It’s been 3 years, 10 months and 10 days since I crashed and burned following a low carb diet. Finally I feel I can say I’m on a path towards better health, and no, there aren’t any potatoes on that path!!! The fog has lifted and I can think clearly again (I may have got a few brain cells back!!), oh and I’m sleeping better, yippee!!

I’d left you whereby I could no longer eat potatoes and I was wondering what to eat next, so let’s pick up there. I started to try and eat a bigger variety of foods, like chilli con carne, risotto, stews etc. but things didn’t really improve. Bits of anxiety were coming back and I started to hate kidney beans or any veg that was in the stews! I knew I had to keep eating a reasonable amount but what to eat to keep the calories up? Well, I picked rice because it was nice and easy to eat, and goes with quite a few things. So for a few weeks I ate tons of rice with various meats & sauces and I didn’t feel too bad. My sleep was still a bit up and down but the anxiety calmed down.

Then I started to work with Billy again. He recommended thyroid and progesterone. Thyroid was my nemesis! Lol! The last time I tried it (over 2 years ago) it just produced more anxiety so I was a bit loathe to try it again. However, he explained that no one really recovers well without taking some thyroid so I decided to give it a go. It’s really important to start slow (yes I had to have a stern word with myself!! Haha!) and to make sure you’re eating enough calories when you’re taking thyroid. So I may have overdone it on the eating part! I think I was that worried that the anxiety was going to come back that I really ate loads and ended up going to bed with a stomach ache!! However, I slept through the night and got no anxiety, so I thought ‘YES, I’ve cracked it!’ I hadn’t though sadly!
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I continued to take a small amount of thyroid each day but my sleep was up and down and I felt tired and lethargic. I ordered the progesterone from Billy and hoped that would be ‘the thing’ that would turn things around.

Whilst I was waiting for the progesterone Christmas came and went. I was poorly again in the run up to Christmas, so it was a bit of an effort to cook Christmas dinner. It all came together though and we had a lovely day. Just after Christmas, on the 27th, we headed up to Findochty in the Scottish Highlands for a short break. It was fantastic! We saw reindeer, took the mountain train to the top of the Caingorms (where we finally found snow and my daughter snowballed me right in the mouth! That was a bit of a shock I can tell you & no, I haven’t forgotten!!), we saw Loch Ness (but not the monster!), went to the beautiful Lossiemouth beach, and the pièce de résistance, we saw the northern lights 2 minutes from our cottage, looking out from Findochty on New Year’s Eve! The only thing that blighted the trip was that I still felt so tired, more tired than I was last year, and I felt like I was going backwards.

Back home and the tiredness continued, the sleep got worse, brain fog had me in its grip and worst of all the anxiety started to come back. I just couldn’t understand what was causing it. I was trying my best to put all the pieces of the puzzle together but my brain was too fuzzy and I just couldn’t figure it out.
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I tried a new tactic. I contacted Sarah Kennard                                    (https://www.facebook.com/TheRevoltingDieter/) who has been trained by the master! (that’s Billy Craig for anyone who doesn’t know who ‘The master’ refers to!) I asked her a few strange questions (lol! nothing new for me!) because I just couldn’t understand why my body reacted so badly to anything containing calcium, or lately anything containing anything at all!! Sarah suggested that I eat more sweet things and not just rice, such as stewed apples and custard, fried banana in coconut oil with maple syrup, meringue nests with good quality lemon curd and other good stuff. This sounded fantastic so I thought I’d give it a go. I felt great all day, my hands and feet were warm and my skin got a bit of shine back to it, but that night my sleep was dreadful. I was up every couple of hours peeing. Sarah suggested this sounded like I had a problem with regulating blood sugar. I just felt like crap! We had a few more conversations about how much I was eating and what I felt like I could eat. I still clung to my rice idea (plus I was still throwing a few potatoes in to get some potassium, which I still thought was a key part in my problems). Things got worse the next day with tons of anxiety roaring around and I was badly bloated by the afternoon.  I was pretty upset, as I just can’t deal with that amount of anxiety at all. It freezes me in my tracks and stops me from functioning. So I messaged Sarah and she suggested trying the carrot salad again, doing some bag breathing, and best of all she made me laugh!! I calmed down a little bit and went to bed more hopeful.

