I’ve started the BSD today. I know it’s only 4 weeks to Christmas but when is it ever the perfect time? Life will always get in the way.
I was diagnosed with type 2 about 4 years ago but just over the threshold at that time but now totally out of control. I’ve been in denial for the total time, eating what I wanted and hardly any exercise. Tested my blood sugar today and it’s 16.5 and I’m 6st overweight (something I haven’t admitted to anyone!). Things have to change. I’ve been on a diet for the past 30 years aaaarrrrggggggg!

I’ve downloaded both the diet and recipe books onto my kindle at the beginning of the week and I’ve been avidly reading it since (haven’t tucked into the recipe book yet).

Welcome Miss Muffet and you really have come to the right place. You are also so right that there never is a perfect time. We have to live and heal ourselves at the same time . There are so many success stories of reversing T2 diabetes and/or losing lots of weight. The only thing I found, especially with the recipe book, is that a hard copy is much easier to refer to as time goes on. I downloaded the BSD Diet book but then bought the hard copy from Amazon because it’s so much easier to refer to, and then I just bought a copy of the recipe book rather than the kindle version.

There are so many posters here who can answer any question you have, no matter how obscure, just be sure to keep posting it really helps. Good luck and enjoy your journey.

Thank you Verano. Feeling really hungry but I keep thinking of that BS reading and it’s stopping me caving in lol! X

Hi Miss Muffet – just wanted to echo Verano’s welcome. When I first started, I had about six weeks to go to a three month vacation. There really is no right time to start and we have to find a way to make this way of eating work for our lifestyles, because life is going to happen, no matter how we approach eating.

This is a great forum for information, advice, applause, encouragement and support. This is the place to come in good times and bad and someone will be there to offer words of wisdom. We are all on the BSD adventure and have our own reasons for being here, but ultimately our goals are the same – to improve our health, wellbeing; to be slimmer, fitter and healthier. Some of us have been travelling a good while now and are moving into maintenance and some are still soldiering on to get to their target, while others are just beginning along their path, but we are all here as a community to buoy each other along.

My snippet of advice is, include full fats in your meals to help with feeling sated, keep an eye on the carbs – they hide in allsorts of foods you wouldn’t expect to find them and finally, hydration, hydration, hydration!

Best of luck to you – keep us posted on progress and if you need advice on a particular topic, try a search using the box in the top right of the page, as it’s likely been covered before.

Hi SunnyB and thank you. I’m struggling with what to drink as hate just water and don’t like it with lemon! Any suggestions? Can I drink Diet Coke? xx

NO!!! We all seem to have a problem with water but what is there to hate? It has no taste. It really is just a habit that we have to cultivate. Try just saying …. this morning I will have one glass of water. The same tomorrow then step up to one in the morning and one the afternoon. Not too difficult, it has no taste!

Miss Muffet – diet coke or any other diet drink will send your BG (blood glucose) sky high, it has the same effect on the body as sugar because the liver cannot differentiate. My daughter bought a water bottle with a central bit to put fruit into so you can say, put in 2 or 3 strawberries and get a fruity flavour.

Miss Muffet I make myself a pitcher of black tea and just let it set on the counter and drink glasses of it through the day…have stopped even bothering with sugar (or ice as we Americans do) and just have it room temp. It works for me and is reported to help with weight loss. See info posted on the Livestrong website (which also has a free option to track your calories, carbs and protien if you wish).

“Research published so far suggests that black tea has the potential to support weight loss. The digestive enzyme lipase is inhibited in laboratory animals that consume black tea flavonoids. Since fats aren’t digested without lipase, some dietary fats are eliminated from the body rather than absorbed. When lab mice were fed a high-fat diet, the animals receiving a higher dose of black tea polyphenols lost more weight than the group that got fewer polyphenols, reported Nutrition in 2011”.

Thank you all!
I drink my tea black anyway and have done for 20 years, I hate milk in my tea, yuck! So that’s something in my favour.
Oh yes my water definitely tastes of something, probably all the chemicals they put in it to clean it lol! I’ll keep sipping it though 🙂 xx

Welcome to the end of your thirty years of useless diets Miss Muffet — this way of eating is going to revolutionize your health, your weight and your life.
So good that you are “just starting”, even though it is the holidays! You are absolutely correct, there is no “good” time to start (well I take that back, the good time to start is NOW but you have already done that!)
Even if the holidays throw you a couple of curve balls, if you just go right back to it again and again, it will become second nature — then the weight loss and how good you feel will motivate you. Just don’t quit — that’s the only way this diet doesn’t work.
As you are feeling some hunger, the best way to get that under control is to get your daily carbohydrate count way way down — as low as 20 grams of carbohydrate per day. It will take a bit of time but you will quickly memorize carb counts and you will find your weight loss is quick and your hunger subsides.
I’m probably a broken record by now but I always recommend new starters get a copy of Gary Taubes book “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It” because it is an excellent description of what we have done wrong in our diets and how to wrap our heads around a new way of eating (low carbohydrate and more good fats). It is a great companion book to the BSD book.
I drink Gerolsteiner sparking water because tap water tastes like pond water to me. Try that if you are struggling to drink water. It also has high mineral content, 25% of daily calcium, good all round.
There are a lot of stories here that mirror your own — you are in good company. Welcome and good for you in just starting!! You are going to amaze yourself.

