Diet Doctor Low Carb Challenge

Brunneria said:

Oh @Chook that is the most FABULOUS news!
I'm not expecting anything like such a momentous shift, mainly because I have effectively had 2 days out in the middle of the week where we ate less-than-VLowCarb due to the situation.

But I am so happy for you.

I haven't totted up exactly how many g of carbs there are in the 1st week of menus, but I suspect (depending on veg portions, skipping unwanted meals, and so on) that they could easily be well under 20g carbs. That isn't something I have ever achieved while writing my own menus and shopping lists. Usually due to the odd sneaky square of 70% choc!

Voleck and Phinney state very clearly in their Art And Science Of Low Carb Living that some people (usually women, usually the ones with metabolisms messed up with previous low cal, and maybe with hormone issues too) need to be 20g or less to lose weight, and may need to stay at 20g or less permanently after that.

Not a thought that has ever cheered me up, and I have never claimed to be consistently under 20g for more than a day or two at a time.

This DD thing is the first time I have even entertained the thought that this might be sustainable.

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Thank you so much. When is your date with the scales this week?

Yes, I completely agree with you. I have eaten under 20g before when, to be honest, I didn't really know what I was doing and had never heard of this forum or CD. I did lose 5 st (but have since put 2 back on). It was really hard then - not much support and I felt like I was the only person in the World eating this way to get their diabetes under control - it's SO much nicer and psychologically easier having companions to share the good and bewildering times with

It's also lovely to have the DD recipes - there have been combinations I would never have thought of putting together.

my date with the scales will not be for a good few days. I ended up eating a few chips on Friday's lunch out, and 2 new potatoes at breakfast out yesterday, which will (from experience) have put on quite a lot of fluid retention. I can feel it on my tummy. So I have to let that go. Then next week I am away from home all week and will be trying to manoeuvre a path between low carb, hunger and potentially causing offence. A veritable tightrope!

and yes, the flavour combinations are astonishingly delicious. I wonder if it is the Swedish influence, or if I have just grown less adventurous in my old age.

Brunneria said:

my date with the scales will not be for a good few days. I ended up eating a few chips on Friday's lunch out, and 2 new potatoes at breakfast out yesterday, which will (from experience) have put on quite a lot of fluid retention. I can feel it on my tummy. So I have to let that go. Then next week I am away from home all week and will be trying to manoeuvre a path between low carb, hunger and potentially causing offence. A veritable tightrope!

and yes, the flavour combinations are astonishingly delicious. I wonder if it is the Swedish influence, or if I have just grown less adventurous in my old age.

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Next week are you guests at someone's home? I did that a few months back and it was very difficult. Like you say, it is so easy to offend people over food because so many people take the food they prepare very personally.

I find spuds hard to resist too, especially new ones, and very much especially Jersey Royals in melted butter. Ooohhhhhh

I am going to tell you something now about spuds that could put you right off of them, it certainly did me (except for the Jersey Royals in butter). You know I used to keep chickens? Well, we apart from the egg laying ladies and pure breeds which I bred and sold, we also raised our own birds for the table - ducks, geese, chickens, turkeys - and if we wanted to fatten them up I'd learned a trick from the old men who kept pigs for meat - feed them warm mashed potatoes. The chooks loved the warm mash (they also had warm porridge in the mornings and occasionally bread) and they would really gain weight fast once they started getting the spuds. The thing is, when it came to gutting them I always found a huge amount of fat around the internal organs - the sort of fat we use as suet. Great fat for cooking with - especially the duck and goose fat - but not so great when I realised that thats the kind of fat that would be found if I was gutted in the same way. Interestingly, when the pure breeds or laying ladies died who didn't get the spuds or porridge) I'd rarely find any fat around their internal organs.

Don't think we were cruel though, we didn't just feed the meat birds spuds and porridge, they also got a balanced diet of grains, corn, chook food, seeds, leafy veg and all the weeds we took up from around the vegies - and they free ranged so also ate grass, worms and insects and lots of the over ripe fruit that fell from the trees. (I once had my geese very drunk on the windfalls from the plum and trees - very funny.

