Hi everyone,

I’m going to try the No Carbs Ploughmans for lunch today and have a couple of questions that I was wondering if anyone could help with:

I am not sure what size the ham slices should be. I have a choice of smallish thin square-sized ham from a packet, or larger, thicker honey roast ham size.

How big is a matchbox-sized piece of cheddar? I can only find small boxes of matches, which I’m sure are too small.

What constitutes a ‘dollop’?

Does anyone know where you can buy low-sugar chutney, as recommend in the book.

Finally, how much is a ‘handful of walnuts’?

Just want to make sure I’m doing everything right!

Thanks!

Hi Natasha,
I think a matchbox size piece of cheese is very small, about 25-30g usually. I would consider a dessert spoon full to be a dollop. Can’t help with where to buy it as I live in Australia. Does your supermarket have a diet or health food section you could look in?
I can fit 12 walnut halves(250cals/1.1g carbs) in my palm.
Not a clue about the ham as I’m vegetarian but someone else on the forum will know.
Hope this helps.

Hi Cherianne,

Thank you, that’s really helpful.

The ‘matchbox’ sized piece of cheddar has been really confusing so what you said is good to know.

I will check out the diet sections in the local supermarkets here. Or I’ll go to the local Wholefoods store, as I think they should have a diabetic section.

Thank you again 😊

Ps, please can you send some sunshine from Oz, it is freezing here! ☀️☃⛄️☀️

Happy to be of help Natasha. Would send some sunshine if I could but it’s not that warm here. I’ve told my husband he has to chop wood this weekend. Autumn has arrived a bit early and it’s nippy at night in the hills where I live.

Hey Cherianne,

How’s it going?

Ah yes of course, you are in Australia – one of my favourite places in the world! I would happily emigrate if I could.

I hope you now have a plentiful supply of wood and are keeping cosy 🙂

Gutted to see the size of the matchbox sized piece of cheese.
You see in the UK we have these huge family sized boxes of matches…….

I’m busy tonight so I’ve weighed out 40g of cheese and 3 oatcakes for my dinner – it looks so pitiful but I can eat and run. I miss cheese although I do try to have the occasional bit (that’s all it is when you add up the calories lol).

Hey Bre123

Well done you for preparing in advance!

I had an evening out with friends last week and took my Ploughmans lunch with me in a little plastic box. I hid it in my bag and excused myself a couple of times so that I could eat! Sounds very ‘secret eater’ lol. I then had dinner when I got home.

Hope you have a nice evening!

Hi Bill,

I’m also from the UK and was hoping the cheese was the size of a Cook’s Matches matchbox!

I think they should specify the size as I have no idea. Someone recommended 25-30g so that’s what I’m going by.

Thanks Natasha_ENFP. I find I have to plan all of my weeks meals and usually do this on a Monday morning; then I can make sure I’ve got everything in I need. I made myself a weekly planner sheet so I can record everything I have and it makes it easier to track the calories as once I’ve made something I know how many cals for what size portion – anything to make life a bit easier as I work full-time.

Bill-
😝
Penny

Hi Bre – yes, working full-time does take a lot of planning in advance.

I’m getting a bit faster with the recipes. I was so slow at first as I haven’t been used to cooking this precisely, but now that I’m getting used to it and I’m cooking some of the meals more than once, I am finding that I am speeding up.
The steak with peppercorn sauce takes me 10 minutes to prepare and cook from beginning to end, and the chicken with butter beans takes me about 15 minutes. The beetroot falafels take me ages though and are very messy, but totally worth it; I love them!

Juggling a full-time job with the diet is no easy-feat. You are obviously very dedicated so good for you!

Natasha I love the beetroot falafels too! Takes ages to do though. Had the Fish pie this evening which was really nice and a big portion! I made the lamb and aubergine bakes on Sunday but wasn’t very keen on them. The skinny chilli is good though as it’s such a huge portion as it serves 8 which means I have put the other portions in plastic tubs and froze them ready for a quick evening meal when I need it.

Hi Natasha,
Just wondering how you are doing with your weight/blood sugars. You sound like you have got all the planning and organising under control. My sister also does a weekly plan and has her week’s meals and snacks sorted on Sunday afternoon. She cuts up her cheese allowance and boils eggs, weighs out nuts etc. and puts stuff into zip lock bags in the fridge or freezer ready to grab on her way to work.
Glad you love Aus, it’s a great place to live and a great lifestyle for families. There are lots of things to miss about England but lots happening I’m glad I’m not there to see!!
It’s definitely moving into autumn here although we’ve just had two days of 35+ degrees as a last burst of summer. Back to cool and rainy today. I have a million zucchinis and tomatoes to eat up from my garden so am madly making ratatouille, zucchini soup etc and freezing it to use them up. Good job it’s a Mediterranean diet.

