For a genuinely good read that stuck with me for years, try Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It’s strange and quiet but deeply human, about a man living in a endless house with statues and tides. On a completely different note, I recently fell down a rabbit hole of 3D printing game models because I wanted a physical copy of a favorite character from an old RPG, and that’s how I found https://www.gambody.com/ – it’s a marketplace where people share and sell STL files for printing. Not a book, I know, but it scratched the same itch as a good novel: it gave me something to hold, build, and get lost in. If you want a reading recommendation that feels like that kind of discovery, go for Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Quiet, sad, and beautiful.

Well done Tulip you seem to have found the ‘eating pattern’ that suits you. I think maybe that’s the secret…. there isn’t ONE way, ONE diet, ONE theory we each have to find our own way.

I think the first step is to be really honest with ourselves as to why we want to follow this WOL.

Tackle high blood sugar, T2 diabetes, eat a healthy diet, lose weight, reduce/eliminate UPF’s. Or any combination of these.

Then we have to individually work out what works best for each of us. Some like fasting, some like really low carb, some like ‘slow and steady’. I think we all know that we have to stay low carb and ditch potatoes, bread, rice and pasta but after that ???.

The Husbands Secret is amazing

thanks

Welcome back SG and thank you for seeing us through April Verano 🙂

I’m still loving the Fast 800 and have lost a bit over a stone (from original total of 3 stone to goal)…the main thing for me is type of food and some kind of calorie defecit but I’m pretty flexible on it in terms of calories, plus mild TRE fast overnight (12 hours or so). Feeling good on this WOE and building various kinds of fitness- both of these things help me manage the considerable household stress with 2 of my 3 doing exams this year (GCSEs and A levels).

Love to all xxx

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Hi everyone.

I’m still washing and ironing. I hate going away leaving either so I will probably have one last wash to do on Friday the that’s that for me.

I weighed this morning and I weigh exactly the same as I did when I started this years diary on December 30th! Not a brilliant start to the year but could be worse there could have been a gain! So I’ve decided to stop recording now and will start afresh when we get back home. I certainly won’t get down or depressed because of the number on the scale. Just have to accept that things are what they are and keep on……

Well done for keeping low Becca just carry on.
Hope everyone is doing well but if not tomorrow is another day!

Will do s-g!

I thought about re-reading The Husbands Secret but know I will quickly start thinking I know what comes next as I start to remember it. Then I looked at the price and it is €8.99 on Amazon so I will look for something else for now but do let me know what you think.

Hi all, the washing is all done and we are starting to put out the summer furniture. I have my head back in the game and looking forward to some good losses. For many of you starting out you will lose quicker than with most other diets but for us who have been doing this for years it gets hards to lose. For that reason I have set an attainable goal of 3kgs before my next doctors appointment in June. It is less than 1lb a week but that is okay as long as it is possible. In the long term (and we have no planned trips or anything) that could be 9kgs by December. I would be very happy with that.

Had a good day yesterday but hubby cooks on Tuesday so I have asked him to consider my diet. I think we are having lamb chops and a big plate of veg/

Keep on…..

Hi all, and welcome back Ms Sunshine! You were missed! But Verano has been doing a lovely job while you were gone.
I’ve been back on the low calories and very low carb for just over a week, and it’s going well, scale is going down at an encouraging pace. Truthfully I could not do this for life, and am looking forward to summer fruits coming into season in a few weeks, but will be continuing the very low carb and calories until after my annual physical exam and labs in 3 weeks. Then will ease up just a bit and move from 20 gm carb to probably 50 gm carb. Keeping calories around 1000, but will probably also move those to 1200 after the doctor’s.

Hope everyone is having a good week in body and mind! Remember to be kind to yourselves!

Becca

S-g thank you. I know exactly what you mean about the ‘dread multi book deal’!

Actually I did watch the ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ series, although can’t remember where it was broadcast, and my goodness it was odd!

Anyway I will take your advice and try ‘The Husbands Secret’ . Thank you.

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Verano, when Liane started her writing career she was brilliant. That was when she wrote 3 Wishes then The Husbands Secret. Then came the dread multi book deal and she started to churn them out. Her worst books are What Alice Forgot and Nine Perfect Strangers. The Hypnotists Love Story is intriguing but predictable. If they are cheap then it could be a good introduction. Still say The Husbands Secret is the best book I have ever read.

