Headaches from he$&

[Katekah]

I am on day six. I have followed everything strictly. I have had terrible headaches since day 2. I even had to stay home from work on Thursday. Does anyone have any idea when this will end? Background: I was already off pasta rice bread etc. medium sugar intake… 1tsp In my coffee (one cup) in the morning, Maybe a piece of chocolate during the day. Cream in my coffee in the morning. 1-2 servings of cheese during the day. Rarely any fruit. I have basically been living a South Beach diet for many years now so I don't feel like this is a huge change.

[ladyshanny]

Sorry to hear you aren't feeling well. It's possible that the headache is a combo of not enough starchy veggies and/or not enough food altogether. WOuld you kindly post a few days worth of food, fluids, sleep, where you are in your cycle, exercise, stress. When including the food, please tell us portion sizes as they relate to the palm of your hand.

We can take a look and let you know if there are any tweaks you can make to clear your headache and start feeling better.

[Sueboo41]

Try having a cup of bullion in the morning and again with lunch. If you aren't getting enough salt your electrolytes may be a bit out of sorts. This helped me a lot. Now I just make sure I use salt with my food. I'm not talking extra salty, but my eating plans had been following the low fat, low salt kind of guidelines and I was not using much salt. As my body was flushing out the old ways and I was drinking plenty of water, I was most likely losing the good electrolytes as well.

[Physibeth]

Try having a cup of bullion in the morning and again with lunch. If you aren't getting enough salt your electrolytes may be a bit out of sorts. This helped me a lot. Now I just make sure I use salt with my food. I'm not talking extra salty, but my eating plans had been following the low fat, low salt kind of guidelines and I was not using much salt. As my body was flushing out the old ways and I was drinking plenty of water, I was most likely losing the good electrolytes as well.

 

For clarity are you talking about making your own bone broth or are you talking about dissolving one of those cubes in water? I've never seen a compliant bouillon cube - they usually contain msg and many other nasty things and that is the first thing that comes to mind for me as an American when someone says bouillon.

[LaydeeMagpie]

Found an answer to what I asked in another thread! 

[Katekah]

Hi Ladyshanny

My headaches stopped Saturday morning, thankfully. However I have been feeling bloated and therefore this morning I stepped on the scale and I've actually gained a half of a pound in the one week I have been on hold 30. I know you're not supposed to get on the scale for the whole 30 days, but I wanted to get a pulse check. I'm a pretty skilled nutritionist not formally trained of course but have been battling with my weight my whole life and therefore have been to many camps and courses and training working with physicians etc.

A basic snapshot of my daily food intake is: breakfast: one cup of green tea and three eggs with spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms cooked in ghee in the ....I was so sick on Thursday and looking for answers online and saw a lot of people having the same problems and not having enough fat that I started adding four pieces of bacon to that, so Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday I had bacon with my eggs. I didn't eat bacon this morning though. Lunch is a bed of greens with meat; Snacks… Which whole 30 discourages but I need to have, could be sugar snap peas with guacamole or a cup of bone broth or baba ghanouj with carrots or an apple or an orange. Dinner consists of an 8 Oz portion of protein like chicken or pork loin or file mignon with any type of vegetable I have… bokChoy, broccoli, squash, whatever is in the refrigerator. Please note everything that goes into my mouth is organic. I am fortunate to live in an area where things are easily accessible. In the evening I might have another cup of bone broth or and another fruit… Like a grapefruit. I ate a total of One Lara bar all last week. A bite here a bite there when I was hungry. I spend a lot of my time in the car so I have to keep portable foods like fruits and Laura bars around. Some snacks have included macadamia nuts and pecans, but not a lot. I haven't delved into the slmond butter much, 1 tablespoon last week sometime.I drink approximately 100 ounces of water per day, starting with one 16 ounce glass with lemon juice every morning before anything else goes in to my stomach. Now that my headaches have dissipated and I'm not so concerned, I am concerned about the weight gain. I went on whole 30 to get off of sugar… Since I was already off of grains… I know I'm also eliminating dairy which in my experience has always been a helpful part of weight loss. I don't want to continue another three weeks and gain an additional half a pound per week.

