Update on 12-04-2016

I have weighed myself this morning without taking any food it is 96.7 KG. Fasting Blood Sugar 5.6. Energy level quite high…. I have started doing 12000 steps per day from 4000 steps 1 week ago. I started taking public transport to work so i can walk to and from Railway station to my work place which is 1.5 KM. I am feeling awesome. I have never been so active or ever got of my couch to do house chores and going for walk willingly.

My wife is quite happy 🙂 with me helping her in doing chores in the house. I am eating approximately 700-800 cals a day and burning approx 400 cals by walking.

Eureka, my back has been dodgy for years, but I really damaged it a few years ago. First, I was bent over hugging the twins when one took her feet off the floor. 😳 A few months later I fell sideways walking down my front path – landed on the drive, on my hip. When I could finally get to the GP I was told I’d damaged the big muscle that runs across my back from hip to hip. Never really been right since. Carrying heavy shopping on Friday (not forgetting the killer cupcakes – which, by the way I’ve been told were very nice!) set it off again. And more shopping today hasn’t helped😱

Hi Judith
What a terrible thing to happen. Sounds like you got the best care. I like the Eiffel Tower idea!
When I had a bad knee I sat on a ‘hop-up’ for those low sort of jobs. That might work for you? Or a longer paintbrush!
Penny

Hi stringbreaker
Leptin ( hormone that decreases appetite ). A hormone made by adipose (fat) cells. Helps to regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger
So much for my play on words! I’ll get me coat!!
Eureka

Hi Christi1948
Happy bday for tomorrow. There is a lovely jewellery shop on your left as you walk out of the Del Duque beach area going towards Adeje. Think it’s called Jose Santillan. Not that I’m giving you ideas!

The Sun King do a good Basque Hake at Los Cristianos. Opposite the beach fountain. Nice & low carb. I feel like I’ve just walked down there too.

Are we all knackered? Someone must have a good back somewhere? Did mine in,in 1984!
Eureka

Day 51 weight 10st 4lbs
Blood sugar 11.9

Had chia seeds on my porridge this morning with my Diabeti sweet (sugar substitute) – I will be eating my porridge this way more often. 😀

Dr has seen Oldie today and prescribed Diazapan for when he is really agitated – so hopefully he will be calmer.

Mum still on track to come home on Wednesday.

As you say ‘we learn’! Finding out our weaknesses is the first step in overcoming them.

Hi Janet
Off to los Cristiano to get a birthday present, eureka has given me an idea! Didn’t have a clue otherwise, we might walk back, we’ll see how my back and leg is.
Christine

Hi Eureka,
What’s leptin?
John

Hi captainlynne
Me too, about the back book, that is, when mines bad I go to a chiropractor, he’s very good, all my left side is more flexible than my right bacause my left side has to work harder! I used to go to yoga, however the chiro man said all the twists were making my back and sciatic nerve worse!

Hi stringbreaker
Aagh!! Tamed the GHRELIN MONSTER ( hungry hormone ). Good sense Leptin & saved you (decreases appetite)
Eureka

Hi eureka
We are in playa fanabe between plays de las Americas and el duque, just had an hours walk after having fillet steak!
Off to los Cristian’s in the morning, to get me something for my birthday! 68!! Haven’t a clue what I want definitely not clothes, yet!
We might walk back, I love the walk, it takes me all day, cause of my back I have to rest every so often!
I don’t have a step counter, perhaps that’s what I could get? Cheers
Christine

Hi Gwendolinanne
I know exactly how you feel as I have done the same over and over again.
I am hoping and believing that this will not be the case this time as I am enjoying the food and feeling so much better than I have for a long time.
I am only one week in at the moment so really looking forward to hearing more tales of your success.
Cheers
Red.

A lot of it is about habit, isn’t it? We’re so used to high carb breakfast that we think we need them and we get used to eating more than we use up without really realising it.

Sounds fabulous Christine, I think everything tastes better in a warmer climate. At least while you were pulling out the corn you were burning a few more calories! What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?

If you can quit smoking then I’d say you have a good chance of being able to stick to a healthy eating plan and sorting out the diabetes. Good luck.

Thanks orchid for the info.

B – Fage Greek yog plus stewed rhubarb and seeds
L – smoked Mackerel, salad leaves, avocado cucumber
D – squid stir fry with broccoli and leeks, mushrooms and salad leaves.
Snacks – nuts, cheese, oatcake

Hi Judith,
It feels so good to be happier in my skin, hears to the next 1stone 9 lbs!
Christine

Hi CallMeDeb
Great loss. Now I’d have dunked the biscuits in cocoa!
My mum kept her purse in the fridge?