Well done Cathy! Must feel good to be down below 145 again!
I’ve been down for the count the last couple of days with this cold, unfortunately. It has been a struggle to make sure I am drinking enough fluids, so I did go a bit off plan and bought some zero sugar root beer and some pudding cups. I will need to dilute the root beer going forward, and I don’t think I will be able to finish the pudding cups as they are just too sweet and I can taste the chemicals in them. They have helped to soothe my throat but I definitely will not be buying them when I’m healthy. Good to know that my tastes have changed so much in 6 weeks.
DCT, I tried the modified chia bircher and the texture was nice but my taste was still a bit distorted so I will have to try it again and report back. I also tried the cauliflower oven chips that I bought last weekend and even with not being able to taste them properly, I know I will not be buying them again. The texture alone was pretty disgusting.
I had the phone appointment with my doctor yesterday and he agreed that the signs were positive for a stimulant working but that I might not be on the right drug yet, so I am now going to be trying a different one. I picked it up at the pharmacy today when I went in for some more tissues. I go back to work on Monday so it will be interesting to see the difference it makes in a work context.

S-g hi just looked at Amazon and they have a set of four Liane Moriaty which includes The Last Anniversry, What Alice Forgot and The Hypnotists Love Story. Just wondering if it’s worth buying the four?

Please try The Husbands Secret, I promise you will finish it in a few days. I also forget what a book was about, but the same with films. They all seem to run into each other.

Thanks Margaret, we live just 50 miles from Bordeaux so give us a wave. It was just a holiday, nothing to get upset about, there will be others. Norway is a beautiful country which is why we went back for the 3rd time. Picked the wrong time of year and chose to go on the outer edge all the way up to the Arctic Circle. Didnt even get to see the Northern Lights but I have seen them before. I think we might try a river cruise but the Rhone or Danube.

Not really back on the diet now until Monday as I havent had time to do a proper shop or got my head around it. Will try to sit down and write a menu tomorrow.

Enjoy the weekend.

Hi everyone,
Cathy I’m just popping in to say well done on your brilliant weight loss using the 12 week online plan! You have achieved what I was hoping to. It’s my week 12 this coming week and I’ve messed around too much so won’t have lost anything near what you have but hopefully I will still be lighter than when I started. I will be continuing with the plan at the end of the 12 weeks. Hope everyone has a nice weekend. Dawn XX

Happy Anniversary S-G & I am so sorry to hear that your holiday didn’t go to plan & wasn’t as enjoyable as you had been hoping . Welcome back & when we visited Oslo on a summer Baltic cruise it poured with rain & the train trip we went on we could see nothing because of the driving rain. However the weather in Denmark & mostly thereafter was fairly good but I probably wouldn’t go on another sea cruise because I get seasick although we are going from Bordeaux in June on a river cruise through wine country & that I can cope with.😀
I will weigh tomorrow & post my results.
Margaret xx

Hello everyone
Weigh in this morning and I was 144lb! I am the lightest I’ve been since June 2019. I lost 1.2 lb this week. Two more weeks on the 12 week 800 calorie keto plan to do and then hopefully a five day holiday to Corfu. When I come back I’ll change plan but I don’t really know what happens then. I plan to keep paying for the online subscription for a few months to keep me on track and to learn how to maintain. I will be happy to maintain at about 140 lb. I am 65 in June. I do not want to go too low with my BMI. Currently it is 27 and I am happy with that as an older woman with confirmed osteoporosis, I think a bit of fat on my bones will be protective.
To answer your question DCT our book club (8 of us) like to go way together for three nights or so once or twice an year and we decided we all needed some sunshine so we picked Kassiopi. We are staying in a beautiful villa for four nights. At Christmas we went to Buxton for a couple of nights and last year we went to Harrogate. We are a mix of ages and most of the group are social workers ( like to party hard). My sister in law introduced me to the book club about 10 years ago ; it was her and her social worker colleagues who had recently started the book club and they were so lovely and welcoming to me. I was having a really difficult time at that time being bullied at work and subsequently I introduced a colleague from the hospital where we worked at together and the rest is history, me and Liz are the pensioners! We won’t allow anyone else to join because we are frightened that our wonderful dynamic will change. We all get on so well and I remember when we went to Harrogate I didn’t realise I had shingles but felt really unwell but still laughed so much I thought I had broken a rib! We will do a lot of laughing. We have chosen our latest book club book and it’s set in Italy, not Corfu. We are going to read The Home Made God. I am the book club swot and keep all the scores etc but my sister in law in particular isn’t really a reader! It really should be a wine club!
DCT – I can thoroughly recommend the 800 keto way of eating. As I am vegetarian I follow the veggie plan and I’ve enjoyed the lovely food. Check out the plan online and maybe try it for a couple of weeks. It really works and you know how difficult I’ve found losing weight over the last few years. I recently read a book by Professor Taylor called Life without Diabetes as I wanted to read how to reduce my blood glucose level as I was diagnosed with prediabetes and I found it really interesting and he suggests doing a three month intensive weight loss campaign using low calorie to reverse the numbers. It’s an interesting and informative book and that as well as the online plan really have inspired me and I’ll be interested to see my result at the end of April.
Have a lovely weekend everyone and please do come on and let us know how you are getting on.

