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So tired and headaches


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I'm on day 18 and I've been feeling tired since the beginning of week 2 and having headaches almost every day. I thought maybe I wasn't getting enough carbs, so I bumped that up starting on week 3. I think my fat intake has been fine. But despite my increase in carbs, I've still been so tired. Today I've felt more tired than I have any other day of this process. It was quite the ordeal to get myself out of bed, I feel like my eyes are all puffy from tiredness, my vision feels blurry, the aforementioned headache, I feel like I could lie down and take a nap right now. By 2 or 3 pm I'll probably be completely beat. I also feel like I'm not thinking clearly: I'm doing weird things like turning off the bathroom light instead of flushing the toilet, turning off the laundry room light instead of the faucet when I fill up the dog bowl; I feel like I'm struggling to remember words and names; I'll find myself just standing in the middle of the room staring blankly trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. 

I was hoping someone could take a look at my log and help me troubleshoot. I've been logging every day here: http://forum.whole30.com/topic/44560-smiths37-log/

I'll elaborate on yesterday's log and since I haven't posted/finished today yet, I'll add some notes about that as well:

Meal 1 - Breakfast casserole: I talk about it in my 1st entry, but here's what all is included (this is for 8 servings): 12 eggs, 4 Trader Joe's Chicken Garlic Sausages, 1 red bell pepper, 1 broccoli crown, 1 package frozen spinach, 1/2 onion, 8 oz mushrooms, salt (maybe 1 tsp or so), black pepper (maybe 1/4 tsp). Veggies are cooked in 1-2 tbsp olive oil (I don't measure) and then I spread about 1 tbsp of olive on the baking dish before putting everything in. Yesterday and today I have added 1/2 of a teeny avocado (the teeny avocados that come in a bag from Trader Joe's). I weighed the flesh of one half and it came out to about 1.5 oz. I want to try to eat an apple at breakfast time but usually ends up being about 11 am when I eat it. I also have coffee (maybe 10 - 12 oz) with some Almond Breeze Unsweetened Coconut and Almond milk. 

Meal 2 - Picadillo (http://www.skinnytaste.com/instant-pot-picadillo/) - used 85/15 ground beef, but the rest of the ingredients were the same. Mashed plantains (http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/mashed-plantains-machuca-de-platano) - used clarified butter instead of regular butter and maybe used 1 1/2 tbsp instead of 3 tbsp and only used 1/2 an onion. Quick Cabbage Slaw (http://www.skinnytaste.com/quick-cabbage-slaw/) - doubled this recipe and split into 7 servings. Added a dollop (~2 tbsp) of Trader Joe's Spicy Chucky Guacamole on top of the picadillo. I'm having this same thing for lunch today.

Meal 3 - Salmon Cakes (from the Well Fed 2 book, which is extremely similar to the recipe in the Whole30 book). I slightly overcooked my sweet potato, so I didn't end up with 1 cup of mashed sweet potato, maybe more like 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup? Kind of eyeballed the parsley and green onions, but they should be pretty much in line with what the recipe calls for. Besides using smoked paprika instead of regular paprika, everything else was the same. I also made the cold Thai salad from the Whole30 book - used 2 zucchini (1 small and 1 medium), 1/2 of a medium cucumber, 1 large carrot, and omitted bean sprouts. Maybe used a little bit more than 1/2 cup of the sunshine sauce for the dressing. When serving the salmon cakes (1 serving = 1/2 the recipe = 3 salmon cakes), I added ~2 tbsp of sunshine sauce on the side for dipping and had half of the Thai salad on the side. I'll have this same thing for dinner tonight. 

I usually have a glass of water in the morning. My coffee lasts me basically all morning. Then, I have water with lunch and throughout the work day. At home, I'll have sparkling water and a few glasses of tap water. I feel like I'm drinking a lot more water than I was before starting Whole30. 

My sleep quality has been pretty good, according to my FitBit. I get about 7- 7 1/2 hours every night and 8 on weekend nights. 

Thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated! 

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Are you salting your food? If not, start there. When you go to a mostly unprocessed diet, you're suddenly getting  a lot less salt than the typical American diet contains, and we do need some salt. The things you've described -- the tiredness and fuzzy headedness -- can be symptoms of low sodium. They can be other things as well, and no one here is a doctor, so if that persists, you really, really need to talk to a medical professional. 

Do you think your water adds up to 1/2 oz per pound of body weight (so if you weigh 120 lbs, you need at least 60 oz of water)?

I think your meals look well composed in terms of the mix of protein, fat, and vegetables, but may be a little on the small side, but it's kind of hard to tell. Let's take your breakfast casserole for an example, though -- you've used 12 eggs and 4 sausages, and divided that into 8 servings, so you get 1.5 eggs and 1/2 a sausage in each serving. If you were only having eggs for protein, you'd want as many as you can hold in one hand, which is probably 3-4. If you were having just the sausages, you'd probably want more than one for a serving. So you're having at best a half serving of eggs, and less than half a serving of sausage. Maybe try dividing your casserole into 6 instead of 8 pieces in the future. You probably need more veggies than you're getting in each serving too. And for fat, a serving of avocado is half to a whole one, so if they're small, go ahead and have the whole thing. The amount of oil you cooked the veggies in or greased the casserole dish with doesn't really add up to much once it's divided up into servings.

The apple at breakfast -- if you want it with your meal, have it with the meal. If you're not hungry enough for it with the meal, save it to have with lunch. If you're hungry between breakfast and lunch, a better option would be to have a smaller serving of protein, fat, and vegetables, or at least two of the three.

Your meal 2, it looks like the only added fat is the guacamole. Again, a serving of avocado for our purposes is half to a whole avocado, so 2 TBSP of guac is on the low side.

 

 

 

 

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I'm a huge fan of salt and have never shied away from using it, so I'm thinking I'm good there, but I'll start to pay more attention to it just in case.

I'll try adjusting the serving size on the breakfast casserole. And maybe I'll try mixing in some coconut milk with the eggs to bump the fat up. I'll also try to throw in some more veggies (maybe do 2 bell peppers, add some fresh tomato on top, I'll need to think about what else to add).

For meal 2, I really thought I was good with the fat since the meat was a fattier grind, there was clarified butter mixed into the mashed plantains, and there was an olive oil based dressing on the cabbage and then topped it all off with guac.

Let's see, water intake should be something like this: 12 oz in the AM; 12 oz coffee; 32 oz water bottle during the day; let's say 1 sparkling water, so that's 12 oz; maybe 2 other glasses of water, so 24 oz. That's a total of  92 oz. That's right on target for my current weight (or at least what I weighed when I started). Of course, these are just estimations, as I have never actually measured how much liquid fits in my coffee mug or water glasses. The water bottle I have with me throughout the day has measurements on the side. Some days I drink the whole thing but other days I have some left in it by the end of the workday. I'll make an effort to track exactly what I'm drinking from now on to make sure I'm hitting my water intake target. 

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