I think so much cabbage and fish has to be the Swedish influence - I would imagine that the kinds of veg available in Sweden in the cold months is either very limited or very expensive imports - but some kinds of cabbage do very well in the cold as do Brussels sprouts so they eat a lot of it.

maglil55 said:

Better tell you how I make aubergine chips - I take some of the skin off the aubergine , leave some bits so you don't have to be fussy about peeling. There are variations now . Yesterday I rubbed the cut chips with olive oil , seasoned them with salt and paprika , gave them another little rub in olive oil and a coat in almond flour. Popped them on a warmed baking tray and into the oven 200c for about 10 mins. Keep an eye on them as they cook quickly depending on the size of the chips. Another variation is to dip the chips in beaten egg first , season and then coat in ground pork scratchings or a mix of ground pork scratchings and almond flour. This method also works with courgette chips.

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When we get over this aubergine shortage I will definitely have a go at making those.

Chook said:

Next week are you guests at someone's home? I did that a few months back and it was very difficult. Like you say, it is so easy to offend people over food because so many people take the food they prepare very personally.

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Staying with elderly relatives. I mention the fact that they are elderly, only because the last time we stayed it was evident that there was a lot less flexibility of thinking than there used to be. Explaining the intricacies of my particular version of gluten free very low carb, with intermittent fasting is not something I will inflict on them.

SoI have said 'I often skip breakfast and sometimes lunch, so please don't worry about those at all. And I will eat whatever you do for the evening meal, minus the spuds'. I can always politely decline any pudding by being 'too full'.

The biggest problem I anticipate is getting hold of enough cream and butter! Haha!

Will see how it goes.

Thank you for doing all the calculations for me! That is really useful to know.

And - I can't remember - did I congratulate you on your 1 pound loss last week? I would be ecstatic with that, but my weight fluctuates so much (fluid intake and retention, exercise and activity) that the only way I can realistically track weight is by watching it rise and fall over months, not weeks.

15 years ago I lost nearly 5 stone (75 pounds) in 6 months, with an accidental intermittent fasting which also meant lowish carbs.
I kept almost all of the weight off, but the most I have lost in recent years was about 2 pounds a month, when I first went to under 40g carbs a day. Ended up losing around 20 pounds but it was like watching paint dry. Then it stalled dead.

I

Brunneria said:

Thank you for doing all the calculations for me! That is really useful to know.

And - I can't remember - did I congratulate you on your 1 pound loss last week? I would be ecstatic with that, but my weight fluctuates so much (fluid intake and retention, exercise and activity) that the only way I can realistically track weight is by watching it rise and fall over months, not weeks.

15 years ago I lost nearly 5 stone (75 pounds) in 6 months, with an accidental intermittent fasting which also meant lowish carbs.
I kept almost all of the weight off, but the most I have lost in recent years was about 2 pounds a month, when I first went to under 40g carbs a day. Ended up losing around 20 pounds but it was like watching paint dry. Then it stalled dead.

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Its horrible isn't it - so slow to take off and so quick to put on. I am convinced I actually don't need to eat carbs cake to put on weight - all I need to do is look at them. I remember once being very angry when a short lady with a Margaret Thatcher suit, claggy makeup, a weird perm and very aggressive nails (WW leader) said 'all you need to do is undereat your calorific requirements by 3,500 calories and you'll lose a pound' It just isn't that simple. If it was that simple I'd be a size 8, no problem.

I don't really understand how eating this way works, its very counterintuitive for me - I got through two and a half packs of butter last week. According to Google thats 4,481 calories - okay, I 'only' ate half of it which is still over 2,000 calories from butter alone and then there's the cream, sour cream, cheese, coconut oil, etc How is this working?? Not that I'm complaining, I'm loving most of the food.

Brunneria said:

Staying with elderly relatives. I mention the fact that they are elderly, only because the last time we stayed it was evident that there was a lot less flexibility of thinking than there used to be. Explaining the intricacies of my particular version of gluten free very low carb, with intermittent fasting is not something I will inflict on them.

SoI have said 'I often skip breakfast and sometimes lunch, so please don't worry about those at all. And I will eat whatever you do for the evening meal, minus the spuds'. I can always politely decline any pudding by being 'too full'.