Hi GinDibs,
That all sounds delicious, I’ve yet to try them. Can’t wait!
I have my calculator at the ready to work out for the bigger dishes what I would need when making 1 portion.
It would probably make life much easier and be far more time-efficient to cook as in the book and divide the dish into portions and freeze them as you are doing.

Hey Cherrianne,

Thanks for asking, my weight is going down. I need to lose 35lbs and have lost 11bs in the first two weeks

I am not diabetic – I tested my blood sugar when I started the diet and my levels were in the normal range. However, with the diet I had been consuming for the past couple of years, I was on a fast track to getting T2D.

What worried me the most was my stomach; with no exaggeration I looked at least 7 months pregnant. I also felt constantly tired with very low energy (often sleeping until 4pm and not wanting to get up), very irritable and depressed and my sugar and carbs cravings were off the scale uncontrollable. knew these were serious danger signs, and that is what motivated me to change.

I had watched all micheal mosley’s TV programmes and am a huge fan. I also really trust his research.I thought the 8-Wk BSD sounded absolutely amazing, so here I am!

I am not as organised as your sister, and cook my meals 3 times a day. I will, however, always make sure I have my next day’s ingredients the day before so I am not caught out. This also helps plant the seed in my mind that next day is bsd day, and so on.

I also like to follow the daily meal plans and recipes to the letter. I’m pretty obsessive about it and won’t substitute meals or ingredients or do my own thing and use guesswork. I don’t trust my judgment lol. I need to know this is going to work by following everything exactly what it says in the book. So far so good with the results.

I’m so jealous you get to grow your own veg AND you’ve had gorgeously hot days! Your homegrown zucchini and tomato recipes sound delicious.

Yes, I loved the Aussie lifestyle and you are a friendly lot! I’m hoping io visit Melbourne again in the not too distant future.

How are you getting along?

Hi Natasha,
My motivation was to get my diabetes under control. I was under threat of needing to start on insulin. I have a very strong family history of diabetes going back at least four generations. In my generation there is myself and two cousins with quite severe type 2, only one of whom is overweight.
I always thought it wouldn’t happen to me as I ate a very healthy vegetarian diet, was at the lower end of my healthy weight range and not the typical apple shape I thought diabetics were.
I really needed something drastic to change. Like you I read the research and it made so much sense. So far I have fasting blood sugars mostly in the non diabetic range so I’m sure my GP will reconsider starting medication at my next review.
I realise now my diet was quite carb heavy so the changes I’ve made have to be life long.
Sounds like you made the right choice to start the diet before you became diabetic. You have lost nearly a third of the weight you wanted to lose already, so well done. At least you’ll be nice and slim when you get to Melbourne next. They have a great cafe lifestyle over there with some really healthy food choices. Plus a fantastic market for fresh produce so you’ll have plenty of options.
I know the hot weather sounds idyllic but it does play havoc with my garden at times. I had no apricots this year because we had days of hot north winds just after the fruit set and they just dropped off the tree. Things can just shrivel up and die despite watering well. I am grateful to be able to grow my own food though and so far my husband and kids haven’t complained about how many of my recipes just happen to contain zucchini!!

Hi Cherianne,

Thank you for sharing your interesting and positive story. I love hearing personal accounts about what brought people to do this diet, it makes it all the more motivating.

I am hearing more and more stories from people like yourself who you would not think had t2d as they are not particularly overweight and have a healthy lifestyle and diet. I think there is a bit of a misleading stereotype that the only people who could develop t2d are, for example, apple-shaped and overweight. It has been a real eye-opener to find out that this is not always the case.

I knew t2d is often hereditary, but I didn’t realise it is something that a relatively healthy person can be susceptible to. I remember reading an article written by a journalist who was naturally slim, very fit and very healthy, and for the purpose of a health article he was doing research for, he had to have a blood test. When the results came back that he had t2d, it was a huge and unexpected shock for him. He went on a special diet to reverse his condition, which was completely successful and wrote a big article about it. Thinking back, I remember the diet came from Newcastle University – which is where the blood sugar diet was developed, so he might have been one of the first ‘guinea pigs’ to trial it. Anyway, it just goes to show that looks can be deceiving, you never know!

