Most of the time naturopathic doctors encourage people to “listen to their bodies”. I know this because I am guilty of encouraging clients to do this all the time. The key about listening to your body though, is that the practice needs to be done when we are feeling healthy. We often know when something is harmful to our health but we often continue to expose ourselves to these substances because they become normalized. An example of this is by thinking back to the first time you tried coffee, alcohol or puffed on a cigarette. Very few people would actually say they enjoyed those initial experiences however many people overuse these substances daily.
The following article however really puts this saying into perspective and I really wanted to thank one of my clients for sending it to me! I can totally appreciate that listening to my body right now would be a bad idea! All I want to do is eat pasta …. and I’m not even a pasta eater!
The first week of my 70 to 80% fat based diet has flown by! I have been living on egg yolks (and some whites), macadamia nuts (and other nuts), coconut oil, butter, olive oil, cheese (Cheddar, Camembert, and Brie) along with almond flower loaf, low glycemic vegetables, some chicken and even a small piece of steak. Although for the most part I have been feeling pretty good, partly from my stubborn will to succeed, I have definitely noticed some significant changes in my body. The biggest difference has been that I am notably warmer. My body temperature is typically low, at about 36 degrees, but in the last few days I have been warmer. The bacterial inhabitants of my guts are rebelling however, so my stomach is a little off. My sleep is deeper, but I have noticed a few glitches in my energy and I’m a bit up and down with my mood! I reached ketosis on day one though as I had been doing some prep work before starting. For the most part though, everything is starting to level out!
I have provided the links for both parts of this 11 page article however I have only included a part of the article that I really appreciated. A must read for anyone trying to make a lifestyle or diet change!
Tricks to Starting a Low Carb Diet
Dr. Michael Eades Blog
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/tips-tricks-for-starting-or-restarting-low-carb-pt-i/
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/saturated-fat/tips-tricks-for-starting-or-restarting-low-carb-pt-ii/
As anyone who has done it knows, getting started on a low-carb diet can be a little rough. Not for everyone, but for some. All too often these little front-end bumps in the road–coupled with the spirit of the times in which the well-intentioned but ignorant friends and relatives of low-carb dieters tell them their diet is going to croak their kidneys, clog their arteries and weaken their bones–can be enough to make many people abandon the most sincere efforts. Drawing on my almost 30 years of experience treating patients using the low-carb diet, I can give some tips and tricks for dealing with these difficult early days.
Listen to your body?
The surest road to failure in the first few days of low-carb dieting is to listen to your body. The whole notion of listening to your body is one of my major pet peeves. In fact, just hearing those words makes me want to puke. In my experience, they are usually uttered by females with moist, dreamy looks in their eyes, but not always. I just read a ton of comments in recent Paleo blog post in which vastly more males than females actually wrote this drivel.
Listening to your body is giving the elephant free rein. If you’re three days into your stop-smoking program, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed. If you’re in drug rehab, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed. If you’re trying to give up booze, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed. And if you’re a week into your low-carb diet, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed. Actually, it’s okay to listen to it, I suppose, just don’t do what it’s telling you to do because if you do, you’re screwed.
Okay, end of rant. I just had to get it out of my system. You just can’t imagine how many times people who have tried low-carb diets then abandoned them early on have said those words to me. Wait. I’m about to get started again. Stop!
Low-carbohydrate adaptation
Probably the best explanation of low-carb adaptation (also called keto adaptation) was written by a Lt. Frederick Schwatka over a hundred years ago.
When first thrown wholly upon a diet of reindeer meat, it seems inadequate to properly nourish the system and there is an apparent weakness and inability to perform severe exertive, fatiguing journeys. But this soon passes away in the course of two or three weeks.
Lt. Schwatka was a doctor, a lawyer, and an explorer of the Arctic, the Great Plains and northern Mexico. The above quote comes from his book on the unfruitful search for the Franklin party in 1878. (For all his experience and gifts, and understanding of low-carb adaptation, the good doctor listened to his own body a little too much and did himself in with an overdose of morphine at age 42.) You can read more about Lt Schwatka, low-carb adaptation, and his time with the Inuit in a post I wrote a few years ago.
The period of low-carb adaptation is that time between starting a low-carb diet and feeling great on a low-carb diet. It can take anywhere from just a day or so to two or three weeks. During this adaptation period people tend to fatigue easily, experience a slight lack of mental clarity and be tormented off and on by the unbidden lust for carbs that seems to rise up out of nowhere. Why does this happen early on with a diet that ultimately works so well to increase exercise capacity, mental clarity, and feelings of satiation?
It happens because both your body and brain are going through a profound change in the way they get their energy. You can’t run your car designed to burn gasoline on biodeisel…unless you install a converter. Then you can. We humans have the design for our carb to fat converters coded in our DNA – the low-carb adaptation period is simply the time it takes for the converter to be built and installed.
Our bodies are simply giant piles of chemicals heaped together in a human-shaped form. Most of the chemicals will react with one another, but only extremely slowly. If we didn’t have something to help these reactions along, life wouldn’t exist.