.

S-g sorry to hear about your trauma.

I must admit my reading is probably a bit shallow. I only tend to read when I’m on holiday when I can devour book after book. I read John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, although I’m bored with him now. I have read most of Marian Keyes but I’m past her now. Recently I’ve started reading Clair Douglas and I did read The Girl on The Train although I’m not really into psychological thrillers. In saying that I’m starting to enjoy them more.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is worth a read. Another interesting book, List of Suspicious Things, by Jennie Godfrey, is about the Yorkshire Ripper murders but from children’s perspective at that time and may also be worth reading.

I must admit I have gone back to reading ‘books’ in paper form rather than using my kindle now. I only use my kindle if I run out of reading. I find ‘paper books’, especially on cruises, always act as a talking point! Can be good!

My problem is that as soon as I finish a book I tend to forget what it was about… maybe it’s an age thing!!!

Happy Anniversary s-g hope you had a lovely day.

Oh dear so sorry to hear about your trip s-g. At least you knew the best way to weather a storm …. with champagne! You may have been unlucky with the weather but I think in that part of the world it’s just a case of good luck. We went to the Fjords in June a couple of years ago and at the last minute I threw a sundress into the case, just in case! We had amazing weather and I needed the sundress! I watched a video of the same cruise the following August and the weather was horrendous! Funny part of the world but the inside fjords are amazing.

Hope everyone is doing well. Another weekend is upon us and this one will be a challenge for me. We have a Thai meal out tonight and I must admit I struggle with Thai in restaurants. When I cook Thai myself it’s so much easier to make it lower carb but it’s not always so easy when eating it out. I tend not to have a starter but even so it’s a struggle!

Two weeks to go to the end of the month … let’s make them count!

Hi DCT, yes that sounds like the same recipe that I found. I am not eating oats at the moment as I’m trying to stay lower carb than that, so that is why I said I will adapt the recipe, but I think I can still get the same flavour profile with coconut and hemp seed.

ARCTICFOX that’s interesting about the Bircher. I checked the recipe and it’s apparently adapted from the 8 week Blood Sugar Diet book. Basically for this version you need to combine oats, chia seeds, coconut milk and water. Leave overnight in fridge. Before eating add passion fruit, berries and hazelnuts.

Hope you enjoy your version of it. And I’m really glad the counselling is going well too X

Thanks for the breakfast idea, DCT. I looked it up and only found a chia breakfast bircher that uses oats and passionfruit. I have come down with a wee bit of a cold (my first virus of any kind since Jan 2020, can you believe it?!). Nothing serious, but I was at a local fruit and veg market yesterday as my throat was getting sore and got a watermelon and saw they had a deal on passionfruit, so I picked up 2 thinking it would add some novelty (and crunch!) to my Greek yogurt. So I think I could modify the chia bircher by eliminating the oats, adding some hemp seeds and shredded coconut and greek yogurt in place of the oats and coconut milk (haven’t got any in at the moment). I’ll let you know how it goes. And I hope you are able to get that tooth removed from your lip soon!
In spite of not feeling terribly well, I went to my counselling appointment today. We were doing walk and talk again around a local park near her office so I figured that was better for not spreading my virus around compared to face to face inside her office and I just asked her to go a bit slower than normal. It went well. We spent a lot of time talking about my horrible pottery session on Sat and how I had realized that the feelings coming up and the urge to binge are tied to rejection sensitivity which may be from the ADHD but also could easily be from the CPTSD. My counsellor said to make sure that I tell my doctor that the meds are having a big impact on preventing me from binge eating. She is going on holiday for a couple of weeks and I said that it was good timing because I am getting busier on the farm so wanted to take a bit of a break anyway. I’m feeling so much better within myself than I was at the beginning of the year in any case, and she was commenting on how well I’m doing with the self-care and that even when I’m having an upsetting day like on Saturday that I am able to bounce back from it more quickly than I would have.
Anyway, I’m pretty tired now so have decided it will be an easy day with plenty of rest. I am on the couch under my electric blanket at the moment and the cat is keeping me company. I will have to go outside later to deal with the horses, but they are finally out on pasture so the chores are easier at least. Hope everyone is doing well!

Thank you Verano, I didnt mention my holiday because it was a disaster from the get go. Arrived at the hotel to discover there had been a serious delay of the ship arriving (a medical emergency so they had to go to Portugal), 5 hours late getting on. The delays continued, we had 2 hurricaines and a medical emergency, all of which meant we either didnt reach port or had our tours cancelled. At one point they announced a fire on board and forgot to say it was a training session. Had to strap ourselves into our beds to stop us from being thrown out in the storms. Bugger that, I stayed up sat on the settee and held on to the arm with one hand and my champagne with the other.

