Hello,

I’ve been doing 800 cals a day with very low carbs (averaging around 45g/day) for 10 days now. The last few days however I have actually put ON weight (I have to weigh myself every day, it’s the only way I can hold myself accountable). Not a huge amount, 0.2 of a lb for a couple of days (every day), but I am exercising as well and not cheating.

Having read the other forum threads I can see some people need to get their carbs below 30g/day to loose weight, so I think I need to try this. My question is – what do you eat in a typical day to keep it under this? I’m already eating only very very low carb foods.

Any advice most welcome!

Hi Wishfulthinker,
If you let us know more about your average meals / daily diet and food preferences then we can probably make some suggestions.
In general I would say that we have all had the fat is bad mantra drummed into us for so many years that we still tend to shy away from having too many calories from healthy fats which makes meeting the calorie count without carbs difficult. Cooking dishes in butter, or using an oil as a dressing for a salad adds calories and helps you feel fuller without adding carbs.

Hello Wishful Thinker. Sounds like you might be making the same mistake I was. I have been on this plan for diabetes control for nearly 3 years (yes, it works) but have never really bothered with carb counting. I would count my calories to around 800 and then look at the carbs. I was always coming in around 45g / 50g and didn’t seem to be able to get it lower without cutting out loads of calories. When I explained this as I tried to reduce to 20g / 30g some clever people on here told me I was miscounting my carbs. So if for example, a tin of chickpeas said 15g carbs of which 3g was sugars, I was counting 15g. In fact I should have deducted the fibre from the sugars and only counted the sugars so I should have counted it as 3g carbs as the fibre count is the good stuff. Have a look again at labels and what you are counting as carbs. If your calculator doesn’t split it between sugars and fibre then type Food Name Nutritional Information into a Google search and it will give you all the information you need. Good luck.

Hi, can you just confirm for me about the carbs since i’m not sure I’m counting right either.

for example on MFP 100g brown lentils are total carbs 28g, 3 of which are fibre and 11 sugars. so i should count 25g?

to further complicate after googling the nutritional value I find the answer is different with 20g of carbs, 2g of sugars and 11 of fibre which would leave me with only 9 grams.
which if any do you think is correct?
I’ve been avoiding lentils and chickpeas unto now because of their high carb value but maybe( hopefully ) I’ve got it wrong.

Hi Skipping, I don’t know about apps, but Allie responded to a similar query of mine a few days ago. For nutritional panels on tins/packets etc, there is a different approach between UK and US and basically in the UK you count the carbs shown as such, and don’t deduct the fibre.

Alliecat posted a link a few days ago from the Atkins site. Below is the bit of interest.

It depends where you are in the world. In the USA (and I think Australia?) the fibre ishould be deducted from total carbs to give “net” carbs, whereas in the UK just use the total carbs I.e. the top figure

in the USA, you rely on ‘net’ carbs and this is often referred to in earlier editions of the Atkins books; which is where the confusion comes from. This is because, on labels on USA foods, fibre is included in the total ‘Carbohydrate’ count, so our American friends must deduct the fibre to get ‘net’ carbs.
However, in the UK and EU, fibre is actually shown separately so you don’t deduct it (or anything!) from the Carbohydrate total. So, for an example, if a label says:
Carbohydrates – 5g
Of which sugars – 2g
Fibre – 1g
Then you’d count a total of 5g carbohydrates for this food.

Annie – Snap!

Let’s trade definitions, sixturkeys! A “round is an 8 week block of the Fast800. Now please tell us across the pond what
“snap!” means! 🙂

Snap is a children’s card game – picture cards and you shout “snap” when you put down an identical card to the one another player has just put down! So it’s shorthand for saying we have both said the same thing quasi-simultaneously! Thank you re “round”!

My head is spinning

Just back online.
We were in tune this afternoon sixturkeys 😀 (great minds and all that!)
Allie 6t was correct with her definition of snap in that context.
Here in the East Midlands and other areas snap is also another word for lunch linked to the mining community – link below.
http://www.miningheritage.co.uk/snap-tin/

Thank you Annie, for taking the time to post this for those of us across the pond! I enjoyed reading it. My knowledge
of English slang has grown by leaps and bounds since 2017 when I had the great good fortune to discover this
site. It did take me a while to figure out what “trip to the tip” was! No clues there, so I finally just had to ask 🙂
Now I know that it’s what we call “the dump”, or recycling center! Who says that we only talk about the BSD here?

of course we would say centre…and we do maths. Two nations divided by a common language and all that. But I did not know snap as a word for lunch so also learning!

Ah AnnieW you just made me remember my grandad. He was down the pit from being 14. I can here him now saying to my grandma when he was hungry “ what’s for snap Betty”

Hi Everyone,

Many thanks for all the replies. I wasn’t sure about the carbs / fibre thing so thank you Sunshine and Annie for clearing that up. Unfortunately as I am in the UK that means I have been counting my carbs correctly 😩.

JGwen – an average day would be coffee with cream for breakfast, salad (with non root-veg) and a protein for lunch and some (non-root) veg cooked with butter and a protein (dusted fish or chicken) for dinner. This parsimonious day takes me up to 50g of carbs!

Yesterday was the only day I managed to keep to just 30g of carbs and this is what I had: 1tsp cream in coffee, 300g full fat greek yoghurt, 1 x dusted cod fillet, 30g walnuts. I was so hungry all day too, despite pretty much only eating fat all day, so that kind of menu is just unsustainable for me. Today I was rewarded by a 1lb shift in the scales (but I do feel I had earned it! 😂), so maybe I am a 30g/carbs a day person to be in that losing zone.

If anyone has suggestions of a better menu for a typical ‘under 30g/carbs’ day, I would be really grateful! I don’t think my yoghurt-and-walnuts-diet is going to last long….

