Feeling the worst iv'e ever felt in my life on primal. page

[jellyfish]

So basically what the title says but here's some key points and backstory:

Iv'e spent most of my life sick and fat. I went on my first diet when I was 10 and began developing ednos around 12 (binge eating with restrictive tendencies). I have a long history of mental illness (depression, but my biggest issues are ocd and anxiety), as well as horrible sleep problems since I was a toddler. I tried every diet from technically paleo high meat and fat, to low-carb with some grain, to vegetarian, to weight watchers, and so on and so forth.

At around 14 I gave into my binge eating which got me up to my highest weight of 220 (at 5'2). My diet consisted mostly of fast food, candy, muffins, pizza smothered in ranch dressing, and frosting from a can. I had suprisingly few physcial health problems but this was the height of my anxiety issues as well leaving me pretty much a social recluse who wouldn't leave my house. The next year I had less access to food so I dropped about 20lbs without trying and by my 16th birthday I decided to get serious about weight loss (for vanity not health) and through various different diets I managed to get down to 148. This lasted a very short while and before I knew it I was back up to 185.

Around july of last year I decided to get serious about shit and get healthy for me and not for vanity. I made a very serious decision to pursue medical treatment for an issue that I would prefer not to go into details of. It's a medication that is literally life or death for me, cannot be cured in any way holistically, and I will be on it until the day I die. Obviously this is going to put some strain on my body , especially my liver I assume, and I want to be as healthy as possible to offset this. The first thing I did was cut back on my portions, and by the end of last year I cut all artificial chemicals from my diet.

Around January this year I went vegan in an attempt to offset what had been a particularly bad month of binge eating. Veganism meant no dairy/meat/eggs so unless I made it to whole foods I was out of luck on vegan friendly binge foods. It worked. I was in complete control of my cravings, my cystic acne cleared up, I lost 12lbs effortlessly, my headaches cleared up and the best part was no more anxiety. Not long after I started to get cravings for salmon and added fish back into my diet to get more omega-3's. The above benefits remained on an whole foods pescetarian diet. I added eggs back in about 5 months ago

To give you an idea of what my diet looked like between ovo-pescetarinism and primal:
Fats: avocado, olive oil, coconut, small amount of nuts, wild cold water fish
protein: fish, eggs, nuts, legumes, grains (my main source of grain besides white rice was flax ezekiel bread and whole oats)
carbs: any kind of fruit, startch, vegetable, squash, etc + the above grains.
While I was eating these foods they made up only 5% or so of my diet: sugar, flour, vegetable oil, soy.
Eating the above diet i went from 185 to 130 in about a year and that's a 90lb weight loss from my highest weight. My blood panel looked amazing.

However I was unsatisfied with how hard it's been for me to put on muscle as well as the fact that my sleep patterns were especially disrupted (over sleeping, sometimes 16 hours a night). So after occasionally browsing paleo blogs for the last 6 months or so I decided to give it a shot. About 3 months I started paleo (keep in mind I had done low carb primal with very very poor results infact I was sicker and fatter then than I am now) Which brings us to where we are now. I feel the worst iv'e ever felt. I do NOT eat low-carb and generally eat between 90-160 carbs a day all from paleo approved sources. I do not drink alcohol/coffee or smoke. I get sunlight and regular exercise. I do not consume dairy due to lactose intolerance. Iv'e replaced all of my grains and legumes with 100% grass fed, pasture raised, or at the very least organic animal meat. I drink homemade bone broth from organic animal bones, and have even dabbled in organ meats. Yes I eat enough fat. I am well hydrated.

Physically:
Pro: I have lost 9 inches off my body which is great and currently weight 122 lbs. 100 lbs down, whoo!
Cons: I am still just as tired and it has not fixed my sleeping patterns, constant headaches, less shiny hair and weaker nails, I have horrible bags under my eyes that iv'e never had in my life, irritated gums, chills despite hot weather and no sickness, horrible breath, horrible painful gas, Irregular bowel movements in which i'm either constantly constipated or have awful diarrhea, occasional cystic acne, less even skin tone, worse recovery time after workout.

Mentally:
My ocd is worse, anxiety is back full swing, which is leading to depression. I'm having a harder time controlling my eating disorder (binging results in shame which leads to restricting which leads to depression and back to binging). I feel on the verge of tears all the time for no reason.

On top of this I feel nauseous every time I eat. I HATE bacon, and sausage, and lamb, and veal, most white meat
,and usually eggs. Im sick to death of fish and I can't stomach any more red meat. I enjoy meat daily in moderation but by my 5th rib-eye steak in a few weeks and i'm practically choking back tears trying to force myself to eat. I do not enjoy food anymore.

I guess the reason i'm posting here is because I don't know what to do. Right now i'm clearly not healthy emotionally or physically but my desire to stay healthy over rides everything else. I'm strict paleo, the diet for optimal nutrion, and yet I have 100% of the ailments iv'e had since I was born with about 30 extra ones tacked on.

Why is this not working and what advice can you give me in working towards fixing myself? I'm all ears to any advice you can offer.

[Knifegill]

OMG. Don't listen to anybody here. Get to a qualified nutritionalist and gut specialist. You sound malnourished, badly. But these people, myself included, are mostly a bunch of bored armchair experts. You need somebody to take a physical look at you. Your symptoms could be anything from a tapeworm to a B12 deficiency, and it takes labs to figure that out. Don't listen to us, man. You have very real problems!