Last time we go to Norway in what is still their winter although I should say we did choose to go up to the Arctic Circle but if you visit the Fjords they are wonderful and inland.

Not quite back on the diet although I have been good, just getting peckish late at night and having cheese on Ryvita. On top of that it is our wedding anniversary today so we have opened one of the bottles of champagne we were given on the ship. Tomorrow night we are out for a meal at our favourite restaurant, so I guess the diet starts on Monday.

My number one recommendation is The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriaty. Usually I can work out who done it in a few chapters but this has so many twists and turns it left me breathless at the end.

My second recommendation is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It sounds morbid as the story is told by the girl who has been murdered and comes back to clear her boyfriends name and warn her young sister about the man next door. Sounds morbid and as a survivor or abuse I should have hated it but it was told with such humour and honesty I finished it in 3 sittings. Yes I cried but I laughed at the same time.

My thing is psychological thrillers like books by Nicci French or Tess Gerriton but I have now been reading Angela Marsens, a frosty detective in a Birmingham nick and the murders she solves. When you get to know her back story you will understand why she is so cold and standoffish.

Hope that gives you something to get your teeth into but if you like La La Land books you wont like these – do read Liane Moriaty.

ARCTICFOX it sounds as if you’re really getting to grips with your medication and its impact, and I hope you have a productive discussion with your doctor tomorrow. Your forthcoming veg crop sounds amazing. Fresh veg always taste so much better than shop bought.

Just checking in quickly to recommend a lovely breakfast I had today – coconut chia Bircher. Very filling and tasty, and only 228 calories. I assume the recipe is online or in one of the books but if not let me know and I can put it on here.

Have a great day everyone xx

Hi everyone,
I’ve just reached week 6 on eating very low carb. I was on the ADHD meds for just over a week, but have come off them for now until I talk to my doctor on Friday as they started giving me extremely vivid nightmares, suggesting that the raised dopamine was interfering with my REM sleep. I was doing better with eating more to a schedule and that eliminated the headaches. Interestingly, I think a big benefit of doing low carb and being on the meds at the same time was that the low carb mostly took away any urge to binge on carbs, unless I had a very disappointing day like on Saturday at pottery, but then I think it was the meds that gave me the ability to slow down my impulses and to think of other ways I could comfort myself. So I’d like to talk to my doctor and maybe try a different medication. Not ready to give up yet. Interestingly, the drug I am on is approved to treat binge eating as well as ADHD, and I can see why it works. I wasn’t having to look to food to get a dopamine hit when the drug was raising it for me.
Out in the garden, I have radishes and snap peas coming up now. I planted out some brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower plants yesterday. They will take a while, but something to look forward to. Not many of the local farms around me grow broccoli and cauliflower, probably because it gets hot so quickly, and so many people still buy into the myth that we can’t plant anything out until late May. I will have to protect them as we will be down below freezing again tonight. Once I have my own veggies producing, it will be so much easier to keep eating low carb. I only have spinach right now, and while it is nice to have something fresh at this time of year, it is getting a bit monotonous.

I know this is totally off topic for ‘The BSD’ but I love to read and always enjoy book recommendations, well most of the time.

My daughter recommended ‘Butter’ by Asako Yuzuki. Usually her recommendations are great but I have to say this one was meeeh!

I would really love to hear of any ‘good reads’ and will be quite happy to add some of my own even if they are a few years old.

Sunshine-girl… welcome home! Hope you had a wonderful cruise and your little gain was really just that …. little!

When it comes to a ‘thread’ I’ve enjoyed doing the April thread because it’s been so long since I last did one and I fully understand how you are ‘all threaded out’ s-g. I would love somebody to pick up the June thread, it’s not that difficult and as s-g says ‘you got onto this site with a question’? However, if nobody wants to jump onboard then I’ll take the June thread. I’ll probably need to jump strictly back onto the wagon after my trip away next month. I hope I gain only as much as you s-g!

So, it’s the middle of the month already and as I type we have a hail storm, April, showers but hail???

Anyway, we are half way through this month and I hope everyone is reaching their own goals. If you are, great and maybe make them a bit tougher. If not maybe reassess. Are they attainable? Are they really achievable? We have to be realistic in our goals. You don’t put weight on in a week, so in reality we have to adjust our expectations, especially as we get older…. a 21 year old body reacts a little differently to a body aged 31, 51, 71 or even 81.

I have said so many times, particularly for those of us with T2, that this ‘Way of Eating’ is for life. I think we maybe each have to prioritise our goals.

