Hi again everyone,
Thanks so much for all your replies and advice, sorry for the radio silence, spent the last few days feeling absolutely rubbish, Woke up on Thursday with one of the worst headaches of my life, so bad I had to leave work early and go lie in a darkened room with an eye mask on to get any relief, wasn't a migraine, honestly think it was my body detoxing from all the junk I've been eating! Took a full 24 hours for headache to shift at all. Started taking half a metformin on Thursday, prescribed 2 a day but I was very nervous about taking that much, felt pretty ok with that, no stomach upset or other side effects. Upped dose to 1 tablet today after having 2 scrambled eggs (advised to take immediately after food). Really wasn't feeling great after that, absolutely exhausted and breathing was a little out of wack but that seems to be calming down now thank goodness. Think I'm going back to half a tablet tomorrow, the possible side effects are freaking me out with this. Also struggling with food, just don't know what I can have, I know everyone here is advising low carb, I just don't know if I can give up my carbs! Lol. Have pretty much been following a slimming world plan which I've done a couple of times before and has always resulted in a good weight loss for me, am I just going completely in the wrong direction with this? Thanks again.
Maggie
Hi Maggie,
I hear you on the "can I give up my carbs?" front... I didn't know what to eat at first either, and yes, you could be experiencing keto flu... Get some electrolytes in you, salt especially, as carbs hold on to water. The moment you lower the carb intake, the electrolytes flush out right along with the water they held on to, so you're probably a little dehydrated, hence the maddening headache. Bone broth or coconut milk should help, if you don't want to go for supplements. Anyway, carbs.. They're addictive by nature. They trigger the same areas in the brain hard drugs to, so.... If they were easy to give up, everyone'd do it. Once you've gone cold turkey though, you don't miss them all that much. The cravings go, but you'd have to stick with it for a while. Extra perk, besides losing weight and getting lower blood sugars: your palette changes. Food tastes so much better when you cut carbs! (Seiously... I used to think 99% Lindt chocolate was bitter. Now I can actually find a sweet note in there.)
Slimming world... Yeah.... Not designed for diabetics. Too many carbs in that. So while it might help you lose weight again, it won't keep your blood sugars within range, and will not get you in remission nor medication/complication free. Low carb would, in all likelihood. But that's the kind of choices you have to make now. We gain weight because there's too much glucose in our blood that we can't burn off anymore, so it just gets stored in fat cells. It's not the chicken-egg thing it seems to be... The weight came on because diabetes was developing. Treat the diabetes and the weight'll come off again.
So these are your choices: Stick with the carbs, and count on metformin to fix everything. (It won't. You'll need more medication along the way, but it IS a valid choice for people who just can't do without their carbs for whatever reason. Carbs have a cost though, so make an informed decision whatever you do!). Or you could cut some carbs, not all, and keep the metformin going, find a balance that way. Or just go low carb and be able to skip the metformin and its side effects. While a lot of us are rather gung ho about low carb, it is a choice we made at some point. Some right from the get-go, some once medication became problematic, or complications arose. And some of us don't low carb at all, or just a little bit. That's the thing: you find out what works for
you. Together with your meter.
Good luck!
Jo
