My BF bought the book and then spoke to her practice nurse about the BSD. The nurse told her it was only for diabetics and people needing to lose a lot of weight for an operation. She said we all needed carbs for our energy. I tried to argue the point with her but because someone medical had said it she won’t entertain it now. She said I must be running on empty and have no energy now…

My food shop is now cheaper and quicker as there’s a third of the shop I never go into now!

you will get lots of support here. You may also find you don’t want to binge as much once your carb cravings fade which is normally within the first week. Jump in it isn’t as hard as you think.

and if you do have a blip just jump right back in as soon as possible. If you do a search on ‘binge’ I’m sure someone started a diary a while back, and bing eater was in the title.

lots of us here who have done it, secret eating etc as well.

Beverly,

Great to see you back! I had wondered how you were doing. I like that you aren’t beating yourself up. You’ve heard that saying: It’s not the number of times you fall, it’s the number you get yourself back up and try again. I salute you!

I agree with SarahDawn, Tibetan, and barby. They’re giving great advice. I don’t always have the best of days with the diet but by tracking my calories, using the Fitbit, and reading the success stories and struggles on this forum, I get back on track. I’m keeping my eye on the prize: Good Health.

Wishing you, Sarahdawn, Tibetan, barby, and all continued success! (And me too!)

Best, EvaZ

Ha ha Frog! Amos, my Saluki Lurcher, gives me a withering look if my stomach rumbles. And that’s another consequence, the dogs have given up hoping for leftovers; I eat everything on my plate now! It’s too precious to share.

I understand all about the diet, have read the book and my GP is supportive, but I do get depressed and then I binge eat!! I want to get my type 2 diabetes under control and my blood pressure down.

I’m not hungry, but my stomach just made a very loud rumbling noise.
Every time it happens my cats ears go up and she looks wide eyed and incredibly startled!

Hi Dogsbody – is trying to spread your food across the day working better for you?

When I started I found I could skip breakfast occasionally without problems.
I’m now I’m finding this a bit harder, and finding I’m hungry if I have a very light breakfast (poached egg and asparagus was lovely though!) – I’m now aiming for breakfast to be around 200, and it’s often my carbiest meal of the day.

unintended consequence – Bissell’s nurse passed out in shock !

a few weeks in and you won’t need to think about it as much you will know the meals you enjoy that work for the numbers. Try to stick it out for a month – this is what he recommends in the book. After week 4 take a look at how you are doing and decide if this version is right for you. If you don’t feel at ease with it by then perhaps you could change to 5:2 or just general BSD way of life. I was well into the swing of things by week 4 hopefully you will be as well 🙂

I don’t suppose they would accept my carrot chips haha

Mmmm, snacks. I’d forgotten them. One advantage of living on my own is that I don’t have to watch other people eating those things I can’t have anymore! Although I do still buy a portion of chips on Wednesday lunch time and share them out between my grandson and two dogs, because they have all come to expect them! What a martyr!

Thx Izzy….i’ve tried different things every day so menu side is ok it’s just the constant having to think about cal/carb content where my enthusiasm is lacking at the mo. Maybe I need a personal chef to do all the work for me 😀😀

Me too with the cauli rice Izzy, and my pants stay up instead of rolling down Frog! And great that you have helped other people make such positive life changes Barbarar. That’s not a small thing at all!
I’ve got my annual MOT with the Practice Nurse tomorrow, I can’t wait to see her face when she weighs me. 😜

Oh! I never watch normal TV so I miss adverts for these types of thing. Thank you for mentioning it I will check it out on the iplayer 🙂

As for my plans well, I’ve given it some thought and I’m going to do my own version of the diet. My losses are moderately slow as it is and I fear that moving to 5:2 may slow it down more than I would like, however I would love to be able to eat a little more sometimes. So I have decided that 5 or 6 days/week I will stick to 800 and 1 or 2 days per week I will just follow BSD guidance of eating the right food and keeping carbs low. It just allows for some snacking on staying in date nights with a movie etc. I made some lovely salsa and carrot crisps earlier in the 8 weeks and I’d be happy eating those when hubby has his doritos! Also I’ve found a recipe to make low carb tortilla chips. So it is that type of thing I would add in to a free day… Not the old usual rubbish.

