Great going chinagas!!!!

Ooooh, river cruise and dolphins!!!! I want to see it!

This diet seems to sort a lot of problems!!!! 🙂

That’s a coincidence Judith, my Mum and I were just saying the same thing today. Neither of us get that anxious, jittery feeling or dizziness anymore if a meal is late.
Today my sister, parents and I went on a 1&1/2 hr dolphin cruise up the Port River. We had planned to go on the 11.30 one to be back in reasonable time for lunch. We then saw a huge party of school children, around 50 of them, on a school trip about to board the boat. We knew it would be really noisy and busy so decided to wait for another boat which left at 12. By the time we needed to return we hadn’t seen any dolphins so the Captain said he would continue a bit longer. So we didn’t get lunch until after 2 o’clock. Breakfast had been at 7, but we were both fine with that. A huge change for us.
Yes, we did get to see dolphins ( knew you’d ask Judith). The river is a dolphin sanctuary and home to about 30 of them. Lovely day, 28C, cheap day out the equivalent of about £4 and we’ve never failed to see the dolphins yet. Recommend it to anyone visiting Adelaide.

I know, I was a bit stunned! I had even eaten a fairly large apple the day before.

I just know I feel better than I have for a decade and no blood sugar crashes like I used to get 🙂

I’m now into my 5th week of the BSD 800. So far have lost just under 6 kgs. My wife and I started together and so far she has recorded a similar weight loss. I have been type 2 diabetic for around 18 months and at the time of diagnosis weighed in at 82 kgs with a bmi of 29 then aged 55. I ‘ve been a vegetarian for around 25 years, ate dairy products and fish. One of those people that exercised on and off (a run here, a bike ride there etc) loved all the wrong kind of food… potatoes, bread, cereals. We joined a gym back in November and have been going regularly 5 days a week since then. Do a whole range of stuff in the gym from spinning, yoga, HIIT, weights and aerobics just to keep things varied. The weight is coming down, the paunch is slowly disappearing and I’ve never felt fitter. The diet is going good too. I used MyFitnessPal to record everything and most of the time keep to the 800 calories. Breakfast is full fat yoghurt with 4 strawberries. Lunch can be a salad with either tuna, sardines or mackerel. Not much of a dinner as we do the gym in the evening after work so invariably just a low cal snack. Target weight is 70kgs. At the end of the 8 weeks, we’re going onto the 5:2 Med Diet and the gym membership is there for a year. Wished I had done all this sooner, actually enjoying every minute of it. Going to try out some of these recipes over the coming weeks.

Judith 3.8 on a FBS ?
Given that we now consider normal to be between 4 and 5, a FBS of 3.8 is incredible.
Very well done, no hypos please.

I was going really well for the first few days of the 800 / day but the last couple of days have been HARD. I’ve been hungry mid morning and mid afternoon and so tempted by snacks.
I’ve been having a handful of almonds to satiate myself but they’re so high in calories that when I have my evening meal, my 800 gets blown out of the water.
Is there anything that I can eat between meals that will fill me up without blowing out my caloric intake?

Thanks

Hi all,
I liked the site best because it was based on what real people think is their ideal weight. Not some boffin who has failed to take ageing into account. It’s only a guide really, because we are our own best judge of what is happening with our blood sugars, and where we think we look and feel our best.

Hi again everyone. My recent HbA1c two weeks ago was 6.9 hence why l am on this diet. The question is my doctor apart from other blood tests wants a repeat and next week after 10 days on this diet would there be a changes in this result.Thank you.

Tomato and butterbean is another good soup. I used to blitz it when serving to people who don’t like butterbeans lol – they never realise!!! 🙂
Yeah, I always start soups with onion and garlic too!

Well,I got a basic result back from my FBS test – 3.8. That’s a less than the 4.9 to 8 I was getting back in 2011 when I was tested. I wish I had had the test done before this diet as I am sure it would have been much higher as I was piling on weight on fresh air lol
upshot – I think this diet has had a helpful impact on my blood sugars. I don’t get those crazy dizzy hungry spells I used to get. 🙂

Cherrianne that ideal weight calculator says I need to lose another 8 lbs!! That will take me to 8stones 8lbs – near where I was aiming!! (i.e. 8st 12lbs) Oh well, onwards and downwards!! 🙂

Thanks Patsy, but Sweetheart is doing all the cooking this week so not heading kitchen wards often enough. I remember my Mum doing that and she had fantastic skin. So there are extra advantages. Thanks Cherrianne, (and Bill), but I am allowing myself 60mls of skimmed per day. So either two brown coffees or 1 beige one and I am adding a sweetner and it’s my sweet treat, if I’m good. I need to practise not drinking lots of milk because if I have what I want, it comes to a pint and a half a day! So I’m going practically cold turkey on this one. Yes I know I need the calcium but I get loads!

