Hi Penny. Happy to link up on MFP. So far I’m not much different from your suggested stats so I’ll use those for now. Day 5 and not doing too badly but nearer 900 average than 800. Need to be good at the weekend!

Hi Bruce. On day 5 today and going fairly well today. Had a bit of a relapse today and munched on some dark chocolate cranberries so that didn’t help. Averaging nearer to 900 cals over the 5 days so will try to be good t the weekend to get it back nearer the 800. That said, 900 is better than what I was eating before I started. Trousers starting to feel a bit loose so hoping that some weight will have come off when I weigh on Monday. Hope you are getting on ok too.

PS I have a brother Bruce but nothing to do with being Aussie.

Did you watch the latest series of trust me i’m a doctor? There was an interesting piece on how blood sugar is a very personal thing. What raises one person’s levels will have no effect on another person’s and its to do with gut bacteria. This is the link, its only four minutes; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gqssd

Hi Bruce, well done for losing the weight and especially for avoiding insulin injections, that’s a brilliant result. You’re right, there’s nothing more important than your health. Onwards and upwards

Hi Bill
I think maybe your crisps and sandwich had more fat. Now you’re having almost no fat at all – the veggies have none, just carbs, water, vitamins, minerals etc, and the cottage cheese has more carbs than fat. I think if you change to full fat cottage cheese this BG prioblem may not happen. I think Michael is in favour of full fat dairy for this reason. It doesn’t raise your BG and stops you being hungry. I think we’ve been told for so long to not eat fat it goes against the grain but according to Michael, that’s the answer.
Penny

Thanks Eureka.

Happy to stay with this group, even if posting on others 😊.

Moving around the country a lot I’ve had both good and bad medical support. Currently I live in a village with only one practice and have only seen a doctor a few times, none diabetes related. My Diabetes Nurse is brilliant. She actually listens. When I complained that doctors want us to be proactive in our care but fail to give us the tools, she said she’s hearing that from a lot of diabetics, and ‘they’ need to start listening to the patients. Not holding my breath though.

Apparently she is going to discuss me with the doctor! Seeing her again in a few weeks. Hopefully they’ll reduce or remove BP meds.

Stress comes with the job – but I do seem to be coping better. Since cutting out carbs I find I’m more easy going and less irritable. Something that would have really irritated me, I can now normally shrug off. Interesting to note!

Lynne

Hi granny to four welcome

Don’t consume ANY grapefruit if you have been warned against it. Some drugs INCREASE in potency if you eat grapefruit whilst taking them. Be sure to read the literature that comes with your drugs. Also ask your GP again to explain this to you. Also look at http://www.nhs.uk for advice

I take Metformin ,just one of those drugs that ban grapefruit, & it’s one fruit I really miss!

Prawns, grapefruit & avocado with a sprinkle of mint Is really nice for those who can have it. Ah well maybe in the future?

Try apple or maybe just a few segments of orange with the Manchego cheese. After all it is a Spanish cheese
Think I’ll try it too
I’m gma to four girls. Go for it!
Eureka

Hi Lou
He says there are appropriate recipes in the recipe section and you need the veg to avoid constipation.
I had a look and there are recipes about 200 cals. They have other stuff in them such as feta or chick peas so it’s not just a mountain of cabbage!
Sounds like you’re doing well
Penny

Bulk powders whey protein is brilliant order online . I have tried chocolate, berries and cream and banana, made up with full fat milk it has 250 calories and 30 g of protein. Very low sugar and carb content. I add xamthum gum powder and ice cubes and blend it. Makes a delicious smoothly that you will be impressed with.

