I’m not a part of the group you’re addressing, but I guess a heads-up for anyone taking notes:
My wife and I tried a number of different eating styles for a while, and discovered maybe 2 years ago that we were becoming malnourished in a couple of key micronutrients and doing a bit of damage to our metabolisms.
Whatever you decide to eat for your new lifestyle, make sure you listen to your body and try at least getting your metabolic support nutrients in spades.
Long story short for us: we were becoming really deficient in our minerals, to the point of suppressing our metabolism. We were consistently running 30% deficits and had to keep reducing our intake because we weren’t losing anymore. The last two years have been good, refocusing on hormone support and we’re feeling really great now, despite not being any smaller.
I think people forget that there’s more to being healthy than just losing weight.
We were both very deficient in the 4 big electrolyte minerals: magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium. Those were the big ones - magnesium is pretty important in thyroid function as well as mitochondrial energy production, and they all counter-balance each other so it’s easy to get unbalanced. We were doing a LCHF diet for a while, with intermittent fasting and an occasional longer fast of 24-48 hours, and what we didn’t know is that as you loose glycogen and shed water weight, all of those minerals leave with it. After 4 or 5 months we were starting to feel the effects of being chronically deficient. You really need to be supplementing those minerals (at least) if you’re going that route. But pretty much everything was wonky, because our bodies weren’t absorbing everything we ate because some of those are necessary for absorbing other nutrients.
We cooled off on the aggressive calorie reductions and focused on getting those minerals basically. We started supplementing them to get back into reference range, and then basically picked and chose foods based on their mineral contents. A lot of leafy greens, nuts and seeds, and then dairy and fish (we were buying canned sardines in bulk because we were afraid of the mercury in tuna and other larger fish).
We make ourselves an electrolyte blend most days and sip it if we’re feeling lethargic in the middle of the day, and it is amazing how much of a difference it makes. Once you learn what it actually feels like to be unbalanced, it’s quick and easy to fix it.
I’m not a part of the group you’re addressing, but I guess a heads-up for anyone taking notes:
My wife and I tried a number of different eating styles for a while, and discovered maybe 2 years ago that we were becoming malnourished in a couple of key micronutrients and doing a bit of damage to our metabolisms.
Whatever you decide to eat for your new lifestyle, make sure you listen to your body and try at least getting your metabolic support nutrients in spades.
Long story short for us: we were becoming really deficient in our minerals, to the point of suppressing our metabolism. We were consistently running 30% deficits and had to keep reducing our intake because we weren’t losing anymore. The last two years have been good, refocusing on hormone support and we’re feeling really great now, despite not being any smaller.
I think people forget that there’s more to being healthy than just losing weight.
I’d love to hear more about what you were deficient in and what you added to the diet to make up for it!
Yea, a good question.
We were both very deficient in the 4 big electrolyte minerals: magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium. Those were the big ones - magnesium is pretty important in thyroid function as well as mitochondrial energy production, and they all counter-balance each other so it’s easy to get unbalanced. We were doing a LCHF diet for a while, with intermittent fasting and an occasional longer fast of 24-48 hours, and what we didn’t know is that as you loose glycogen and shed water weight, all of those minerals leave with it. After 4 or 5 months we were starting to feel the effects of being chronically deficient. You really need to be supplementing those minerals (at least) if you’re going that route. But pretty much everything was wonky, because our bodies weren’t absorbing everything we ate because some of those are necessary for absorbing other nutrients.
We cooled off on the aggressive calorie reductions and focused on getting those minerals basically. We started supplementing them to get back into reference range, and then basically picked and chose foods based on their mineral contents. A lot of leafy greens, nuts and seeds, and then dairy and fish (we were buying canned sardines in bulk because we were afraid of the mercury in tuna and other larger fish).
We make ourselves an electrolyte blend most days and sip it if we’re feeling lethargic in the middle of the day, and it is amazing how much of a difference it makes. Once you learn what it actually feels like to be unbalanced, it’s quick and easy to fix it.