How to deal with "Low Carb Flu"

Gary has told me that he wants me to contribute to this blog so I thought I'd write a blog about things from my point of view. I don't find this diet quite as easy as he does because I'm not so keen on eating meat all the time, I like variety and I like my vegetables. The first few weeks of this diet were the hardest for me and I really suffered to start with.

Prior to starting this diet I ate quite a lot of sugar and used it to spike my energy and keep me going. Generally I felt tired all the time and the sugar helped with peaks of energy. When I started the diet I was, of course, cutting out the sugar so I just felt really exhausted and cloudy all the time. I found myself staring into space and losing hours of the day. It is a drastic change for your body and it needs time to adjust, through this time you might not feel so great. These few weeks are often described as Low Carb Flu. So what can you do about it?

Drinking fluids is really important. Your body is losing a lot of water in this time and you need to replace it. I personally don't drink water so I consume a lot of diet coke, it's my one treat on this diet. I wouldn't recommend you drink this but find something you can drink. I have a 2 litre bottle that I have to get through each day, then you can see exactly how much you're drinking.

Next thing I did was to allow myself a small amount of carbs in hot chocolate. The recipe is below:

Hot water

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tsp stevia sweetener

This contained a few grams of carbs but that small amount was enough to give me a small energy boost but not ruin my diet. You can put cream in the hot chocolate or on top to make it slightly more luxurious and it's completely on plan.

Make sure you're having enough salt in your diet, Gary will/has talked about how important this is but from my point of view, it makes me feel better!

Another thing we did was pudding occasionally. We made up sugar free jelly and had it with double cream. Again this was minimal carbs but it was a nice treat and certainly helped me through the evening when I usually like to nibble the most.

Other things that I have found since that are ok to snack on are:

Cucumber sticks and a few cherry tomatoes.

Peanuts, these do contain carbs but also high amounts of fibre so the net gain is small. Try not to eat too many as I do though.

There are other options depending on what it is you're particularly craving. For example if you feel like chocolate certainly dark chocolate is fairly low carb if it's high in cocoa. I found this way to bitter to eat but it was nice to have the option. The internet has lots of options, let us know if you find any good ones.

I hope that helps you in those first few weeks. After I got through those I felt so much better and now my energy levels are not only stable but much higher than they were previously. I feel like they have returned to, what I would describe as, normal levels. Just push through the tough start and watch the scales go down.