Does anyone have any comments or solutions?

[ladyshanny]

There is a reason that 1) this is a 30 day program and 2) we ask you to stay off the scale. That scale weight means nothing. Maybe you had food in your stomach/digestive tract. Maybe you hadn't pooped yet, maybe you are more hydrated than you were before, maybe you are currently healing and balancing your hormones and are retaining some water, maybe you are at a different stage in your menstrual cycle. Gaining 8 ounces of body weight is not the end of the world and knowing that's happened at Day 8 because you weighed yourself is not at all what a Whole30 mindset is meant to be.

Please continue on and do not stand on the scale again for the duration. Eat according to the template and how you feel. Protein, veggies and fat. If you are hungry before 4-5 hours is up then make your next meal larger to get you through. If you are hungry between meals we recommend a mini-meal of at least protein and fat but ideally also veggies. A larabar does not have a place in your Whole30 unless it is a drop-dead emergency, they are not approved as a regular addition to your meals/snacks. If you need to carry food with you because you are transient or have a crazy schedule, please consider hard boiled eggs, cooked chicken, olives, canned tuna/sardines + fork, compliant beef jerky. Larabars, even one bite at a time, are not your best choice and will not give you optimal results.

[Katekah]

Thanks lady Shanny… I'm not going to stop… But I am concerned that I am eating too much fat or protein… Or something else. My water intake has not changed at all from my previous lifestyle. I've had a total hysterectomy so I'm not going to any menstrual cycles. My bowel movements are totally regular. One Lara bar over seven days shouldn't affect anything. my mindset for whole 30 Is to get completely off of sugar. I am worried that the dairy component is what is throwing me off. In South Beach dairy is an important component of nutrition and so I wondered if that's what the problem may be. No Dairy+ lots of fat + more protein than usual. Do you think two fruit servings a day is too much? Does the rest of my diet look like it's on track?

[ladyshanny]

It's a bit hard to tell if your intake is balanced as you do not note quantities as they relate to your palm. Do so and I can give you some feedback.

If you are trying to get off sugar completely, the larabars are a detriment to that as you are still sending sugary-sweet items into your body. Just worth a thought.

[LadyM]

So many of us come to Whole 30 thinking we're experts in nutrition and weight loss, but if what we knew worked we wouldn't be here. 

 

You really are going to have to trust the program as written and let go of what you think you know about nutrition and weight loss if this is going to work for you. That's my best recommendation. Let go of South Beach and the scale and dairy and snacks as you know them and immerse yourself in the whys and hows of Whole 30. The best way to do that is to read It Starts With Food if you haven't, or if you have, reread it. I always do when I embark on a new Whole 30. 

 

This is about so much more than weight loss. It's about finding a sane way to live with optimal nutrition while letting go of disordered relationships with our bodies and food and becoming as healthy as we can in every way possible.

 

What's most crucial to you? How much weight you can lose in a month or eliminating your sugar addiction? Some people can do both at the same time, but for me it happened in stages. I had to slay the sugar dragon before I could begin losing fat. The process has been transformative and totally worth it. But it never would have happened if I hadn't surrendered to the program.

[Katekah]

Thanks again lady shanny.

My proteins are the size of 1 of my palms.....which is different than the size of Magic Johnson's palm of course. I'm very familiar with the palm size portion control method.

I am short(5'3") and not very active ( walk 2-3 x/week and yoga 1/week) so I follow the books' guidelines for my plate building pretty closely. Breakfast is my largest meal with the three eggs, 2 cups of vegetables and ghee. I'm going to go ahead and cut out the bacon now because it is just too much food. I don't eat my breakfast until 10:30 AM as I don't start work until around 1230 or 1 PM. Therefore my lunches are around 3 PM, and often times because eggs hold me over so long, I am not even hungry at 3 PM. I start getting hungry around 430 or 5 PM, at which time I will opt for the salad and a palm size protein source and avocado if available. This is also the hours at which I find myself in the car and not having convenient 2 cups vegetables plus one palm size protein plus one thumb size fat etc. It's so hard when you travel all the time. Unfortunately, I also have mercury levels that are too high and I have to avoid several types of fish, including tuna which is all too convenient and the quickie foil packs. Maybe I'll start packing a small cooler where I can keep hard-boiled eggs… But then again, I don't think I want to be eating more than three eggs/day....even though I love eggs. I guess I can start experimenting with different types of breakfast… But eggs with vegetables are really one of my all-time favorite breakfast so I don't find them monotonous even after several weeks. I won't eat any more Lara bars. Although, I really cannot imagine that one Lara bar over a whole week, which really equals about a bike the day, can affect anything.