What is your main ‘objective’? Lower blood sugar. lose weight? both? Just be generally more healthy?

At the end of the day I think we just have “ … to thine own self be true…”
Have a good evening.

Thank you Verano for setting up this thread. I have to agree that the 3 month thread didnt work for me either. I did so well in the first couple of weeks that I slackened off after that. My reasoning was that I was absolutely fed up with having to set up these threads with no help from anyone. First I abandoned the weekly one and we to monthly. I know it is only once a month having to think of a title, say a few words and then keep it going by welcoming old and new and keeping people motivated. I have had enough. I like Veranos idea that we share it out and I am happy to take on the May thread but would ask that someone else kindly volunteer for June. Before you say you dont know how to do it then think back to how you got onto this site. Most of you started by starting a new thread with your own particular question. Was it so difficult.

I am back from 3 weeks away on a cruise and then with my daughter. My total weight gain is 3.5lbs so I am well chuffed with myself for that. My BG has been in the high 100’s and hit 200 a couple of times but is quickly coming down to normal and was 125 this morning. I did a search to see about damage and if it is short-term and also you know the reason there is no need to panic.

I am thinking about my new goals and want to do 1kg per month. That will get me under my pre-holiday weight by the time I see the doctor for my 3 monthly check up. Have a good week and keep on……..

Hi Newbie, I would like to say that keeping under 50g is so difficult. After 10 years I have only managed it for a few days at a time before I have to sacrifice calories then I am not eating enough. Just by cutting out the main white carbs you are doing great. I was told not to eat carrots or apples or blueberries. I say, I am diabetic and this diet it for life so if I cant have the occasional treat or even basic veg then there is something wrong with the diet. We do the best we can. 50g is very low so dont feel you have to get any way lower than that.

CATHY and BECCA thanks for your good wishes. Yes it’s the most bizarre thing! The lip took a long time to heal, but as it did I’d been noticing a hard lump just underneath it. I initially assumed it was scar tissue, but feeling both sides I began to suspect it was the broken tooth. Thought I was probably just being fanciful but it then started to feel a bit swollen and tender so I did an e-consult with the doctor (like you Becca, I assumed it would be them) and they said to go to my dentist. I was a bit worried I’d end up being fobbed off and passed to and fro between them but she was lovely and did an X-ray and there it was! Though she said she personally didn’t feel confident to remove it. The antibiotics seem to have done their job so far, as it feels ok again, but I now have to wait to be contacted about what happens next!

Becca I’m so glad you had a wonderful time. What a beautiful place to visit. And lots of happy memories I’m sure. And hopefully the weight regain will begin to come off again.

Cathy thanks for the advice re antibiotics.Some of the weight gain seems to have come off this morning and I finish the course today, so here’s hoping it was just a blip and I can get back on track. I was hoping for 148 by the end of this month but am now back at 152 so we’ll see. I’m not too concerned as there is a gradual ongoing loss, but what I may do is switch to the Fast Keto programme for a few weeks in May when I’m back from my Devon break, just to boost things up a bit.

Good luck Cathy with your HbA1c test. You really deserve to see some much improved results. And then it will be your trip to Corfu which sounds lovely. I was going to ask, is it purely a social trip or is it based on a particular book you’ve read? I think travelling to the location of a book is quite a thing now (I’m sure it has a proper name but can’t think of it!). Anyway, enjoy! And I hope you find some good hair options when you get back.

Hello also to everyone else reading this and I hope you’re all ok and having a good week.

Dreams, how awful to learn about the piece of broken tooth in your lip! I hope the surgical fix is sooner rather than later. Am a bit surprised that your lip would be considered dental surgery..? Anyway, I do hope you get things all fixed up and can put it all behind you.

Oh, and yes, I did do the Arizona trip already with my daughter and granddaughter and had a lovely time, thank you. Gained some weight, though, and am now back to low carb/low calorie to get it off and continue moving downward.

Cathy, very smart of you to plan your A1c test for before your trip, especially since you have been SO disciplined! I wish I had done my test before my trip. Instead I’m having it in 4 weeks, so it will be impacted by the carb-fest on my trip. I didn’t realize the test would be coming up that soon.

Also smart of you to decide to stay off the scales when you get home. It was very demoralizing (but not surprising) for me. On the other hand, was a good motivator. It’s hard getting back on low carb when you’ve been away from it, but I’m a few days in now, so those first few days are behind me.

I can see now more of the big picture of your hair appointment gone wrong. Didn’t realize it was such a hugely expensive process. But you seem to have made peace with what happened, and that’s probably for the best, for your own well-being. Will be interested to hear if you do go check out the wig shop. I have extremely thin hair myself, as did my mom, and she got into wearing wigs later in life, so perhaps now it’s my turn to look into it.