Get your own back & make dad cauliflower pizza! Go to : cleananddelicious.com Danni spies cauliflower pizza
And the Force be with you young Skywalker. ( not out here yet, boo)
Eureka

Hi Janet
Just got back after an hours walk, I actually had fillet steak and salad! It was succulent the only down side was the salad had loads of corn and I don’t like it, it took ages to take them out of the salad, I was going to have salmon, will have that another night.
Christine

Thanks Hashimoto, very helpful. Have also looked at the Forums showing “what I ate today”. Lots of tips there, also looked at recipes, might try some of the flatbreads. Been having the no carb ploughman’s, that is really nice.

Hi Lisa! Stick with it ! I am at the end of week 8 and have lost a stone and 6 pounds, I feel a lot better than I did 8 weeks ago. If you stick to it you see very quick results believe me – 4lbs for me in the first few days. I don’t feel like I am dieting – and I know dieting really doesn’t work at all. You need to change what you eat and that’s the brilliant thing as the food you can eat is good stuff! I keep waiting for the motivation to die off a bit but it doesn’t because I feel the difference all the time – fitter, more energy – my cheekbones have reappeared after years….. So go for it – and best wishes! Daria

Thanks everyone! This is working for me so I am inclined to stick with it a while longer but I will have a good look round the other topics on here and see what others do after passing 8 weeks.

Good luck, LROK.

Ketosis is when you are burning fat rather than carbs or protein. As such, its the holy grail for us dieters. You do it by keeping your carbs low and your protein at moderate level (rather than a high level). A few of us are using ketostix now which tell you if you are in ketosis or not. You can get them from supermarket chemists and Amazon

Deb,
I love “Food Blackout”
Before BSD that was me.
I remember being in the car heading towards a friend’s house for dinner.
I was about 20mins away when I just “had” to have a Cornish Pasty.
I knew I was about to be very well fed and yet somehow all my reason and commonsense just “blacked out” and before I knew where I was I’d eaten a large pasty. They actually had small ones but it had to be large.
Sadly it wasn’t a rare sort of occurrence but now I’m on low carbs the cravings have virtually gone. If I fancy a carb snack now, I easily make do with a 15kCal savoury biscuit.
John

B – yoghurt with 2 passion fruit

L – home made tomato soup and a slice of ham

D – chilli (like the one in the book, but I add peppers and don’t have yoghurt on top)

I’d advise against eating the mercury, even if it is low carb …

Aw Deb, I can see why you say you two are like a sit com! Thank goodness you found them before you started cooking! Forget about the slip up, its in the past now. You did the right thing getting straight back on the plan. Life will always chuck things our way and if life doesnt our relatives will!

Thanks everyone. I must check out that book for bad backs😳

Orchid – be careful with volume to weight converters. The weight will depend on the density of what is being measured by volume. A tablespoon of mercury, for example, would weigh considerably more than a tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

Hi Florene05
Welcome. Look at my post on Fast 800 forum, Topic : Variations in Fast 800 posted at 5.52 am today to Natalie.
Original carb fat & protein amounts extrapolated from shakes info. You can work out what you want from that.
Good luck
Eureka

Well done – great response. And I love the story of your Dad – I recognise the putting things away syndrome 🙁

Thanks very much for your reply Bill, looking forward to feeling better!

Hi Spirit

I polished it specially for you, glad you like it 😃 Thanks for your kind comment!

Happy Monday all – Day One of Week Three and I am feeling (pretty) good!

The Good News: Lost another 3.4lbs and 0.5″ – Chuffed (that’s what you Brits say right?)

The not so good:

Had a slip up yesterday.

Background – I’m in my early 40’s, no kids, no husband, and my 78 year old father lives with me. We’re like a sit-com. He won’t eat anything I make since the garlic-coffee incident when I was 8, so we cook and shop for ourselves.

So Dad is getting a little forgetful (don’t worry, we’re keeping an eye) and keeps forgetting that I am doing this diet. He brought home a box of cookies, because they’re my favourite (and his) oatmeal raisin. I reminded him that I am being quite strict and asked him to hide the cookies. He did. In the oven. I found them when I went to make my lunches for this week (Chicken Breast, Salsa, Cheese). Yes, I did find them before I turned the oven on to heat (this time).

Then I slipped.

I ate one.

I then experienced what I call a food blackout, and came out the other side having eaten 5 in total.

Know what I did? I logged it. I got on the treadmill and walked for 60 mins (too cold to walk outside). Went back on the plan.

I got my revenge on Dad though. I made him sit through Star Wars: The Force Awakens, instead of the beginning of The Masters, and I didn’t let him fall asleep, not once.

