My son is a pharmacist too, I just never thought to ask him, just ordered them from amazon. He looked a little disappointed when I showed him them as I could have got them through him! 🙁

Lucienne
I find the floaty dots in your visioin concerning.
Has your doc sent you for a diabetes eye check yet ?
I ask because those floaters, whilst normally nothing to worry about, can also be an indication of early retinopathy. Best to ask I think.

Hi Cherrianne,
Thanks for thinking of me… I have been great… had to look at the calendar today to see if it is week three or four… Yes the low carb choices here are amazing!!!! hahaha…. but we spent easter in Luxembourg and I actually learned to choose well from the menu’s…. Italian is easiest – of course not the pasta or pizza but their fish and salad choices are better.
Thanks for reminding me about tinned fish though will invest in some tonight… too far from the coast here to eat the real thing…. having grown up in King George Whiting country frozen fish does not cut it…
Anyway… yeah cannot weigh myself but clothes are getting baggy…
Fasting BSL is still hanging under 8 so, I am pretty happy – but waiting for the expected spike before I relax completely… would like to see it under 6 of course but realistically I have been diagnosed 16 years so feel I am doing amazingly well given that. Had to halve my BP profilactic med as was having dizzy spells but metformin remains unchanged for a while yet I reckon even though it is XR so will take longer to deplete my glucagon stores but don’t want to harm myself while trying to do good. Diamicron I have not taken since the day after I started this change… I have the app you recommend but had stopped using it in Germany.. will take a gander….
Thanks again chic..

Hi hashimoto
Thanks for the info, I should have asked daughter Emily , she is a pharmacist! However, (don’t tell her though!) She tends to talk down to me when I ask her leading questions! Like that. Will check Amazon.

Wow, spenloven that will spur you on through the complexities of your new diet!! 🙂

Thanks Magpie, hope it all works out 🙂

Hi spendloven have you thought of FF yoghurt with berries and nuts/seeds or ground flax? An easy no cook breakfast!! 🙂

MerryMary, Switzerland and Desperate, such a good start to your BSD journey! You will be feeling so inspired 🙂 keep posting, it makes everyone feel good.
Judith thanks for your kind words.
Lea, just jump straight into the BSD way of life, as Bill often advises ‘don’t over think it’. Just follow the plan, shout out for help and advice, someone will be there to help. Keep reading and posting. You will motivate yourself and others. If we can do it, diverse bunch that we are, anyone can! Just watch those kilos disappear 🙂

Hi notsofatty,
Haven’t heard from you for a while, I was wondering how you were doing. Germany isn’t renowned for it’s low carb cuisine so I was concerned you might be struggling.
As far as your protein goes, are you eating dairy at all? That will go some way to increase your protein count. If you have a smoothie for breakfast you could add a legume based protein powder to it. The whey based ones are higher in carbs.
Half a cup of cooked lentils are 7.1g protein for 81 cals. 1/4 cup of Tofu stir fried is 11.3g for 119 cals.
Half a cup of tinned cannelini beans will give 5.8g protein for 69 cals. Great added to a salad or mashed to a paste with some sage and lime juice to use as a filler in celery.
I can’t remember if you are vegetarian but if not:
Tinned fish 50g of sardines in oil = 8.5g protein for 81cals, 50g tuna in spring water = 11.9g protein for 50 cals. Two large boiled eggs = 13g protein for 140 cals.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you could download the Australian easy diet diary. Scroll through the list of foods and check out the protein levels and choose some low cal options.
Hope this has helped.

Bill I think you are truly inspirational. 👍🏼

Hi Winston, I hear you but 10% of body weight is significant, a good 10k time I could only dream of, a personal best, slightly lower BP? I don’t suppose that you carb load before a run or anything but maybe its time for a medical second opinion. In his book there were some tricky cases and one who was in fact type 1 if I recall. I am lucky in that I am not type 1 or 2 and have other challenges. I will be interested to see how you get on but as for not recommending a way to lose 10% body ms and set a best 10k run time – surely you must be feeling very depressed after your linked success. I hope others can be more help with their personal Type 2 experiences. All the best..

Hello everyone – Husband & I are mainlining vegetables, we boost the dinners in particular with the veggies & anything left over goes into soup. We are eating lots of soup for lunch, it’s filling, tasty, transportable and uses up stuff in my groaning fridge.

We add a few legumes pulses to the soups and then use the remainder in the meal plans for the evening meals.

