Hi all, I’m 10 days in and looking for help and guidance! While weight-loss is a driver for me, one of my main reasons was to feel better and have more energy. I have no blood sugar issues (had all my bloods done before I started) The first week was great (with a very dodgy day on day 4), and a loss of 9lb at the end of the week, I still didn’t feel great in myself, but continued. I’m now at day 10 and today as been bad – not as bad as day 4, but I cannot see myself continuing for another 6 weeks feeling this bad. I work full time and need to have my wits about me, but at the moment I’m fuzzy, and honestly, exhausted most of the time. Today I fell back to sleep at 9.30 am and woke up at 2.15! any effort results in me getting the shakes and sweating – even minimal effort leaves me shattered, this wouldn’t happen pre starting on the 800 diet. I’m trying to analyse what I’m doing and wondering if I’m not eating enough fats? (years of having “low fat” ingrained in my brain I guess). Weighed myself today and only 1/2 a pound down since my 9lb loss, kinda disheartening as I have stuck to my 800 all week, plus I do keep on top of my 2lt+ of water per day (I count just plain water, and not herbal teas etc). I think my lack of knowledge of macros(??) and nutrients in each meal might be by downfall – I really don’t want to give up! Sorry for the long post, but I’m determined to be successful!!
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Hi Firefold – you are in the right place! A mine of helpful information. I am sorry you are feeling bad, you have had such a great start! I am sure others with more expertise will be along re macros/balance of nutrition etc. I wondered in passing whether you might have reduced your coffee intake in the last few days, if you used to drink quite a bit before? I understand caffeine withdrawal can make one feel very groggy until it passes. As you may have spotted from other posts, keeping salt levels up is also important. All the best and well done on the 9 1/1 lbs!
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Hi sixturkyes, thank you for your reply and thanks for the well done 🙂 ! I was a bit stunned on day 4 to see the 7lb, then when I got to 9.5LB I was equally surprised, when I think of the weeks and weeks in the past about how long to took at achieve that on fad diets!
I wasn’t a very heavy coffee drinker, but would defo have 2 a day, I was trying it with sweeteners – EUGH! awful – so I’ve decided to either have none, or have 1 with a single sugar (as I don’t have blood sugar issues), and guess sweeteners are probably a bad idea? I did read about the salt, so drank a glass of salted water, it seemed to help a little. I’m a lot better today thankfully – but I wonder why I am getting random days of such dreadful sickness, followed by a couple of okay days and then back to awful again. Trying to focus on “hidden carbs” – i.e. not the big hitters and seeing if I am consuming more than I think. Next weigh day is Wed, so hoping its a minus result and trying not to think about next Sat… as so far my Saturdays have strangely both been my rough days.. -
Hi Firefold.
Well done for the good start.
It’s very common for people to feel quite tired and generally not good at some point in the first couple of weeks (I think it would be helpful if the book explained that as it’s also common for people to then think the diet isn’t for them or that they’re going wrong somewhere). This doesn’t tend to last long so hopefully you’re almost through it. Once your body adjusts to the changes you’ll feel much better – not just compared to now, but also compared with how you felt before you started.
If you don’t feel better in a few days it might be worth seeing your doctor in case this is not caused by the diet.
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Hi Firefold. Congratulations on your fantastic first week results. Detoxing from carbs can take on a lot of different forms. I had no “carb flu” of any kind, while others were hit with terrible headaches, brain fog, joint aches, fatigue the first week, the second, for a few days or a couple of weeks. Your staccato bad days are unusual. I think you’re wise to focus on hidden carbs. They might be causing a sharp spike and collapse of blood glucose that make you feel miserable all of the sudden.
How are you recording your food intake? If you’re uncertain of your macros, it’s important that you make exact calculations of planned meals before you eat them. I use MyFitnessPal. Fat Secret is another popular app.
One last note: just because your blood glucose results are within the norm does not mean that you are free of any issues in that area. You could still be overproducing insulin and in fact it’s very likely that you are. Hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance is very widespread in overweight individuals and goes almost entirely ignored by the medical community even though it is a large part of the reason that many people find it virtually impossible to lose weight and keep it off on the low calorie, low fat, high carb diets that are the standard out there. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. If it’s high, you can’t burn your stored fat. I was hypersinulinemic and then insulin resistant for three decades, adding pounds steadily until I weighed 320+lb and yet, my blood glucose levels never crossed the line. It was only when I drastically cut carbs down to fewer than 20 grams a day, that I finally lost all that weight.
Welcome to the forum!
