Quote:
Originally Posted by Yakumo
Hmmm. That was a seriously helpful post, Itsthewoo. Yeah, initially I was not starving myself, I was just doing regular Atkins. But I found that I needed to eat less and less to feel as good. Now, I find it near impossible to stay in ketosis without severely undereating. But I don't think I should be in ketosis anyway if I want to rebuild. So I agree that 90% of my current metabolic problems come from starving myself, the rest from candida and my liver issues and being so underweight. I do, however, still have IR. The trouble is that it comes back so quickly (high insulin) even if I avoid carbs. I think it's because insulin is such an anabolic, rebuilding hormone and my body kinda needs relatively high insulin to repair itself. That Schwarzbein woman seems to think along these lines. In fact, after reading about it, it seems high insulin is part of the body's natural repair/rebuild mechanism after you've had some kind of serious illness or infection and I still have an infection. So maybe you're right and I should just eat and not be so afraid of it. The trouble is that eating makes me feel like rubbish (tired all the time, fall asleep after meals, or hungry all the time or hyper or jittery or something) while undereating makes me feel so good. I definitely do better LC than HC. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat HC again (What a bummer. Going to miss those doughnuts). I was IR and struggled with carbs and blood sugar (mostly hypoglycaemic) long before I ever went on LC or started to undereat. Only weight training helped the situation. But back then I weighed 198lb and could eat a whole lot more and never passed out after meals.
|
Glad to see we are agreeing that starvation is probably the major reason you are so FUBAR with food and health. Many of your symptoms correlate to recovering from starvation. It's not fun or easy.
Out of curosity have you had all these conditions verified by medical doctors and blood tests? To be as IR as you are it is highly abnormal to have no present weight problem (or history of excessive eating and obesity). IR correlates with obesity mainly because eating a lot of carbs (food) and gaining weight does things to our metabolisms that cause it. It's a
lifestyle disease with strong genetic
predisposition. In other words, IR shows up when we cause it after a long history of really crap eating habits. It's really really really rare for someone who is both thin and young to be super insulin resistant like you are.
I would like to point out that many symptoms of IR - such as hypoglycemia for example - may actually stem from another condition unrelated to classic metabolic syndrome (which is more a consequence of american/western diet & obesity). Hypoglycemia is caused by a relative deficiency in adrenal hormones, it alone is NOT necessarily indicative of metabolic syndrome. The source of this "deficiency" is often assumed to be hyperinsulinemia as a consequence of insulin resistance & too much glucose food (the high insulin makes it impossible for competing adrenal hormones to function and "overrule" the insulin level). Other disorders completely unrelated to IR and hyperinsulinemia may be the reason a person is hypoglycemic.
Saying you have IR because you have hypoglycemia is like saying you have IR because you have hyperglycemia; usually it's true (only because metabolic syndrome is so sadly common due to our lifestyles and diets). However, there are a whole population of hyperglycemics who have no metabolic syndrome at all! They are the type 1 diabetics - they don't have too MUCH insulin but too little due to autoimmune disease.
So you see the danger in diagnosing yourself with conditions based on symptoms alone?
Just trying to give you some food for thought.
If there really is a serious disease(s) at the end of all your starvation behavior, do NOT assume you know what it is based on symptoms alone. It's not that I'm against self diagnosis. Sometimes we can self diagnose. I diagnosed my IR (and reactive hypoglycemia and PCOS) for many years before actually having a doctor tell me a few months ago. It was funny hearing a doctor tell me I was glucose intolerant and had reactive hypoglycemia, as if he were explaining it to a patient with zero understanding of the conditions.
However in my case my symptoms were so numerous, classic, and extreme, plus I had blood tests to support me, that it really was a no-brainer. I had the works. Plus my case responded very well and rapidly to treatment (LC diet & weight loss) which further reinforced my diagnosis.
In your case, your symptoms are sketchy and often contradictory, are not responding to typical treatments (LC is making your IR worse? Say what?) and as far as I understand they are not supported at all with any kind of labwork. Plus you have been starving yourself for a fairly long time, are presently underweight, and we all know that sort of behavior will cause many of the problems you are struggling with. So in your case, I do not think it is appropriate to go on self diagnosis at all, and if I were you, I would see doctor(s) to assist me in finding out the root of my problems.
BTW you should also be very honest with your doctors - that is, disclose the true nature of your eating habits and weight - it woudl do neither of you good for them to "chase a phantom" when it may very well be EXCLUSIVELY a problem of self starvation & abnormal eating patterns.
Quote:
The thing is, if I start eating above about 30 or 40g of carbs a day OR if I start eating meals high in sat fat, or any sort of reasonable sized meals, then my appetite quickly increases seemingly without bound.
It's exacerbated by the fact that often if I eat a normal-sized meal (e.g. last night I went out and had a hamburger patty with some low-carb veg), I can't digest it well, but my insulin seems to go up anyway and I end up just feeling more hungry instead of more satisfied. So it can get to the point where I feel like I'm STARVING and I could eat a whole buffet sort of thing. But if I ever give into my hunger (even if I avoid carbs), I end up feeling like rubbish. It's really, really, really difficult to control. What I find is that I can keep it on a cyclic basis. I eat progressively more and more as my appetite increases, then it gets too great so through force of will I go back to a mini-fast and sort of reset it.
|
This is
completely normal.
It might help you out to read some anorexia recovery literature, because it would seriously demystify what's happening to you.
Starving initially suppresses appetite. You can't tolerate more than very small bits of food.
Once you take those first few bites, watch OUT. You become insatiable.