I totally agree with the other posters, relinquishing simple carbs has made me think outside the box for meals and I am going full pelt at adapting any family-favourite recipes. Lunch today will be homemade minestrone, minus the pasta. Tomorrow I am going to use that Gwyneth Paltrow Black Bean soup recipe from the Mail on Sunday magazine, adapted to exclude the tortilla strip garnish, yoghurt instead of sour cream as I only have yoghurt in the fridge . What I haven’t got in my cupboard, I stuff in something else instead, I am what my husband calls a ‘confident cook’ but do empathise with people who are less at ease in the kitchen, my motto is just to try, take adaptations slowly, use your favourite ingredients to flavour meals, introducing new ones slowly if they are off your radar.

Anything goes within the food guidelines, try it & see!

Wow well done Leanne what a fantastic first week result! I second what the others say, I reserve some calories for an evening snack – I made some caraway seed pancakes with coconut flour and one of those is really filling with a hot drink, other snacks might be a few redskin peanuts with a little piece of very strong cheese like parmesan or gruyere.

Congrats again on a very successful first week.

thank you Right on top x

Sunnyb, thats great, by the time you are there you will have loads to catch up on! Send us lots of stories of Turkey while you are out there. It will be the closest I get to a foreign holiday this year so it will be nice to enjoy yours vicariously! Until then, one last push!

Good on you Spirit, sometimes other people can shine a light on us that makes us see things differently. Sounds like you’ve had a ‘lightbulb moment’ and that will strengthen your resolve and add to your ‘why’. Well done.

Well done on the weight loss!!

I’ve always had a glass of warm milk before bed (old person stuff, I know) calms me and keeps me going till the morning. Something to digest

Thank you all for those encouraging comments. I shall happily continue with the coffee and cream and consider myself on a fast!
Janice

It’s weird at first not having a serving of potatoes, rice, pasta etc. with a meal, but amazing how quickly you get used to it. I find that I have adjusted by having two different kinds of vegetables with the protein serving, so there is variety in the meal and it’s interesting to eat. I also use some of my calorie allowance on butter for the veggies and that makes them very tasty.

Good luck to all new starters! Hope you have a good first day.

i would agree that i wished to see lower blood levels but not necessarily remarkable ! They are all done as soon as i get up. True i ran yesterday and posted a fast 10k time …last week i posted a personal best at that distance. I said before that i was pleased with my running results and had put this down to loss of weight and adjustment to the diet. The spikes of such magnitudes are hard to comprehend…is 8 weeks not enough? if not, how long? i am not prepared to go on indefinately only to see more of the same. Its the hope that kills in the end.I have 6 days left and i will see then how i feel. Right now i am gutted.

My son and husband suffer with eczema and diet/dehydration play a big part. I’ve found that 2tbsp of coconut oil in a hot bath and a handful of Himalayan pink sea salt (Asda £3 a massive bag) works a treat, a couple of times a week helps sooth and hydrate.

Hi All,
Shopping in Woolworths SA today I found a type of potato called ‘Spud Lite’. It says it’s 25% fewer carbs than other potatoes ( is not GMO), and has 8.9g carbs and 208kj or 50 cals per 100g. So a smallish 100g potato wouldn’t blow the carb budget if you ate it with other low carb foods and didn’t exceed the allowance you’ve set yourself. I allow 50-55g carbs a day to keep my blood sugars in the non diabetic range.
It’s grown by Zerella Farms in SA, who supply Woolies with other veg ( pretty sure I’ve seen their name on carrots). Hopefully Woolies or Safeway in other states will have them 🙂

Thanks for the advice. I hardly cooked so the expense is the things I didn’t have in the cupboard, defiantly going to check put Aldi though! I’d like to stick to the book as much as possible to give everything a try as my palette is rather inexperienced. I’m a bit of a simple cook being just meat, veg and a potato or chips or just a tin of soup. I’m a big cereal eater though and love a snack in the evening. So strange having just meat and veg and actually having to cook a breakfast…. Hubby isn’t liking it at all lols!

Hello, Well, where to begin and how? I do not go to any gym but I cycle and have a Treadmill at home, I use a heart rate monitor, XL spreadsheet for calculating meal total s of calories and sugar, and weigh quite regularly now. Initially my waist size dropped noticeably almost immediately. I do weigh food items and some days I have spare calories more than others. I averaged 845 per day and less than 30 gms sugar/day – read the labels you will be surprised. We all know to eat fewer things full of sugar and other carbs but we previously did not do it.

I finished 8 weeks yesterday 2 stones lighter. I only eat foods that I have always eaten but in bigger quantities of veg etc I have lost the bread, sweets and milk, no longer crave sweet stuff and do not get hungry very often.