Brilliant! Well done you! Isn’t it amazing what we can achieve when we stick to it!
What do you plan to do next?im in a similar position and am mulling around different ideas. 5:2 with 800 on the two and continuing with the under 50 carbs is my current thinking.
Are you watching the Sewing Bee BBC 2 programme, if you like altering clothes?
Again, well done!

I’m not a coffee fiend but is a latte made with milk?

Almond milk is my saviour these days. The unsweetened version is very low calorie and I use it to make shakes and hot chocolate. Perhaps you could try that and make your own latte? it may not be the same but you might find you love it better!

Most of us find that it becomes less of a chore to stick to the diet so hopefully the negative feelings you have will fade.

Some people find sticking to much the same foods every day helps them along but that just gets boring for me, and you sound the same. I’d recommend a good surf online on the recipes here and elsewhere and choose something you can look forward to eating for lunch and dinner.

Good luck, try to stick it out because it does get easier and it is worth it.

excuse me for bounding in all excited but I’ve made 10% with just two days of my 8 weeks left I was beginning to think I wouldn’t make it! didn’t lose anything in week 7 but that’s 2 off so far this week.

So near to graduating 🙂

well done to all for continuing success and weathering the stormy plateau’s

Woke up this morning feeling a bit fed up. Craving a latté but yet another fruit tea or lemon water to start my day! Thinking of the day ahead…..another day of calorie counting & thinking about what i can/can’t eat. I’m only 7 days into this & wonder if I can last another 7wks. Hope my mood becomes more positive 😦

ha! me too I love my spiralised courgette! and cauli rice… who knew?!

Good luck Slimmingmayya.

Well done Patsy, it doesn’t matter that it was slower it’s just as big an achievement!

Enjoy your new healthier life 🙂

Good luck bghouse. I simply use the data in MyFitnessPal (scanning barcodes where I can as it’s so quick and easy). While I aim for 50g of carbs a day it’s not something I focus on too much.

How lovely of you to offer, thank you. If I struggle going forwards I may well take you up on that offer!

I feel ok again today it’s just so up and down just now. I’m grateful to have not had a complete relapse though which I did fear was going to happen a week or two ago. In Feb I could barely function with anxiety and all I wanted to do was sleep with exhaustion.

Now I feel anxious off and on, but I still have energy to do things like sort out the sandpit tent yesterday (my legs hurt today) and cook lots of things, and just ya know- live a little. I couldn’t do that a few months ago. All of that considered I’ve come a long way forwards. I had some CBT counselling which was helpful.

I feel able to rationalise lots of it, I talk to myself like a lawyer lol, the feelings are real but many of the worries are not.

I do have some of those grown up colouring books too! I can’t risk that either when my son is around haha he can’t be trusted not to steal my pens. He will get older though (far too soon) and all of those things will be easier. It is true though that it would be easy to bring that out on an evening once he is in bed than painting so maybe I should try that. Thanks for the explanation of why it works – I knew it worked but I didn’t know why! I am awesome at doing two things at once and painting is the only thing that I can really only do the one thing lol.

I have a small announcement to make… I’m two days off the end of my 8 weeks and this morning I weighed in at 11st 8. This is officially 10% gone! So I made it! 18 lb’s gone, feeling very happy with that. 11 st 7 is my next target so should get that soon as well then it will be moved to 11 st 🙂

Ideally I would like to get down to 9 st, with a view to staying under 9st 7. 9st 2 brings my bmi to 25 but I find going lower in the past I really feel too lean. I have quite a physical job as an engineer so I think I probably carry some muscle.

This morning I made another almond milk raspberry shake, adding an extra 1/2 cup of almond milk. It only added 13 calories and made no difference to the taste, but it meant it filled a whole pint glass. Feels like such luxury to sit having that for breakfast! 198 calories well spent and very satisfying. I’m sure I could save on calories by making it just with fruit and milk and it would be nice enough, but the yoghurt makes it nice and thick and it adds the fat and makes it filling. calories well spent.

