How the Super Healthy, Low Carb/Sugar Paleo Diet Ruined Our Health & Sanity

If you are doing awesome on it, great!

Peeps if you are following paleo, LCHF, primal or some other way of eating and it’s working for you and you feel amazing, that is super fantastic, I’m honestly very happy for you. This post isn’t for you.. or maybe it is so you know what to watch out for, I simply implore you to listen to and love your body and change shit up if you need to. If all is going well, fantastic!! Much health and happiness to you. This is my story and my partners so you don’t have to relate to it in any way, shape or form if you’re going to be a nasty about it, please keep it to yourself. I’m 3 days overdue pregnant and I don’t give a fuck about your precious ego or how I didn’t do it right or how you have the answers and are better than everyone. Seriously. Read with an open mind or go along on your merry way.

Pre Paleo

When I met Dan he was fit, robust and literally NEVER, EVER got sick. We enjoyed watching tv series (Game of Thrones, True Blood, The Walking Dead) together whilst eating mix bag lollies and we LOVED to eat out. We didn’t worry about what we ate. Dan subsisted on mainly cereal, subway, Boost smoothies, omelettes and some vegetables and meat now and then; I remember he would eat like four bowls of cereal in the morning- so a pretty high carb diet, our favourite cuisine was Japanese, especially the sticky rice and the green tea ice cream for dessert.

Getting sick- start of diet obsessions

I had battled candida in the past but when I met him I was doing pretty well as I had been on a long course of daily Diflucan and that seemed to sort that out for a while, unfortunately it appeared to really mess with my immune system and I began getting vomiting bugs all the time and contracted some nasty viruses such as Eppstein Barr and Adeno virus. I was very, very sick, got down to 38kg, hospitalised multiple times, could not take care of myself at all, he basically had to nurse me full time at my mums house. I began obsessively researching as the antidepressants and sleeping pills and diagnosis of it’s all in my head from all the Drs, specialists and the hospital basically just giving me a drip and vomiting suppressants and sending me on my way wasn’t a great deal of help.

So I became obsessed with the candida diet, did that for a few months but in the end found that whole grains and loads of vegetables definitely was not my cup of tea- I was fucking starving and couldn’t stick to it at all, the food tasted so bland and shitty to me. I started seeing all sorts of holistic practitioners. I got ‘diagnosed’ with everything under the sun. Apparently I was intolerant to just about every food/chemical/substance on earth. I tried the failsafe diet. Fuck that was good times. Really. I loved eating a diet made up of 10 foods, when I ate anything not failsafe I’d have a huge reaction. One time I ate something with tomato and eggplant. My tongue swelled up in my mouth to four times its size and I could barely fucking breathe, my lips were raw red and I thought I was going to die. Took some antihistamines and that calmed that down but wtf, I used to be able to eat those foods without that kind of shit happening. I mean I am anaphylactic allergic to peanuts and cashews but not to a fucking tomato and some eggplant. Jesus. So ditched the failsafe mental asylum and continued to plough my way through a fuckload of research. Thus my introduction to the Weston A Price Foundation and then to stuff like the GAPS and Body Ecology Diets and Paleo in general. This way of eating was far better, Dan loved it too. Fuck I felt like I was the smartest little shit around. Eating like our ancestors, never entering the big two supermarkets. If I did I would stare in disgust at what other people were buying/feeding their kids and how fat, sick and depressed everyone looked. What an uppity wanker- seriously.

Learning lots of amazing things

I am actually very grateful for a lot of the amazing knowledge I gained in my hours, upon hours upon hours of reading books, blogs, studies, research etc. I think supporting grass fed, organic, locally sourced animal products is extremely important over supporting grain fed, factory farmed fucked up shit from the supermarket. I am all for organic, seasonal/local and eating real food. I am all for avoiding PUFAs as much as possible as I actually think they alone are the most damaging part of the modern human diet (margarine, vegetable/seed oils etc, some nasty ass and seriously damaging/inflammatory shit). I don’t want to ingest aspartame or a huge clusterfuck of additives, preservatives, colours and e numbers. But things started to go pretty darn sour 12 months down the track of our perfect, superior, ancestral, grain free, sugar free, low carb, paleo, real food, egomaniac, better than everyone diet. Interestingly the more symptoms we got the lower carb, lower sugar we tried to go.. this is what started happening. I’ll start with Dan and then run through my symptoms.