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​The next morning the progesterone arrived. Most people are drowning in estrogen, which is not a good thing, in fact it’s a very bad thing! I’d offer to write a blog piece on it but Sarah has done a very good one already, which you can find here: http://www.sarah-kennard.com/blog/2016/12/20/your-fisher-price-toy-guide-to-estrogen We’d agreed that I would just start with a few drops of progesterone before bed, as it’s quite prone to making you sleepy (happy enough with that!). So I did 3 drops of progesterone before bed and then had the strangest night!! This was my message to Sarah the following morning:
“Well, that was an experience! Took 3 drops at around 10pm & went to bed round 10.30/10.45. Read for a little then tried to sleep. Didn't happen for a while, then woke up at 1am. Felt very hot & sick. Then needed a bowel movement at 2am! Then was starving at 3am so got up & made food. Eventually slept from about 4 till 7, now I feel a mix of starving & sick and just had another bowel movement! What's going on?”

Sarah assured me that it was unlikely to be the progesterone causing the problems. In the midst of our conversation I made my breakfast (egg fried rice, with bacon and fried potatoes) and sat down to eat it but after a mouthful I just couldn’t carry on! It felt all big and starchy in my mouth and I just couldn’t swallow it! I happened to say to Sarah that I thought I wasn’t getting enough potassium because I had a thirst that I just couldn’t quench (goodness knows where I got that idea from) but her reply was that unquenchable thirst was, in her experience, blood sugar problems.
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As I sat there, looking at my bowl of food, the only thing that I wanted to eat was melon!! Honey dew melon! So I dropped my son at school and picked up melon on the way back. When I got home I devoured a couple of pieces and it felt soooo good!! I realise that I’m always going on about listening to your body but I haven’t really listened the whole time I’ve been trying to recover. I kind of listened when potatoes stopped my anxiety, but that was just from fear of it coming back. I quite liked eating potatoes and never felt like I was forcing myself, but if I’m honest I never actually ate them because I really, really, wanted them. I just really, really, did not want the anxiety to come back. Which it did in the end anyway! 

​So, slowly (with Sarah’s help) the penny dropped. Bad blood sugar regulation was, at least in part, causing my anxiety. After the melon, I had 2 fried eggs, and boy did they taste good too! Having some fat and protein with your carbs will help to keep blood sugar more stable. I pretty much kept it on an even keel all day. I drank chocolate milkshake and I made a crustless bannoffee pie! It was delicious! That night I slept like the dead. Brilliant! I didn’t get too excited though in case it didn’t last! It did last though. My sleep was getting much better. Then I had a setback on Saturday when some anxiety came back. I spent some time trying to figure out what was going on. I had added in stewed apples and custard as Sarah had suggested and when I had a second portion of them later that day my anxiety really flared up. I can only assume (because they had a ton of added sugar as well) that they were just a bit too much for me and sent my blood sugar too high, or actually, thinking about it, maybe the calcium from the custard? So I’m staying away from that mix at the moment!

Last Saturday night I slept for 10 (YES 10!!) hours uninterrupted! No peeing! Nothing! Just sleep! This is amazing! I haven’t slept for that long without having a wee for many years, probably since I was a kid. The problem was that I slept too long and by the morning my stress hormones had risen again (because of blood sugar regulation) and I felt like I spent most of the day playing catch up to sort it out and calm down the stress hormones.
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The following night I slept all night again but the night after I woke for a wee. I figured since I was up I would have a quick bite to eat (some melon and some yoghurt) to try and keep my blood sugar more stable. It worked and the following morning I didn’t feel any anxiety at all and I felt on an even keel all day.

​So, things are definitely looking up! My anxiety still flares up if things overwhelm me, such as getting over excited about drinking milkshakes! I love chocolate milkshakes but one day last week I got overexcited and had 2 or 3 of them (one at a time and with meals) but either it was too much liquid or my body didn’t like that much milk, and my anxiety came roaring back! I think maybe I still have some issues surrounding calcium which are causing me some problems so I'm going to try limiting the dairy a bit, but these days I love to eat plenty of fruit throughout the day along with  prawns, eggs,  some meats and other lovely home made desserts! 

I also take vitamin D to help with calcium metabolism. I've not had my vitamin D levels tested but given that I didn't spend too much time in the sun last year as it always caused me problems (lack of sleep, dry skin  etc) then I'm sure I could  use a boost.  I also take vitamin k2 and I have 1 mg of cyproheptadine  an hour or two before bed. Cyproheptadine is a anti histamine which just happens to lower serotonin, which is exactly what we want, and can help you to get a good nights sleep.