I didn’t make my food plan yesterday but I’m off to do it now. Last week was ok without a plan- I didn’t go off track but it did mean frequent visits to the shop.

back soon my friends 🙂 thank you as always for the support x

Congratulations!

Hi Alan,
Are you counting your carbs? I think you could maybe focus on those to try and get them as low as you can. If you have had diabetes for a while you might need to have a little patience to allow your insulin levels and pancreatic function to return to a more normal function.
Your weight loss is fantastic… and that has to be helping at a cellular level. Have you had an HbA1c blood test? If so, then hopefully next reading will show improvement of your glycemic control over time, despite the higher than ideal BGLs.
Don’t give up… this is life saving stuff!

If I was a superhero my superhero name would be Freya.

Hi Gayn,
There are plenty of us veggies here. I’m aiming for a carb target similar to Orchid, my goal is about 50g a day. Of course our legumes have lots of carbs but are delicious and contain protein too.
As for snacking… I try to have hommus and veg, or a slice of tasty cheese, or soy bacon grilled in the sandwich press topped with avocado. If I’m low on calories then I have a miso soup (28 cal).
Good luck.

That really is great to read Gina. Best wishes for your continuing success.

Hi Frobbie,
Another veggie here. I mostly have egg brekkies, or none (if I’m not hungry in the morning I just extend my fast until lunch). I’m trying to keep my carbs under about 50g per day which is not always achievable as a vego but it’s something to aim for. With our consumption of legumes we naturally have more carbs than the meat eaters.
The book makes it clear on the fruits… berries are best and we should try to avoid the higher sugar things like mangoes and bananas. I still include the occasional piece of dark chocolate (and tonight made chocolate dipped strawberries… yum!).
I’m cooking more stir fries and soups since starting the BSD and make heaps of servings so the next day’s lunch takes no thought or calculation, it’s just leftovers. Otherwise I have hommus pots with veggies at lunch, or miso soup if brekky was big.
Planning ahead makes it easier and apps like MyFitnessPal let you track your weight loss and meals.
Good luck,
OzVeggy

Dropped 2 dress sizes so the clothes I bought in the sales a size smaller were too big! Charity shop got lots of bags.
Discovered Frittata’s – only ono Friday – but made an Asparagus one and had half for Friday hot and had yesterday cold. Delicious!
Spiralizer – I did not believe the courgettes could be enjoyable other than in a ratattoille as a thickener!

Heading in to week 5… Still feeling great, no where near as tired, 5kg down and blood sugars much better behaved. At this stage I’m planning to do this for as long as I can to try and get myself closer to my goal weight. Hope you are all doing as well. Dr Mosely you are a life saver, thank you!

Hi Frog and orchid,

Many thanks for your thoughts. I’ll keep an eye on carbs as I have been, and will experiment with the breakfasts as you both suggest.

I really appreciate everyone’s input – it’s so helpful to read other people’s experiences of the diet and how it works in real life!

Fran

That is the wonder of these forums though, wherever we are across the world we can still interact with each other regardless of distance and time.

I tend to post in the morning and then in the evening and on my days off I’m an addict and post in-day as well :-p

It keeps me feeling accountable and in check I think.

Lets keep Melting 🙂

Thanks frog and orchid
Yes I’ve just looked at the thread you suggested orchid, that should help.
What I really need is to book into a health farm for 8 weeks and let them feed Me!
Failing a win on the lottery I guess I’d better start planning for the week😂😂😂

Hi Lynne
I know what you mean about the toast – someone made some in the office the other day, and even with boring white sandwich bread, the smell was amazing.
I did have a toast craving yesterday after a too small breakfast – mid-morning I had a single slice of vogel bread toasted and it was amazing. It did fit into my daily carb and calorie count – but I didn’t lose any weight yesterday – I don’t get too hung up about daily weights, but don’t know if that was the culprit.
BUT – I had toast, I didn’t have the urge to eat the entire loaf and the world didn’t fall apart, so as an occasional treat, I can have toast!

It is weird how people get insistent that you have food/drink isn’t it? Particularly given that you don’t drink alcohol, are on a diet and diabetic – Limoncello woman wrong on three counts! – four if you include that you’d said ‘no thanks’.