Good luck, hoping this adds o the sum of knowledge you will be sharing on here

Lost 5lbs in my first day!! So pleased

Hi All,
The post is called ‘low carb foods in Australia’ and is in this forum. If no one posts on a thread it moves down the list each time, so you may have to scroll down a bit to find it. I’ll post something in a minute and see if I can move it up a bit.
Welcome to all you new Aussie BSDers. We are very fortunate here that we have access to products through the NDSS, that folks in the UK have to pay much more for. From reading the posts I have discovered that unless their GP’s practice will supply them they have to pay for glucose test strips! Most of us wouldn’t have even had to pay for our meters.
We also have fabulous low carb bread, read the other thread to find out. Plus today I found another staple food with 25% less carbs… A little cliff hanger to get you looking for that post lol 🙂

Hi all,

I love to drink fizzy water but most days I need a hit of sweetness and so I opt for no sugar drinks such as Coke Zero. Are sugar free drinks a suitable drink (apart from any other non sugar related potential risks) for people looking to maintain weight lost during the diet phase?

152 signatures!!!

Hi Taniavic, I know what you mean. I was out for lunch with a friend last week and I ordered the full English breakfast without the toast. My friend whispered you forgot to ask for the fat reduced version!! She follows SW. She was really surprised when I said this diet is the opposite of slimming world and you are supposed to eat fat. She ordered the book!!! I had lost over 2 and a half stones since she had last seen me.
It took me 2 weeks to get around to ditching skimmed milk and low fat yoghurts. Boy have we been brain washed!! 🙂

Hi Janice, I know purists would say don’t drink anything with a splash of milk or cream in that 16 hours but I would be demented without my morning coffee – so I still have it! I don’t think I am alone in that either!! 🙂

Saw Bill and Janet’s responses after posting So am editing. I knew I wasn’t alone!!!

Chris, don’t worry, it’s going to be variable. I’ve lost 8lb, 2lb, 2lb in my first 3 weeks. We’re all different 🙂

Sunnyb those are good results, don’t knock ’em!! You might even reach your goal of a stone by Friday!! 🙂

Hi Alexginda, you can choose to eat well but sensibly on your anniversary. How about a lovely steak with butter/mustard sauce or peppercorn sauce and a side of veg? Plus a glass of wine/champers? It’s a special occasion! 🙂

Newlife, those goals and rewards are a good idea!! 🙂

Yesterday:
B: not hungry, skipped
L: 2 chicken thighs and masses of veg – carrot, broccoli, peas, sweetcorn – with butter 🙂
D: not hungry, 2 dessert spoons of cottage cheese

Today:
B: FF yoghurt, mixed berries, mixed seeds
L: smoked salmon salad
D: 2 chicken thighs, cucumber, tomatoes, red pepper, red onion, maybe mayo

Gotta use up those chicken thighs, getting bored…

Hi Grandma48
I’m a vet this coming Friday so I hope you don’t mind me jumping in a little early. I agree with bill, your calories in your coffee won’t add up to much so you will still have gone a long time with only a tiny number of calories which is what we aim for with the fast. My fast is from 7 at night until maybe as late as 2 in the afternoon. I’m not recommending that to anyone, you understand, its only that I can manage it because I have a costa latte with full fat milk and it fills me up for a good while.

9.8 starting to mid 6 now
We all get the dawn phemomonen to a greater or lesser extent, I messaged the team about it and was told not to worry as it’s a natural thing.

Hello – starting my 56 days today! I’m a pretty well controlled Type 2 and am hoping to be able to come off Metformin. Does anyone here suffer from Dawn Phenomenon and if so, have you noticed any improvement in this?

Hi Grandma48
thanks for all the nice comments in the past BTW
To me fasting is no food. I wouldn’t dream of dropping my morning coffee, in fact I’d fight to keep it, and it doesn’t seem to be causing me any harm.
Start cutting out everything you enjoy and you’ll give up is my motto. A little of what you fancy can be good.

Thanks for your kind words everyone, I’m so glad they mean something. I also just wanted to tell you about a recent (before I was aware of the bsd) time I was out with 3 friends (of the 4 of us, 3 are overweight). The order for everyone’s coffees was 3 skinny cappuccinos and 1 regular (full fat) cappuccino. It seems a little ironic at the time and almost laughable that it was the slim friend who ordered the full fat….now it could make me cry, echoing my thoughts in my first post about the anxiety of eating foods in their natural state, and fallacy of the current weight loss industry.

Hi Chris, you won’t see a consistent daily loss but it will sort itself out over the course of the week and you can expect to weigh less each week.
There is a plateau that many people hit around the week 2/3 mark as the body adjusts to a much different way of eating.
Many people only eat two meals a day so skipping lunch shouldn’t be an issue. The only thing I would consider tweaking is you mention semi skim milk and cutting the fat off the pork. On the BSD you are encouraged to use full fat products and you can eat fatty meat and oily fish. Fat will help stop you feeling hungry and will help with changing your metabolism from carb burning for energy to fat burning.
Keep an eye on your portion sizes, especially porridge, and make sure you keep your fluid intake up to 2-3l per day.
You are off to a great start so don’t lose hope, you will start losing again soon 🙂

I understand your disappointment but there are many people who are seeing remarkable sugar readings, myself included, in fact I have just been downgraded to pre diabetic.
True, the diet is in it’s infancy and although some have had blips, this is the first negative result I’ve seen. Are your readings the fasting ones ? It just occurred to me that, as you are a runner, your liver may be releasing extra stored sugar to compensate for the extra calories you are burning during exercise.

