yuk for so long after .Oh well …maybe something else was going on ??

So I am sticking with it , fasting where possible and eliminating any white carbs .I immediately get an attack of acid reflux if I eat bread so that is a good deterrent .
I have a week in the UK planned early October to catch up with hubby’s family so I will need to be extra vigilant there but apart from that , no other trips planned .

I start back to yoga this week and will resume pilates whne aquagym stops mid October .

Just keep going everyone and be gentle with yourselves .You can pick yourself up and crack on if there are any detours on the road !! Just find your way back 🙂

Wishing everyone a positive week
Wendy x

Wendy so sorry to hear that your carb withdrawal symptoms are so bad. Hopefully this week will be smoother. Keep on keeping on ……

Hi all, no weigh in today. I am getting used to not weighing every day but tomorrow is my official day – hoping… fingers crossed. I have been super good and no afternoon snacks except one slice of ham today and yesterday I have 2 olives and a couple of chunks of pineapple.

Verano, I too know what carbs I can have and how often but they can still creep in. I allow myself the occasional Ryvita with butter with my boiled egg or with my homemade soup. But notice it is getting to be most days. Luckily I run out after my current packet and no more until we go back to the UK.

Wendy, sorry you are struggling. Think of it as your body ridding itself of the poison. I could say in French ‘bien fait’ but wouldn’t even suggest such a thing 🙂 Sorry, something I learnt today. These crazy little phrases that we think we know what they mean. Now I am worried you will think I am serious. No way. It is a phrase I had to learn so I never make the mistake of using it. :). Only you and maybe Californiagirl will understand – are you still on track with the French Californiagirl.

Lovely weather here again but no chance of the pool heating up so just have to get on with the aerobics.

Have a good week.

Hello all, just started having a shake at lunchtime. Bit of trial and error with the quantity of water and stirring it up properly, but super easy. Having a med style dinner, usually chicken and veg but also make my own burgers with just the meat and herbs and a bit of cheese and salad. After a week clothes feel looser (I don’t weigh myself), but definitely felt more tired than usual. Hoping this wears off as I adjust!

Hi all, today is my weigh in and was a little disappointed as I have been super strict but I have lost 0.75 of a pound, so on track if I can do that every week for another 3 and half weeks. Must get more exercise factored in. I am doing some but a bit here and there so maybe 3 times a week.

StarGazer, sounds like you have a plan and doing what is working for you. Not sure about shakes with water, I prefer to use almond milk which is quite low in calories and fat but gives my smoothies a creamier texture.

Spend the night worrying that Wendy is going to take offence at what I said to her. I’m sure she will understand I was just flexing my newly found language skills. Big hugs Wendy.

This idea of mine of getting out and about more seems to have got out of hand. We have 2 more cinema nights next week and I have booked for us to do a city murder mystery tour on Saturday. It takes place in Bergerac and is all done on the phone. We have to decide whether we want to be Ersin Lupin (the famous French jewel robber) or Moriarty of Sherlock fame. The only difficulty we will have is that it will all be in French so 2 phones will be needed, one to translate in case we get stuck, but a great way to learn the language more.

Hope everyone else is keeping on.

No offence taken SG ! Please don’t worry ! Xx