Hey Capo, I’ve been told that there is always some kind of band of error with finger prick testers, but that overall they give an ‘accurate enough’ measure for my daily management, and my home tests generally fit the pattern that the 3 monthly average (HBA1C) that the doctor suggests. The only true measure is apparently through a lab analysis. It can be worth doing 2 tests at the same time as a comparison measure, yesterday I was really surprised by one measure and then a minute later it was closer to what I expected (3.5 mmol lower). Also, make sure you wash your hands well before any test as food or whatnot on the skin can make a huge difference. None of which should imply that you might not want to get some tests done for reassurance, if it was the case that your sugar was too high its an excellent opportunity to do something about it while its controllable, rather than go down the nasty roads that I and probably others have followed through not knowing and not coping with a full blown diabetes diagnosis.

Sorry forgot to say 125 calories per serving plus the milk or whatever you use. I also add a bit of xamthum gum powder to thicken it up more and four ice cubes. Absolutely delicious.

If you need any more info get back to me.

In your book, Michael, you mention that consuming 2 dates are the equivalent of eating 2 (or was it 3) pundits of strawberries. But I noticed in Sarah’s ‘Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownies’ recipe, in the same book, that it calls for 5 dates! Please can you advise whether this is correct and that either I can use these as a snack without going overboard. Thank you.

I have seen a lot of posts asking for meal replacement shakes and I can recommend Bulk Powders pure whey protein. You will be able to order this online. I have tried the Chocolate, banana and the berries and cream flavours and can recommend these flavours. I use milk to make up the shake and they taste very good. The whey powder has 2.5 g of fat, 3 g of carbohydrate and 22.5 g of protein per 30 gram serving. Try them and you will be impressed.

Thanks for the answers! Helen, sounds like we’re at pretty much the same starting point. End of day 2 for me now and I ‘went nuts’ and ate an apple at 4pm because I was really hungry! Know it will get better and trying to stop the weirder parts of my brain worry about the difference between 800 cals and 817! Had a day off gym today too, but will get back into that tomorrow. Have stocked up on ingredients and want to basically stick the the recipes in the book so that I don’t have to count any calories or think about food too much, in a positive or a negative way. How’s it going for you now, almost at the end of the first week?

Bill1954, thanks man, that made me laugh! Yes Bruce is my real name, and as someone living in Germany and outside my usual cultural reference point, its brilliant to hear from someone who would even think of such a thing. I have no idea where the belief came from, neither does my good friend in Sydney, Sheila, but it seems quite a popular one outside of Aus. I’ve only ever met two or three other Bruce’s in my whole life, so maybe its like the classic Aussie beer Fosters which no self respecting Aussie would touch so I’m told (I don’t drink beer at all, but Victoria Bitter is the way to go to fit in!!)

Ok, about to start preparing the salmon and spinach for dinner tonight, I had thought about white bean mash with that but seem to have used up my quota on the apple hahahaha 🙂 I’ll do a workout tomorrow morning which usually makes me less hungry and at least fills in a few hours where you don’t need enormous mental concentration, which means I’ll do the brunch / dinner combo over the weekend.

HI, yes unfortunately I ended up with horribly saggy wrinkles at the top of my legs after losing 10kg really slowly, I didn’t think it would have been this bad at only 47 but trying to focus on the health outcomes rather than appearance consequences. It stopped me going onto short term insulin, which means 3 or 4 extra injections a day. Be healthy and enjoy the weight loss!

I’m on Exante too. Just over two weeks and one stone down. I’m not prediabetic or diabetic so don’t know about the blood results.

My query however is: on page 129 of the book Michael recommends 600 cals in shakes, plus 200 cals in non-starchy veggies. This is like Exante’s Man Plan which I’m doing, where you can ‘spend’ the 200 cals on a high protein low carb meal. Now I reckon that 200 cals of veggies would be rather a lot of veggies! I have a chicken breast or small piece of fish. Would that make any difference? Would appreciate any opinions! TIA Louise

Hi captainlynne

Excellent news, very well done! Do hope you stay with this group as your experiences will continue to be invaluable
Keep us posted on your medical support. A lot of us don’t have that
Hope the stress levels come down & maybe you’ve found new strategies to cope.
Eureka