Then you may be sated and stuffed a bit after your binge. You want to doze off and feel as if you've been hit by a truck energy wise.
However, the hunger is still there, and is in fact more intense than it was before. The only solace from this is the overnight fast where your body again gets the wretched stuff out of its body, insulin is back low, body is back burning it's tissues for sustinance.
Sound familiar?
I went through this once i started gaining weight. I would literally lose control and just binge out on meats and feel like death. Go read back my old posts and journal from a few weeks ago (I gained about 5-10 pounds in 3 months). I thought my body turned too much protein into sugar.
Now I know it was a part of the weight regain process. Now I no longer feel like that. Eating meat doesn't do that to me anymore, normal sized meals do not phase me, big meals barely do at all either (bad news for my weight
). In fact, I can even eat big meals
with carbs and not experience as dramatically those symptoms (yes carbs still knock me out but not like they did in the very begining).
It's all part of the underweight & drastic under eating.
Your body is FUBAR right now. You just gotta keep eating and gain weight and eventually your metabolism will adapt. Keep on controlling carbs
reasonably (don't go and eat no carbs or anything stupid) and you'll be okay.
Quote:
I just don't know what or how to eat. Just about any food seems to either increase my appetite too much, or make me feel sick. Unless I eat really low calorie "non" food like broccoli and stuff and lots of oils. But eventually if I do that I end up starving again.
|
It's not eating broccoli, it's NOT EATING FOOD that makes you feel good. Not eating makes you feel good because you've ruined your body by adapting it to starvation.
Don't consider your broccoli diet a diet, because it's not, it's starvation. Even Melissa DeHart the famous anorexic eats beans and a bunch of equal packets (which have trace calories) - she got down to 58 pounds that way.
It would help you to think of it in clinical terms like this.
If you continue to starve on your broccoli and beans diet, you will only get worse. You will continue the starvation cycle that makes your body not able to tolerate food.
If you start to eat, you will feel discomfort initially. You will experience losses of control with food, and at times paradoxically eating more will make you hungrier and more tired. This is part of the process. Like batspit said: your body WANTS you to be that way so it can more effectively rebuild its lost tissues. It's not a stupid body, it knows what it's doing.
Quote:
Perhaps I'll keep trying the homo optimus diet. It made me feel really good, except that I was hungry a lot. And it was quite weird how I could eat 100g of double cream just before bed and yet my weight was not increasing. Kind of fun as diets go, but I'd rather eat a nice bowl of butternut and sweet potato over a pork loin-chop anyday.
|
Whatever diet you do just make sure it's reasonably low in bad carbs like sugar and too many starches (if you have IR) and sufficient in cals. That's what is most important.
Quote:
Anyway, I get what you're saying. So do you think my insulin and energy will really stop going ballistic eventually if I just continue to eat?
|
Yes
Quote:
I do think I should throw a bit more carbs back in too though. Non-starchy variety, but I think I should shoot for at least 50g-100g a day (though I don't really count).
|
I agree, this will also help speed your recovery. Carbs help you grow tissues. Problem for your average fat american? Heck yes. Problem for an emaciated man? Heck no, it's what you want, it will help. Just make sure you get plenty of protein and fat, too, as these are even MORE essential than carbs for rebuilding your tissues.
Quote:
Perhaps you could email me and we could discuss this. U sound like you've had some experience. you can get me at dirk.coetsee~accenture.com
|
Sure I will send this reply to your email
If you ever need to ask me any questions feel free to drop them in my journal, or you can email me at withthelightsout00~yahoo.com
Quote:
The thing is, like I said, eating is not my only problem. Liver, hormones, adrenals, candida, some sort of viral infection, hashimoto's. My body is really, really unhappy. But I think that undereating allowed a lot of these problems to creep in. Drat.
|
If these problems came AFTER starvation it's likely they did.
Carbs are actually a very common impetus for anorexia.
Then of course the anorexia makes you way sicker than you were, and so you starve more to feel better, and it's just a vicious cycle. The only way to stop it is to eat and control carbs.
Quote:
So anorexia causes IR? What a bummer. And to think I used to undereat to try and REVERSE my IR.
|
Well under eating DOES help improve IR. However if you are starving to the point where you are in this adrenal-hormone environment from all the physiological (and psychological) stress of wasting essential tissues and barely getting basic nutrition (TRUE prolonged starvation, not occasional restriction to lose excessweight)... then yea, it will also cause it.
Quote:
Wish my doctor had said something instead of just giving me HRT.
|
General practicioners are pill dispensors who know what to do for what symptoms. Really. You usually have to go to a specialist and a good one to get any kind of meaningful help.
Quote:
Anyway, I'd appreciate any more advice you guys can give. I still think that I should not eat too much sat fat since in published literature it seems to worsen IR while mono-unsat fat seems to make it better.
|
I disagree completely. In fact my metabolism is best (that is I can tell it is most balanced by hunger levels, energy, and ease of entering ketosis) when I'm eating relatively more animal fats like eggs. As you can see from my bloodwork I am only healthier after doing this.
Quote:
But I do need some and no amount of olive oil can satisfy appetite like animal fat. Also, I have read a good study that said that eating a LC diet with lots of protein and fat also caused IR. So I need to avoid eating too much protein also. And I need to get out of ketosis. What a mission...
|
Beware of anti-LC studies; most are funded by industry with vested interests.
You would be well served to peruse our media forum. You would be surprised how extensive the distorting of facts; the layperson will get sucked in totally unless he's digging deep.
I hope some of this helps you out...
Bottom line, if you take nothing else from my post, you need to start eating food. This alone will fix most of your health problems.