My local (Fortino’s) didn’t have any real full fat, so I had to make due with a 4% Cottage Cheese and a Balkin Style Yogurt that only had 4g of carbs per serving.

I think I am going to have to visit the other grocery stores in my city, or I will have to breakdown and visit Whole Foods in the town over from me.

Hi Ed
It seems it’s normal to have a plateau now and then. Have a look at Jenny Ruhls book ‘low carb problems solved’ (£3 on kindle) which might help.
Penny

Was in Asda about an hour ago and two young men walked past me. They were on their lunch break. One said to the other, ‘Are we having something healthy or something nice?’ ….?

Bill I used to love cheese but didn’t dare eat it except as a little sliver for an occasional treat. All those warnings about my high cholesterol!! I’ve eaten more cheese on this diet than I have in the last 5 years!!! 🙂

Glad cherrianne likes the orange!!

Hi Lesley
Isn’t that a great moment!
Penny

BTW Cherrianne, I am just supping my first liquorice tea. It tastes just like the liquorice root sticks I bought as a nipper. And rather too sweet!!! 🙂

Hi Judith
sorry to hear about that. We used to have a nurse at the practice who seemed to just stick the needle in somewhere near the vein, and then move it about as she tried to find it, sometimes she would pull it out and repeat the process.
I refused to see her in the end and I did hear that many others had too.
Other nurses and docs never seemed to have a problem.
At least you should have your blood sugar results soon, it’s a PITA about the cholesterol and thyroid tests though.

Cherrianne I am so glad you posted that, I’ve been seen as a bit of a freak because I can smell so many things even from a distance!! Oddly I can smell bacteria too. There have been two occasions when I have told a GP I knew I had a pseudomonas lung infection because I could smell it when I coughed. I had some very old fashioned looks. But I was correct both times!!

I have always been able to tell the difference between sugared and unsugared drinks but the sensation of the overpoweringly awful smell of it in shops is something I had obviously blocked out – until now.

I can’t stand the smell of meat cooking either. As a child, when my mother went into a butchers I could never go in because it smelt of blood and death. I was told to wait outside and not move ( I was young) but I would still gag and often throw up.

The strokes – well there must be chemical changes going on in the body during such a dramatic incident.

I can smell my medications on myself and I hate it. I can also smell other people on a lot of medication.

I thought I was alone in my ‘oddity’. I am so pleased I am not.

Inka, I can smell a small bonfire from miles away. I thought it was my body warning me in advance because fire smoke is likely to trigger an asthma attack and certainly has a bad effect on my bronchiectasis.

I wonder whether others on this diet will develop a heightened sense of smell? I have always had it – but with peoples tastes changing so much you have got to wonder about other things 🙂

Hi Neohdiver
I notice you’re using net carbs. I haven’t noticed anyone else doing that. Maybe I missed it! It seems like a good idea as the fibre isn’t absorbed. In fact yesterday I was considering doing it when I noticed That cauliflower carbs are almost halved if you do it net! So I might follow your example.
Penny

Hi I haven’t used the bare naked ‘rice’ it. I thought about it but I no longer miss the rice!!! I do like the gram flour flatbreads with a curry though! 🙂

Hi Mollytopmarx,
that must be so frustrating for you. I thank heaven that my GP’s are very supportive and, as it turned out yesterday, willing to listen to their patients, which of course should always be the case.

**Woman rescued after climbing Ben Nevis with ‘just a selfie stick’**
Judith – get back down here – now !!!

Hi, thinking of getting this to help with making family friendly meals. I know her view won’t be as disciplined as here but I hopefully should be able to adapt the recipes. Anyone seen the book/have an opinion?

OK orange mankini shocking pink socks, nightglo green trainers and a powder blue headband.
I’ll get thrown out of Turkey on arrival!
Shame we can’t post images on here 😉
Cherrianne, she was really interested, I’m hoping great things will come from it but we are talking NHS here so sloooooooooooooooow, but hope springs eternal.

