No energy to do normal day activities

[Lisa Chanez]

R1D15, 53 yr old female. Please provide your input. I am still experiencing extreme muscle and generalized fatigue. I want to go to bed by 7pm, i sleep well,  and i still want a nap during the day. It's ridiculous! I am following the template, getting enough fats, eating 3 meals per day, drinking 3/4 to gal water per day.

I compare the fatigue I’m experiencing to how I felt during the beginning of my pregnancies. The muscle weakness is significant enough that I only do a low intensity work out of 15-30 min....like slow walk or elliptical and hand weights, and I just started that this week.

I am not pregnant; I am on thyroid replacement and my levels are within normal limits.

I’ve read that if you don’t carefully count carbs, you could unknowingly be slipping into/out of ketosis without knowing, and inadvertently be extending the “carb flu”.
I know that we are told not to count carbs and I haven’t been.

I have otherwise felt fine, no other “flu like” symptoms, such as headache, nausea, fever, cough, etc.

Please let me know your thoughts. I want to continue, but I just don’t have any energy to get anything done. Thank u for taking time to read.

Sample day

Breakfast
2 Fried or scrambled eggs
Sautéed peppers, onion, mushrooms
Fried potatoes
2 slices avocado

Lunch
Taco salad with olives, peppers, cucumbers,avocado and taco meat
Salsa
Home made Ranch Dressing

Dinner
Baked salmon
Asparagus
Baked potable with ghee
Pear

[ladyshanny]

I would say that you are undereating. It's hard to tell how much you're actually eating but for your breakfast you need more protein. Eggs as protein are as many as you can hold in your hand without dropping. That's at least 3-4. A serving of avocado is half or whole, not slices. Veggies are meant to be 2-3 cups at least. 

If you're eating salad as a meal, it needs to be huge. Like...mixing bowl huge. Lettuce munches down to nothing. Are you including 1-2 palms worth of the taco meat? That's your palm, length width and thickness. Same for your salmon, is it 1-2 palms worth? How much ghee? 

Are you salting your food?

We don't recommend you count anything and you really don't need to. If these meals are indicative of your standard, you have plenty of carb to avoid ketosis but you are undereating across the board. Bump your meals up and see how you do? 

[Lisa Chanez]

Now I'm confused. I thought ketosis (burning fat) was one of the benefits of whole 30. Please help me understand. 

Also,  potatoes seem to be discouraged my many. I like potatoes and could eat couple per day as they are filling. Why did people say to only have one every couple days?

[jmcbn]

I don't want to setp on @ladyshanny's toes here but to answer your questions as she may be at work:

Ketosis is not the aim of Whole30 - fat adaptation is. The difference being that when fat adapted your body can switch between burning sugars and fats for fuel. Ketosis is a whole different kettle of fish.

Potatoes are not the enemy. In fact we recommend around a fist sized serving of starchy veg per day. However, it's always good to eat a variety of veg so sticking with potato is cheating yourself out of other valuable nutrients so we always recommend mixing the starch sources up - sweet potato, beets, parsnips, winter squash.... they're all good. Be sure to include plenty of other non starchy veg too though - eat the rainbow...!!

HOWEVER, if you are particularly sedentary, or have issues with blood sugar then we'd recommend you restrict the starches to every other day as starch is another form of sugar and it may impact blood sugar and/or fat adaptation when eaten in volume.

Hope this helps 

[Lisa Chanez]

Thank you