No I monitor pre bedtime and when I wake in the morning although I did notice the other day that at teatime, my level was showing 6.8
Previously when I was having a sandwich and a bag of crisps for lunch I was always between 4 and 5 at that time of day and low fat cottage cheese with celery and pepper dippers shouldn’t have raised it.
I prefer the theory that the diabetes is fighting back, coz if that what it wants, I’m well up for the battle 🙂

Cherrianne don’t worry, I’m in this for the long term.
Fancy calling Aliba slobs ROFLMAO
Sorry Aliba

Humus is available in a few flavours and in individual portions, it goes great with salad dippers. I’ve also enjoyed the Sardine dip and a mackeral salad at work. Cottage cheese is good too.
This morning I made a 2 egg mushroom and pepper omelette and took it to work to heat up … delicious.

On week 3 (Day 19) of the diet – good results so far lost 20 lbs – been feeling pretty good but since yesterday I have some nausea & headache. Going to up my water intake over the weekend to see what happens……

Have made these muffins twice, first time they fell apart and was more like crumble mixture. After reading an article about sugar free cakes, it advised to use more water to make the consistency better. A tablespoon at a time. Tried it and boy it works. You have to keep them in the fridge as coconut flour looses its moisture.

Don’t worry Lesley, I didn’t like the peanut butter dip but my OH loved it – just personal taste. Good luck on your start – I’m on 2nd week and not found it difficult at all but do need to plan what we’re eating.

Hi everyone
Quick update as of today Friday I have lost 5lbs and 2 inches from my waist, saw my gp yesterday and she was very encouraging with further review and blood tests in 4 months. What I have done though is bought a Fitbit and although I know not 100% accurate it has shown me that if I eat 2000 calories a day I will put weight on , I am only using on average 1800 calories a day and that is doing at least 10000 steps per day so even when I have reached my target weight loss I will have to keep the calories below the recommended daily amount as my gp said I am 5ft 2in 61 and have hypothyroidism so important to look at what I actually need to maintain and keep healthy. Still feeling very positive and finding it easy to keep motivated , looking forward to furter weight loss

Hi
I have been on the diet since last Sunday and food diary is so important , also I have a Fitbit which shows I only use 1800 calories a day and I’m fairly active but have underactive thyroid so if old calculation of you need to save 3000 calories to lose one pound of weight I am only losing a pound every 3 days but I have lost 5 so far and 2 inches off my waist, keep going we over 60s can do it!

Oops, didn’t check my auto correct, didn’t mean to call Aliba ‘slobs’. My apologies.

Hi Bill, you are doing really well so far. It might be worth looking at the dawn phenomen previously mentioned so that you can understand what is happening to you. I used to suffer from it and it is so disheartening to go to bed with a blood sugar under 6, knowing you haven’t eaten for hours, and wake up with a high fasting reading. So I typed in ‘low BGL at night but high fasting BGL’ into google and found out about the dawn phenomenon. Now I eat a 20g slice of cheese and 150ml full fat milk at bedtime, both included in my daily count, and it doesn’t happen anymore. I also think you aren’t eating enough, as slobs suggested. The book makes it clear you need fat, and you do need to eat regularly. Keep trying, diabetes won’t win if you follow the diet properly. It will take all of us a while to get it right because we are having to change our thinking about what is the ‘right’ food for diabetics, as well as changing our bad habits.

You know what guys ?? that is the kind of support that really helps so thanks so much for that.
Yeah I was feeling a bit glum this morning but I’m not going to let this beat me.
The way I see it, no matter how much sugar is stored in my liver and pancreas, as long as I’m not putting the wrong things in to my body, there has to come a point where that stored sugar runs out. That shouldnt be too long I hope and I’m looking forward to seeing what the scales say tomorrow.
Aliba, you very well may be right, I’ll look at what I’m eating over the weekend and try to up the fat intake a little (fresh cream cakes here I come ……NOT) 😀

Hi Bill,

Just wanted to chip in with a bit of support as this must be really frustrating. The way I would look at it is, we have basically got fois gras inside us. As long as we stick with the diet, we reverse that a bit more each day, and that can only be a good thing for our health. It may take a while to show up on the readings, but every day we do this is a day we scrape fat out from around our internal organs rather than deposit it back in. The readings will catch up soon!