Dan’s body starts falling apart

Dan was the most chilled dude I have ever met when I met him, nothing could fire him up, he was very even tempered and just went with the flow pretty much all the time. He smiled a lot and was happy doing just about anything, even cleaning makes that boy happy, seriously. Like I said he never got sick, literally never in his life even had a common cold and he had boundless energy, we used to walk 8ks a day min and he was a runner and into loads of sport. Plus don’t forget the sex 😛 but he started to lose his health, he got dandruff all the time and weird rashes on his body, he became snappy so much more easily and really fatigued, in more recent times he started to get horrible digestive upset, I won’t embarrass him too much with the finer details but it wasn’t pleasant, he also started vomiting a lot which was truly bizarre and developed sinus issues, poor sleep and his muscles literally started wasting off his body- no matter how much pasture raised bacon, eggs, organic grass fed meats, super healthy fats and vegetables he consumed in a day. He became scared of carbs and even fruit and stopped eating his beloved bananas even.. he wouldn’t even touch sweet potato, we were so obsessed it was mental. He started lying around watching cricket all day, not having the energy for anything much at all. He was super moody and his zest for life had all but disappeared. He couldn’t exercise anymore, if he did he would get sick again. Weird stuff started happening to his teeth and he was getting kind of stinky, he’d never had a bad smell problem before haha (sorry babe).

He decided that our water filter must not be clean enough and that’s why he was sick all the time and kept cleaning the water filter, even though Dom was drinking from it and he was totally fine- good thing Dom was still getting carbs from all the other places he went huh? I can only imagine if we had him 24/7 and he didn’t get any carbs or sugar- fucking bad times for his growth and health that would have been.

Dan would say he must have got sick from cleaning the bathroom or not washing his hands after doing the dishes or something, he was freaking out about everything and would not TOUCH any food that wasn’t from our house and totally organic/paleo. I think it’s possible he was even more paranoid about it all than me. Poor bastard. Wtf had I done to him. I said we should go even lower carbs absolutely no sugar. Only fruit allowed was berries, lemon and lime and absolutely no grains (we’d been grain free for the best part of a year anyway) or starchy vegetables allowed. Ketosis and gut healing protocols and supplements would cure us.

This was a week ago. I posted about the gut healing protocol on my page. A few people were smart enough to call me out on it and say it was a fucking bad idea, given I’m pregnant and will also need to be producing titty milk. One chick in particular kept commenting and private messaging me stuff. Stuff about low carb/no sugar not being the answer and how it could really harm our metabolism and adrenal and thyroid health. I thought she was a bit mental but good thing I love to read.  She implored me to read more from Josh and Jeanne Rubin and this batshit Matt Stone fellow. I read 6 of his books in a few days. I’m like that. Then I thought about my own symptoms over the paleo time.. what had happened to me?

My health starts deteriorating again..

Well initially we felt amazing and were on top of the world. Pretty common scenario. Super fucking human we were. Knew it all. Did it all right. I mean shit I have 5,500+ people following my facebook page and liking, sharing and commenting on all the stuff I shared- good thing I ripped into veg/seed oils and highly processed shit more than I did natural sugar and carbs.. so hopefully I haven’t caused too many people lasting damage like I have to my own family.. although I definitely did encourage low carb/high fat.. fuckity.. hopefully if anyone else is experiencing issues this will help them on their way. I started to really lose my appetite. I seriously could not face bacon and eggs at breakfast. I wasn’t hungry until 10.30/11 and then I’d make a smoothie and usually not eat again until 5.30 or 6 where I’d push my meat, veg and fat around the plate.

It wasn’t always like this, I used to love the food and Dan is truly an amazing cook but I was just so fucking bored out of my mind. I was constantly exhausted, like could barely walk 50 meters down the road without moaning and groaning and wanting to sleep on the side walk (this is prior to me being so heavily pregnant). My moods were psycho, everything made me angry and irritable, I mean I am a pretty firey person in general as you lot I’m sure are well aware but seriously. This one day I was driving home and I started screaming and crying and punching the steering wheel because the red light was taking too long to turn green and my aircon was broken and it was fucking hot sitting there in the sun. Like properly just losing my shit. Completely mental. Thought it was just hormones. This started happening more and more. Something tiny would set me off and I would go fucking ballistic, swearing and crying and screaming and slamming doors like my good old 15 year old self. A grown woman, behaving like one of those disturbed teenagers you see on those weird American shows that get sent to bootcamp and then come home all normal again, for a bit, then they start smoking crack again or whatever. I spent lots of time hiding in my bed, I found it difficult to answer the phone and emails again, I found it extremely difficult to cope with criticism of my work on here, I would cry virtually at the drop of a hat and had suicidal feelings often. Never feeling good enough and so ultra fucking paranoid about shit that just seriously DOES NOT EVEN MATTER.