DCT- I can’t get over the tooth being embedded in your lip! I hope you get an oral surgeon as good as the one I had last week and don’t have to wait too long. How on earth did you find out it was there- can you feel it? Sorry that you had an unexplained 2lb shock this morning- thats rubbish! Whenever I am prescribed antibiotics I always buy BioKult from Amazon and they help my gut biome. I always take them when I travel too. Antibiotics always mess with my microbiome and I always get thrush. I really try to avoid them but my dentist prescribed them when he didn’t know what my dental issue was many months ago. Hopefully you’ll be feeling better very soon and those extra pounds will be gone for good!
After my hair disaster on Friday I calmed down after I got home. I was devastated as my new system isnt due to be replaced for 18 months. I have accepted that a mistake was made and in the big scheme of things it’s not really important. Worse things are happening in the world. Because of my alopecia I’ve been wearing a hair system for 15 years and I always say, things can’t really go wrong because I can always get a new system but it’s £1500 a time and the maintenance is expensive. I am considering wigs for the future and may have a mooch to a wig shop in Manchester for a chat after my holiday.
With regard to whether I’ve noticed the weight loss, I can see my wrists are tiny and my hands are slim and clothes are looser and I can see my legs are slimmer too. I’m more excited to see if my HbA1c is normal and I’ve got my blood test booked in for a few days before I go away!! Wise move!!!
I’ve already decided that when I get back from Corfu I am not going to get on the scales. I’ll go straight back to keto and weigh myself after a month. No point in striking myself with a second arrow! I am hoping I will eat healthy food in Corfu and I plan to stay sugar free. I don’t think my pancreas would cope with sugar now!
Have a good week everyone .

YOWZER lovely to hear from you and thanks so much for the positive thought. It can be easy to fritter away time or spend it in a negative frame of mind whereas we should really be grateful for every minute and put it to good use – even if that means taking time to care for ourselves and rest and relax. I’m very good at being busy for busy’s sake, if that makes sense!

CATHY very well done for your ongoing loss. That’s fantastic! Are you noticing changes to your body and clothes as well as on the scales? I’m so pleased for you. Also good to hear your tooth is now gone. And I hope you get your new hair system sorted quickly.

ARCTICFOX well done for staying on track despite a disappointing weekend. It’s so easy to turn to eating or drinking all the wrong things when we feel fed up or frustrated, even though that then exacerbates the negative mood!

BECCA I’ve lost track : have you been on your holiday yet or is that still to come? Either way, I hope you have/had a wonderful time!

I had an unexpected gain of almost 2lb this morning which was disappointing. But then I had a thought. I’m on antibiotics at the moment and I Googled it and found that they can cause weight gain due to messing with your gut microbiome. Things like probiotics and fermented food can help so I’ll look out for those when I go shopping today, and the antibiotics are only for a couple more days so hopefully any effect will be short lived anyway 🤞 (btw it turns out that after my fall in NYC the broken tooth is still embedded in my lip! It has become slightly infected so the antibiotics are to deal with that. I’m being referred to a dental surgeon to remove it. Will keep you posted . . . )

Hope that everyone has a good week. Here’s to more losses 🙂. I’ll report back at the end of the week X

Oh wow, Newbie, I read your list and while you are on a pretty good track, the blueberries jumped out at me right away. You are consuming 12-15g of carbs in blueberries alone. As Verano says, if you can stick to blackberries, raspberries and strawberries which have less than half the carbs, that is a good tweak for now. If you do that and cut the portion of fruit in your yogurt by half and add a few nuts and some seeds like hemp or pumpkin (bonus, these are also very high in magnesium and diabetics often have a magnesium deficiency and it is a super important nutrient for glucose metabolism), you will improve the composition of your breakfast by a lot. Of course it is much better to be eating fruit than sweets and bread, so if you need them for now until you manage to change your tastes, that is fine. I’ve had to ditch the blueberries too. I thought I was doing a healthy thing by eating them as a dessert, but they were spiking my blood sugar a lot. I’m down to one portion of fruit per day. Maybe try snacking on some low carb veggies like bell peppers and cucumbers in addition or add a high fibre, high protein item with them? I like lupini beans for this. I toast them in the oven with a bit of salt and 3 tbsp of nutritional yeast. The nutritional yeast is great for adding in B vitamins that you might be missing from cutting your grains back, and is a good source of iron as well. I get the lupini beans from a local Mediterranean shop, so if you have an Italian or Greek shop nearby, you may have luck finding them there. I looked it up and it seems Tesco may have them too. They are cheaper dried, but they are quite hard to prepare (they have to soak in constant changes of water for weeks on end to get all the bitterness out) so I just go with the pre-cooked ones.
You’re already doing well to get your carbs under 100g. Keep it up! This is a learning process and you can’t be expected to know it all at once. I still get shocked by some things. I had to stop eating imitation crab. I thought it was just pollock soaked in crab brine, but I was getting it at the fish counter in the supermarket so it wasn’t labelled and I didn’t know that was what was spiking me until I saw the reading on the cgm after eating it in nori wraps with avocado and cucumber (so I knew it had to be the only thing that could have caused the spike). I looked into it and realized that they also add loads of sugar to the brine. So we all get tripped up now and then.