Yep, Janet1973, I absolutely loved the stuff…. Now, I have no idea why!!! :-0

Well said, Cherieanne, I can smell things too, and like you know if someone put sugar into my coffee or tea, without having to taste it…. Even if its only a small amount…. AAartificial sweeteners are also on my radar. The smell of red meat makes me feel ill sometimes, and there was a very long time, when I couldnt eat it. I can also smell protein in chicken and fish and my nose, well usually, is very sensitive to malty aromas and smoke. I can smell a bushfire well before it becomes noticed by anyone else and before the signs are visible. The same, if it rains somewhere, miles away. It is wonderous and great that many of us retained this very important and keen sense, or, like now, can rediscover it again and use what it tells us, wisely and to our advantage….

Hmm think the orange would work Bill!!
Great results and even better response from the GP. I bet the BSD will be a hot topic at their next practice meeting, she is bound to share your story as it seemed to have an impact on her.
The goal for most Doctors and nurses is “evidence based best practice”. The research is there to back up the BSD, and your results prove that it works. So now it’s up to them to change their advice and management.
Good for you 🙂

Hi Bill1954, just try it, it may not taste so bad to you…. and maybe it was the combination of Ryvita and the cheese… I dont know, but it certainly tasted horrible to me…. 🙂 If you dont like it, you can always give the rest of the packet to the chooks or feed them to the ducks 🙂 ….. tried to give one to my dog just now…. She usually likes crispy crunchy things …. She wouldn’t take it, looked at me strangely and went back into her bed… So you have it, Ryvita is not dog-proof and I guess, thats that, the end of Ryvita for me …. 🙂 and I loved this so before the BSD!!!! 🙂

Great victory karra!

Ryvita. You succumbed to Ryvita? I would rather have eaten the box it came in!

Yes Bill, being able to eat cheese makes any other sacrifice worth it! In the past I only ever used to say ‘eat fat’ as an insult!

Hi Judith, I can smell sugar too. I’ve always been able to. It’s how I tell which cups of tea or coffee have sugar in, when I’ve made multiples for guests and forgotten which is which lol.
I can smell diabetics with high sugar levels as well as hypo’s, rheumatoid arthritis has a smell and strangely enough so does a stroke ( can’t figure that one). When I worked in a wound clinic I could make a fairly accurate guess which bacteria was growing in an infected wound based on the smell.
I hate the smell of meat cooking because I can smell blood, the rotisserie area of supermarkets make me gag with their roasting chickens, same with steak and kidney pies cooking cos I can smell urine.
I think we live in a world of sensory overload now, and so don’t always notice what our senses are telling us. So houses, cars and people are drenched in fragrance, foods have added ‘natural flavour’, salt and sugar, music and noise everywhere and we are so desensitised that it takes something radical like the BSD to make us realise that natural unprocessed food has a great flavour.

Hi Inka
your tastes do change when you drop the carbs don’t they ? I don’t like sweet things now.
I did buy some Ryvita rye crispbread at the weekend as it said 0.8 gram per slice carbs so I though ideal snack material.
I’m not so sure now.

I am still not feeling to crash hot, my sinusitis is only shifting very slowly. My nose is still pretty much blocked most of the time… making it hard to sleep at night. … but we have a chemist not far away, and I also need to buy more supplies. I will buy the sticks and will add the result to my spreadsheet.

Because, I havent really been out the last few days, I ran out of all the good foods…
and so, here it is, I succumbed to eating carbohydrates … it was only one slice of Ryvita with butter and cheese, I also still had some eggs, which I hard boiled and I ate that with some cucumber and a whole fresh tomato. When I boiled the eggs and cut up the vegies, I looked on my small plate and thought … This wont be enough, and put two table spoons of plain creek yoghurt and a handful of blueberries in a bowl, as desert.