So I talked to one of my friends she's on day 39, and she will eat a handful of almonds and a handful of olives to make sure she's getting protein and fat together. She's not going to get a vegetable in that "meal" but it's better than nothing. I look back on the weekdays and realize I'm not getting exactly 3 meals a day, I'm getting really two meals a day, and more of a snack size thing… Like a fruit around five or 6 PM. Dinner comes around 8 or 9PM as I don't go to bed until about 1 AM.

So I'm down to fruit… Should I be cutting it out? Today I had an orange around 3 PM and a grapefruit around 7 PM. Are usually have an Apple as 1 of my fruits but I had run out.

For the others of you who have replied to me thank you for your support. I don't want you all to think that I am weighing myself to try to see if this is working in one week. I realize that the scale is a very psychological thing to people. A tick up or tick down on the scale can make people discouraged or encouraged depending on which way it goes. Obviously when one sees themself lose weight it is motivational and encouraging to remain on a program and stay strong. Most people who see a weight gain may throw their hands up and run for the hills. In my case, weighing myself, whether it be an uptick or downtick, isn't going to make me quit the program. Weighing myself is driven by more curiosity than anything else. I work in the healthcare industry and I have heard a lot of people talking about the program which is why I chose this program. I have a lot of people at work waiting to see what type of results to get. Some of them are trying other types of programs this month as well. It's a type of "well aware" challenge among coworkers in our department. I like to think of the whole 30 as an experimental challenge. I am already and the cleanest eater of anybody that I know, so eliminating all sugar and dairy from my diet is the final frontier for me if you will. Many people approach the whole 30 in hopes of feeling better, thinking more clearly, increasing energy level. I am fortunate enough to not have challenges with any of those things in my life anymore.

My challenge is my weight and always has been. Thankfully I don't have any of the health problems associated with being overweight such as high blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, prediabetes, high cholesterol, inflammatory HDL tests etc. (No, HDL does not refer to my "good cholesterol"....it is an advanced blood test to test your level of inflammation in the body.) But at age 45, vanity has set in and I do want to look better. If you're going to feel good you may as well look good. I'm not grotesque or anything...I'm a size 14....but I need to lose 30 pounds. Whole 30… Get it?

Thanks again to everyone on this blog. I started it with some horrible headaches ( days 2-6) and after taking someone's good advice of increasing fat I'm back to normal. I also increased salt with someone else's recommendation… So I guess I really don't know which one alleviated my symptoms.

[GFChris]

So I talked to one of my friends she's on day 39, and she will eat a handful of almonds and a handful of olives to make sure she's getting protein and fat together. She's not going to get a vegetable in that "meal" but it's better than nothing. I look back on the weekdays and realize I'm not getting exactly 3 meals a day, I'm getting really two meals a day, and more of a snack size thing… Like a fruit around five or 6 PM. Dinner comes around 8 or 9PM as I don't go to bed until about 1 AM.

So I'm down to fruit… Should I be cutting it out? Today I had an orange around 3 PM and a grapefruit around 7 PM. Are usually have an Apple as 1 of my fruits but I had run out.

 

 

Regarding the almonds and olives, nuts are considered a fat source on a Whole30.  So nuts and olives together are considered two fat servings.  For best results, the suggested mini meal consists of protein, veg and fat.

 

The recommendation on fruit is to have it with or immediately after your main meals only.  If you're needing to snack between meals, it makes me wonder if your earlier meals aren't big enough?  You want to create meals that satiate you for 4-5 hours.  Until you get there, use the mini-meal of protein, veg and fat if you find yourself genuinely hungry in between meals. The litmus test for that is if you feel you could eat something bland, like steamed fish and broccoli.