OP
whodathunkit
Member
- Joined
- May 6, 2016
- Messages
- 777
@KellyP, your story sounds oh-so-familiar. Big stress load and poor eating/lifestyle choices leading to "sudden" metabolic crack-up. But it wasn't really sudden...you just reached critical mass.
My understanding is that fast unexplained weight gain is actually a hallmark of the beginning of CFS. And that sounds like classic PEM you got. Not to say you have CFS...there are a whole other bunch of symptoms that go with it. But having those two symptoms are a pretty good indication of serious metabolic dysfunction even without being able to call it some syndrome.
But not to worry. You can fix it. Especially at this point, with as young as you are and as proactive as you're being. But even if you were my age, you could still do it. Might take a little more work, but absolutely fixable. I didn't start really healing until I was 49, and that was three years ago. And I'm not done yet. So far, things just keep getting better. Now if I can just find a food or supplement that completely reverses the effects of gravity...
Seriously, if you put in the work you will get results. I'd bet my 401K on it. :)
Best thing I can tell you right now is to stick hard and fast to very low fat/high carb Peat (VLF/HCP). From my more experienced perspective I advise not calorie restricting too much right now. Don't get distracted by the weight loss angle. You'll probably lose weight just from dumping PUFA and eliminating fat, and you need energy to heal. You have to overcome the cravings somehow before you can attempt calorie restriction successfully. Nutrition and energy are the path to overcoming cravings.
VLF/HC at will bring your blood sugar down FAST which will in turn give you motivation to continue. However, be aware that you might plateau with glucose readings for a while. Blood sugar derangement is mostly about fat in the liver and if your liver is carrying a lot of fat it might take time for it to clear.
Also, if you are obsessive about taking post prandials, be aware you may get some scary spikes (like your 201). That's to be expected and is not a bad thing. My post pran spikes are coming down, too. For example, the other day to test my tolerance to fructose rather than starch, I drank a bunch of grape juice on an empty stomach and then checked sugar at the half hour, hour and 2 hour. Half hour was 156, hour was 145, and 2 hour was 106. That 2 hour was better than after most mixed-macronutrient meals I eat. So were the other readings, for that matter.
So at this point, for people like us, it's not really about the spike, it's what does our body does with the sugar load over time. I advise you to skip the post pran readings for about a month. That will save on strips and cause you less anxiety. Plus, if you can stick tightly to VLF/HCP and no PUFA, you will probably get a very pleasant surprise next time you check your post prans.
Also, try not to obsess too much over daily fluctuations in any of your stats. We keep track so we can spot trends over time, not to beat ourselves up about stuff every day.
I'm not going to weigh myself every day, for example...I only weighed these three days in a row to see what would happen on the scale with VLF/HCP vs. what happened when I was doing VLF/calorie-controlled starch. Now I know, so I'm not going to torture myself every day. I'm only going to weigh once per week, every few days at the most. For all the moaning about needing to lose weight fast, this is *really* about losing weight fast while at the same time trying to stay as healthy as possible. I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of my metabolism to the almighty scale, but not *that* much. Since you need to make progress in feeling better, you're probably better off just concentrating on healthy.
I'm also going to use other measures to gauge progress, like how certain jeans fit. Best not to torture yourself with that every day, either, but since we don't care if we weigh 200lbs as long as we can get into our target jeans, that's probably a better, healthier marker than the scale.
My understanding is that fast unexplained weight gain is actually a hallmark of the beginning of CFS. And that sounds like classic PEM you got. Not to say you have CFS...there are a whole other bunch of symptoms that go with it. But having those two symptoms are a pretty good indication of serious metabolic dysfunction even without being able to call it some syndrome.
But not to worry. You can fix it. Especially at this point, with as young as you are and as proactive as you're being. But even if you were my age, you could still do it. Might take a little more work, but absolutely fixable. I didn't start really healing until I was 49, and that was three years ago. And I'm not done yet. So far, things just keep getting better. Now if I can just find a food or supplement that completely reverses the effects of gravity...
Seriously, if you put in the work you will get results. I'd bet my 401K on it. :)
Best thing I can tell you right now is to stick hard and fast to very low fat/high carb Peat (VLF/HCP). From my more experienced perspective I advise not calorie restricting too much right now. Don't get distracted by the weight loss angle. You'll probably lose weight just from dumping PUFA and eliminating fat, and you need energy to heal. You have to overcome the cravings somehow before you can attempt calorie restriction successfully. Nutrition and energy are the path to overcoming cravings.
VLF/HC at will bring your blood sugar down FAST which will in turn give you motivation to continue. However, be aware that you might plateau with glucose readings for a while. Blood sugar derangement is mostly about fat in the liver and if your liver is carrying a lot of fat it might take time for it to clear.
Also, if you are obsessive about taking post prandials, be aware you may get some scary spikes (like your 201). That's to be expected and is not a bad thing. My post pran spikes are coming down, too. For example, the other day to test my tolerance to fructose rather than starch, I drank a bunch of grape juice on an empty stomach and then checked sugar at the half hour, hour and 2 hour. Half hour was 156, hour was 145, and 2 hour was 106. That 2 hour was better than after most mixed-macronutrient meals I eat. So were the other readings, for that matter.
So at this point, for people like us, it's not really about the spike, it's what does our body does with the sugar load over time. I advise you to skip the post pran readings for about a month. That will save on strips and cause you less anxiety. Plus, if you can stick tightly to VLF/HCP and no PUFA, you will probably get a very pleasant surprise next time you check your post prans.
Also, try not to obsess too much over daily fluctuations in any of your stats. We keep track so we can spot trends over time, not to beat ourselves up about stuff every day.
I'm not going to weigh myself every day, for example...I only weighed these three days in a row to see what would happen on the scale with VLF/HCP vs. what happened when I was doing VLF/calorie-controlled starch. Now I know, so I'm not going to torture myself every day. I'm only going to weigh once per week, every few days at the most. For all the moaning about needing to lose weight fast, this is *really* about losing weight fast while at the same time trying to stay as healthy as possible. I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of my metabolism to the almighty scale, but not *that* much. Since you need to make progress in feeling better, you're probably better off just concentrating on healthy.I'm also going to use other measures to gauge progress, like how certain jeans fit. Best not to torture yourself with that every day, either, but since we don't care if we weigh 200lbs as long as we can get into our target jeans, that's probably a better, healthier marker than the scale.
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....that poor girl read through My Ode To Ignorance in its entirety....eeegads.