Have a good day

Hi Frobbie,
I am veggie as well and have blueberries with full fat yoghurt and seeds every day. I did not eat any other fruit during the 8 weeks unless you count tomatoes which are really a fruit but we treat as a veg. I totally avoided dried fruits as they are very sugary for their size, and have not had fruit juice at all – I rarely drank it anyway as I preferred the whole fruit. It is important to keep up the 5 fruit and veg a day and that is 450g fruit and veg per day, so 30g berries is an part of that.
You will see labels saying X grams carbs of which y is sugars so sugar is just a type of simple carb that we need to avoid. Fruit also comes with fibre – which we need plus lots of other antioxidants.
For breakfast – what is important is that it fills you up for a good few hours. I initially tried eggs and Portobello mushrooms – I find that the full fat yoghurt, fruit and seeds is more filling; others find the egg breakfast best. Try to vary for a couple of days and which ever leaves you feeling fullest and stick to it. If that is egg – use the berries and yoghurt for ‘pudding’ later in the day.
Good luck.

A sudden desire to customise and alter clothing instead of throwing it all out.

as the poster above a rekindling of a love and excitement about cooking and food.

Finding I’m saving on not eating crap and then spending a lot of that on Almond flour -my new fav baking ingredient.

Hopefully giving my kids a better start with food than I had… No disrespect to my Mum as she gave us what was accepted as a healthy diet of homecooking, no one knew any better then.

Good news on the clothes front! I’m assuming that the levels you are posting are fasting b s levels ? Often the last to reduce even when readings the rest of the time are good. Hope you have found the last few days have brought better news.

-Rekindled my passion for cooking
-8 bags of clothes to charity shop
-discovering a whole new wardrobe of clothes that fit.. Sometimes properly for the first time.
-Knowing that at least 6 people have had significant weight loss and other health benefits because I became a walking advert for the diet and told everyone about it (must have bored quite a few)
-discovered love for yoghurt… Now make my own.
I’m sure there’s more… They are all quite small things but in total have made me happy

Syb – there is a thread called rising fasting blood sugar levels (or similar name) which will be helpful to you. Don’t despair – many found it took a while to get success but did get there in the end. Fasting levels are the last to get sorted even though rest of the time readings are good. If B S levels the rest of the time are good then that’s a huge success !

Most of my trousers are too long and my pants come up too high!

Hi Frobbie
If you keep the carbs under control, won’t that also take care of the sugars?
Looking at nutrition info (waitrose is a frequent source), Nutrition info is set out as
Carbohydrate X.X
of which sugars X.X

Hi Kitty, welcome back! There is a thread on ‘what have you eaten today’ https://thebloodsugardiet.com/forums/topic/what-have-you-eaten-today/page/11/ which has people daily menus on it – that might help you.
For a couple of weeks I would stick to a limited number of foods just to get started and keep it simple. I had the same breakfast (full fat yogurt, berries and seeds)l lunch was soup – I made a pot 3 days running and eat one, freeze 3 so I would rotate round the three till I needed to fill up the freezer again. I had a salad with that and dinner varied most – but I stuck to things that I could easily make and I was not having to go out getting new foods for recipes etc. That worked for me – hope it helps.

Hi Bissell,
Many thanks for your very fast response! I’m a little confused if that is the case as many of the breakfast recipes contain foods with naturally occurring sugars such as berries, raisins, fruit juice etc.
I’m a veggie so I’m trying to be ultra careful to vary meals, hence my inclusion of the fruity breakfasts. Perhaps I should focus on the eggs plus veg type breakfasts? (Reluctant to do that as it would make most meal ingredients samey for me over the course of a week!).
Any thoughts would be much appreciated. 😉
Fran

