The FastDay Forum

Weigh-in at the start of day 10: it's down, only a very little, but down all the same - that's 133.2lbs, a further loss of 0.2lbs... Waist and tum measurements remain the same, slightly less 'easy' if anything, but underbust is creeping towards 31 inches - I'll give it 31.25.

Pretty much as expected really, if one accepts that cleanse / phase 1 losses are probably due to calorie reduction rather than any magic - woo. But the 5:2 and low-carb approach does appear to give results that are, sometimes considerably, greater than the sum of their parts. Definitely a phenomenon to investigate scientifically methinks, perhaps Dr.s Volek and Phinney should be called onto the case!

No pondering tonight's dinner - I'm cheating this evening and having a skinny version of the frittata that I had the other day. But I will be pondering tomorrows dinner instead, mmmmm....

@PhilT Brain wasn't working last night and I only twigged once in bed: your copy of CBB has arrived! Did you manage to get a decent price? And, more importantly, what do you think of the recipes? Not a hair-shirt in sight, unlike RE's very worthy but, inexplicably, uninspiring and rather penitential offerings.

it was just under a tenner, ex library so covered and good condition. Nicely laid out and straightforward. Cunning plan is to give it to vegetarian offspring and tell them they're cooking !

Wednesday, day ten, fast day: having said I'd make life easy for myself and just have a skinny frittata, I go and find four huge flat field mushrooms reduced to 50p in the Co-op, along with a wedge of Wenslydale cheese for a quid. I couldn't resist, so cheesy mushrooms, with rocket leaves (again - I could eat rocket day-in day-out) it was to be...

Emerging fast day story, slightly over on the calories but way under on the carbs:
....... Calories 528.14 Carbs 12.38 Fat 38.72 Protein 29.02 Fibre 8.21

I fear that I'm being terribly slow in getting to grips with the carb / calories balance, but I'll get there in the end - practice makes perfect they say

cheesy field mushrooms
flat field mushrooms, large 15c/C0.4/F0.5/P1.8/Fi1.0/100g
.........154g (two) 23.10 0.62 0.77 2.77 1.54
hawes mature wensleydale, 375c/C0.1/F31.5/P22.8/Fi0/100g
.........40g 150.00 0.04 12.60 9.12 0.00
walnuts, raw, rough chopped, 654c/C7.0/F65.2/P15.2/Fi7.0/100g
.........10g 65.40 0.70 6.52 1.52 0.70
chilli flakes 0.00
basil, dried
.........good pinch to each mushroom 0.00
corriander seed, fresh ground
.........a grind or two to each mushroom 0.00
s&p 0.00
total 238.50 1.36 19.89 13.41 2.24

Method: 1. give the mushrooms a good wash 2. remove stalks and chop very fine 3. crumble the wensleydale and mix with stalks, walnuts, chilli, basil, corriander and seasoning 4. stuff mix into mushrooms 5. place on an oven-proof dish and bung in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 15 to 20 minutes, until brown and bubbly

I can't let PhilT have all the fun - I must bake tomorrow...

Weigh-in at the start of day 11: nice, my fat cells must have been unhappy with being fed mushrooms, nuts, cheese and rocket yesterday as 0.8lbs of them have taken the hump and shuffled off! That's 5.4lbs gone in ten days. Very nice.

Now a 'svelte' 132.4lbs (I jest): nine and a half stone is one heck of an improvement on the ten and a half stone I was on the first of May, so I am a very happy FatDog.

Three readings do not a pattern make but... that's three times the morning-after-a-fast day has shown a loss of 0.8lbs (out of four proper and one accidental fast days). Statistically I'm sure there's no significance but I'll be keeping a better eye out for patterns from now on (obscure reference warning: I'll try to avoid looking for the number 23 from the Illuminati though).

This might be one for the wisdom of @PhilT...

My oat bran, White's from Holland and Barrett, is labelled as follows:

... Calories 383 Carbs 68.4 Fat 6.5 Protein 12.6 Fibre 9.3 per 100g

which seems affy low on the fibre and horridly high on the carbs - tesco's, by contrast, is something like carbs 50g and fibre 15g. Is there really that much variation in oat bran or is this another mislabelling event?

Cheers, FatDog.

Thursday, day eleven, feed day: was going to use my monster avocado with salad for dinner but couldn't resist some hugely discounted ready chopped / washed broccoli. Sigh. Thought about a stir-fry with it but couldn't find inspiration for working out the numbers so was a complete lazy dog and just plagiarised my broccoli cheese special: voila broccoli cheese cheat's version... I'll detail the cheat's version as, although it was not as luscious as the proper one, it was pretty decent, and my OH gave it 9/10 - though he really has a dreadful sense of taste

And honestly, I was trying to keep the calories up but failed, yet again, to get the calories to play nicely with the carbs (the final straw was using peanuts as a snack - for some reason it's stuck in my head that they're low carb and they're not); my 'milky' (soya) bedtime drink saved the day again:

