big health problem

[Loriblue]

Help!

I have been doing atkins faithfully for about a month, and I am on the nuts and seeds rung of OWL. A few days ago, a friend and I went out to dinner and cheated. I ate white bread, chips, a dessert...all that stuff. The next day, I felt TERRIBLE. For three days I have been having headaches and feeling very tired. I thought I was really sick, so I went to the doctor, and she told me that it sounded like a low blood sugar headache and suggested that maybe I should introduce something more starchy into my diet. Will this pass? I'm really scared!

[ErinB]

I really know nothing about low blood sugar, but your doc's advice doesn't make sense to me. You did low carb for a month, then introduced the starchy food and then you became ill? From what you said, it sounds like the cheat foods are the problem for you, not the Atkins WOE.

[mizski]

Sounds like that dinner sent you into carb/sugar overload which is a shock to the system. Then if you went back on plan, your body is going through a "detox" similar to when you started Induction. Your body is mad at you. It's also probably not the healthiest thing to do often...so don't do that again!!

I don't think you need to eat starch things but rather maybe some of the more carb-dense veggies if your diet was on the lower carb veggies/lots of lettuce type before and also have your dairy and nut/seed servings. I'm not a medical professional, but I think that would stabilize your blood sugar better than the shock of more starches/sugars to your system. Good luck and hope you feel better once you get back into ketosis.

[Loriblue]

Thanks you guys! Its nice to have support

[mizski]

Originally Posted by Loriblue

and I am on the nuts and seeds rung of OWL.

Pssst...hey, Lori...maybe you could change your status from 14 day Induction to OWL Rung 3 so others replying to your posts will know.

To change your status, click on User CP and then click on Edit Your Details and scroll down to the drop down boxes under Atkins Phase and select the correct phase.

p.s. Are you feeling any better?

[Georgiana]

Besides what mizski said about veggies, eating 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day instead of 3 big meals also helps. Choose nutritious foods, eat meals that combine fat & protein with small amounts of carbs (preferably veggies, of course) and avoid eating too much (can trigger a hypoglycemic reaction) or too little (not enough food) in one sitting. If you are a coffee drinker, avoid coffee, esp. the caffeinated kind. Try to get good sleep at night. And get some exercise in if you can; even going for a walk will do you good.

How are you feeling today?

[Barb1965]

I had a similar reaction a couple of years ago after doing Atkins faithfully for 2 months, I just had to have some of our fresh baked Christmas cookies, after having not a drop of sugar the prior two months. The next morning, I got up to go holiday shopping, and fell out at Toys R Us of all places. They had to call an ambulance. I was only out for a couple of seconds, and the manager luckily had had blood sugar problems herself and figured out what it was, and grabbed me an apple juice from the shelf and I was fine in about a half hour after being checked by the EMTs and having my blood sugar checked.


I'm not diabetic or anything, but apparently that cookie feast sent my insulin back into its old mode of out put and even after it had gotten rid of the cookie glucose it thought I was going to eat more cookies and kept putting out until I got my diet re-stablilized. Very scary, and it might take a couple of days to retrain your pancreas. That scared me enough to not do that again. Good Luck!

[Loriblue]

Okay! Status changed!

Thank you guys so much for all of your support. I am feeling much better. I stopped taking the vitamins and fish oil and that helped a lot. I am thinking it might just be the fish oil, so I'm going to try and just take the vitamin tomorrow. I wonder if it really helped or if my blood sugar just stabilized. It took me about four or five days to get back to my old (new!) Atkins self.

In a way, I'm glad that I did it, because like Barb1965 said, it scared her enough not to do it again. With other diets, you can have a cheat day and not feel any different. But I know that Atkins is the real deal because you have such a violent reaction after eating something bad. It shows me how far I've come from eating a whole bag of oreos in a day!