I starred at the Ryvita and cheese leaving it to last, while eating everything else on the plate…. and then it was time to eat the crispbread, I kind of had thought about it since lunchtime, … and took my first bite, expecting this familiar taste sensation which had made me eat them by the boxful before. and, yes, you guessed it, it tasted really really salty, so much so, that I had trouble to finish it. Not sure why I just didnt leave it on rhe plate. Old habits do die hart, I think, because from an early age, I had been conditioned to never leave anything on my plate, because it was considered to be an insult to the cook. So, I ate it. This was about 1/2 hour ago and I could not get rid of rhe salty taste…. I had to rinse my mouth….. and I have totally lost the appetite for the joghurt desert…. Well, it will go into the fridge and it will be my breakfast in the morning.

With this long winded story, I hope I didnt bore you too much, I just wanted to highlight that it seems that not only the taste buds which detect sweetness, but also those which detect salty and savoury foods seem to be effected and return to normal? Too much salt is not good for us either ( but we still need small amounts) and I am amazed that my body once again, is warning me, to curtail my desire for excessively salty or indeed sugary things. I have not consciously eaten anything which obviously has sugar in it since starting the BSD, but if it tastes as terrible as the savoury salty food, I will have no problem, to stay away from it …. and I tasted that so intensely despite my head being all congested with the flu…. Thanks for “listening”!

Janet are you a cheese fiend like me ? I love mature cheese.
Don’t forget when you’re bigging it up that it also contains beneficial fat (doesn’t that still sound weird)

Hi Kes
I sit at a desk all day and used to live in a bungalow so I feel your pain.
I try to keep my legs moving whilst sitting at the desk in a sort of sitting / walking movement if you know what I mean.
I also follow Michaels advice to stand up every half hour although working at a standing desk is perhaps taking things a step too far.
There is usually some small thing you can to to help.
Interesting about the bare naked rice, let me know how it is if you use it please.

Thanks Hashimoto, that made me smile. Unfortunately I’ve no stairs though, and because I work from home there is not much distance between my desk in the office and the bedroom/kitchen/TV room so any form of exercise involves getting away from my desk and outside somewhere. Therein lies our problem, if we didn’t work from home and live in a bungalow we wouldn’t be fat in the first place!! It all piled on when we stopped moving around, having both been very active in our jobs before going self employed.

Karra
Well done on taking the plunge! You’ll soon be able to add strength to your legs and build up your distance. The main thing is you’ve made a start! I’ve been in the park with my daxy this morning, it was really lovely. I’ve also clipped down my neighbour’s old English sheepdog (my job). They have him so short he looks like a pit pony!

Works for me too. It makes it very easy to get organised as I don’t have to work out every measurement and calorie count. There are no carbs in meat, eggs, fish or butter so I can have as much of these as I like. My appetite has shrunk beyond belief but if I do feel more hungry I know I can have an extra egg in my omelette or a larger piece of fish, etc. Oh and cheese is only half a gram per 25g. Life is worth living again!

Hi Fran. Glad to hear you’ve had a better day. I absolutely agree with everyone and want to add ny voice on the importance of full fat dairy and plant oils in helping you to feel more full. I also have found including food that is high fibre (70g baked kumara – 50g chick peas, 60g avocado – which is brilliant for good high fat too) and 45g dried prunes can go a long way to helping you to feel more full. If you are breastfeeding of course its important to keep up your protein and water intake too. Good luck. You wont be sorry if you persevere. It will be so worth it. You can do it!

Spam alert above!! – snap, Bill!

Hi Annie, welcome. I’m newish (I’m in my 3rd week) and feeling more positive than I’ve done in many years. I lost 8lb in week 1 but then only 2lb in week 2 – many people here have experienced similar. Stick with it!

Thanks Hashimoto, its good to know that my multi visits to the bathroom will slow down as my body changes. I like the idea of seeing weight loss in terms of physical things and 28 packs of lard is a lot of lard (even though it now seems that its ok to use lard rather than vegetable oils). What I’ve learnt so far is that I need to make every calorie count. To make sure it full of flavour and texture and variety and so need to expand my cook book to keep the motivation going. The one thing I am really missing is rice and have found product called Barenaked Rice. Its made from Konjac flour and claims that 100g has just 0.1 g of carb and just 8 cals. Have you or anyone used this?