You and your family sound like the perfect example of how deceptive t2d can be, and how it isn’t always the result of a bad diet.

Good luck at your next GP appointment. He/she must be very proud of you for taking such a proactive approach to conquering it! It will be interesting for you to see the results of your check-up. Do you think that this diet will mean you won’t need to be on medication, or is it more complex than that?

I know exactly what you mean about this diet being about making lifelong changes. I think I said in my last message that my friend asked me if she thought I would be able to carry on after the 8-weeks, and I truly believe I can, and will. I never ever want to go back to looking and feeling so bad again. I’m not going to swear-off sugar, but think I will only have it occasionally. I definitely prefer all the meals I have cooked on the plan to what I used to eat.

Can you remind me how long you have been on the BSD?

Thank you for the encouragement! I fell in love with Melbourne and could easily see myself living there, it’s such an awesome place. I also went to Sydney which I really enjoyed, but not as much as Melbourne. I need to meet an nice Aussie man I think lol. Thank you for the tips about where to go, I have written them down.

I fully understand about the weather playing havoc with nature. Although we don’t have anything near to your climate in the UK, we have had exceptionally mild weather this winter which has confused the hell out of the flowers and trees. So many flowers started blooming months before their time.

I don’t grow any fruit or veg so I really am full of envy about your hoard! Homegrown apricots and the such sound absolutely delicious. You must be a very versatile zucchini chef!

Right, I’m off to make the chicken, butter bean and walnut salad for lunch. It’s one of my favourites. It’s great that there are such varied and delicious vegetarian options in this diet, makes it so easy for all.

Hi Natasha,
This weekend is the start of my fourth week on the diet and my blood sugars have become fairly consistent now.
The first week or so I forgot a few times and grabbed fruit from the bowl or absentmindedly nibbled a few grapes while packing children’s lunches for school. I had a revelation one day when I ate a nectarine and looked up the carbs to discover it had over 12g. So I am much more mindful now.
My Mum is also doing the diet as she found her blood sugars were getting harder to control and her cholesterol was going up. Neither of us wanted to start medication. She lost the couple of kg she needed to lose and is also back in the non diabetic blood sugar range.
It’s been harder for her to get her head around being able to have full fat products because of forty years of being told that low fat is the way to go.
I think we will both be able to avoid medication now, and we have a great GP who is willing to listen and very open minded. One of my cousins wasn’t so lucky and had to sign a medical waiver when he wanted to try the fast 800 instead of medication!
I agree with you that the food is great on the BSD and is more likely to become a way of life because it is varied and not special diet food. You get inspired to find ways of adapting what you would normally eat. Hence the zucchini slices instead of pasta when I’m making lasagne. Plus the fact that friends and family have started to groan if I offer them zucchini, my plants have gone berserk producing them. So I have to be inventive or I’ll have no friends left, even my chickens roll their eyes when I bring them the scraps lol.

I’m on day three and i have to say the recipes in the book are very inaccurate and confusing – grrrrr

I too was worried about the No Carb Pougmans, so did some research and it get the whole meal close to the calorie count quoted, this is what I came up with:
25g Cheese
60g ham
10g walnuts
10g chutney

I use the best tasting cheese and ham I can find. Depending upon the exact brands you use, this comes out at about 310 calories and up to 19g carbs. But I never eat all of the chutney, so I figure I’m under 300 calories…

Hope this helps.

“No Carb Ploughmans” I am very confused – how can this be called “no carb” when there are at least 20 grams of carbohydrate in the meal? Am I missing something? Can someone please explain?? Same applies to “no carb bircher”!!

Think of it as NO REFINED CARB Ploughmans (i.e. without the normal whacking great slice of bread) and NO REFINED CARB bircher – i.e. without all the refined cereal.

Does that help?

Yes Heather, quite high in carbs, I usually just have half the apple, give the other half to hubby, he is so grateful.

Thank you both for your replies. There is something seriously wrong here – Michael Mosley or his reps or his publisher should answer these questions. It is a clear example of “false advertising”!!! “No Carb” should be No Carb not No Refined Carb. If this is wrong what else is wrong about the diet?

Heather Patricia

The whole subject of this approach to improving Type 2 is quite complex and scientific and I believe that Dr MM is trying to be as simple and easy to follow as he can.

However this isn’t to say that all the information is as clear as it could be – and perhaps comments here will be helpful to the team in the future.

Some people here follow the recipes for 8 weeks and have excellent results.