If you balance out your weightloss/ blood sugar decrease over the time since you started the diet, it is still really impressive – so maybe try to think it terms of overall decrease rather than recent plateau? Having said that, I’m sure things will start to go down again soon – it’s not physically possible for us to keep on eating this few calories and not lose weight so it will come soon!!

I believe olive oil provides good cholesterol but what about full fat milk, yogurt and butter etc? The doctor says I need to get from 5.7 to 5.0 cholesterol. It is down from 6.5 last year so healthy choices are making a difference. Should I only be eating olive oil and fish fats is the question?

Thanks Janet!
I wouldn’t say I enjoy salads… but I’m sure once my tastes adjust away from the extraordinary amounts of sugar I am eating now I will enjoy them alot more.

Thank you for the advice.. written my plan for one week with peanut butter dips and no carb ploughmans,then once I am in the swing of it I shall get adventurous with salad!

It is so great having my parents being such a fabulous support, hopefully i will see as good results as they are! Xx

Hi Bill, are you monitoring sugar levels after every meal? There may something causing a spike for you that you didn’t expect?

Sometimes you will lose inches before you see a weight loss and the diary helps to keep track of anything that unconsciously sneaks in. You have the will power to do this – you are going to be fine!

Hi Lesley
Welcome on board!
For lunch I would suggest perhaps just keep things simple. Try to keep it to two or three hundred cals. If you enjoy salad, have loads of salad veggies and a weighed piece of chicken, tuna, salmon, egg or beans/lentils. A little bit of oil-based dressing which you can make yourself with some herbs and you’re done.

Whilst taking medication for high blood pressure I have been advised not to eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice, would this rule out the grapefruit and manchego salad featured in the recipe section, could I substitute other citrus?

Oh really? I was excited to try to peanut butter dip! Hopefully I will enjoy it ha ha.
I didn’t really want to take soup – when I was doing low fat I just packed sandwiches and fruit and off I went, the microwave is super rubbish and I would be waiting 10 minutes of the break for it to heat up!
I will have a look through and see what else they might be, looking forward to trying the pepper with feta on my days off and things.

Thanks!

Thanks Bernie, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head – the psychological stuff really makes a difference. If you haven’t found it yet, there is a great thread on here about catastrophes which I think you would enjoy. I have done every diet under the sun over the years but have only just started this one and have never tried giving up carbs (my best friends!). I hope so much that it changes my way of weight loss forever and that I get the results other people are getting.

The lettuce cups are lovely, particularly the chicken, celery and apple. I couldn’t get on with the peanut butter dip at all.

Tried the beetroot and cannellini bean soup but wasn’t too fond of that either so I have been making minestrone soup (recipe on site) and taking it – it really fills me up. I am going to try some of the other soups that have been listed in the recipe section as they look lovely.

Have a scroll through some of the forum posts as there are some great suggestions by other posters as to what they enjoy eating.

Thnak you and I am determined to keep going! I do my own cooking and using recipes from the book, and drinking lots of water too. Haven’t done a waist measurment and will do that and keep food diary to see if that does the trick and maybe few more days will see results.

I think I’m starting to go the same route. I don’t get weighed again until tomorrow but my Sugar levels have went up again despite me sticking religiously to the diet.
I’m not going to give up but it is disappointing.

Hi!
I am overweight and definatley heading towards diabetes, getting married in July, weigh in at a hefty 17 stone 8 lbs at the moment – 100% addicted to sugar – will happily skip meals and eat a pack of sweets or chocolate. My parents have had massive success already and are on their 3rd week on this diet.
(My dad has shrunk!!)