I was also experiencing lots more digestive problems, couldn’t take a shit half the time, ended up with haemorrhoids, needed a bucketload of magnesium to get things moving, candida wouldn’t go away and would flare up hugely if I ate anything outside my paleo list, which was becoming a more regular occurrence. The cravings were constant and I felt so much guilt that I couldn’t just be good and stick to the perfect diet that was apparently so fucking satiating and not depriving at all.  My arthritis/RSI was playing up terribly in my hands and arms, I had pains all over my body and what felt like shin splints despite doing sweet fuck all in the way of exercise, I started waking at 2am and being unable to sleep. I was angry and irritable virtually all of the time.

Social anxiety- epic cravings

We had no life. Seriously. Even at Christmas time I would read the ingredients on say mint jelly (one of my favourite things of all time dating back to lovely memories as a child, slathering it on my meat) and I WOULDN’T PUT IT ON, because it contains sugar. That devil poison shit that is killing us all. I wouldn’t eat grains or if I happened to I would get really sick and feel really guilty. I never liked fruit much anyway. When I went super low carb, no sugar, my cravings were out of control. I thought I had a major addiction and problem that I needed to fix but my body is, as it turns out a fuckload smarter than me and when I went to McDonald’s eight times in a fortnight and ate the shit out of a large cheeseburger meal and a sundae, hiding the evidence and crying in guilt and literally ate 2/3 of this amazing cake my sister made for my son’s birthday in TWO DAYS. I thought maybe my body is really sending a strong message here. Maybe I’m not a weak piece of shit after all.

Questioning the low carb/sugar obsession

So I read Paleo Myths, Eat for Heat, Diet Recovery 2 and a bunch of other books by Matt Stone, I read Don’t Quit Sugar by Cassie Platt which I’d previously said a lot of disparaging shit about. I looked into the work of Ray Peat and Danny Roddy, I checked out Go Kaleo and I started taking our temperatures. According to Matt Stone and many others, these super restrictive diets fuck you mentally (obviously) but also for many people really destroy metabolism, thyroid and adrenal health. Dan’s raising temp was 34.4, mine was 34.8. Really if your metabolism and thyroid are functioning correctly you should be BARE MINIMUM 36.6, even better 37.2 or higher (99 Fahrenheit). Clearly we were fucked and our bodies were literally starving, particularly funnily enough for CARBOHYDRATES (that devil shit that is making us all fat and sick) and SUGAR. As well as salt, saturated fat, sleep and starch. The s’s for dealing with stress.

Feel initially amazing and get to your ideal body weight by quitting sugar?

In Cassie Platt’s book Don’t Quit Sugar she explains- “Many people experience profound results through quitting sugar, particularly in the short term. Mentally, there’s increased energy, blunted appetite and noticeable mood enhancement. Physically, there’s seemingly effortless weight loss. What most fail to realise is that such changes are attributable to a state of cellular stress and consequent rise in stress hormones. For three months, six months, perhaps a year (this is affectionately termed the ‘honeymoon phase’), stress hormones can make you feel excellent, promotion euphoria and a heightened sense of wellbeing. But beneath the surface, stress hormones do exactly as their name suggests- they’re a stress on the body in its entirety. Prolonged elevation can break down body tissue, impair thyroid function, damage the metabolism and devastate the body physiologically.”

Signs that your metabolism is on the decline

• Low body temperature (increase sensitivity to cold, consistently cold hands and feet). TICK
• Frequent urination- pale in colour. TICK.
• Digestive issues- bloating after meals- delayed gastric emptying, less than one daily bowel movement. TICK.
• Poor sleep quality (insomnia, waking up during the night)- TICK.
• Low sex drive or impaired sex function- TICK.
• Thinning hair or hair loss
• Infertility
• Absent, irregular or difficult periods.
• Thinning hair or hair loss.
• Thin outer third of eyebrows.
• Dry skin, especially on the hands and shins.
• Fatigue (feeling tired, sluggish or weak). MASSIVE TICK.
• Brain fog or poor mental focus.
• Mood disorders, increased anxiety or depression. YES!!
• Oedema (water retention), particularly facial puffiness
• Weight gain
• Muscle aches or weakness. TICK!