Hi, MissMuffet, and a very warm welcome to the forums! As one of the “biggest
losers” here, I know your story, and you have indeed found the way forward. Spend
as much time as you can reading different forums, join the new thread about to
begin in Dec., ask every question you can think of! We maintainers love to share
our knowledge with new BSDers. Californiagirl, I recommend Gary Taubes’ book
as often as you do. Sometimes I feel like a broken record, but it revolutionized
how I think about food and nutrition forever. I’ve never looked back, and you can
do so too, MissMuffet. Good luck to you!!!!

Allie

Hi there,

My daughter turns 6 months old tomorrow and it is my line in the sand. I had gestational diabetes in pregnancy and like you have been in denial. I have the typical – harmful fat around the middle. I always think ‘I’ll start tomorrow’ which means I feast the night before with the result I Form a good intention most days and feast most days. I am about 20 kg ( 3 stone ) overweight and it affects my mood. 4 weeks tomorrow until Christmas Eve and I’d like to have lost 4 – 5 kg by then.

The thing that has worked for me is this:

Seaweed snacks – 20 kcal per pack but so deeply savoury it is oddly satisfying
Graze veggie power protein boxes ( 130 kcal per box )

Black tea. I can’t drink normal tea bag tea black as it’s tannic and vile and gives me nausea but proper ( expensive ) black tea is DELICIOUS. It’s the only way I’ll drink it black and I crave it.

Good luck!

Miss Muffet, I weighed more than 300lbs at 5’2″. I avoided the scale for years so I don’t know what my highest weight was, at least 320lb, I have good reason to believe. Today I weigh 119lbs, less than I weighed in high school. That’s what? Fourteen+ stone? It took me a year and a half, 14 months of it on the Fast 800. Admitting that I was killing myself and had to confront a hideous reality unflinchingly was the most important step, and you’ve done that. I second Californiagirl. Cutting your carbs to below 20 grams while enjoying lovely healthy fats and proteins will break a very long-standing, entrenched pattern of pernicious dieting while giving you a feeling of true satiety that is simply impossible to achieve while eating bad carbs of any kind. In your case, it should also help drop that terrifying blood sugar figure as quickly as possible.

Sarahkeay, I’d never heard of Graze so I looked it up. It’s quite high in carbs thanks to ingredients like cashews (one of the worst of all nuts, carb-wise), rice flour and two different kinds of sugar (maltodextrin and sucrose). Given your history of gestational diabetes, you might need to be extra vigilant about hidden sugars and simple carbs. I understand women who have experienced GD are at great risk of developing diabetes even if it cleared up post-partum. I’m insulin resistant and it wasn’t until I found the BSD and started monitoring the ingredients and carb count of everything I ate, eliminating all sugars and white carbs, that I finally reversed 20 years of steady weight gain and went from moribdly obese to my high school weight in just over a year.

I know from bitter personal experience how denial can become like an old, comfy blanket we wrap ourselves in, and the pattern of gorging the night before “starting a diet” is just another form of avoidance. It’s also a deadly trap because carbs spike insulin which scrapes the glucose out of your blood which makes you crave more carbs and on and on it goes. Cutting them drastically (20 grams or fewer a day, none from wheat, cereals, grains, sugar, starchy veg) can break that pattern better than anything else.

Good luck! Don’t be afraid of the calorie restrictions and counting. It may feel unfamiliar and scary, but it is liberation.

Wow Esnecca! That 8.5 stone! (14lbs in a stone) that’s an amazing achievement.

Sarahkeay Congratulations on your baby, my high blood pressure started when I was pregnant and it never came down. I have a joke that I’m still trying to loose my baby fat…..and my baby is 29! Lol!

I’m overwhelmed by the kind words and support xx

I didn’t lose 119 pounds. That’s my current weight. I lost at least 200. 🙂

Yes I understood that. I was congratulating you on weighing 119lbs which is 8.5 st xx

Oh, right. Sorry about that whole two countries separated by a common language thing. 😀

Thank you! To paraphrase an old adage, if I can do it after two decades of paralysis, you can do it too. Things can and will change for you, even things you’ve thought immutable, just like they did for me. There’s a forum full of people here who know what you’re going through and are happy to give you whatever support you need. Eyes on the prize, Miss Muffet!

Hi, I’m in pretty much the same situation as Miss Muffet, although I luckily only have 2.5 stone to loose. I was diagnosed T2 3 years ago, but was only just over and although I followed (UK) NHS diet guidelines at the beginning I lapsed and wasn’t too worried as I have no symptoms.

However, although I still have no symptoms, my numbers were well up this time and the doctor has put me onto 4 metformin, so I really need to get a grip before it gets any worse. I know this isn’t a good time of year to start, but I’m going to do it, and I’ve already worked out how I can cope with most events that I’ll be going to. The tricky ones are likely to be Christmas lunch with my sister-in-law, where to refuse pudding could cause a major family incident, and New Year, for similar reasons.

If I do really well, I aim to be close to my target for an amateur productions of Spamalot that I am performing in late January. It will be good to look nice in the photos, not lumpy!!

Hi Miss Muffett I’m excited about everything! I’m also very pleased to see that like me you have lots to lose. For me it’s 6 stone and then some… I can’t even contemplate the number so breaking it up into weeks and other targets like bsl is great. I’ve been type 2 for more than 20 years and recently went into insulin after surgery. I’d managed all that time on pills so it was a big shock feeling like I’d realky lost control of Bsls. I started 27.11 so v close to you. 👀 ng forward to this journey and many successes!