...... Calories 1303.30 Carbs 21.00 Fat 102.21 Protein 67.48 Fibre 15.68

broccoli cheese cheat's version
broccoli florets 29c/C1.1/F0.8/P3.1/Fi2.3/100g
.........320g 92.80 3.52 2.56 9.92 7.36
tomatoes, tinned, chopped 15c/C3.0/F0.1/P1.0/Fi0.7/100g
.........400g 60.00 12.00 0.40 4.00 2.80
onion, fine chopped, 43cal/C9.3g/F0g/P0.71g/Fi2.1g/100g
.........23g 9.89 2.14 0.00 0.16 0.48
garlic, chopped, 149cal/C33.06/F0.5/P6.36/Fi2.1/100g, 1 clove GL1
.........2g 2.98 0.66 0.01 0.13 0.04
fennel seed, fresh ground
.........5ml 0.00
olive oil, 824cal/F91.6g/C,P&FI<0.1g/100mL
.........30ml 247.20 0.00 27.48 0.00 0.00
lemon juice, 26c/C2.0/F0/P0.4/Fi0.3/100ml
.........5ml 1.30 0.10 0.00 0.02 0.02 (check taste first)
mature cheddar, lake district, grated, 416cal/C0.1/F34.9/P25.4/Fi0/100g
.........190g 790.40 0.19 66.31 48.45 0.00
nutmeg, ground
.........2ml 0.00
s&p 0.00
hazelnuts, medium fine chopped, 695c/C7.0/F60.8/P15.0/Fi9.7/100g
.........40g 278.00 2.80 24.32 6.00 3.88
total 1482.57 21.41 121.08 68.68 14.58
dog's 1/3rd portion total 494.19 7.14 40.36 22.89 4.86

Method: as before, but no fresh tomatoes or cheese sauce this time; and brown the cheese topping before sprinkling the hazelnuts over for a light toasting (watch with care, they go from untoasted to burnt in an instant).

The baking will happen soon...

Oat bran is in my book as high carb. 50% like your Tesco number.

I don't think it separates as well as wheat bran, and sometimes the oat "bran" has other stuff as well. Dr Dukan is obsessed with the stuff, his "specially milled" version lists at http://www.mydukandietshop.co.uk/en/pro ... 14080.html as 51.5 %carbs, 16% fibre.

http://www.whitesoats.co.uk/product-range/oat-bran seems to suggest it's actually whole oats and not oat bran at all, very confusing.

Weigh-in at the start of day 12: this could all be fantasy-land stuff today - the battery in the scales is well and truly deid so make what you will of these readings: 132.4 four times, 132.2 six times and 127.6 lots of times, then blank... Most unscientific, but I'm going for the 132.2 as that makes sense in terms of the last eleven days (though that 127.6 would be lovely - soon eh?!).

So that's another 0.2lbs off (after a feed day at that, albeit a low calories one). Good.

Oh, nearly forgot the other measurements: waist down on the right side of 29 at 28.75 and tum 34.75 - shrinking! It's really getting rid of the blubber around my midriff that is driving me - I hate it - I've been over-weight a couple of times in the past but have never had this blubber-ring before, am just praying the skin shrinks back with it!

I hate to say it (and I've not let slip to OH yet) but I'm seriously tempted by doing another week at 20g carbs as I'm so chuffed with the weight-loss. Then maybe not, I'm really missing 'reasonable' quantities of onions, tomatoes, garlic etc., and I think the extra 5g would help squeeze these back in. And I'm looking forwards to hitting the 40g mark when I can have some lentils!

Thanks for the info @PhilT - I might abandon using the oat bran in my chai express: from what I can gather its only 'express' action is to irritate the gut (phylates?) otherwise it is just a bulking agent. That would give me a whole 4.79 carbs extra to play with and 26.81 calories extra on a fasting day - maybe I could stay on 20g carbs for another week after all!!

Friday, day twelve, fast day: slacker's yoghurt (nae oats and just cinnamon as spice - taking the oats out frees up nearly five carbs and three calories!) and skinny frittata (as before but with one egg and just 20g of cheese). The yoghurt is fine, though it doesn't 'thicken' without the oats, and the frittata tastes very good, it's just rather a shadow of its much richer fuller self, - not really surprising at ~320 calories fewer. But all rather pedestrian really.

A bit over the calories and under half the carbs (that's the oats going):
......Calories 537.02 Carbs 9.79 Fat 34.88 Protein 30.11 Fibre 9.10

