Top tips for starting and succeeding on the BSD. Lots of experience here. Hoping posts here are not too long and rambling….just quick tips on what helped you most in the first 3 months of the diet, and then tips on staying the course.

My Top Tips for starting out the BSD:

Like others, I have done a score of different diets, and this is the only one that reliably works for me. Had lost 60 lbs on it in 2017 and over the years have slowly put half of that loss back on. Have tried easier/slower diets to re-lose the extra weight but nothing has really worked till I jumped back on the BSD. Now down 10 lbs in about 5 weeks. It works.

My Top Tips for newbies and Oldies and Goodies needing a re-set:

1. I highly recommend you start out on a keto diet for two big reasons. You will lose quickly on it but the biggest reason is that IT KILLS HUNGER. You may feel “empty” at times, but the hunger goes away. That is half the battle.

2. Per #1 above, start out with mainly eating eggs with as much butter as you want for the first 3 days (google “The Egg Diet”). Again, kills hunger.

3. Lose the white carbs (white rice, potatoes, sadly pasta, etc).

4. Start by keeping net carbs (carbs minus any fiber in them) to 30 and under. What carbs you do it should be low on the “GI INDEX” (google it). These foods are high in fiber and very slow to raise your glucose. Great examples are garbanzo beans and lentils. Very filling, and a good trade off re. calories and blood glucose. When I have a higher carb day, these are the carbs I go for. After success on 30 net carbs you may want to go to 30 total carbs. I now typically do about 10 total carbs a day which ends up being a big pile of green veg with butter and 4-6 oz of grilled/broiled/sauteed meat or fish.

5. Pasta is tough. My fix has been a max of 2 oz of whole wheat or gluten free pasta mixed with a half of a medium zucchini cut into long thing strands about the size of linguini (can use a spiralizer but I use a mandoline to get thin slices rotating the zucchini to get only the outside and discarding the core). Then I hand slice into thin pasta-ish ribbons). Don’t need to ‘cook’ the zucchini….just salt and let sit to draw out the excess water, then toss into the water your 2 oz of pasta for its final 30 seconds to merely warm it, and your done. Actually is very satisfying…the little bit a pasta adds a chewiness to the combo. Am not nuts about zucchini “noodles” alone.

6. There are lots of good keto bread recipes out there. My current favorites are on these web sites:

https://victoriasketokitchen.net/breads
http://indigonili.com/category/recipies/keto/egg-white-bread/

Also just google “chaffles” … a 4 minute “bread’ that can be used as a bun, toast, or great companion to a bowl of soup. Add something crunchy that you really miss when watching carbs.

7. I am from the US and am typically a coffee drinker. But nothing zaps a sneaky bit of hunger starting to annoy me like hot black tea with a bit of liquid stevia (like that MUCH better than the powdered form).

8. Fat is your friend…helps with satiety. But it is calorie dense so you have to balance that out with what ever else you are eating.

9. Full fat yogurt and cottage cheese are a great bang for the calories. Just 4 oz of full fat Greek Yogurt (with stevia) and topped with 1 tsp of diluted sugar free jam for breakfast keeps me going until lunch (total of 125 calories).

10. Soup …enough said. Filling, comforting, a big bang for the calories. Great for cold weather months. Love a good lentil soup, any soup with garbanzo beans, vegetable soups, vegetable heavy cream soups.

Hi Luvtcook! Good to see you!
I still point people towards your recipes!
OK so you put some weight back on but you know where to come to!
Eat well and get back to where you want to be with all the support here.

Verano, so amazing you are still on the site and helping people find their way! Kudos to you ! Nice to hear from you. And YES, I know where to come to. This diet works. And there are good kind people here to help. As I was doing a reset, thought some of the things that are helping me could help others as well. But everybody is different. Gotta find your own groove.