​I know I haven't suddenly miraculously  made myself better and some days are better than others. I still worry  that certain foods might trigger my anxiety. Sometimes I  worry that  I'll never be totally better - which actually to me just means having some energy to do things and to not suffer from crippling anxiety! In other words I'm still a work in progress! Lol! In the meantime I'm just extremely happy to be getting some sleep!

As always, I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings! Remember to  listen to your body & certainly not to me! Lol!  You're aiming for a nice high body temperature, warm hands and feet, and a nice calm feeling,  oh and a good nights' sleep!! Good luck xx

Well here we are again folks, at the end/beginning of another year. Where on earth does time go? Last year went wayyyyy too fast! Doesn’t seem a minute since this time last year when I was setting some goals (not New Years resolutions!!) for 2016. If you remember (or just go and re read the post!!) then you will know that I wanted to be able to do a handstand or the splits. Sadly the year hasn’t quite panned out as I wanted it to and I still have a way to go. All the health improvements that I had been experiencing seemed to grind to a halt mid-2016 and the rest of the year has been spent leading a merry dance trying to find the path to feeling better! I’m not sure I’m actually on that path yet but I’ve managed to carve out a small footpath where I don’t feel too bad.

​I’m slightly frustrated that a lot of the time I’ve been too tired or feeling too crappy to work on the stretches for my splits, but I’m not disappointed or beating myself up. I haven’t given up and tossed the idea aside with a ‘well it was a silly idea anyway’ kind of gesture, which I may have done in the past. The goal is still very much in my head but as I’ve said many times on my blog, I’m learning to have patience! Ha! Actually, I’m being forced to learn the art of patience! It doesn’t come easy to me I’m an all or nothing kind of gal and I don’t really see that changing in the near future. I will do the splits at some point, even if I’m in my eighties! Lol! Although I’d like to think it’d be before then! I’ve made a little progress and am more flexible than I was! (Just ignore the dirty feet! I like walking barefoot and this was at the end of summer)

 I dislike the idea of New Year resolutions. Grand gestures that don’t last or vague ideas that you think will improve your quality of life but rarely do they live up to the hype – that’s if they even last a week! The word resolution is a strange one, with its’ meaning being a firm decision to do or not to do something, or the quality of being determined or resolute. What I mean by strange is that, for me at least, it doesn’t conjure up the feeling of being determined, or of wanting a goal so badly that you can’t imagine not obtaining it. These are the qualities you need to feel about something if you really want to obtain it. A feeling of fire in your belly! This is how I feel about getting my health back, and doing the splits (and a handstand). I couldn’t explain to you why the splits/handstand are so important to me but that doesn’t really matter I guess, they are just goals, in my head, that one day I will reach!
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There will be no ‘new’ me in the New Year. What does that even mean anyway? That the me of now isn’t good enough? Good enough for what? I’m me! The me that dives into things whole heartedly (even when it ends in trouble), I’m silly, sometimes (often!) weird, I laugh at my own jokes, I talk out loud to myself all the time (sometimes in a Yorkshire accent (my parents were from Yorkshire!) as a joke), I have silly ideas, I like to travel (we take our cat too!!), I like to go out at 11pm if I think there is a chance we can see the northern lights (even though we usually end up staring into a dark sky, not seeing much!!) and a whole host of other things that just make me, well, me really!  

​The same goes for when people say to me ‘ah, I feel like we’re getting the old Karen back now’. No, you’re not! You can’t go back, ever! I’m only moving forward, ever evolving, ever changing, with newer, sometimes even sillier ideas! And that’s the way I like it. Maybe they just mean that I’m a bit less ill now and I function better than I did a few years ago (can’t believe it’s coming up to 4 years since I really crashed and burned) but even before that I was  heading downhill for several years, making myself ill, and losing my sense of humour. Anyway, even if I could, I would never choose to go back. It’s made me who I am today and I like me! So there!

Maybe, if you absolutely have to make New Year’s resolutions then you could make ones that include being kinder to yourself, not making yourself into a newer model, or learn a bit about cell physiology so you don’t fall for all the hype/baloney that the media constantly throws our way!
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Either way, thanks to everyone who’s read my blog posts and followed my journey throughout 2016. Here’s to 2017, may it be healthy (stay away from mainstream crap information!!) and happy for all of you! 

My 2017 is off to a fantastic start by seeing the northern lights whilst staying in Findochty. It’s going to be hard to top that but I’m going to try!! I’ll be putting all my latest trials and tribulations with regard to my health in a blog piece soon.

​Happy New Year!
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Take care, Karen x