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After Low Carb, Can I Ever Eat Normally Again?

March 26, 2010 by Lisa

I have been on the guai protocol for almost a year. It has been a hard struggle back. After having my little girl almost 2 years ago. FM hit me hard. I was in so much pain and not sleeping, my feet were killing me. I have made such a remarkable change in the last year. the problem I am having is the food. I seem so sensitive to everything. I am basically eating just protien and salads, eggs nothing fun. I seem to have aproblem with cheese also. What i want to know is are you able to eat more now that it has been 5 years for you. I am going to go back to work as a flight attendant and the food scares me. I will have to bring lots of my food with me. Seem to be senative to Splenda also. Any words of wisdom?

Hi Carol, So, you did what I did – you went on the guaifenesin protocol for fibromyalgia, believed that you were probably carbohydrate intolerant or had hypoglycemia, and so you went on a low carbohydrate diet. Plus the low-carbohydrate diet is a great diet to lose weight on if you can be strict about it.

And you say you are sensitive – meaning if you try to eat carbs you have a reaction that you can feel in your body?

My experience with coming off the low-carb diet
I am currently on a moderate carbohydrate diet – meaning that I am conscious of what I eat and how much carbs it has and I do try to limit how many carbs I am willing to eat – all day, at one time, and later in each day.

These days, I don’t believe that I get any significant muscle pains from eating carbohydrates, but I definitely notice that my emotions can get a little crazy if I eat a lot of sugar. I also have a very puffy face (bags under my eyes) if I eat too many carbs in one day. I would say if I eat more than about 55 carbs in a day I am in for it the next day.

I don’t think cheese bothers me but I don’t eat a lot of it. I wonder if raw cheeses (cheeses made from raw milk) would bother you? Have you ever tried them? You can get them from a health food store.

It does depend on what KIND of carbs for me

Like you, I got pretty sick of the low carbohydrate diet within about a year. I have never liked splenda so I didn’t eat too much of it. I also don’t like the other artificial sweeteners.

I experimented with xylitol, other sugar alcohols, and non-bitter stevia. None of them are quite the same as sugar, can have a laxative effect, and aren’t often worth it, although sometimes I will use them. When I was actively doing low carb I would use them a lot.

Raw Food Versus Low Carb

At one point, I considered going on a raw food diet and so I discovered that raw chocolate and raw sweeteners (dates) don’t seem to affect me in the same way sugar does. I get these raw chocolate bars or raw cacao/raisin/date/sunflower chunks at the health food store and I can eat as much as I want without having any sort of a reaction. ( like ani’s books and carol alt’s books about raw food)

Raw Sugar Vs Refined Sugar – Raw and Whole Affect Me Differently

The thing is, they cost more and are very filling and satisfying, so as much as I want is NEVER as much as I would have wanted of say brownies, or little debbies, or regular chocolate bars.

It’s a bit strange actually – because in the old days, if I were to go and get a box of little debbies, I could eat the whole box until my stomach hurt because it was so full and still ‘want’ more with my brain. But the raw chocolates aren’t like that. It’s like the pure sugar is addicting but the whole foods aren’t.

Total raw food seems to be as boring to me as total low-carb, so now I am trying to strike a balance between moderate carb, raw food, and ‘regular’ food.

Basically I changed a lot of the KINDS of carbs I was eating though – like I’ll do raw oat groats (soaked) instead of oatmeal, and I’ll do raw chocolate (the maca bars at that link are the ones I like) instead of chocolate bars, and I’ll do dreamfelds pasta instead of regular. That kind of stuff.

If I am out an about, I can eat at a restaurant (I had shrimp linguine at the olive garden recently, plus a big piece of birthday cake at my son’s birthday) but I wouldn’t want to try it every day.

Food Craving Supplements

One thing that has kind of helped me with the food issues is good days positive mood formula. I saw on Dr. Amen’s Blog that certain supplements like 5HTP and L-theanine can help with food cravings and the positive mood formula has both of these.

So, now that I take one every day my whole day is kind of smoothed out – not just around food but also emotionally and thought-wise. It is easier to have a positive mood. I don’t know if this will help you, because cravings aren’t your problem, but I mention it just in case.

Highly Recommended: 30 Days to Feel Better From Fibromyalgia

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Comments

One Comment on After Low Carb, Can I Ever Eat Normally Again?

  1. admin on Fri, 26th Mar 2010 8:45 pm

    2. Wow, funny thing. I just (about two hours after writing this) went to the health food store for some things and picked up soem root beer for my husband. I got the agave syrup root beer to tyr – it has half the sugar of regular soda. Well, I drank about a quarter cup or less – just a few sips really, and I can FEEL IT.

    I can feel the response in my body and it doesn’t feel good. Soda is definitely forever out for me, agave or not.

    I have seen a stevia soda .. I probably could drink that.

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