Can't think strait

[Medowsweet]

Should I eat more starch or tough it out

Been really hard to think (especially at work) tired and hard to concentrate.  Staring at the computer and doing nothing productive.  Tired.  a little moody/short.

I am on day 7.  

I assume it has something to do with glucose and the brain?

Should I eat more glucose (potatoes, squash, parsnips) or try to wait it out?

About what I ate:

Yesterday 
Breakfast: taco leftovers:
95% lean ground beef with spices and lemon
Red leaf lettuce
Salsa (Pico de Gallo style)
Guacamole (home made with lots of onion, tomato, garlic)
(Ate extra lettus beyond the taco "shell" leaf just to get some veggies)

Lunch: see above (sorry but I am a lazy cook)

Snack: hand full of raspberries

Dinner:
Apple stuffed with ground beef, onion, celery, garlic, macadamia nuts

(Super delishious. But it turns out you can't fit a ton of meat inside an apple) (a lb of meat split between 6 apples and 6 of us)

Side of broccoli and cauliflower 
1/2 avacado

Half a peice of steak an hour or so later because I was still hungry

(Steak was being made for breakfast and lunch tomorrow)

Breakfasts:
2/3rd palm sized peice of steak and 2 eggs plus 2 (small) slices of sweet potato toast (like silver dollar size, tiny slices from the middle of the potato)
Broccoli and cauliflower with olive oil drizzle 

Lunch:
Steak (palm and a half)
Guacamole
Broccoli and cauliflower 
Grapes 

Snack:
Apple with almond butter (felt temporarily better after Apple)

Dinner:
Tuna on two (slightly thicker) peices of toasted sweet potato (the morning ones were sliced as thin as I could and they sorta burned so I cut them thicker)
Cauliflower rice cooked with baccon garlic and an egg
(Cauliflower cooked in baccon fat.  Bad for you but delishious)
(Cauliflower is on sale, 2 dollars for a giant head the size of my head!)

Also:
Too much red meat?
Also:
Meals feel heavy.  Like... hard to process in my stomach?

Like the meat is hard to digest?

 

(Note: I have always been a big meat eater so it shouldn't be....)

[jmcbn]

At which point in all of this did you have the brain fog/tiredness?

I see that you had a snack of fruit on it's own on both days which we wouldn't recommend as it can cause this very thing... Also, considering this made you feel temporarily better I'd say you're battling your sugar dragon.

Increase the size of your meals (the easiest way to add satiety withot adding bulk is with fat) to negate the need for the snacks to  see if that doesn't help. Check that you're salting your food as a lack of salt can cause similar symptoms, and you could add in a little more starchy veg if you like - I'd stick to just one meal though, and a fist sized serving is the recommendation.

Are you drinking the recommended half an ounce of water per pound of body weight, daily?

Also, in terms of the red meat feeling heavy, you don't look to be eating a huge amount of it, and if you're already a big meat eater there's no reason why it would start to cause problems now. I'm wondering if it's not the cauliflower & broccoli you're eating a lot of. Both are known to cause digestive issues....

[ultrarunnergirl]

You don't say exactly the quantity of veggies you're eating. On a standard size plate, three quarters of the plate should be filled with veggies, and not just covering the plate, a good pile. Lettuce is a very "light" veggie so you may want to add additional veggies to meals that are mostly greens. 

 

 

 

[Medowsweet]

About half a plate of veggies.

 

I have happily eaten broccoli all my life (but not in this quantity.  Usually I eat it once a day about a third of my plate and generally avoid cauliflower because I don't like it's flavor (but I am earning to make it good by making it taste like lemon and garlic or baccon)

 

Sugar: yeah, I started this because I was major addicted to sugar.  I mean like a smoker addicted!  Like if I didn't get a sugar hit every few hours i'd be dipping into the office candy jar hunting a Hersey kiss... like if I didn't have sweet after a meal it nagged at me.....

I am on day 8 and the sugar addiction is already getting better.  I find my eyes drifting repeatedly to the donuts someone brought in but I don't -crave- them... I just SEE them and for a second want them and sometimes can't help but sort of look at them.... but when I leave the room I forget about it (which is a huge improvement)

 

Keeping this in mind I try to limit fruit to two servings a day... but not eliminate because i love fruit- and it's healthy.

 

I think that 5 o'clock time when I always have a snack is hardest time of day for me.

I just got home from work so I am often physically and mentally drained, and I am very hungry (not as hungry as i used to be ln my old eating habits tho)

Also all my temptations are at work where people walk around with Starbucks and someone always seems to bring pasty or cookies, and part of my job is to pass out chips and pie to the seniors and sit and socialize while they eat (sipping my unadorned  tea as they keep trying to offer me pie which I used to always eat with them)

It's not that I don't eat a fairly big lunch, but because of my scedual I eat at noon and get home at five (5:30 if I stop on the way home to buy food to make for dinner)

So it is 5 hours since my last meal.

(And if I eat dinner at 5 I end up hungry before bed (which is at 11) 

But maybe I could make an early dinner and a snack of dinner left overs later in the evening?

Or bring a snack for my second bream and eat that before I got home?

 

[jmcbn]

3 hours ago, Medowsweet said:

So it is 5 hours since my last meal.

Five hours is not a long time when you're fat adapted. I regularly go 6-7hrs between meals - every day in fact, from breakfast til lunch.

Until your body become fat adapted I'd suggest planning a protein/fat based snack for when you get home, keep your dinner for later, and keep the fruit to eat with or as part of your meal - berries in a salad, pineapple in a curry, apple sauce with pork - that sort of thing. Or have dinner ready & waiting for when you get home & have the protein/fat based snack around 9/9:30pm. What time do you have breakfast?

Broccoli & cauliflower are both high FODMAP foods, and both notoriously hard to digest - I happily ate broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, leeks & avocado on a regular basis preW30, but with the added volume found they were problematic to me. The same could apply to you.

That said if you think it's the volume of meat then maybe look at adding in a digestive enzyme to see if that helps - it should help your body break down the proteins a little faster.

[Medowsweet]

Feeling mostly better now.

Yesterday I had a Tylenol proof headache all day!  I tried water, caffeine, pain pills...  I also felt irritable and moody... like crying a lot for very little reason (like my daughter was slightly annoying me).

I ate tuna with a ton of veggies and had no tummy problems (tho that eliminated both red meat and broccoli/cauliflower so I guess it is not a good test)

I upped my veggies a little... whole can of aspeigus for breakfast (with baccon and eggs) whole can of green beans for lunch today (with chillie that is 50% veggies at least)

Yesterday I had tuna salad (which it's self was 50% veggies with onion, garlic, tomato, avacado, pickles) 
Served with two large celery sticks (used as edible spoon) 
A very large carrot
A very large Bell pepper
A small apple

Chilli for lunch today!  Red meat but no broccoli cauliflower so we'll see.

Today I feel almost 100% better/normal.

So far no headache and brain seems to be functional.
Mood will have to see how the day goes.  Hadn't been tested yet.

For a snack I had more tuna salad when I got home, then made dinner and ate aroud 7