Cassie’s book also delves into many more facts and fiction about sugar including the whole insulin resistance escapade, fructose fear, fatty liver, sugar makes you fat, humans apparently ‘not being evolved’ to eat sugar and even the need to cut out sugar in order to stop feeding candida. MYTHS!! She then provides a how to guide to sugar, the best ones to use and how to incorporate them safely in your diet. When we talk about sugar, I merely mean sugar from fruits, starchy vegetables, raw honey, maple syrup and yes even pure cane. Not highly manufactured, processed versions like HFCS which IS damaging and a pretty bad idea for health.

EAT THE FUCKING FOOD

So yeah.. now we are eating all the foods. All the time. Min 3500 calories a day for me, more for Dan. Today I had a glass of freshly juiced, organic OJ (OJ CONTAINS AS MUCH SUGAR AS COKE OMG WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE), I had two pieces of Turkish toast for breakfast, with a shitload of butter. Then I had weetbix with milk. I had a pie for lunch, with sauce and a mango smoothie, I ate some Turkish delight and some lollies, I had 3 ice creams. I had scallops and mash in butter sauce for dinner. I drank apple juice.  Oh yeah I also had a cheeseburger too. I was fucking hungry. I’ve been doing this for a week now. Literally eating all the things, what I want, when I want to. I’m not going to carry on like this forever but funnily enough processed, calorie dense foods can be just what the Dr ordered to smash your metabolism back up to its rightful place and sort your shit out, plus it’s the best way to cure years of deprivation and starvation. Get it all in there. You’ll stop craving so much shit if you just eat all the things and get it done. I know, I know, completely mental right? Our temperatures are already rising, today I was 36.6 during the day and 35.5 upon rising, a definite improvement. I look forward to being a normal part of society again, eating nourishing foods but also enjoying my sister’s pastries, Turkish toast and juice.

Where to from here..

All I can say is you need to listen to your body and do what’s best for you once again. You can’t prescribe a one way diet for everybody on the planet earth. It just doesn’t work out. Sorry. Do your own goddamn research and for fucks sake google where to get the books (amazon kindle people, keep up).  Google the blogs, just fucking google it all. Check out these posts from previous low carb paleo peeps too http://huntgatherlove.com/content/breaking-paleo and http://butterbeliever.com/low-body-temperature/ and http://www.cheeseslave.com/why-i-ditched-low-carb/. Don’t bother commenting about what I’m choosing to eat and how I’m choosing to deal with what I believe actually got to the point of an eating disorder. Google Geneen Roth, feedbag method etc and shove your judgments up your ass.

I’m having a fucking good time EATING THE FOOD and feel about a million percent better in every way. So does Dan. I will probably lose a lot of my audience with my very different attitude towards food and health, that’s ok, I hope that I will also gain a new audience and retain a lot of my old fans as well. I think I can still be proud of a lot of the work I have done. Saturated fats are a very important part of the diet, eating local, organic, sustainable food is awesome, PUFAs and highly processed man-made oils and ‘spreads’ are in no way healthy. I’m not sitting here swilling vegetable oils and HFCS by any means. But I think a much more relaxed and enjoyable approach is needed in many cases and you may need some carbs and sugar.

Type 2 diabetes and all the other complications that paleo/low carb claims to save you from are not as simple as they are made out to be.  I think the paleo movement has a lot of wonderful and very positive aspects but I think the low carb, sugar fear mongering campaign is pretty akin to the saturated fat and cholesterol fear mongering propaganda and that makes me really, really sad. I really hope that I haven’t harmed anyone else with what I thought was the holy grail of dietary advice. That’s the thing that freaks me the fuck out the most and lead me to abruptly shutting down my page. I guess I can say that I never wanted people to just do what I do anyway, all I wanted was to share information with the world and get people CRITICALLY THINKING and now I am taking a critical approach once again and turning a lot of what I thought I knew on its head. Again all covered in Matt’s books and by the likes of the others mentioned.. check it out it really is very interesting..hope there is still some love for me and my ramblings out there. Be kind to yourselves..

**IMPORTANT UPDATE** It really is important to try and find a place of balance, swinging back into eating any and everything you want can be ok for some people for a short amount of time but if you have significant gut health and other health issues it may do more harm than good. I now aim for Balance- eating mostly high quality, organic, traditional, nourishing foods, with room for treats. I include rice, potatoes and high quality organic sourdough and make juice and have cake at a party. Going from one extreme to the other can be very damaging. Balance is very hard to achieve. Seek counselling and the advice of a qualified nutritionist (a good, well recommended one).