Slacker's yoghurt (transit regular)
youghurt (yeo valley), 82c/C6.5/F4.2/P4.6/Fi0/100g
.........50g 41.00 3.25 2.10 2.30 0.00
linseed, brown, 534c/C1.5/F42.16/P18.29/Fi27.3/100g
.........10g (scarce TBSP) 53.40 0.15 4.22 1.83 2.73
cinnamon, ground
.........2ml 0.00
pure via (stevia based sweetener) 2c/C0.47/F0/P0/Fi0/0.5g/5ml
.........5ml 2.00 0.47 0.00 0.00 0.00
water
.........about 50ml until it's nearly a slurpable quality - add after mixing other ingredients
total 96.40 3.87 6.32 4.13 2.73

skinny frittata
eggs, brown, 151cal/C0g/F11.2g/P12.5/Fi0g/100g
.........~54g x 1 of 81.54 0.00 6.05 6.75 0.00
mature cheddar, lake district, grated, 416cal/C0.1/F34.9/P25.4/Fi0/100g
.........20g 83.20 0.02 6.98 5.10 0.00
mixed peppers, diced, 28c/C4.4/F0.3/P1.0/Fi1.6/100g
.........45g 12.60 1.98 0.14 0.45 0.72
chestnut mushrooms, 6thd, 16cal/C0.4g/F0.5g/P1.8g/Fi1.1g/100g
.........82g 13.12 0.33 0.41 1.48 0.90
onion, fine chopped, 43cal/C9.3g/F0g/P0.71g/Fi2.1g/100g
.........19g 8.17 1.77 0.00 0.13 0.40
olive oil, 824cal/F91.6g/C,P&FI<0.1g/100mL
.........5ml 41.20 0.00 4.58 0.00 0.00
chilli flakes and garlic flakes 0.00
s&p 0.00
total 239.83 2.33 13.57 13.78 1.62

Method as before.

Oh, and I bought a new battery for the scales - I'm dreading what they might come up with tomorrow. If the 'pattern', such as it is, is followed I should be rid of another 0.8lbs by the morn. But, if the scales were telling porkies for the last few days, I might be in for a major disappointment. Or should I look on the bright side and anticipate a pleasant surprise?! FatDog

Oops, must have been so excited that I forgot to do my weigh-in log: one pound off, that's right a whole pound! That's a 3lb loss for the last five days. Grin.

Might not be sustainable in the longer term but it's doing the business just now, and my prosthetic knee is thanking me already - far less grumpy about walking and standing - I just wish the weight-loss would have the same effect on my sore back!

Edit: Oh, and please don't say it's the new battery in the scales

Saturday, day thirteen, feed day: remember that avocado? well that was dinner (okay, half for me and half for the OH) along with a huge salad including olives, feta cheese, tomato, onion and vinaigrette dressing (came to about 450 calories). Had to make 'carb space' for the avocado (12g carb for my 140g half!) by reducing the yoghurt in the 'transit regular' and, for the first time, noticed a slight bitterness in the brown linseeds.

Milky soya drink was to be enhanced by proper cocoa (Bournville, about 18 cals and half a carb for a flat teaspoon) but OH had the bright idea of adding linseeds as an alternative to adding to 'breakfast'. I made mine first (blitzed soya milk, cocoa, cinnamon, stevia and linseeds, then pinged to heat) - hmmm... don't think I'll do that again, too hair-shirt. OH wisely skipped the linseeds in his and had a nice cocoa...

School report for today:
....... Calories 1342.11 Carb 22.69 Fat 113.62 Protein 54.41 Fibre 19.66

I'm still doing the 'breakfast' and 'evening snack' as per the original plan (albeit with slight variations in the cheese / nut type), just in case you were wondering where the other calories were coming from!

Have gone slightly bats buying 'new' (to me - charity store) frocks two of which, Joe Brown and Gap, claim to be size 8s. Now, there is no way that I'm a size 8 - so has 'size inflation' become that bad?

Love your journey with this fat dog, sometimes I am not getting it but still love reading of your description of your experiences.

I wanted to comment too about the sizing being bigger as I had a similar experience and I was not sure f it way my still thinking no way I cannot be a small Or have they mucked around with the sizing. I wonder if that is happening as I have never gone anywhere but to XL size and often that was too small

Thank-you so much @gillymary ! I'm not 'whistling in the wind' after all

Sizing seems to be pretty bizarre these days - I know that M&S have gradually increased the inches in their sizes, I vaguely recollect that the idea is that a '12' (or is that a '14') should be the norm... and as the average has expanded so have they!

A few years back I went to Thailand, quite slim at the time (definitely a small near extra small in the UK) but the only sizes that fitted me over there were the XXXL! I was mortified (I doubt anything in Thailand would fit me just now). But one happy thing was that foot sizes were commensurately smaller and often the largest shoe size stocked was a 4 (37) - FatDog in heaven, I have a horrible time getting my size 3 ish (36) here but had no problem in Thailand

Awww... thank-you too @izzy!

I was sure that I had a good link about using the different flours but I can't find it for looking, humph.

In the various recipes that I've seen, almond meal is seen as 'the best' for many of them, followed by coconut flour, which seems to require more eggs???

I noticed that CBB uses soya flour in some of her recipes, but perhaps it's just to keep the cost down (e.g. the almond muffins need 225g soya as well as 150g almond, 375g would be a heck of a lot of almond meal)? RE does not appear to use it at all. Bread recipes using all soya flour don't seem to exist (as far I've found), 25% is the most I've seen.

Long story short: methinks you'd be fine using almond instead of soya flour, but you might need to bump up any eggs used if you go for coconut...

p.s. glad Doggins is good: will pm in due course FatDog

[Betsysgr8]

Not whistling in the wind at all @FatDog, been reading and learning with great interest.