He then offered to make me pizza for dinner, but I think that was just for spite.

Make today a great day!

Deb

Love the sound of that chicken Catgirl 😃

Hi suzie:

Any kind of salad – ie tuna fish, chicken, ham etc

The no carb ploughmans

Any of the dips from the book (the peanut butter/ cream cheese dip takes seconds to make )

Fritatta

Pot of FF yoghurt and some berries /seeds

A flask of soup

Piece of cheese and some nuts

Hope that helps! 🙂

Thanks Eureka.

Thanks Penny, I have ordered the book.
John I noticed that book on backs when I ordered the book on knees.

I go to Pilates for bad backs and like you I do the exercises as soon as I get a twinge in my back. I might order the back book after I have read the knees book 🙂

Hi hashimoto
You are a ‘can do person ‘ who always acknowledge & encourage others, thanks for that.
Eureka. 💐

Cheese is useful and easy to eat, I find it difficult to come up with packed lunch options for work which don’t include bread, are quick & easy to eat but filling. Have been taking hard boiled egg, 2 baby bell cheeses, a few tomatoes, some nuts & 3 or 4 oat cakes. Is this o.k.? Any more simple suggestions please. Thanks in advance!

Hi Christi1948
If you’re in Playa de Las Americas toss a coin into the musical fountain for me! I love the long walk from Los Cristianos to Bahia del Duque. Put your step counter on for that walk!
If you’re at Puerto de la Cruz, walk quickly past the ice cream parlour at Cafe de Paris. Enjoy it all. Buenas noches
Eureka

Janet,
Thanks.
John

Janet, I must be one of the luckiest people alive re my leg.:)

Eureka thanks for the heads up re Michaels blog. You’re a star!

Penny, thanks, I’ll look it up!

Hashimoto,
Keep it up! (And I think I now understand what “Stickies” are).

Penny, (and anyone with a bad back)
Another book in the “Treat your own” series is “Treat your own back”. I went to my physio a few years ago being hardly able to move, and after setting me back on the road he said that all I really needed was this book.
In the bad old days, when I got a bad back, I was in real trouble for weeks – now, as soon as I feel a twinge, I get down on the floor (even in the middle of tuning a client’s piano) and do the exercises. Result – the discomfort is usually gone in a few days.
I guess it all depends on the nature of the back problem.
Following up on the above, I have to confess that this post would have been better posted in “Coffee and Chat” if it existed – sorry for drifting.
John

B – 50g Feta Cheese with Pea shoots topped with two medium poached eggs – 300

D – 2 x Sesame crusted seared tuna steaks with 100g edamame beans, 1 red chilli and chopped coriander tossed in lime juice and a little extra virgin olive oil – 500

Tasty! 🙂

Yes John, you certainly did get us all thinking. I noticed you did a runner! Only joking! Stickies are threads that stay at the top of the list like the one MM put on about looking for American guinea pigs.

Wow Judith, you went through the wars didn’t you? I complain if I stub my toe!

Hi john I had already grumbled about the sheer number of new threads causing problems, making it difficult to help new starters. We obviously want to help and encourage new starters and some of us are spending a lot of time trawling latest posts to find and encourage.

Just as the grumbling died down you reopened the issue.

A number of us still want to be able to welcome new starters and it would be lovely to be able to point them to a thread dealing with common problems and the unexpected ‘blips’ , thinking of sudden blood sugar rises which seem to happen in week 4/5 last a couple of weeks then drop to pre or non diabetic levels. It savesa lot of worry.

With captainlynne we have 16 weeks of BSD experience! We are the experiment – real people, eating real food out in the world. We have a wealth of experience and tips to share.

I just hope it gets ‘stickied’ so it stays at the top of the threads – like calling all americans ( I think that is what it’s called).

So thankyou John for making me realise it really needs sorting and a lot of folks feel the same.

Now a work in progress! 🙂

Hi Michael,
A huge “Thank you” to you and the Prof for the BSD – I have had great results already, but much more importantly (as I’ve had large weight losses many times before) I really think this is a working tool for the rest of my life. Every other regime has been a struggle whereas this has genuinely been a delight.
Just a little suggestion – I know there are plenty of books out on 5:2 meals, but they are nearly all aimed at lower calories, being mainly for 600kCal fasting days. True, one can scale up the sizes, but a new BSD cookbook would be great – we have mined the recipes in the BSD book and found them superb and satisfying.
I do hope you’ve been trawing the forums – the success stories are many and amazing – “This has to work for me”, My 8 weeks” and “Over the line…..” should give you some great facts and figures.
When’s the TV programme on progress so far?
Thanks again
John