Hi FiFiP

Thanks for that. I wasn’t actually concerned too much about the 26 calories but I was more confused about why I hadn’t gained any calorie intake for the rest of the day by using non-fat yogurt and light cranberry juice. I was expecting the calorie count to come out lower than the book but instead it came out higher so I was concerned that the book calorie count was incorrect and if that was incorrect, then were there anymore that were wrong.

I am trying to stick quite strictly to the diet but there are things that I just can’t eat so some swaps are necessary and I want to ensure that I don’t go too far over the 800/day because some counts are not correct.

I’ve only just begun this and I don’t want to scupper myself in the first week. I am staying away from the carbs though.

Thanks again

Absolutely bizzylizzy. I can’t be the only one hiding all the bread etc at the bottom of the chest freezer and the biscuits and bars at the back of the cereal cupboard with lots of half open packets of non tempting things in front of them! Thanks Hopeful and Bill1954, Morrison’s here I come. I am really missing bread and am prepared to faff around just for 1 slice with butter. Funny I thought it would be the fruit or the low fat dairy that would sabotage me, and they haven’t …yet!

Interesting cherrianne
that gives me 12 stone 5 pounds, much nearer to what I feel comfortable at.

Thank you Cherrianne – excellent site, very helpful as I think BMI belongs in the same deep hole as sugar…..

Hi lynne have you tried the nhs healthy weight, bmi calculator? It takes variables such as age, gender, exercise levels, height etc into consideration. It is the one your practice will use.

Sianyb well done 🙂

Hi Lea71
Welcome! I can crave sweets at night and what I have had the last two nights is a small bowl with a couple of tablespoons of coconut yoghurt and a few blueberries and raspberries…eat it with a teaspoon … very yummy 😏

Hi Lynne,
There is an ideal weight range calculator at halls-md/ideal-body/weight.htm
You type in your age, height and gender, and it will give you a weight that most people in your age group consider to be ideal.
I think it is a bit more realistic than other sites which often have a 20 kg range. The site shows my ideal weight to be above my actual weight and I’m not skinny! I agree with the others though, the weight that you’re happy with and which enables you to keep your blood sugars in the non diabetic range, is the ideal weight for you. We all have a ‘personal fat threshold’, the place at which our fat levels are sufficiently low enough to enable us to eat well and maintain good blood sugar control. For some it may mean staying quite light, for others a loss of 10% body weight will be enough.

Hi JWS!

All my soups start with garlic & onion fried gently in a little olive oil. I now use stock instaed of milk as the fluid.

Try:

pea & watercress or spinach
Tomato & basil
Beetroot & butter bean (or cannellini )
Mushroom & thyme
Spicy bean ( any old cans of beans will do) chilli to taste, add cumin, cayenne & oregano along with celery
Curried celery with lentil
Onion and almond (modified Spanish recipe)
Aubergine & mozzarella

You can tell I like soup…….

Got a brilliant book some years ago called The Complete Book of 400 Soups – I have just been altering & adapting the recipes to exclude off-plan ingredients. When we aren’t eating soup, we eat a lot of salad. Sick of salad but not soup!!!!

Hi jackiemac quite a few of us have posted to fb. The more people hear on tv and radio etc the more people will notice it on fb and vice versa.

At the mo the majority of people haven’t heard of the diet or think it’s just another fad diet.

The more noise we make the sooner we will be heard. 🙂

175 signatures now 🙂

Well done for starting. Plan meals ahead and make sure you have yogurt, berries and lots of veg in the fridge. I am trying all sorts of veg and my husband is delighted with the new varieties being brought into his diet now and he isn’t on the BSD ! Good luck and wait for the complements even after 1 week!