Hi Kitty
I am cooking a lot more from scratch, but haven’t used recipes that call for lots of ingredients I don’t have and not likely to use again.
I also hate having a menu plan where I know what I’ll be eating a week ahead.
I have bought a spiraliser, which I love for courgetti and salad stuff – carrot, cucumber.
My general principals are splitting calories and carbs reasonably evenly through the day – I’m finding that if breakfast is a lot less than 200cals, I get hungry, or need an early lunch.
At least one meal will be lots of low carb veg (cooked or salad) with fairly plain fish or meat – although I often have one or two veggie days across the week (protein of egg, cheese or hummus)
Lots of eggs – breakfast, and frittata (one egg bulked out with spiralised veg)
Full fat cottage cheese is great – with spiralised courgette, if you have it with a salad you don’t need a dressing

I found some lovely pictorial references to low/high carb fruit and veg content – so nice I’ve put colour prints in the kitchen
http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/vegetables http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/fruit

Good luck

You know that feeling when you are walking along and suddenly think ‘something is missing’ and you realise you’ve forgotten your handbag or coat or something? I was walking down the road yesterday and thought ‘there’s usually something with me that isn’t here’ and then I realised what it was. My stomach!!!! I’m so used to it being between me and my bag that I missed it! In a good way, of course. Not that I’ve exactly got a six pack yet, still more of a party seven!

So that got me thinking, are there any other unexpected consequences to this diet that you’ve noticed? I’d love to hear them! As another example, my kitchen is easier to clean as there is less fat spattered about!

Over to you!

Morning Fran. Pretty much none, I’m afraid! Carbs in some pulses, above the ground veggies, but no sugar as such. It gets easier, I promise!

Thanks Imogen 😃

I’ve been doing this for so long now that it really is a habit.

The cake or bread my friends eat for breakfast didn’t bother me. Nor did the jams. But the toast did smell good😳 But I enjoyed the meat/cheese I was eating. 😃

I think people we ate with thought it was strange until they realised that I was enjoying myself just as much as they were, just not eating what they ate (or drinking the wine – I don’t drink alcohol anyway).

Strange how some people try to push food or alcohol at you. After one meal out we went back to a house. We were offered home-made limoncello, which I declined. The lady was so insistent that it would have been rude to continue to refuse. The merest hint of the limoncello touched my lip – no further. She didn’t know, but it made her happy.

My friend cooked one recipe (chicken) which included some sultanas. I couldn’t sit there and fish them out of the sauce, could I? Very nice, but my stomach really did not like the sultanas😱 Fortunately they were a limited quantity! Now I know for certain that I keep away from foods like that!

Hi Stacey – well done on restarting. The level where we go into fat burning is individual. I lost 33kg on BSD on 60g carbs and I was in ketosis at that level of carbs. I don’t eat any refined carbs and am veggie so eat more pulses that are higher in ‘good’ carbs which may be why I needed the 60g. I still concentrated on 800 cals as that was to do with portion size, but if, after lunch, my carbs looked too low for the day then I would adjust my next meal to get as close to 60g as possible. Likewise if I spotted that I was going over the 60g, I adjusted the last meal to bring it down.
There are quite a few people only counting carbs and they tend to be setting limits as 50g and lower for the day. If you are good at managing portion sizes, then this is simpler. Bill (who you may have seen has reversed his diabetes) sticks to 50g a day and his calorie intake can be 900 a day.
Having finished the 8 weeks, I continued to a couple more then took a break as I have holidays and visitors. I have just restarted this last week and as part of moving to a longer term plan, I am monitoring my carbs only and trying not to panic when I see the calories at 950 for that day. I am in ketosis and lost weight this week on that approach. BTW – we have all seen the – I ate more one day and suddenly lost a lot the next day! Not sure why – maybe something kick-started the body which was worried about the low cals, may just be enough gut fill to push through and empty the bowels!
You don’t say why you decided to make the change in week 6? Did you think you had reached a plateau, or were you concerned you were not losing enough weight?
I made minor adjustments as I went through the 8 weeks, mainly in food intake to make sure I was getting rid of visceral fat. If 40g is not working for you, it may be too low. Honestly – if you were losing ok before, why jeopardise it by changing as it if you are having these cravings you may well be below what your body can deal with. Try 50g carb a day and see if you can keep that consistent. From one site I read, keeping it consistent is more important than the grams as you can move in and out of your fat-burning zone which leave the body ‘confused’.
Hope that helps and good luck.