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Hi Esnecca, Hi Squidge – thanks so much for coming back to me. I read the book, cover to cover but I do feel it left some gaps in how to proceed, or some clear dos and don’ts.
I’m using myfitnesspal as I knew I’d need somewhere to keep track – I only have a basic version, it is work going premium I wonder? I set it for Carbs-20%, Protein and Fats at 40% – is that even the right thing to do?! I just checked the nutrients for today – darn you quinoa – its 9.2g of carbs!!! (I thought it was supposed to be okay, I’m sure I’d read that in the book) – annoyed about that – I’m at 24g of carbs now – mainly coming from quinoa and berries – I’ll be on dust til bedtime now!
Esnecca – that is wild about Hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance, I guess I’ve very ignorant to that – I was more concerned about T2 as my brother was diagnosed a new years back, no other history in the family, but his diet was atrocious – serious sugar fiend, but he has reversed it by diet alone. There is so much to learn, and its so easy to eat the wrong things – I was tracking as I went, but think tracking before I start is my new mantra! -
I think the book deliberately avoids macros, is loosey-goosey on calorie counts and eschews carb counts altogether because it’s trying to make such a radical dietary change seem less intimidating to readers considering embarking on the BSD. It also includes some slow-burning carbohydrates like chickpeas and high-sugar vegetables like beets which can cause an insulin reaction. The portions are very small and spread out over several weeks these recipes are probably fine for a lot of people, but not for everyone. I can’t eat beets period, for example, much to my dismay because I adore beets. I used to make a roasted golden, Chioggia and oxblood beet carpaccio with arugula, capers, shallots and lemon juice that was out of this world and so beautiful to look at, a veritable jewel box of a meal. Some people get wistful about cake; I get wistful about roasted beet carpaccio. 😀
But I digress. My percentages are 10% carb, 65% fat and 25% protein (20g carb, 58g fat, 50g protein), but you don’t necessarily have to go as low as I did on carbohydrates. It varies by the individual. A good rule of thumb to get into a fat-burning state (ketosis) is 50 grams or lower a day. Try setting your protein levels first. You want .5-1 grams per kilo of target weight, depending on how much you work out. Unless you’re doing a lot of muscle building exercise, you don’t need a lot of protein. Set the carbs as low as you feel comfortable with and fill in the rest with healthy fats (grass-fed meat especially ruminants, oily fish, nuts, olive oil).
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Hi Firefold,
I suffered like you from time to time during the 10 weeks I was sticking to the 800. My macros were set at 40 carbs, 50 protein and 50g of fat. I used the 40g of carbs as a maximum and was generally around 30g. I
I lost 12 kg during this time and felt like you’re feeling during the first week and then again on and off for a few other days. The rest of the time I had lots more energy and felt bouncy. I’m not sure but think my feelings of extreme exhaustion seemed to follow days where I had been very low carb (10g) and eaten under the 800 cals. 10 weeks wasn’t really long enough for me to really get to the root cause.
I’m in maintenance now and have started introducing short fasts of between 24 and 40 hours. I feel great whilst I’m fasting and terrible the day after. Still trying to work out why that is.
Anyway the point I’m trying to make is, we’re all different and you need learn from what your body’s telling you. What we’re your macros like yesterday, are you sure you had enough salt and water or we’re you exercising a lot or really busy?
I’m sure by adjusting something you’ll feel better. You’ve made a really good start. -
Hi Esnecca – wistful about carpaccio, that did give me a laugh! 🙂 but I get it – I actually dreamt about gorging on pringles the other night! and I’m Irish and I tell you – the craving for chip (fries) from the chip shop will defo by on my wistful list! 🙂
I think I might struggle on the 10% carbs, I’m at 19 already – I’m getting some real lessons here on food – 4.5g in berries, I mean what is that about – every time I think a food is healthy and good to eat, I get stunned by the grams in my app!
I’ll try to work out the protein allowance based on what you said above and see where I am, I think I’m really still battling with the ingrained “don’t eat fatty foods” mentality of old. So I’m trying to compile a cheat sheet of goods fats to my daily routine.
Thanks so much for your help and guidance – its great! -
Hi, Skipping through the tulips ( v fun username!)
While I’m sorry to hear of your early on suffering, it does give me hope that how I’m feeling is somewhat normal – since Saturday, I’m feeling a good bit better, but that’s happened before and then boom – a really awful day appears out of nowhere!
huge well done on 12kg though – that’s fantastic.
I am keeping a diary of what I eat, and how I am feeling to try and see a pattern – I try to finish eating (bar water / herbal tea) by 8pm and don’t break it for about 12-13 hours – that’s the most I can manage so far.
