ANXIETY IS AFFECTING MY new diet

[mz_rachel]

Hello friends, so my cousin and I are doing the no carb no sugar for 10 days challenge. She is ahead by 2 days and I’m on my 4th day. I feel sluggish and tired and my anxiety is affecting me bc I feel empty and just something I’m not used to feeling and it’s giving me more anxiety- I’m doing the dirty keto diet and haven’t done any exercises bc I’m still figuring out this hurdle. Anyone going through this? I’ve done diets before and of course they never lasted. Any advice?

[Hidden]

Those are extreme diets and are known to cause distress as your body adjusts. The keto diet will make you feel flu-ish. With anxiety I wouldn't disrupt my system so much. This kind of diet is hard to sustain and really is not healthy. Why not try everything in moderation and portion control? Fats and carbs are both necessary for a healthy body. Also easier to sustain.

[mz_rachel in reply to Hidden]

Thank you for replying. I’ve actually done it before with no problem but this time is just feels different. Yeah it’s a sudden drastic change and I’m distressed. And I put so much thought into things- yeah I’m definitely an over eater and moderation never really worked but I could try to transition my diet before getting cold turkey. Which I’m at right now. =\

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

You really should't be feeling this bad. The critical point is that you must (a) eat more fat and (b) eat more generally.

When you stop eating carbs, the only remaining energy source your body has available is fat. Initially it will be unable to access your body's own fat stores - this takes time to kick in after years of high-carb food - so the fat needs to come from your food initially. You should be adding butter and oils to your food at every opportunity (eg., mayonnaise-based salad dressings) and choosing oily vegetables, full-fat dairy (cheese, cream), eggs, and fatty cuts of meat.

Most people have no idea what a proper portion of food looks like because it's been drilled into our heads that we have to "eat less". This is fundamentally incorrect: you should be eating what your body asks for, while ensuring that it's not asking for too much (and not asking for the wrong things). The main aim of a low-carb diet is to correct your appetite. So eat until you're full. You'll find that, as your body figures out that there's some unused bodyfat available, your appetite will drop. As your bodyfat is consumed (a few weeks from now) it will start to rise again. That's your "maintenance" point. You'll be able to re-introduce some carbs later, too.

You might want to join the LCHF group - there are a lot of people there who have been there, done that.

[mz_rachel in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thank you very much for your reply! Means a lot. Very very informative and will join the other group as well. All for the name of being healthy right! I just don’t wanna be on medications anymore. I’m willing to try anything!

[TheAwfulToad Visitor in reply to mz_rachel]

There are any number of stories from people who have found low-carb diets make them feel healthier than they have in years.

There's a lot of mainstream misunderstanding of low carb (much of it deliberate). It's not no carb; it's just that the traditional diet contains far too many carbs. It might be more accurate to describe this way of eating as "balanced carbs" and the fattening, diabetes-inducing version as "high carb".

Oh -- also, add salt to taste, and try a bowl of beef broth daily. These help maintain electrolyte balance during the switchover.

[mz_rachel in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Yeah low carb is doable and we do need them. I just suck at picking the good ones out of the bad ones. But I know I won’t deprive myself from having things I enjoy. Just in moderation and in due time. If I only had a balanced lifestyle we’d be good but it’s life. Yeah my salt intake is pretty bad bc I NEED everything with taste so I gotta control that a bit and broth sounds good to add on!

[TheAwfulToad Visitor in reply to mz_rachel]

I meant don't reduce your salt. Add it liberally if you feel the need. Listen to your body. This is merely an adjustment period, so your food will look slightly odd for the next couple of weeks: you do have to completely eliminate carbs to begin with and replace them will dietary fat.

After that, your body's natural control systems will take over the reins and you'll find that your salt reaches a natural, correct level for your needs, as will your carbs and fat. You will lose your desire to put lots of carbs on the plate; basically, your tastes will change. You won't need to manually fiddle with any of it or exercise endless "self-control". It's very liberating!

If adding more fat and salt doesn't help, you might be able to wind your carbs down slowly - some people do it this way - but it's often more painful because your body kicks back (it demands more carbs). It varies from person to person.

[mz_rachel in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Yeah no I plan on using salt still lol. Are you one of the life coaches on here? Yeah everything is still all new again and it doesn’t mix well when you have an anxiety disorder as well. It’s gets to be a little much.

[TheAwfulToad Visitor in reply to mz_rachel]

Hang in there! You might need to experiment a bit, but once you get it right, you'll find diet becomes one less thing to become anxious about

Nah, not a life coach, but I've been where you are now! Don't worry, it does get easier.

[BridgeGirl Administrator 2 stone]

Good morning, mz_rachel, and welcome to the forum 😊

The best information on your specific query would be from TheAwfulToad and I see that has already come your way. Do follow up on that advice and join the LCHF forum healthunlocked.com/lchf-diet

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[CLARAmay]

Hi my-Rachel, I know I need to be on your road, you are succeeding as you have recognised you have a problem and that’s no 1, most people blame everything else but them selves I say god on you, keep in touch I need to lose weight and maybe we can airport each other through this journey.

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

Hidden : I'd say there are three good reasons for taking the scenic route.

