Severe Muscle Stiffness

[AnnaLog]

I'm having severe muscle stiffness, about a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale. It's painful to stand for any length of time. The stiffness is in my lower back, butt, hamstring, calf, and shin areas, plus pain and discomfort in general in those areas. It also becomes hard to sit for any length of time as well. My water intake is adequate, 60-70 ounces a day. I'm on Day 6. Anyone else experience this?!

[Physibeth]

Can you give us more details? Could you post your food for the past few days? Also what is your activity level, stress, and sleep like. How is Whole30 different from what you were eating before. I have a couple of ideas but at this point they are more based on my context which might not be yours. From your picture it looks like you may be breastfeeding...is that the case?

[AnnaLog]

Food:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, chicken apple sausage, strawberries or banana (I eat this every day)

Lunch: Chipotle- lettuce, mild salsa, carnitas. I had this twice last week, then my other lunch has been chicken coated with egg and almond flour over lettuce.

Dinner:

Last night: Turkey burger (egg, almond flour), lettuce, mustard, sweet potato fries.

Day before: chicken coated with almond flour and egg, over lettuce.

Snacks each day: handful of almonds and some grapes

Yes I am breastfeeding. I don't current exercise regularly. Stress is moderate.

[AnnaLog]

Also for snacks I've had an orange the night before last, and I tried an RX bar

[Physibeth]

OK a few things to experiment with. The summary of which is I think your muscles are not being nourished enough for someone that is feeding another human. I'm not a doctor but based on my reading and my experience with high levels of activity (which is similar stress on the body as breastfeeding from what I understand) these suggestions might help.

 

1st - It doesn't look like you are eating enough food in general. We recommend that pregnant and breastfeeding mom's eat 4 meals a day instead of 3 and you can stick to the upper end of the meal template. 

 

2nd - It looks like your only vegetable sources are really lettuce and sweet potato. I would highly suggest increasing the variety of your vegetable sources to get more nutrients. Also your first meal has no vegetables. Fruit is an extra at meal time and shouldn't push vegetables off your plate. I would recommend more starchy vegetables than you are having. Aside from sweet potato this could be carrots, beets, winter squash, parsnips, etc. 

 

3rd - You appear to be eating a lot of almonds between the almond flour coating and the snacks. I would try cutting back (or cutting out) the nuts for a while and using other fat sources. Your level of fat in general appears to be awfully low. Try avocado, coconut, olives, and there respective oils.

 

4th - Are you purposefully not eating red meat? I try to get beef or lamb in at least one meal a day for the iron and other nutrients that are unique to those types of meats.

[AnnaLog]

Not purposely avoiding red meat. I do beef regularly, just hasn't worked out that way this week. I'd say I have beef about 2 times a week. Now that I think about it (I'm in a fog these days) I did have carrots with dinner this first week and brought leftovers to work. And I had broccoli one evening. Variety in my vegetables is certainly something to work on. Vegetables in the morning are hard for me (I'm still not even that hungry in the mornings to begin with).

And I will comment that my baby is on solids as well as breast milk. And I have not seen a decline in my milk production at all.

Thank you for all the tips, I will work these into my meal plan