Wow, carbs before I started the BSD were up to 250 (on a bad day) so I’ve cut them down to under 100g I’m happy, will see if the tweaks above help too

Hi Verano, I use my fitness pal to log all my food as I’ve used it for years and found it quite reliable so far. I didnt realise blueberries were so high, I shall keep them for my breakfast and cut them out for my afternoon fruit and stick to strawberries thank you for the info. In all fairness this batch of granola has some oats in which I shall omit next time round and keep it to nuts and seeds. I will have a go with the bulgar wheat and keep to a low portion to ring the changes with cauliflower rice. Thank you for the advice, im intrigued by what my carb intake was prior to this so shall go back through MFP and have a look. Have a good day all

Thank you Yowser for your thought for Monday morning. What a wonderful, inspiring post.
I am feeling so much better since the tooth has been extracted. No earache and no gum ache. There.does not appear to be any involvement with the sinus and everything seems intact! Phew! I’ve been very lucky and so thankful to the wonderful Oral Surgeon who was so kind. Am so grateful for his expertise.
I still can’t believe how well I am doing to lose 22 lb in the last few weeks – I am the lightest weight I’ve been since June 2019! This morning I was 144.2 lb. All those years of getting absolutely nowhere! The difference has been sticking rigidly to 800 calories and doing keto and NOT CHEATING ONCE! I am lucky to have a superpower of willpower! I’ve eaten fresh food for the last 10 weeks whilst doing the online plan. I can’t eat nuts and seeds for two weeks til things start to heal up in my mouth and I’m missing them. I’ve had no crisps, chocolate, chips, cakes, biscuits, bread, crackers. Not even a crumb or a rogue chip that fell off my husband’s plate! I really hope my HbA1c reflects my effort at the end of April. I’ll keep going til the end of April then take a few days off for my book club holiday to Corfu and then get straight back to basics. My plan is to enjoy holidays, festivities etc and then in between eat keto and be mindful. Let’s see what happens. I know maintenance will be hard.
Have a good week everyone. We’ve got this. I think we really have!

BTW Arcticfox I made a variation of your yogurt dressing and it’s lovely. Gone are my mayo days!

Newbie it looks like you have lots of good low carb stuff but I wonder how you calculate your carbs? Do you use an app like fatsecret? The reason I ask is that it seems to me that there are one or two items that maybe you don’t realise are pretty high carb. Strawberries are around 4g per 100g whereas blueberries are almost 15g per 100g. Maybe have a few more strawberries in the afternoon and fewer or no blueberries. I have no idea how many carbs there are in the granola you’re having but maybe leave that out and just add 10g of walnuts?
Bulgar wheat isn’t too bad but lentils and pearl barley are pretty high and make sure you are checking the carbs in cooked v dry because the difference is huge!

Truthfully, if you were to calculate the number of carbs you were eating on average day pre-blood sugar diet you will be shocked, maybe even horrified! If you having less than 100g a day that actually is low carb compared to an ‘average’ persons diet. Don’t stress too much about the number and just follow the general rule of not eating bread, pasta, rice and any vegetables that grow underground and you’ll be fine.

Thank you Arcticfox. I live in the UK and have looked but neither of the lupini beans or rapini seem readily available, so I shall keep my eyes peeled for those when I’m out and about.

Verano –
Breakfast at 10am is 100g Greek yoghurt, 50g raspberries and 50g blueberries, fiber supplements, and 2 tablespoons of homemade granola following a recipe I found on this site. Lunch is mixed salad (pepper, cucumber, celery, radish, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, small amount of sweetcorn) with either tuna or chicken, no dressing. Snack at 3pm of 50g strawberries, 50g blueberries, 50g blackberries (I need this to help me get through the afternoon at work or I’ll go home and snack on naughty stuff). Dinner is a meat protein, veg including tenderstem broccoli, beans, spinach, cabbage etc, and cauliflower rice (almost for every dinner), sometimes I have lentils or konjac rice, I’ve got edamame noodles and black bean noodles to try and bulgar wheat and pearl barley, (once a fortnight I may have 25g lentil pasta), followed by a sugar free jelly or if calories allow a small piece of 85% dark chocolate (finish eating by 7pm). Cup of tea at 8.30 and 2-3litres of water during the day.