Tomorrow is weigh day for me (I do it twice a week) so I’ll see how I go. I’ve not done a huge amt of exercise since I started – planned at start of week 2, but I’d no energy, so my plan is from end of week 2 instead.
I’m still fuddled with macros – do you mean just the breakdown of fat/protein/carb at a high level, like 20/40/40 for e.g? -
Hi,
First of all it would be better to set up on absolutes with grams of carbs and protein rather than percentages. So – 20g of carbs rather than 20%. – The reason I say 20g is that most research suggests that even someone who is insulin resistant will be in fat burning mode (ketosis) on 20g.I had some days when I felt foggy, at the start of my journey, but once I started to supplement salt in my diet they eased. – Now as the others say, the days when I feel rough are when I have eaten something high carb. – Particularly if it was a physically inactive day.
You are asking your body to switch over from one fuel source Sugar to another Fat. That involves changes to all sort of mechanisms within the body. – Think of it like one of the old manual levers to change railway tracks, if it hasn’t been used for a long time it will have rusted and take a lot of effort to work. But with each use it will get easier. If you have been eating a high carb diet for a while the body has got out of being able to switch readily from one fuel source to another. – Stick with it and this stage will pass.
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Hi JGwen .. . what a BEAUTIFUL analogy you drew here . . . the rusted lever of change/pattern and habit. And reading here . . . it is interesting how many stages – and DIFFERENT stages and experiences at differing times, we all have along the way . . . for instance . . . in the past week I have had some massive speed-humps answered, navigated and sorted – and this week . . . I have seen the scales showing around 3lb gain. WITH NO DIFFERENCE IN FOOD CHOICES OR INTAKE!!!??? That causes me to assess is it an EMOTIONAL stage which it would seem – can/could over-ride even the best of intentions . . . OR is it the MASSIVE chilly, windy change in the weather here . . . downunder in my particular neck of the woods where there has been a couple of days Ive eaten three times as opposed to my usual 2 and even sometimes once? 🙂 OR is it a combination of both? Im doing my darndest to be positive about this (seeming) backward step . . . and focus on the clothing discard for solace that THAT was the size I am and now this IS . . . the size 14 jeans which had me looking sideways in the mirror on the shopping mall yesterday . . .(VANITY PLUS at the fore!!!)
In 36 days I have my first anniversary – and the overall picture has been studied on depth . . . Sure there have been some downers . . . but in the main . . ? when they were explained, greeted with suggestions, sympathy and understanding . . . or investigated with the good grace and helpfulness of this forum 🙂 . . . were minor blimps on an amazing horizon I now seeing as I climb towards the top of this 1 year hill 🙂 In around 10 weeks, Ill be receiving a letter which needs a Docto’s certificate to clear me to keep driving – (Im 75 in September and in Aus we HAVE to do this!!!) – so my focus MUST be stay calm, accept and believe in what Im eating . . . (which has lowered by HbA1c to a healthy acceptable level. . . . because stress will raise BSL’s . . . AND could create a REAL ISSUE for me – one of mobility and independence due to my location 🙂 Quack Quack and fond thoughts to all with (any kind of) distraction defining their days right now . . . Patience is a virtue of we can find enough of it 🙂 -
Hi Woodduckie, you raise an interesting question. We do know that stress hormones effect how our body responds to food. But there is also the question on the natural cycle of our bodies preparing for winter which will involve longer periods with less daylight, so less activity and colder temperatures.
One thing is for sure, unless you ate 3500 calories x 3 more than you burnt that 3 lbs is not going to be 3lbs of fat.
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Wow JGwen Thank you for that analogy 🙂 I definitely didnt change anything in the shopping or the menu so Im buoyed by your 3500 calories comparison/explanation 🙂 In fact, in recent weeks, I have occasionally needed to boost my protein portions – (not over the top just a little more) – as quantity and content hasnt been sufficiently fufilling – and therefore – the snacking monster had begun waving from the kitchen . . . 10 points to Duckie for recognising “it” even in disguise! I had also been to a Big Morning Tea for the Cancer Council fundraising day . . . and f0und SOME of the offerings on the table tempting . . . Thats MOST unlike me now . . . and so . . . this new “testing” glitch isnt surprising . . . just think it has been sent as a challenge to see just how committed I am 🙂 The fragile human can obviously be tested at any time 🙂 Thank you for your comment/response which I truly appreciate 🙂 Im creating diversions to keep me busy – more than usual 🙂 and KNOWING this too will pass – Im just hoping SOON!!!!! Quack Quack!