Others investigate further – there is much on the web about Professor Taylor’s research and I hope you are not suggesting that his scientific rigour is “wrong”? He is endeavouring to establish the effects on the body with lower or nil refined carbs with experimental data.

Others combine the two approaches above – I made my own recipes using non-refined carbs and used MyFitnessPal to check carb content.

I found this fairly simple and sxtremely successful

May I suggest – and I wish you all the best with your BSD – that you put to one side your concerns with the “no carb plough mans” and either simply follow the recipes or do your own calculations.

This programme workd for many people – look at this forum – don’t get too caught up in criticism before you’ve tried it and found your way

Good luck. 🙂

Hello, all –

I’ve been following the BSD since June 29th and have lost nearly 3 stone in that timeframe, so I consider it a big success – but I, too, became very worried the first time I put the no carb ploughmans into my Fitbit app and saw that the calories were off!

I don’t have an opinion about false advertising, etc. but I wanted to say that I eat the no carb ploughmans for lunch every single day (despite the calorie/carb count) with some modification and here’s why: it is easy to pull together, filling, and travels nicely. I don’t eat the chutney (I don’t care for it and it’s a hassle to find), but I do eat the whole apple, what is surely a bit larger than a matchbox piece of cheese, and I substitute pecans for walnuts (taste preference).

I’m pretty positive that, by following most of the recipes very carefully (obv this is not a good example of that!), I’m eating more than 800 calories a day because the counts in the book are off, but I’m still eating less than 1,000, and that, combined with exercise, has had a significant impact on every part of my health. I was not T2 but probably would have ended up there after a few years and I was definitely overweight and out of shape. At my last dr’s appt, every measure of my health had improved dramatically and that’s certainly a function of the diet and exercise.

So I echo Igor’s encouragement, but understand the worry about the calorie/carb counts – I was pretty upset about 5 weeks in when I realized I hadn’t been at the 800 calories I thought I was all that time. In my case, though, even if I’m at 900-1000 calories/day, it’s so much less (and the food so much better in quality) than what I was previously eating, I’m still much better off. That’s not to excuse any inaccuracy but to say that I think, even if flawed in terms of the counts, the diet is really effective and worthwhile.

Heather, there is no such thing as no carbs in 2 of the recipes. I think you have taken it too literally, the no carbs refer to 2 meals that normally have a whacking great chunk of bread (the ploughman’s) and I hate to get you started on the no carb bircher, meaning it is not made up of the usual grains. It is a title not carved in stone, which you wouldn’t really carve in stone, but take it with a pinch of salt so on and so on. I repeat it is not to be taken literally. For the purpose of yourself let’s change the name to low carb ploughmans – if you really want to get into semantics, it is not even a ploughman, that is a man who ploughs not a plate of food. Like igor I wish you well on the plan but picking holes in it does not help anyone. We have been more than happy to answer your other questions but you seem to be dwelling on this.

Thank you all for your replies and encouragement. It puzzles me that some people are so defensive about my comments. I believe in the science of this diet but I feel that the there has been carelessness about the calorie/carb count. And I am not alone – for example see “elgardo” above and many others. I am entitled to my opinion and to express it. Hopefully, this diet will work for me.
So far I am very happy with the choice of foods etc. I’ll keep in touch. Good luck to everybody.

I think the thing to remember is that this is a LOW carb diet, not a NO carb diet. General consensus has been to get the carbs to around 50 a day, so the inclusion of an apple (at 18 carbs) in one of three meals sounds about spot on to me.

I guess with these two meals it is highlighting the gulf between the refined carb heavy traditional variations and the very low carb BSD versions. In a similar way that almond milk isn’t the liquid extracted from the mammary glands of an almond, but is used as sort of reference point.

Thanks Timmy. I love your example about the mammary glands of an almond – I will steal that one and use it myself!

Haha. Glad you liked that.

We can disagree on terminology! The important thing is that following the general guidelines will result in losing weight and regaining your life. I never took anything literally, and I probably ate more than 800 calories many days, but day after day, keeping on keeping on, it has made a world of difference for me. I still recommend putting your “evaluative/critical brain” on hold for just a few weeks while you try this out. We are all so trained to evaluate and pass judgment too quickly — I am just as guilty as my lawyer training has made me very critical. But if you just suspend the critical part of your brain for a few weeks, follow the guidelines and keep at it, it will work. In the end, it does not matter what we call it exactly, but it does matter that we have regained our healthy selves. Best wishes to all on this journey.