Well done thepolly and Bill! 🙂

Don’t worry Leeanne
If you were here I’d even let you prick my finger to show you 😉

I don’t really know the answer but I have heard someone mention optifast and also people have tried slim fast. Sometimes people have mentioned being hungry while having them which, for most people, isnt a problem after a couple of days on the bsd. Maybe if you are only planning to use them for a fortnight while you get organised, you should be ok. Alternatively, everyone here will help you get your head around the bsd if you decide to jump straight in.

Hi Bill, Yes I’m hoping it will sort itself. Damned blood sugars! Pesky readings! It’s frustrating though.

TWSAndy and MrsTWSA – I also started yesterday, after a few days practise.

I too cringe at ‘diet’, however a recent blood sugar reading after a recurring virus and associated illnesses gives me the motivation to reverse it asap. I prefer to think of BSD as a scientific experiment as per Michael Mosley’s documentaries, with me as the subject.

My wife is still working and finds it more difficult to not eat carbs as so much food outside of the home is carborific, hence some pre-planning seems essential. I [already] endorse Bill’s “keep the carbs under 50gr / day, eat full fat products, and drink at least 2 to 3 ltr of non sugary fluids / day”.

Good luck.

Djdaussie, if you get fage ff carton it contains 190 calories. 2 oz blueberries is 32 calories a total of 222 calories. If you get a large pot of different ff yoghurt you will need to calculate it. A teaspoon of flax seeds isnt very much.

A 2 egg omlette won’t come to many calories – about 180 for 2 large eggs and oil for frying 🙂

Hi CazP1965 – we have been having the no-carb Bircher most mornings, for all sorts of reasons. I use coconut water from Waitrose instead of apple juice (too sweet for me) & chop up 1/2 Apple into it (shared between the 2 of us) for texture. After the initial bigger weight loss, I am now losing a steady 2lbs a week, husband is more or less doing that too. We BSD for 5 days a week pretty strictly, but have significant work related commitments which tend to scupper the remaining 2 days, (but we do try hard, rejecting bread & desserts etc, wine is another matter….) despite this we are still losing fat & our tummies are diminishing.

I honestly wouldn’t get too worked up about 26 calories, 200 calories, yes, I’d need to balance out the ‘food-book’ but 26 in the great scheme of things isn’t going to cause havoc with your weight loss goals.

You might find an egg based brekkie suits you better, from what I have read in the postings there’s all sorts of adaptations & modifications going on, people are changing foods around, swapping, experimenting – but still sticking to the food group principles. If more protein floats your boat, then I’d go for it.

Do you eat yoghurt? If so, that’s a great breakfast with some fruit and/or nuts. I find it just as filling as the cereals I used to eat and it’s not exactly a hassle to prepare.

Bread is trickier to give up, I think, as it’s so handy for a quick meal. Gram flour flatbreads are the best alternative I’ve found. They aren’t really like bread at all – more like pancakes, but they’re helping me not to miss bread so much. Good with curry instead of Naan or rice. They’re also good as wraps instead of a sandwich.

It’s that week 4 /5 figure again
the readings will stabilise again. Mine shot back up to 9.8 after steadily falling.
2 – 3 weeks seems to be how long it takes to get normal again but my FBS this morning was 6.6 so persevere, it will sort itself out
Others have discussed this in the rising blood sugars thread.

B- plain yoghurt/10 cherries
L- Apple, 25g cheddar, 2 sl ham, half tbsp pickle
D- pork chop, onion bhaji, salad

Teas ( swapped to stevia sweeteners by hermesetas as found others spiked bs).

Vicfish37, I wholeheartedly agree with all the others. You are an inspiration! If you can do this after 30 years of being diabetic it is proof positive that age and length of time since diagnosis, needn’t be a barrier to success.
You and your lovely wife are to be commended. Thanks for posting about your journey, it is night time here in Aus, and your story has just topped off what has already been a lovely day!
You will go on to lose the rest of the weight, and your Dr will be amazed at your results. Hope you have a wonderful 80th Birthday, and many more healthy years to come.

I have 2 friends who have been on 5:2 for an age, works brilliantly for them and they are sticking with it, 1 has got to her ideal weight & does it once a month to wipe out any misdemeanours, the other is still on it & is 2stone down, 1 more to go.

I have shown them what I am doing with BSD but they prefer to stick with the eat-anything approach of the original 5:2 to eating Med long term.

