Next up… Ketosis!…or not…

I started “dieting” when I was 22 with calorie restriction. I successfully lost 50 pounds then and developed an eating disorder that would haunt me indefinitely. While my weight would only severely yo-yo due to creating tiny humans, in the following years, I have tried probably every diet out there.

I have done:

• Calorie restriction
• Caloric density
• Intuitive eating
• Inner clean/detox
• Juicing/smoothies
• Hormone balancing
• Whole30
• Low glycemic
• Gluten free
• Low carb
• Low FODMAP
• Metabolic profile
• Intermittent fasting
• Fast mimicking
• Healthy/balanced eating

At the end of that all, I had seemed to settled happily on intermittent fasting. I was finally happy and stable for the first time since before I had started to think about these things. Then last year, something happened to my body amidst medication changes, and it never really came back to itself. So it was back to trying (and failing) at all the things.

Nothing has worked, which has left me with one final thing to try (at the direction of my doctor). One thing that I have avoided for all my years of dieting: ketosis.

I have avoided ketosis for multiple reasons. Yes, it is a strict eating regiment. I can do strict. The simplest excuse is that I love fruit, and after giving up so many different foods on so many different diets (cheese for fuck’s sake), I had no intention of relenting my last grip on fruit.

Also, everyone I have personally seen on ketosis does lose weight very well… then gains it right back. Over and over again. I do not need a temporary fix. I need the answer that intermittent fasting was before whatever the hell happened happened.

However, it is what the doctor recommended, so I went into it with the intention of giving it the full attempt for three months. And since I was going to be in it, I might as well report how it.

Month 1: Fuck This

With all the various diets and restrictions I have tried in the past year, so many of the foods included in keto have been off limits. I was excited to eat cheese and bacon and FAT again. This excitement lasted a day, maybe two. Until I actually ate all the fat.

While delicious to eat all the fat (and liberating to not count the calories or the portions), it made me feel gross, the way I might feel after days on a fast food bender. The “keto flu” came and went in the first week (or so I thought), but on the other side, I still felt nasty. I never crossed over into the promised land of when keto is supposed to feel awesome and energizing and clarifying. Instead, my stomach always felt heavy; my tongue always tasted sour; my muscles always were weak and shaky.

What I felt in my first month of keto was rage. So much rage. I was angry and bitchy and unhappy all the time. I wasn’t hungry, but I might as well have been hangry for how irritable I was. I also experienced weird tingling and numbness in my hands/fingers and feet/toes. ALL my workouts were absolute shit, especially my runs, like I was trying to run on an empty tank. After I was active, I would hit an impenetrable wall and be borderline nonfunctional. Most likely, all of this wonkiness and extended “keto flu” was due to an electrolyte imbalance that I could not seem to rectify.

I adapted, somewhat, in my first month. Getting used to the composition and rhythm of the food. The grossness dwindled after the first couple weeks, but I still didn’t feel awesome about the food. It often felt heavy, even nauseating in my stomach. In the second week, I attempted to reintroduce fasting but found it halted my weight loss and tried adding the third meal back in (though that didn’t help). It seemed counter intuitive to need to eat more of such rich, high calorie food.

I just went strict. I followed the meal plan. I spent my entire days on Sundays doing meal prep, cooking things in butter and frying bacon and mixing in heavy cream. I didn’t cheat. I went to Chipotle when I ate out so I could get a bowl with no rice or beans, just mean and cheese and guac. I didn’t deviate.

I committed, and I suffered. I am able to do that. It is moderation I cannot accomplish.

However, the first month was not terribly successful either. In the first two weeks, I lost 8 pounds. In the second two weeks, nothing happened. I didn’t change or eat carbs, so I don’t know why it did not work in the second half, but it was very frustrating to continue to be miserable for no results. What I thought this told me is that I lost water weight in the first two weeks but did not lose any actual weight in the entire first month.

At the end of the first month, what it really felt like what more of the same, just like all the other failed diets. A lot of hope fizzled out into physical discomfort without change.

Month 2: I Can’t Feel My Hands!

My negative keto symptoms seemed to reach their peak as I moved into the second month. The strongest, and most unsettling, reactions seemed to be from an electrolyte imbalance. The most notable and irritating was extremity numbness. At its worst, I would lose sensation in both hands and both feet, especially while running.

In response to all the tingling, I started drinking bullion, taking a magnesium supplement, and adding salt to everything. After about a week, I did start to feel better. Even more that the electrolyte symptoms, I started to feel better overall. It seemed like I might actually be seeing the other side of the keto flu. I might actually be adapting to keto itself. At the end of week 5, I finally went on a run that did not feel terrible. It was still atrociously slow, but it was not a miserable experience.

At the end of week 5, the Coronavirus pandemic panic also broke on the grocery stores. I had the strange anxiety of first worrying about being able to get food, and once I had the essentials, I worried that I would not be able to stay on keto with what I had in the house. There were bizarre tiers of stress in my eating. Thankfully, the stores restocked in the same weekend, and it became a nonissue, but it was a surreal experience briefly. Keto would have quickly died if I had to turn to boxes of ramen or cans of soup.

I messaged my doctor to tell her about my numbness and ask her how to proceed. She had me come in to see her. At this point, I had been on keto for six weeks pretty strictly. However, I had not lost any weight past the first two weeks, and I never started to feel good in any real way. I only experienced negative side effects. So she advised me to terminate the diet. Since I only went on it because she recommended trying it, I complied.

Part of me feels like I should finish the 12 weeks just to finish them, but why? How wrong does it have to be to be wrong? I think I am just frustrated to have the last option still not be the answer.