They are going to support me with evening meals which is fabulous, my question is – what lunches do people take with them to work?
I eat lunch at work 5 days a week – and although I have access to a microwave I prefer something I can grab out of the fridge and not draw loads of attention to what I am eating.

So far the best ones from the book seem to be – peanut butter dip, no carb ploughmans and the lettuce cup. Does anyone have any other reciepe ideas that would work for me?

Thanks for your advice!

Thanks Janet – thanks for all the encouraging suggestions.
I am definitely going to try and moderate my eating on all of the days and definitely going to make low carb choices where I can.

It is this psychological battle with dieting that I have struggled with for years i.e you eat something ‘bad’ and think you’ve blown the whole diet – logically I know that isn’t the case and I really want to work on the beating myself up if things go slightly astray. I really want this diet to be a lifelong change to the way I view food.

I am on week 2 of the diet and haven’t faltered at all and feel really great on it and am losing weight which is my main goal – your encouraging comments have made all the difference to how I was viewing this holiday.

Thank you Janet1973! The moderation approach makes sense and the fact that there are no forbidden fruits is god news. See how it works out 🙂

Hi EIM

You are right, there are recipes that seem to contain forbidden foods but they are all limited to quite small amounts and would only appear two or three times across the week. I think the menu plans aim to give a wide variety of foods and nutrients but still in moderation.

Hi I am just about to embark on the Fast 800. Having read through the outline of the diet, I see nuts and seeds are encouraged to help you feel full and get vital nutrients.

I am allergic to hazelnuts and some other nuts with husks on and cannot eat seeds due to a digestive problem. Will I compromise my health if I leave these two elements out? Are there any alternatives?

Thats amazing Tuesday, very well done! If you have any tips for keeping hunger at bay, we’d love you to share them. Keep up the good work!

Hi Swabybrown
I’d say try not to despair, there can be all sorts of reasons for not losing weight and everyone is different. Are you keeping a food diary? Is there anything you are not writing down? Have you done a waist measurement and has that changed at all? Are you clothes feeling any looser? Do you do your own cooking? Do you have an underactive thyroid? How much water are you drinking and do you drink anything else? Are you eating plenty of protein and some fat? Lots of questions, the answer could be in there somewhere or maybe not. You may have to give it a few more days before you start seeing results.

Keep going for this next week and keep us up to date with your progress.

Hi Bernie
I hope you have a lovely time while you are away. I’m curious though, you said you are booked into restaurants for two days so what about the other three days? You may have decided to just let the diet go for the five days which is fine but if you want to try to limit the damage, there are some things you could do. You could stick to 800 cals the other three days. It may well be enough to balance out the other days and you could still lose weight. Only have one course in the restaurants or if its not possible, choose low carb or leave the carbs – the restaurants might customise your dishes if you ask. Keep an eye on your alcohol intake (if you drink alcohol), it not only adds calories but reduces will power too. Avoid any bread if they offer it. Don’t starve yourself before you go thinking it will help with the calorie count as you are more likely to be like a kid in a sweet shop and eat everything!

Of course, its only five days and we should make the most of holidays as we don’t get enough of them. Decide beforehand whether you are going to be semi-dieting or not at all and don’t beat yourself up while you are away. Its a chance to re-charge your batteries ready for a big push when you get back. Enjoy!

Hey all,

Newbie here. Been on this diet for 5 days now and feeling pretty good. Need some advice though. I am overweight but have never had blood sugar issues to date.

I got a Blood Sugar Monitor from my chemist yesterday and tried it yesterday 2 hours after lunch. It was a very reassuring 5.8 and my wife was a happy 4.9. Although very relieved we decided to monitor it for a few days to see if there were spikes.

Imagine our surprise this morning when, after a 13 hour fast I tested 8.2 and my wife tested 10.2. Are these ranges possible?
I’m using a FreeStyle Optium Neo, is this reliable?

It looks like I am not allowed to attached the link so you have to take my word for it.