I prefer Med long term and once I have shifted the next 1.5stone will be looking at it for life. Tried original 5:2, got so ‘hangry’ every afternoon that decided my marriage was being risked. The BSD is a dream diet for me, if that’s possible!!

I was hoping that I would get a few more calories to have a morning snack and not go over my 800 but according to me I get no benfir at all from the lo fat and light substitutes and I’m 26 cals up 🙁

I’m concerned about the calorie count in the Breakfast Bircher recipe. When I add up the calories each ingredient separately, I get a heck of a lot more than 180 / serve and I even used Fat free greek style yogurt and light cranberry juice instead of apple.

50ml Light Cranberry juice 10 cals
2 tbsp ground flaxseeds 60 cals
1 tbsp raisins 42 cals
2 tbsp no far greek yogurt 35 cals
1 tbsp walnuts 59 cals
Total 206

Anybody else add this up? Am I missing something ? It was delicious but not very satisfying. I was hungry again by mid morning.

I’m positive I get this. In week 1 I started at 11.0 down to 6.7. Week 2 , 7.9 down to 5.2. Week 3, 8.2 down to 6.2. Week 4, 7.8 down to 7.2. I’ve just begun week 5 and am struggling to get below 7. However the readings during the day have mainly been well below 7. Surprisingly I forgot to take any tablets at all yesterday until 11pm when I just discarded half of them and my reading was 6.8 but on waking today it had risen to 7.4.

Thank you Hopeful and Bill, I must definitely try that bread too! Does it freeze well?
I have tried Nairns oatcakes, Venusflytrap, but the main problem is only eating just one! They are too more-ish, and my OH finds it well nigh impossible not to eat at least 5 at a time! So I don’t buy them anymore. My thoughts on bread are that if I freeze a sliced loaf, then it’s more of a faff to defrost a slice or two so less likely to eat more than we should!

I was very successful on the 5:2 and lost 10kg. I fell off the wagon and have now put back on half of that !
I started yesterday with a fast day. I am trying 2 fast days per week with about 1000 calories on non fast days but using the BSD.

I think this will help as even on fast days previously I craved sugar and would resort to diet desserts. I am hoping to break the sugar craving and balance my blood sugar but more importantly I have family history of heart disease so might get a few more years than my parents !
I have never joined a forum before but know that reading others posts helps to stay motivated.

Thanks both. I think (hope?) the whoosh fairy is paying me a visit. Certainly feels that way… 😉

Hi venusflytrap,
You don’t have to drink your tea and coffee black. You just put 150 mls or so of milk in a separate container in the fridge. Add this to your carb/ calorie count and use it for your drinks. Bill has a cappuccino and he’s had fantastic results. 🙂

I give up, Internet crashing.
Will natter later.
Love l ucia
Xxxx

So I am sticking with airborne veg not buried veg.

Love Lucia
Xxx

I understand bananas are bad with sugar and some chemical, helium or potassium or something.

Love Lucia
Xxx

The internet is rubbish today.

I was saying carbs in apples.
Love Lucia
Xxx

Thanks hopeful, I’m definitely going to try that.
Toasted cheese’n’onion sandwich
YUM

Some vegetarian protein products follow Chinese vegetarian ideas and use a washed gluten fibre. That’s what a lot of the non quorn pretend meat products are, like own brand vegeburgers and vege sausages. Not sure how that would sit with coeliacs or how it would affect the carb content. It might be that the carb is what they are washing out and it is the wheat protein that remains. Quorn is made from a mushroom like plant so there can’t be any problems with the actual protein for a vegetarian, unless you are allergic to fungi. You might want to check which eggs they use in the process as when it was launched they were unable to get enough cruelty free eggs, if that is an issue for you. The great thing about quorn is that it comes nicely portioned and it is low in fat, which keeps the kcal down. Fats are added to the burgers, for instance, to improve the mouth feel. It might be that I am way out of date on many of these products as it is a long time since my diet was vegetarian. We’ve been using quorn in the BSD, this week because we always use some quorn products. It seemed to be as satisfactory as the chicken we forgot to buy at the beginning of the week. Certainly much easier to cook! Of course, most pulses taste better as they actually have their own flavour. Quorn is a bit like tofu in that you need to add the flavours yourself.

Are you sure he’s gone ?
it’s not just the internet connection ???
😀 😀 😀 😀