Good morning!

Wendy a loss is a loss!

Pootle well done! I think you have found the secret in cutting back straight after any indulgent time that way you don’t ’drift’ back into bad habits.

Becca it’s a good idea to write down what you are going to eat BEFORE eating then you might decide to leave something off your plate! Have you tried Greek yogurt instead of cream? It’s so easy to underestimate how much cream you are actually pouring. Also it might be an idea to try and do without the sweetener that way you do eventually lose any ‘sweet tooth’ and in fact I find lots of foods too sweet now!

Newbie what a good idea to print of the sheets and pin them to your fridge. I don’t know if you used the dietdoctor site but that has brilliant graphics.

Anyway, the sun is shining here this morning, hope it is with you too. The start of a new week so a ‘new start’ for each of us. One day at a time….

Newbie it might be more helpful if you tell us what you eat in typical day then we might have some lower carb suggestions.

Thanks for the thought Yowzer. It certainly applies to my situation this weekend. I was enrolled in a teapot making workshop at the pottery studio. Saturday was just dreadful. I was struggling with my clay being too wet and soft and did not mesh at all with the instructor’s teaching style. I really wanted to just be able to pick up some tips and tricks, but in the end was upset at myself for getting frustrated by it all. It was so interesting that I just wanted to get off the wagon after and have some very high carb/high fat treats. So I said to myself, what could I have that would feel good? I was too tired to cook, so I decided on palak paneer out of a packet and went to the supermarket to get some. It hit the spot and I avoided buying things I shouldn’t have. Then I called my godmother and had a good chat. I went back to class today and although I still wasn’t meshing with the instructor, it went better and I got more out of it.
I stopped at the organic market where I get my soy free tofu and duck eggs on the way home and I did splurge on a few things that will just make my life a bit easier now that I am headed into busy season on the farm. They were supposed to have gluten free keto bread on special, but they didn’t have any left, so I did get some buns and a pizza base instead. Also, I got some almond flour cookies and some hemp seed protein bars. Then I found cauliflower oven chips! They are pretty highly processed, but very low carb, so will do for an occasional treat on a day when I don’t feel like cooking from scratch, and will be nice with the fish filets I have in my freezer. So hopefully all these things will allow me to stay on track even on busy or upsetting days.
So, there were times when I definitely would have used being upset and tired as a reason to abandon this way of eating, but I’m quite proud that I remembered what kind of weekend I would like to be having eating-wise and how I need to stay on track for at least 3 months to meet my initial goal and I’m only on week 5. Actually, next week will be week 6, so half way!

Hi Newbie,
I don’t typically count my grams, but I am eating very low carb at the moment. I note from one of your other posts that you sometimes have a small slice of bread or some lentil pasta. I am celiac, so can’t have bread anyway (except for gluten-free keto bread, but it is very expensive so I rarely indulge). Before going this low carb, I would sometimes have lentil or chickpea pasta as well, but I realized by wearing the cgm that it was spiking my blood sugar. In fact, even chickpeas and lentils themselves are spiking my glucose at the moment which can lead to overnight crashes (reactive hypoglycemia) for me. It’s too bad because they are so healthy otherwise. But my goal is to be less insulin resistant and more metabolically flexible so they are off the table for now. So, at the moment, if I want noodles, I have konjac/shiritake noodles or zucchini noodles or thinly sliced cabbage (instead of chow mein noodles for instance). Instead of lentils or chickpeas, I have lupini beans which are higher in protein and much lower in carbs. My other low carb proteins are duck eggs, soy free tofu (allergic to soy and have a chicken egg intolerance), hemp seeds, Greek yogurt, different types of fish and seafood, and a few nuts and a bit of cheese. I combine these with lots of low carb veg and nori seaweed snacks for iodine and salt and incorporate nutritional yeast for iron and B vitamins. If you want to lower carbs further, look for things like rapini instead of broccoli. Broccoli is a very healthy vegetable, but subbing rapini for it half the time will lower your carb intake, especially if you eat it as often as I do (3+ times per week). I try to also have lower carb nuts, so macadamia nuts or pecans instead of cashews, for instance. Put together, all these little swaps can really add up over the course of a day or week.
Hope this helps.

Hello all, I was diagnosed in December 2025, so I’m new to the whole BSD way of life but have been following it for 3 months and have lost weight and reduced my HBA1C levels by over half.

I was just wondering if people could tell me what they eat on an average day to keep their carbs below 50g. I eat all the right things but seem to never get my carbs below 50g so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, any advice would be great and seeing what other people eat in a day would be good.

Thanks in advance