My blood sugar levels don’t seem to spike but are just generally higher, I do think that its all more complex than I understood.
I also don’t understand why it was found that using artificial sweetener increased blood sugar levels as these are lo carb. I have given up on those when I started the 8 weeks, I do have a very sweet tooth but am now finding that is readjusting.

Hi Allychat – that’s a good idea about highlighting the book. I’ll follow your lead.

A huge congratulations on your weight loss. Yes Bill is right, I can actually smell sugar and it truly revolts me. Ive always been known in the family as being a blood hound due to my keen sense of smell. There is a chippy a mile away and I can frequently smell it when it’s frying! I can smell if someone is brewing a pot of tea before they open the door! It’s freaky. But being able to smell sugar is totally new to me. I never knew it was so disgusting!! And I used to love the sweet poison not so very long ago!!

Reported for spam, we don’t need the quack remedies

Hi inka
I love my ketostix. Yes, the apps and other stuff are useful but they don’t tell me what is actually going on inside my body (I’m not type 2 so I don’t test my blood). For instance, I had an off-plan day on Sunday and then no ketosis by Wednesday. Even by yesterday afternoon, nothing. Then I did half an hour on my treadmill – you know the one that makes a great place to hang my clothes – and boom, straight into ketosis at a strong level. They just help to reassure me that what I am doing with the diet is helping me in the right direction. I don’t lose weight every day but knowing I am still in fat burning mode is a big encouragement for me. Its a personal thing I guess, it works for me, they are cheap and easy to use.

Hi Allychat, you’re doing really well, congratulations.
On the subject of sweet things, I tried a couple of sweet things over the Easter, and not only did I not enjoy them, the strangest thing happened in that although I could identify they had a taste of some kind, it wasn’t one I could identify as sugar!
I really hope things stay like that as it seems (hope upon hope) that I no longer have a sweet tooth.
I think it’s Judith who can actually smell sugar and it revolts her.

Thanks, susan, I’ve just read the article. I had no idea it was such a complex area!! I’m not diabetic either but I’m now hoping the fasting blood test I had done this morning won’t show a spike! 🙂

Thanks everyone. End of day three now and while I am definitely still hungry and have a slight headache, it is much better than yesterday. I had yogurt and some nuts and more cheese today. Closer to 900 calories than 800 but less than 50g carbs. I am already 3kg down- this is due to fluid loss I am sure but motivating none the less.

Thanks for the support.

Hi lostgirl, you could always get a small bottle of diet coke and just add a little to sparkling water when you really feel the need. That way you won’t get into the habit of only drinking a lot of coke!

Yeh, like the herbal teabags. Liquorice comes from a root ( we used to buy a liquorice stick for half an old penny on the way to school, it could last for days) so you gat a lot of sweet flavour with no calories!

I’m on my way to town to get some myself!! Glad you liked the peach flavour, I haven’t had that one so I might just treat myself!! Thanks, Lostgirl! 🙂

Hi all. Congrats to everyone whether your results so far are modest or spectacular. I hit one of my milestones today. I started out 7 weeks ago at 98kg. Today I weighed in at 89.6kg. That’s 8.4kg and the first time my weight has not started with a ’90 something’ since I became ill a few years ago with pituitary tumor and thyroid growths. I’ve also lost 16cm from my waist! For the first time in a long time I am beginning to trust my body a little and feel I have reasons to be hopeful about something to do with my health.

My next milestone will be 88kgs as that will be the half way point and I plan to celebrate with something yummy that I miss (but not too much of it) and a massage!

