Impending carb flu?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

I've been essentially carb-loading since I got sick last week, mostly out of necessity. Fruit. Mashed potatoes. Fruit juices/smoothies. Saltines.

My head feels like it's full of cotton today, and I'm having trouble focusing. This is partly due to sleep deprivation, but it begs the question:

Is my general malaise after all those carbs and sugary foods (natural sugar is still sugar) psychosomatic? Do I feel like crap because I really feel like crap, or do I feel like crap because I WANT to believe that I will inevitably feel bad when I eat like this and feel better when I start eating mostly paleo again?

My mother is convinced that any indigestion, upset stomach, bloating, headache, or other symptoms I experience from eating things like highly processed muffins or HFCS-containing foods are all in my head, because I WANT them to be bad for me. Perhaps this is because I have a history of lacking skepticism regarding diets. I've always been so desperate for them to work that I've latched onto them, heart and soul, without even trying them for a month first to see how they feel before making my assessment.

I'm pretty sure my sugar is crashing as we speak from all the delicious fruit juices I've been drinking. All I want right now is something nice and salty, like chicken broth, and a nap, but I'm here at school until the makeup lab is over. That could be anytime between 5:30 and 8:00. Suck.

Regardless, my stomach demanded food last night and I fed it mashed potatoes and ice cream. Not together. Lots of salt on the mashed potatoes. I'll probably eat more potatoes tonight, too, and tomorrow morning attempt some scrambled eggs. Maybe try a salad for lunch with olive oil and some salt and pepper, easy on the acidic stuff. I'm just glad I'm not an expressway anymore!

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

KWRIGHT26 7/10/2012 8:27PM

Brewmaster, I like the way you think below the surface. I was typing on my blackberry before my laboratory opened, so I didn't get to elaborate much. A diet of mashed potatoes and ice cream is certainly not balanced. I was eating mashed potatoes because I've had bad stomach upset for 3 days and the doctor ordered me onto a diet of liquids and soft, bland, but slighty salty foods to replace electrolytes (as if I hadn't already relegated myself to chicken broth). It just happened that my mother had made a batch of her homemade mashed potatoes, which are whipped and fluffy and everything potatoes should be, so once I was able to eat more than fruit juice and chicken broth, that was my dinner. I also had ice cream because it's my favorite indulgence, I only allow it maybe once every month, and I felt like crap. Maybe that's my old emotional eating talking, but I seriously didn't care, and yes, it did make me feel better. I also didn't eat the ice cream and the potatoes at the same time. That would be an insult to the sensory experience of both. I eat relatively low carb most of the time and I used to be hypoglycaemic before I cut my carb intake paleo-style, which entailed having a nice mini "carb flu" every day unless I ate something carby every 3 hours. I'm not sure that 3 days of fruit juice and potatoes is going to cause me any problems when I cut them out again so quickly, but the headaches, shakes, and nausea that go with hypoglycaemic crashes are completely miserable, and I will always dread feeling that way again. Report Inappropriate Comment

VHALKYRIE 7/10/2012 5:20PM

Oh, sorry, I think I misunderstood. I don't think you'll get low-carb flu if you've carb loaded just for a few days. I find if I've carb loaded, that it can take a few days to get my hunger levels back in check, but I've never had anything as bad as the initial transition. Report Inappropriate Comment

KWRIGHT26 7/10/2012 4:50PM

I must not have specified. I meant that because I have eaten like crap for the last few days, I will be going back to paleo tomorrow and have the potential to hit a carb low at that time. Report Inappropriate Comment

BREWMASTERBILL 7/10/2012 4:07PM

Well, I've only heard of this "flu" you speak of when you LACK carbs, not when you eat too many. Typically if you load you'll have a lot of energy. It's not uncommon for endurance competitors to eat much in the way you described. But mashed potatoes and ice cream just sounds like imbalance. It may be exacerbating a deficiency. I don't know, I'm not a doctor or a licensed anything. But I read "I ate like sh1t and I feel like sh1t, wtf?" ... so, um, ya. Report Inappropriate Comment

VHALKYRIE 7/10/2012 3:39PM

Low carb flu was pretty real for me. Initially I cut back to half my 'normal' carbs, and I got pretty sick. Turned out I had a systemic candida infection from years of antibiotic use and high carb diets that I didn't know about. Mine manifested more as a horrid sinus infection, and took several weeks to clear out with lots of probiotics. Have you just recently started paleo/low carb? If so, it could be low carb flu. Once you're feeling better, you could try starting out at a slightly higher carb level and slowly cut back in order to lessen symptoms settling back in. Sorry you haven't been feeling well. Get better soon. Comment edited on: 7/10/2012 3:46:44 PM Report Inappropriate Comment

Heark, the Herald Avocados Sing!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Could it be?

Is it true?

Is Sparkpeople getting over its irrational fear of fat calories?

Judging by its slideshow of funky avocado recipes, it just might be.

Now, I'm not sure about vegan pizza or the buttermilk in that chilled soup recipe, and I'm not real keen on hummus as it is, but the fact that Spark is supporting avocados out loud makes me happy. I'd like to see them less scared of eating more than a quarter of one, but it's a start.

And the salad dressing? "You'll better absorb the nutrients in salad if you drizzle them with a little fat"?

YES! THANK YOU! The Romans didn't dress their salads liberally with olive oil for nothing, you know.