Another Failure

Instead of a month 3, keto ended at week 6 in another failure, in more negative results. To me, this leads me back to the conclusion that brought me to a medical professional for assistance: something is not right with my body. Something is not functioning how it should be. From what I have been told, strict keto works for almost everyone. The doctor had expected me to easily drop 20 pounds in the first couple months.

If I cannot lose weight, that’s fine. I can live with that. The problem is more that if I do not starve and work myself to death, I gain weight rapidly and my blood sugar climbs. That is not healthy. Or normal. That is what I am trying (and repeatedly) failing to figure out here.

So now I am to return to Whole30, which worked when I tried it before things got all wonky last year. I’ll be happy to eat produce again, not feel gross, and be able to feel my fingers and toes. Maybe I’ll have some fuel during my workouts. I’m also going to layer intermittent fasting back on, simply because I like it and it makes my body feel good.

Here we go again… We’ll see again… I’ll have another follow up with the doctor to reveal lack of progress yet again I’m sure.

 

Christina Bergling

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Surviving the Whole30

I survived the Whole30 Challenge.

When the new year dawned, my barre studio hosted a Whole30 Challenge, complete with Facebook support group. When I read the email, I thought, we could do this. It did not seem that difficult or different from my low glycemic diet, and after all, it was only 30 days. It seemed like the perfect way to reset from the holiday season of indulgence. I even convinced my husband to join me.

The rules seemed simple enough…

Seemed simple enough. Except that sugar and soy are in EVERYTHING! I did not consider not being able to have hummus or salad dressing or any of the accoutrement that makes the yes list bearable. I think, mostly, we were unprepared for the sheer amount of food preparation.

Since I HATE (loathe) nuts, if it wasn’t an apple or banana, everything required preparation. We had to either make salad dressing or cook eggs or make a whole meal that had no easy ingredients. It was an adjustment. And a supreme challenge with how completely jam packed and double booked I keep our schedule. Who has time to cook everything?

Then, there was also the withdrawals. Whole30 has a whole little timeline to give you a preview of what you might experience. I, of course, did not follow this timeline really at all.

For example, I started my journey at KILL ALL THE THINGS. Literally in the first couple hours. As if my brain told my body it was in for a shit storm. I went through borderline psychotic withdrawals and hanger. I was hungry and angry and bitchy and irritable and all of it. I struggled to concentrate the first three days, and suddenly, 30 days seemed like a borderline infinity.

So there was the anger (homicidal/suicidal rage) for a couple days. Next, I experienced a strange food apathy. I stopped caring, and I stopped wanting. Since the food I could have was not very enjoyable to me and exhaustive to make at times, I did not really care when or how much of it I ate. I would shove something in when I was hungry, but otherwise, food became more utilitarian. I experienced a lot of tired days, either from the detoxification process or the low calorie count due to my lack of food inspiration.

I would have days where cravings and hunger would rage up. I would want to eat absolutely anything I was not supposed to have. I would try to talk myself into defying the rules, cheating, slipping. Then it would be back to sleepy food apathy. I just stuck with it. I just followed the rules and crossed off days on my calendar.

About halfway through, I was supposed to experience what the program calls “tiger blood.” I was to feel energized, see better workout performance, just feel awesome. Unfortunately for me, I spent two weeks cripplingly sick instead. When I should have been burning clean and bounding with healthy energy, I was feverish and unable to lift my head off the couch.

It was a miserable two weeks. For us all. I was sicker than I usually get, taking sick days when I work from home. Then, of course, my kids were sick, and I was taking care of them. Then my husband. We were a typhoid house, practically under quarantine.

So I did not get to feel great. I also did n0t get to workout while feeling the effects of the diet. That was disappointing, but it did not make me want to bail on the program or regret trying it. I did cheat. I ate condensed soup and ice cream after not eating for two days. I could not bear the thought of preparing anything, nor could I stand long enough to do so. But once my health improved, I returned to the rules immediately.

My husband’s journey diverged from my own quite a bit. Granted, we rarely experience anything the same (or even similarly). Thankfully, our different phases never aligned. I do not know that our children or house would have survived both of us being psychotically hungry at the same time. Instead, when one of us went mad with withdrawals, the other sat comfortably in the program. It was a trip to be able to watch both sides from the other side. Yet it was also helpful to be able to support each other from that position.

He made it too. His sickness slightly behind mine and even more severe, he crossed the finish line unable to eat at all.

For me, the most unexpected part of the experience was how much I learned about my own habits and food itself. I did not notice how much I sampled food while I was cooking for my kids until I could not eat what I was making them. I did not notice how often I ate because food was easy until food was no longer easy at all. I did know how often I ate for emotional reasons, but it became more obvious when that crutch was removed.

And oh how I missed booze! And Monster.

In the end, despite the hurdles and unexpected turns, the Whole30 served the exact purpose I was after. I wanted to reset after holiday overindulgence. I just wanted to detox and get back on track. Though I am only in the first couple bites of freedom, I do feel like that is what it did. I don’t feel the compulsion to eat all the fattening, sugary, unhealthy things I was physically craving after the holidays.

I also dropped 15 pounds in the month. Strangely, once weight loss was not the goal, it actually happened. When I let go and focused on just getting the eating right, it just fell off. I am now not only back at my pre-pregnancy weight but below it.

You would think after all my struggling and obsessing and fixating, I would be ecstatic. Instead, I’m ambivalent. Because I had finally made my peace with my body before this challenge. And I think this is how I would prefer it.