I remember in the book there were several people who said that it was more than a diet, it was rather a way to eat and manage weight ongoing. For many of those in the book they seemed to have broken the ‘rules’ at least every once in a while and they still got amazing results because they got back into it and kept going. That has been my strategy too. That way I dont feel deprived. To my surprise I only went up by 100g following the Easter break. I didn’t eat any chocolate but did have a hot cross bun on one day and dessert on two other days that would not have normally fitted in to the BSD. Interestingly I found I didnt enjoy the hot cross bun as I found it too sweet! Likewise another dessert I just couldn’t finish as it was just too sweet. I’m really excited about this unexpected development as if I no longer even enjoy some of the things I used to, then it is less tempting for me to eat them! I’ve also found that on the odd occasion when I’ve eaten a small amount of the fast starchy carbs, such as a bread roll (that I now regard as a ‘special occasion only food’), I seem to have been better at processing it and didnt experience the unpleasantness of a blood sugar spike (which I’m sure was happening before) as my body is not being overloaded by starchy foods three times a day every day anymore. Has anyone else had a similar experience? (I’m not diabetic).

BTW: I read the book twice (highlighting key points for myself the second time) as so much of the information was so different to what I’d been told by medical professionals that I felt I really needed to go over it all again in order to be sure I really understood it well. I’m really wishing every blessing on Michael Mosely. His book has been life changing for me.

Today I decided to take our dog out for a walk, first time I’ve ventured out without my walking stick or someone with me to make sure I was ok, just went around the crescent we live on, and boy my legs are feeling it now, but on the bright side the sun was shining and it wasn’t too cold at all.

I have just bought my first lot of ketostix and it seems I’m burning fat. Am planning to take them on holiday with me and use them as my prime indicator that I’m not going too far off piste – as per suggestion from hashimoto. However, having tried it today, I think I’d better get some more, as I’m sure I’m going to end up using them pretty much daily I think.

Take it the herbal tea isn’t a herbal fruit tea… As love iced peach tea.

Arrggh didn’t Michael say in the book of all else Diet Coke as a last resort . ??

I am on week 7, I am not diabetic but test my sugar levels as they had started to rise over the last 6 months. I have found my fasting level rising from week 5 and looked at this report which may be an idea as to why. I am staying within the 800 cal and having very little carbs. I have lost 10% of my weight.
http://ketopia.com/high-blood-sugar-in-ketogenic-dieters-plus-a-special-surprise-hint-genotypes-and-metabolism/

Thats right Liz, I’ve never counted them, they are far too small and roll off the table 😉
Seriously I found that if I just watched the carbs, my appetite was determining my portion control and I have found often that I can’t finish even half of what is on my plate, so I would say go for it.
Works well for me.

Hi Inka, if mine start to show I am not burning fat I will check on my carb intake and increase my water intake. I think Bill was unlucky with his batch as mine are working fine. You do have to be careful to take the sticks out quickly and screw the lid on tightly as any moisture getting in the tub can damage them. I don’t think that is what happened to Bill, I think he just got a dodgy batch. 🙂

Hi lostgirl, brilliant result there.
When we were on holiday, we took some of those little Robinson concentrated squash bottles with us. Just 2 drops of it was enough for a half litre bottle of water and it’s available in a few flavours.
It says no added sugar but will have some natural fruit sugars in it.
But hey, 2 drops per half litre of water can’t be bad.

Sorry, Lostgirl, cordials are not OK, they are packed with sugar! Stick with the sparkling water, you will get used to it in time. Go for more herbal teas in the meantime.

I think we have all been sugar and carb addicts – that is why we have all ended up on here, so you are in good company! Thinking of it in terms of addiction is a good way to go.

I like the no carb ploughmans too. I ate out yesterday with an old friend and had the cooked breakfast minus the toast for lunch. I really enjoyed it!!

Inka, I had a dodgy batch of them, no colour change on any of them bar for the first couple.
I just reasoned that my body is burning something and it isn’t carbs coz I’m not giving it enough so I must be burning fat as I’m still losing weight.