The biggest problem I anticipate is getting hold of enough cream and butter! Haha!

Will see how it goes.

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I have a similar problem when we go to visit the aged Mother in Law. She's really in to frozen gateaux desserts and steamed puddings or pies. Nowadays when we visit we only go for the day and always say we'll get lunch from the chippy (lightly battered fish and mushy peas - doesn't affect my BG) and then we leave before tea ('to avoid the traffic' and 'because of the dogs') and stop off for a carvery dinner on the way home. I'm not sure what I'd do if we had to stay there for a few days.

maglil55 said:

You are spot on - it is under 20g of carbs. First 3 days were

18g, 11g, 14g. Next day was almost exact but boys came to stay but it was 15g Friday was 14g. I did notice that by week 3 (repeated week 1 but left things out as not hungry at lunchtime) it was under 10g a lot of the time and I honestly didn't think it was possible. I had "off piste" meals too but they were seriously low carb as well.

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Thats really interesting. I thought they must be higher because I haven't had any sign of carb flu or felt deprived in any way. I'm like you, just not interested in food at lunch time. I actually have to set an alarm on my phone to remind me. Strange...

As i understand it, in my very simple way, the only route for fat to be stored in fat cells is with the help of fat storage hormones. Insulin is the main one. Cortisol is another (which is why stress disrupts weight loss too).

If we don't eat carbs, then we don't generate insulin to deal with it. And we don't gain weight because nothing is being shoved into the fat cells by insulin...

There are, of course, 50 other factors, hormones and so on that affect things - including 'starvation mode' and varying basal metabolic rates, and our own background insulin (everyone has this, not just T1s injecting basal), and of course insulin resistance is a major player. However, insulin resistance falls in the absence of dietary carbs.

Fung explains if FAR better in his blog Intensive Dietary Management, with excellent references.

@Brunneria
I've read most (if not all) of Jason Fung's blog and understood maybe a half of it.* That was one of the bits I didn't understand so thanks for explaining it.


* I lied, it was probably only a quarter, if that.

Might have a look at the dd challenge and menus, sounds good!

Angelofthemarches said:

Might have a look at the dd challenge and menus, sounds good!

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You'll certainly not go hungry.

Well well well,

Last night, after (nearly) a proper week on this DD Thing, my blood glucose was in the 4s and 5s all night (according to my Libre). None of the usual shenanigans of a drop to the edge of hypo at 2am followed by repeated liver dumps like little road humps until wake up time (which was 5.7 instead of the usual mid 6s)

I have never seen this before. And I am trying not to get too excited.
It might just be a one off.
It might be because I had 3 protein meals yesterday instead of 1 or 2.
I wonder if the fact that I didn't dog walk yesterday is a factor...

But wouldn't it be marvellous if it is a sign that my body is flourishing on this consistent under 20g carbs a day?
I do feel great on it.

Be interesting to see what happens this morning.

@Brunneria. That's wonderful!!!!! I'm so happy for you. I've got my fingers crossed that it carries on in the same way today (and in the future). Your body obviously needs three protein meals a day and under 20g of carbs.

After @Brunneria excellent news I'm sad to say that my BG was 6.8 this morning.

On the positive side, I had the DD coconut porridge for brekkie today which tasted and had the texture of my childhood favourite semolina pudding - except I didn't have the coconut porridge with a big dollop of jam.

Brunneria said:

Well well well,

Last night, after (nearly) a proper week on this DD Thing, my blood glucose was in the 4s and 5s all night (according to my Libre). None of the usual shenanigans of a drop to the edge of hypo at 2am followed by repeated liver dumps like little road humps until wake up time (which was 5.7 instead of the usual mid 6s)

I have never seen this before. And I am trying not to get too excited.
It might just be a one off.
It might be because I had 3 protein meals yesterday instead of 1 or 2.
I wonder if the fact that I didn't dog walk yesterday is a factor...

But wouldn't it be marvellous if it is a sign that my body is flourishing on this consistent under 20g carbs a day?
I do feel great on it.

Be interesting to see what happens this morning.

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Just a thought, do you think that this might mean you having to have crack slaw every day for breakfast?