The most important is that most people cannot adjust to a moderate-carb diet. It's too unpleasant. For the average Westerner, insulin resistance has progressed so far that fat-burning is incredibly inefficient, so when their bodies have burned through whatever (limited) carbs are available, it'll aggressively demand more of them. It will incorrectly store the fat content because (as you explained) that's the biochemical imperative of high circulating insulin, so its only option is more carbs. This is, incidentally, why ultra-low-calorie carb-based diabetes interventions don't work as reliably as higher-carb keto diets.

The second is to make sure keto-adaptation doesn't take weeks. If you drop carbs to the lowest practical level, you're presenting your body with a tough choice: (a) get keto-adapted or (b) die. It takes the former route, and it does it real fast, with very little fuss, for obvious reasons. You're generally burning ketones and fatty acids for fuel within 48 hours, and the adjustment is complete within a week or so. If you just wind your carbs down, and you can ride out the cravings, you will certainly adapt to the lower-carb regime ... eventually. How well it works depends a lot on how insulin-resistant you were to begin with, and perhaps on psychological factors. I know there are a couple of posters here who have done exactly that (you included, I guess?). But for many, it's not optimal.

The third is more philosophical. We've been told for so long that "glucose is the body's main source of energy" that most people instinctively believe it to be true. In that context, bodyfat is simply dead weight. We've forgotten what it's for: it's actually our primary backup power system. Going low-carb proves to yourself at a visceral level that dietary carbs are not a critical macronutrient. Watching your bodyfat firing on all cylinders - delivering power at the same rate as a carb-heavy meal - brings home what it's capable of. You start to realise that bodyfat is your friend, doing an important job, not a parasitic twin. Even if you understand the science, actually doing it is an interesting experience.

All low-carb diets end up with a moderate carb content after the keto phase, and your body will find its own level. While it might seem odd to go ultra-low-carb merely to end up at a moderate-carb position, it's guaranteed to work smoothly if you do it that way.

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

I guess the key phrase here is "some people". I'm sure some have vagaries in their fat metabolism in the same way some people have issues with carbohydrate metabolism. I won't suggest that your experience isn't real, but I will say it's rather unusual. Atkins successfully took thousands of patients through this process; if it hadn't worked, I'm pretty sure he would have tweaked it so that it did.

I've read a lot of Volek and Phinney's research, and nowhere have I seen them assert that keto-adaptation takes months. If you're referring to peak performance for athletes, yes, that takes months. But getting 70% of the way takes literally a couple of days. If it didn't, you'd die, wouldn't you? If you drop carbs to 25g/day, your body has nowhere else to get energy except glycogen and fat (dietary fat in the first instance). Glycogen will be gone in a matter of hours. Therefore the main source of energy around day 2 must be fatty acids/ketones, and synthesized glucose.

I train at 14-15 METs for several minutes at a time. I lift heavy. My 'keto' adaptation was so rapid and painless I thought I must have done something wrong. But no, according to the test strips I was excreting ketones. The only strange experience I had - which I think I mentioned before - was "running out of steam" on a fast sprint. However that's never happened since. In fact I find my cardio endurance is much enhanced compared to my glucose-fuelled former life.

Again, that doesn't negate other peoples' experiences. I know one person who took nearly two weeks to get over the "keto flu", but like everyone else she just woke up one day feeling full of beans. I don't doubt that for some people, the slow-and-steady approach works better. I'm simply suggesting that cold turkey is the approach that works most reliably, and if for certain individuals it doesn't, well, they can try the other way and see how that pans out; no harm done.

And just to be clear: I'm not suggesting that deep keto is to be sustained. It's a means of forcing very rapid adaptation to a fat-based diet. I'm not one of those people who thinks that we should all be 'keto', all the time. Apart from anything else, it makes everyday life very complicated if you have to avoid carbs. Most people ain't got time for that.

I wonder if perhaps the experience you describe is related to adipocyte count? Since the release of energy from stored fat is achieved in a massively-parallel fashion, perhaps people with fewer fat cells have a lower ceiling on peak power.

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

>> Fat cannot be burned in the absence of oxygen.

True, but under most circumstances this is of little consequence. A body can operate anaerobically only for very short time periods, and it only needs to do so at the extreme limits of its power output. The "running out of steam" thing took me by complete surprise because I didn't feel in any way compromised during normal activities (it was a long time ago, but I was, I think, just a few weeks out of keto induction).

At 14METs I'm certain I'm aerobic and fat-fuelled. I can feel that I'm oxygen-limited. There is no lactate burn; I just can't get oxygen in fast enough, and my body seems to know this and doesn't attempt to go anaerobic. An average person doing average things wouldn't even care about this sort of esoteric effect.

>> I think one of the factors you may be relying on is gluconeogenesis from protein

I doubt it. My protein intake is moderate; about 1g/kg. Since I train heavily, most of that is surely being used for cellular repair. At 70g/day protein turnover, I only have about 150kCal worth of glucogenic amino acids available.

Remember one-quarter of a triglyceride molecule is glycerol, so your body has a plentiful supply of glucose (the conversion of glycerol to glucose is a fairly lightweight process) even in the absence of dietary carbohydrate.

There's definitely something a bit odd going on with your internals I wouldn't like to speculate as to what it is, but your experience is at odds with many fat-fuelled athletes (have a look at Peter Attia's blog).

[Hidden]

Oh sorry to hear

I just find just healthy eating is best way, everything in moderation

This leaving out and fasting would leave me feeling more anxious !! but that's just me

Life is for living and not being too analytical

Too many of these replies on this post are too scientific for me 🙁