Hi Wishful Thinker no wonder you were hungry! I’ve just worked out the values for the walnuts and yogurt at 493 calories but only 10.11 carbs. So that would give you plenty carbs but few calories.
If you eat three meals a day how about 100g yogurt, 50g berries and 10g walnuts for breakfast. Lunch could be a salad with a protein ie. eggs, tuna, cold meat or chicken, or cheese. Dinner can be another protein with above ground vegetables.
I am guessing that ‘dusted’ cod is dusted with flour so higher on carbs than a plain piece of maybe salmon which could be cooked with herbs/spices.
I don’t normally do a 30g or less day so maybe one of the 20g people could give you a better guide.

Hi whishful, I never would have survived on that. Do you like courgetti? When I’m really hungry I make that for lunch. I had a massive 250 Grams worth with pesto, pine nuts, and few peas, Parmesan and lemon juice on Tuesday. It was less than 10g of carbs. It’s ready in 5 minutes and hardly any washing up. I don’t cook the courgetti but if you sprinkle the lemon juice and pesto over it leave for a few minutes it does soften it up a bit. I’m getting mightily bored of the protein plus salad/ green veg so I’m trying for a bit of variety. the tamarind chicken stir fry which I thought had a lot of potential, was almost unfit for human consumption.

Hi Wishful – It does look like you can successfully lose at 30g of carbs and that should be quite doable. As Verano suggests, I’d limit yogurt to 100g and look to add a few berries and nuts or seeds. By doing that, you will have quite a few extra cals to play with. You don’t say what’s included in your salad, but things like tomatoes and onions are surprisingly high in carbs, so are best limited. If you are going to ‘dust’ things, think about maybe doing this with almond flour to drop the carbs lower. I used to religiously keep my carb to max of 25g, but mostly sub 20g and was going to give you a complete picture of a daily menu, but sadly somehow my spreadsheet has become corrupted, so that’s not now possible – hopefully someone who has available data will offer you an extra insight though.
The other thing that occurs to me, is that you have only been using the BSD way of eating for a short time and your body is still adjusting, which will be contributing to that feeling you many not be able to sustain. Once your body adjusts to not having the larger amounts of carbs it used to get, that feeling will dull considerably and eventually become a distant memory. No one has mentioned hydration, but just in case, here’s a little reminder that keeping hydration high is very important – if in doubt, have an extra glass or two of water. Hope you’ll soon be in your stride and balancing your cals and carbs to discard the pounds successfully.

Hi Wishful – noting Sunny has lost her spreadsheet might I give you an idea of my between 20 and 50g carb menu. Not sure how it will copy here so I will explain it has the day, then the food – the first number is carb grams and the second is calories with a total of both at the end of each day but reversed – cals and then carbs – here goes

Tuesday yog & fruit 10 100 hallumi salad 10 330 pancetta & broccoli gratin 10 340 770 28
Wednesday yog and rasp 8 100 tuna cream cheese 7 300 frittata 4 400 800 20
Thursday egg & mush 3 115 warm chicken salad 10 220 chicken chorizo & beans 40 400 735 53
Friday rasp & yog 8 100 lettuce cup, chicken & walnut 5 320 pork stir fry 13 350 770 28
Saturday egg & cheese 1 280 tuna lettuce salad 6 150 Steak & veg 14 350 780 21
Ha, not come out too bad – to clarify – Tuesday it was total of 28 carbs and 770 cals, Wed, 20 carbs and 800 cals, Thurs 53 carbs (big mistake with the beans) and 735 cals, Fri 28 carbs and 770 cals and Sat 21 carbs and 780 cals. Hope that gives you some ideas. Even on the high carb day I will only just over the 50g.

Hi Wishful Thinker, I keep to below 20 grams a day. Here’s what I ate the last 800 cal day:

Lunch: 2 egg omelette with one chopped spring onion, 2 oz portobello mushrooms, 1 oz sharp cheddar
Dinner: 2 links chicken sausage, 5 oz spinach sauteed in 1/2 tsp olive oil with one clove chopped garlic and topped with 1 oz crumbled feta, 2 oz garlic sauerkraut and 2 mini cinnamon roll cheesecakes (homemade).

Total cals: 738, total carbs: 17, fiber: 11, net carbs: 6.

Dear Verano, Tulips, Sunny, Sunshine and Esnecca,

Wow thank you for all the meal suggestions. Really helpful. Who knew mushrooms were so low carb? I’ve just had a delicious bowl of fried mushrooms and eggs.

Courgetti! Courgetti! I used to love courgetti. Somehow fell off my radar. Sounds delicious with pesto, that’s dinner, thank you Tulips! Thanks for the heads up on the tamarind chicken, it’s so frustrating going to the hassle of cooking something only to have to bin it.

Verano you are quite right about the dusted fish. I will now keep my fish strictly un-dusted…

Sunny – WOW. Under 20g carbs a day?!?! I don’t know how that’s possible. Hats off to you. And weird on the hydration. I have always been TERRIBLE at drinking water but suddenly I am really thirsty for water which can only be a good thing, and glugging away quite happily at plain water.

Sunshine – that’s so ORGANISED. Is it from an app? And so many great ideas in there, I stole the egg and mushrooms from you already.

Esnecca – your day sounds DELICIOUS. And ditto re the mushrooms and eggs, that’s turning into a new staple for me, I’m going to fancy it up like yours with some chives and cheese. What pray tell is Mini Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake? I’m v interested in how this keeps you so low on carbs, it sounds so nice!

No app, I just type it into a Word spreadsheet every Sunday and print it off and stick it on my fridge door. I then keep it in a file so some lazy weeks I just pull out a menu and follow it. Glad it helped.