I wonder why oranges seem to be being avoided in the diet. My husband, son and I are following the 8 week meal planner at the back of the recipe book, and oranges seem to be absent. They are not referred to as being high sugar, like mangoes or bananas, but not included as possible fruits in for instance, the breakfasts.
Coming from Australia where oranges are plentiful, I would love to know if there’s science behind their non-inclusion, or what?

Also intrigued to know, for instance, why greens aren’t included in dishes more often: eg hot smoked salmon and tomato recipe (p29, Oz edition). A handful of greens (rocket, salad mix etc) would be great, but we’re not including them as they’re not part of the recipe.

I don’t use any of the recipes in either of the books. I prefer to modify my favorites instead. Also I’m far more stringent about carb counting than the Mosleys are. Tomatoes are one example of a food the books indulge in that are way too high in sugar for my limit of 20 grams of carbs per day. Beets, legumes, oats and ever so many fruits are other examples. There are also major problems with the accuracy of the calorie and carb counts, especially in the originally BSD book. Many of them are off by a lot.

All you have to do is look up the nutrient profile of the foods you want to include. You can use an app like My Fitness Pal or Fat Secret, or simply Google “[name of foodstuff] nutrition.” If the carbs/sugars are too high, either use a tiny amount or find another option. One very small orange as 9 grams net carbs, all sugar. That’s out of the question for me, but if you have no blood glucose issues, it could be worked in to your menu as long as you were careful to weigh, measure and count it.

The books are just a convenient starting point for some people. Following them is in no way a requirement.

I am following the BSD in exactly the same way as Esnecca. Have followed the principles to the letter but not the recipes and I keep carbs to 20g as I also have blood sugar issues. I use greens a lot but no oranges. I use fat secret to track calories and carbs etc. and it has worked so brilliantly.

Like Esnecca nd Krysia, I never used the recipes either, but adapted my own, following the principles. Whilst losing, I tried to keep my carbs to below 20g (though I had no blood sugar issues) but since moving on to maintenance 5 months ago, I allow myself up to 50g a day (which is the figure a lot of people use whilst losing). So now, I may allow myself the odd piece of fruit (an orange etc) but whilst I was losing, 9 – 10g carbs for one orange was way too much of my daily allowance gone. So if you feel like an orange, by all means have it, but weigh and log it, and look upon it as an occasional treat. These days, as I am no longer counting calories, I allow myself unlimited leafy green veg, but even they were weighed and logged whilst doing 800. By all means add them to any meal you like, as long as you log them.

Fruit is high sugar/carb so only have occasionally. As far as veg is concerned, the general rule is that growing above ground is fine (green leafy veg), for those growing below ground use very much with caution, and only occasionally.

Eat more greens! They are practically no-carb and massively healthful — I still fill my plate with spinach and kale and chard and arugula and anything like that — I would supplement greens every day.
And, I love oranges but I eat them in moderation (even the peel if they are organic) — but not the juice! When I think about how much orange juice I used to drink I am horrified.

Hi minksch

I like you am following the meal plan and all the recipes. Tomorrow I will be having yoghurt with rhubarb compote which does in fact contain an orange! There is also a smoked mackerel and orange salad which I’ll be having later this week. I’m doing the diet just to lose weight and not for any blood sugar related issues so I’m less worried about total carbs per day. So for that reason just going with the guidelines in the book as it has been designed to deliver a nutritionally balanced diet so that while eating very low calorie, you aren’t missing out on any essential nutrients. Confusingly the fruits to be avoided – tropical fruits mainly, do not have dissimilar carb values to some of the fruits that are allowed such as apples. As advised in the book, the best way to compare fruit is to look at their Glycemic load which is the degree to which a food affects blood sugar, these values are listed on http://www.glycemicindex.com/. The lower the GL the less affect it has on blood sugar. Also if occasional fruits are used as part of a recipe as opposed to a snack between meals then their overall carb effect is balanced out by other foods. PS I’m two and a half weeks in and lost 9 lb so something is working!

I’m sure the books says oranges are too high in sugar, so aren’t included?

I had a bit of a shock with oranges, I did my blood sugar test just after eating one satsuma and it was over 220 (around 12 on the other scale), no more oranges for me.

I too took up the BSD purely to lose weight and not because of blood sugar issues, however, I very soon found out that if I didn’t keep a close eye on the carbs, weight loss badly stalled. It is very evident that not all calories are equal, so my advice would be to account for carbs as well as calories, even if you are only on the BSD to lose weight.

If you’re only planning to do this for 8 weeks then you can probably be as restrictive as you like with no ill effects, but — now I’ll stop saying ‘you’ because this is about me — I intend to make this a long term WOE so I don’t want to miss out on the vitamins, minerals and fibre I’ll get from eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Especially as my family is very cancer-prone. If my weight loss is a bit slower, so be it. I do check my blood sugar levels occasionally (I have a tester because I had gestational diabetes with my second child) and I know what pushes my blood sugar up (anything made from rice!), unlike sunshine-girl I’m ok with an orange so for me it’s about speed of weight loss. I may have to drop carbs if I hit a plateau.

As gardenista said, the book always makes carbs like fruit part of a meal, not a snack on its own. Fat lowers the GI of a meal so your body processes it much better than if you eat carbs alone.

In my honest opinion (I prefer to type it in full not IMHO) anyway – if I wasn’t diabetic there is no way I would be on such a strict regime, it is madness. BUT if you want to lose weight quickly it is a good short term plan. As for another aspect of the oranges, anything that is so sweet is going to make it more difficult to withdraw from sugar / carbs but on the other hand, if that is the only sugar you have so what. I am strict because I am diabetic and dont want to lose a limb or my sight etc so do what works for you.

Sunshine-girl – your comment made me smile, because it is absolute madness! That’s what I tell people when they eagerly ask how I lost weight so easily and I tell them and their faces drop, because it sounds so hard/sad to give up that particular set of food.

If I didn’t have blood sugar issues I would not have started it, but boy am I glad I did, given how I feel now as to how I felt then. And now I’m a healthy BMI (checking insulin resistance after holiday) I hope I can be a bit less rigorous about some of the veg and fruit I banished. Like others here I did not use the recipe book during the weight loss period, but I’m thinking I may give it a go in maintenance.

Sunshine-girl reversing diabetes isn’t the only thing that makes losing a lot of visceral fat quickly worth doing!

Hi, When I told my doctor it is 800 calories and all the things I dont eat he thought I had gone crazy and wouldn’t recommend it to other patients as it is too restrictive and no-one would be able to stick with it. Well some of us can and do but all I was saying is that if you dont have any health problems but just want to lose some weight, this is a good plan in the short term. However, it is very restrictive and if you dont have serious health problems then having an occasional orange or a slice of toast is not going to harm you, it may help you to stick with the plan, as MM says of some example dieters, they have the occasional glass of wine or even a sneaky take away. As long as it is controlled. For me, one take away pizza would send my BG sky high so I wouldn’t risk it. Yes we all want to be healthy but unless we have a motivating factor and it doesn’t have to be diabetes (that was just my example) then this diet is hard.

So going back to the question from the OP, who has not put any medical problems on their profile, why not oranges if you want one now and then and add more green if you want, they are not going to push your calories up very much. Make the diet work for you and adjust it to your needs. That will make it easier to stick to in the longer term.