Now if we can get them to stop recommending a "moderate" 150+ g of carbohydrates to diabetics, we'll be golden. Seriously, folks... moderation in all things is NOT the answer for diabetics. Diabetes and other conditions require stripping away unnecessary demands on an already-broken system in order to fix it!

Ever tried to fix a table saw with the blade running?

Exactly.

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

KWRIGHT26 7/10/2012 8:16PM

There's a point at which plugging "less bad" food as healthy has to stop, and good food needs to be celebrated. And calories seem to be the only measure of health when it comes to that kind of food. "X is lower fat and lower calorie, it MUST be better than Y!" I'm pretty sure I'm winning with a salad topped with a whopping 4 to 5 ounces of meat and a generous 2 T of olive oil and vinegar instead of a carefully measured half-cup of beans (because meat has fat and is bad), 2 tablespoons of grated fat-free cheese-carageenan amalgamation, and 2 tablespoons of fat-free high-fructose corn syrup/soybean oil blend. Oops! I mean, "fat-free salad dressing". Report Inappropriate Comment

SALONKITTY 7/10/2012 5:49PM

I saw the avocado slide show and was a bit surprised that SP put that one up. Seems pretty progressive for the site, doesn't it? Just yesterday or the day before, I came across an article (I think one of those Daily Spark posts) on bacon sundaes, with a headline that wondered whether this dessert is a a treat or a nightmare. I thought the headline was provocative in a funny sort of way, so I read on. The post turned out to be a rather enthusiastic plug for Burger King's seasonal offerings. So I guess I'm not too surprised to learn that SP recommends 150+ calories to diabetics. Report Inappropriate Comment

VHALKYRIE 7/10/2012 3:32PM

Seriously? They recommend 150+ carbs to diabetics? If that's the standard dietary advice, it's no wonder so few manage to lose weight and get off the meds. Report Inappropriate Comment

Stupid.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

I have no idea whether I food-poisoned myself with undated mayonnaise or if I just snagged a 24-hour bug, but I've been sick all weekend.

I missed an online homework assignment because I was sleeping off a fever. That's worth 40% of a quiz grade, and this isn't including the one I missed last week because I just plain forgot it.

I have two lab reports to do and they're stupidly long.

I have an exam at 8:00 in the morning that I couldn't get out of if I wanted to, and even if I could, I can't get out of my organic lab in the afternoon because a single absence during a summer term means you basically fail.

Eating upsets my stomach, drinking upsets my stomach. I haven't been throwing up (knock on wood) but yesterday held plenty of other entertainment. I seriously can't take even a sip of water without my stomach bloating and hurting.

My temperature spiked around 99.8 last night, or at least it had when I checked it. It's normal now, but I still feel pretty crappy.

This whole arrangement just sucks. Blah.

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

BROCOLIJOLI 7/8/2012 2:02PM

Eek, hope you feel better soon! Report Inappropriate Comment

GINAV2 7/8/2012 1:38PM

Oof, that's rotten. Feel better! Hugs and (non-stomach-irritating) chicken soup! Report Inappropriate Comment

Reading magazines is mentally taxing.

Saturday, July 07, 2012

I still get issues of EatingWell and Clean Eating even though I haven't paid for my subscription in... I don't know how long.

I would love to make some of these delicious meals, but I'd have to modify them, since their mantra seems to be

Cut the fat!

Cut the fat!

Replace butter with canola!

Saturated fat is BAD!

More healthywholegrains!

Everything is made with canola oil, whole wheat flour, low-fat cheeses, and the whole bit. It's sad, really. They're trying to make everything so much healthier and yet they keep getting farther away from the wholeness of food that makes it nourishing.

I wish I had time to write letters to them listing all the things they should be looking into before publishing their anti-fat propaganda.... but alas. Accelerated summer term.

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

MICHERU 7/11/2012 12:40PM

I want them to look at the ingredients list before suggesting some of their foods. If you can't pronounce it and have no idea what it is, don't tell your readers to eat it. What is in low fat cheese and sour cream? not really stuff I wanna eat. Report Inappropriate Comment

Barbecue sauce disaster

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Yeah... tried making the barbecue sauce out of Paleo Comfort Foods. It was tasty, but it needed something.

Turns out that something is high fructose corn syrup. Heh, who knew?

I doubled the recipe (first mistake) and after my mother confessed it didn't taste like barbecue sauce and she didn't like it, I made my second mistake.

Instead of listening to her, keeping it as it was, and just making the barbecue chicken for myself, I tried vainly to balance the flavors and see what it needed.

After adding Worcestershire sauce, a completely non-Whole30 HFCS bomb, sugar, and soy sauce, I've ruined it for my own consumption and still failed to produce anything like barbecue sauce.

My first step probably should have been assessing other non-paleo barbecue recipes to figure out what I was imitating before trying to imitate it.

Anyway, that's two shallots, a can of tomato paste, half my jar of minced garlic, and an hour and a half of my life wasted on something I should have just let be.

Mother knows best, you know.

  

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

CHAOSTHEORY635 7/5/2012 11:53PM

Agreed with the dry rub suggestion. You really, really can't go wrong with Caribbean jerk seasoning on chicken! Report Inappropriate Comment

GETSTRONGRRR 7/5/2012 10:06PM

All good...next time try out a dry rub....I think our ancestors started out more with rubbing leaves on meat than marinating it in sauces Report Inappropriate Comment