Hopefully not making the situation even more confused but I have just completed the first week sticking to 50 g carbs and 800 cals per day but it didn’t last long. I have become so used to the 5:2 format (sometimes it is 6:1) that I started playing around with the figures and aimed for a weekly total than the daily one. I did two fast days last week keeping under 500 cals/day.

Keeping a record on Calorie Count (similar to MFP) and at the end of the week I was under 350g carbs and 5600 cals and I have lost 4.8 lbs. Some of that was water as I had just started BSD and a lot of it was chocolate Easter egg and hot cross buns.

Hi Chris53
Welcome to the BSD and the forum. No need to panic, this is completely normal and is just as a result of your body adjusting to the new eating regime. Weight lose will vary day to day and as you progress into the coming weeks, there may be days in a row when nothing seems to be happening – this too is completely normal.

Just be sure that you are drinking enough, have a good amount of fat in your diet (could have has some of the fat on the pork chop) as this helps you feel full for longer and also helps kick the body into fat burning mode. Also check that your carb intake is not too high – no more the 50g a day is best.

But you have made good progress so far and you shouldn’t allow this small anomaly to throw you off course. Stick with it, we all lose weight at different rates and your body is doing what is right for it. Keep us posted on progress and shout out if you need support – someone will be sure to respond.

Please could one of you veterans help with regard to the fasting overnight? I am more than happy to eat my dinner about 6.00pm and then skip breakfast and not eat again until about midday the next day. However, I am still drinking my cups of tea, and, worse still, my coffee with cream – to which I am addicted! Well not really addicted, because I only ever have one or two a day, but of course the cream fills me up because of the lovely fat in it! Does that still constitute fasting, or should I only drink water between dinner and the next meal?
Thank you everyone for all the help you provide.
Janice

I have lost 4.8 lbs after the first week which is very encouraging and I can see a difference in my waistline and energy levels are up so looking forward to this week but anticipating a hiccup because it’s our Wedding Anniversary on Friday and we don’t eat out very often.

karra you seem to be doing it right, I wouldn’t mind betting that you will turn out to be one of those who see nothing for a few days and then will see a large weight loss almost overnight.
Just keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s almost impossible to not lose weight on 800 cals and under 50g carbs per day.

Hi SunnyB
One thing that finally clicked in my brain last week is about drinking water. It has really contributed to my weight loss this past week. 3lbs in 3 days! So get that tap turned on and drink away the last 1.4lb. Good luck
Janice

Weight loss will vary over the course of a day never mind day to day.
Personally I don’t agree with weighing daily, I find once a week mucj better for me.
Your body will be reacting to the lack of carbs so you will stutter and maybe hit the odd plateau, but stick to it. All these things seem to resolve themselves, one look at the forums will show you that lots of folks have a stutter or two and then go on to great success.

Hi JWS (brilliant nick by the way)
Just to mix it up a little, I’ve never counted calories, just watched the carbs and portion sizes (I find now I struggle to finish a meal at times)
I weigh once a week at the chemists on their scales, (some people can be put off by natural weight fluctuations through the day so I don’t have scales in the house).
Every weekend I make a big pan of soup or stew to see me through the weeks lunches using chicken lamb or ham as the protein element with lots of lovely veggies and pulses.
2 stone down, blood sugars stabilising. Week 9
I guess the way to do it is the way that suits you best, but you will get results as long as you keep those carbs down and be around the 800 cals / day
Good luck on your journey, I’ll atch with interest.

Great to see some good results being posted by everyone. I’m at the end of week 6 and this is my last complete week weigh-in before we go away on Friday. I have been hoping to crack the stone lost mark before our holiday, but still a bit to go at this morning’s weigh-in – lose this week 2.8lb with 1.4lb left to go to a full stone lost.

On other measurements, I have lost a total of 2inches on my waist – not as much as some, but I am aware I have lost chub from other areas too. My BMI is down from a starting point of 28.1 to 25.6 – still not out of the over weight zone, but close.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with things so far and I will be doing my best to weigh in at a whole stone less by Friday. Have planned how I am going to keep things under control while I’m away, so hope that if I put any on, it will be very little and not all piled back on before I get back in two months.