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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
“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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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