[Damiana]

Yes please. If you're doing everything right and still feeling like crap, it's time for some medical testing.

[j3nn]

How are your thyroid and hormone levels? You seem to have symptoms that suggest something is off. You also sound stressed, not uncommon. I know how that is when dealing with health. Have you read anything on Ray Peat ? A lot of what you describe is touched upon in his articles. Maybe you'll find some leads there as to what the trouble might be and you can investigate with your doctor. Start with a basic hormone and thyroid panel, if you haven't already.

[magnolia1973]

Yeah, primal as written nd followed is just a basic healthy lifestyle. If you are eating a rounded diet, and exercising, you should feel good. Adding back in vegetable oil, processed sugar and wheat isn't going to make you feel better.

Hope you can find a solution.

[jellyfish]

You sound malnourished, badly. Your symptoms could be anything from a tapeworm to a B12 deficiency, and it takes labs to figure that out.

Is it actually possible to go from perfectly healthy to malnourished in like 11 weeks? Either way I'll be seeing a doctor this week and possibly having lab work done so i'll bring it up then.

How are your thyroid and hormone levels? You seem to have symptoms that suggest something is off. You also sound stressed, not uncommon. I know how that is when dealing with health. Have you read anything on Ray Peat ? A lot of what you describe is touched upon in his articles. Maybe you'll find some leads there as to what the trouble might be and you can investigate with your doctor. Start with a basic hormone and thyroid panel, if you haven't already.

Extremely stressed actually. I haven't but i'll definitely look that guy up and start reading! As for my hormones/thyroid everything has been tested and is fine.

Yeah, primal as written nd followed is just a basic healthy lifestyle. If you are eating a rounded diet, and exercising, you should feel good. Adding back in vegetable oil, processed sugar and wheat isn't going to make you feel better.

I never disagreed that vegetable oil or processed sugar are bad things. When I said those things made up %5 of my diet pre-primal I mean I had a small cookie made with sugar and canola oil maybe once a month. I can't eat sugar because it gives me wicked headaches and vegetable oil is gross. Aka 80% of my diet was paleo approved foods, 15% grains/legumes aka toxins, and 5% occasional treats which depending on how you view it isn't that much different then being 80/20 primal. I mean I have 0 intentions of ever going back to SAD foods, but iv'e been fairly free of them for over 9 months now.

I'm neutral on the wheat=toxic issue but let's say half my current physical problems are caused by stress. The stress is caused by eating a diet that isn't pleasing and literally makes me nauseous which triggers a whole host of other mental problems. We can all agree stress is horrible so what's actually worse here: eating occasional gluten in the form of sprouted grains but having lower amounts of chronic emotional stress and a general better mental state, or being free of gluten but being so stressed mentally it starts to be a physical issue? That's a serious question by the way. Obviously the ideal would be to manage your stress AND be free of wheat but hey sometimes things don't work out that way.

I mean i'm not kidding when I say I was mostly okay eating just fish, eggs, beans, grains, and produce but I remove wheat/legumes and replace it with land animals and all of a sudden i'm having issues. I don't necessarily think it's from lack of wheat because that makes no sense but what if the issue is what iv'e added in and not what iv'e taken out? Ie: I have problems with certain meats.

[jellyfish]

Side note: I don't really intend to add wheat back in anyways. I went on an i dont care i'm going to eat what I want binge a few days ago which included wheat and iv'e never had stomach problems show up so quick before. I mean i'm severely lactose intolerant and I have better reactions to dairy then I did to some whole grain cereal so i'm not in any rush to feel that pain again.

[sbhikes]

So you had a healthy diet in the past that you felt good on and lost weight but the only complaint you had was that you couldn't build enough muscle. Why don't you go back to your diet that you felt good on and try a different muscle-building program?

[jellyfish]

So you had a healthy diet in the past that you felt good on and lost weight but the only complaint you had was that you couldn't build enough muscle. Why don't you go back to your diet that you felt good on and try a different muscle-building program?

I was also hoping to fix my sleep issues but that seems to need something beyond a diet change. Logically it makes sense to just go back to how I was eating before but to be frank it's a little easier said then done. For one i'm scared out of my mind of doing something "harmful" to myself that i'd almost rather not eat then eat something "bad" (yay anxiety).

The other thing is that I may be subconsciously using paleo as a reason to restrict myself out of fear of gaining weight while also looking for a way to control my fear of inevitable death. In which case I clearly need to sort out my issues surrounding food and mortality first.

Edit: I really would like to get to the bottom of why I feel so awful and what i'm missing in my diet though regardless of the outcome.

[sarasue624]

Diet does make a great scapegoat. It's so easy to control compared to other things. Granted, it is almost always part of the problem, but the brain is a funny thing. Having physical revulsion to meat is most likely mental, not biological (unless your meds are disrupting your processing of the meat thus leading to the feeling of revulsion.)

You're taking on too much too fast.

Sort out your mental issues/reactions to medications/whatever else you're not telling us first. Eat a happy vegan primal if that's what your body wants right now. Don't worry about building muscle until you get other issues worked out. You don't need to stress your body more than it already is. Lower the stress and other things like sleep issues will most likely fall into place.