Dizziness after eating dinner

AlyM725

I started on the weight loss journey a month ago. My starting weight was 243 (I'm 5'8", I would like to get down to 140), and my current weight is 236. Occasionally, after I eat dinner, I feel dizzy and lightheaded. It's not every day though, and when it happens, it's always after dinner. Never with any other meal. I get really hangry, so I make sure I'm never really starving by dinner time. I eat different food when it happens, so I'm not really able to pin it on one food item. I just wonder if it's my body adjusting to cutting back, or its my weight, or something medical. It definitely doesn't feel like low blood sugar dizziness, and I don't use any sweeteners (those make me dizzy too). Has anyone else had this problem?

My diary is open, feel free to take a look

rachfking

Yes! I went through a stage in my first couple of months of MFP of getting dizzy whenever I stood up. I put it down to low blood pressure but it's also possible I just wasn't eating enough. It seems to have gone away now.

AlyM725

My blood pressure is a little on the high side, though it's come down with the weight I've lost. I did this last year before I got sick, and I feel like I may have experienced the same thing. It seems to be happening less and less, so I'm hoping it's just an adjustment

Serah87

OP, how many calories are you eating??

queenliz99

Have you had a check up recently?

rachfking

I think maybe I wasn't drinking enough water - could that be the case for you as well?

AlyM725

I'm eating 1200 to 1300 calories a day. I have had a check up last week. I mentioned it to my doc, but she didn't seem concerned, she thought it was adjustment. She told me to call her if it gets worse. Like I said, it feels like it's happening less than it was, and I feel like it may have happened before. I had a long battle with a stubborn sinus infection, which caused constant dizziness. I finally beat it, and I feel better, but after six months of dizziness, I really don't have tolerance for it!

AlyM725

rachfking wrote: »

I think maybe I wasn't drinking enough water - could that be the case for you as well?

It could be. I've been drinking almost a gallon a day, but I only drank a little more than half a gallon yesterday

LazSommer

Try moving the goal to 1 lb a week.

kyubeans

Hello. I know this post is from over a year ago, but it's the only one of its kind and it describes exactly what I'm going through. I was eating VERY poorly, high carbs, high processed, high sugar, soda, snacks, all kinds of things. Suddenly, when I saw a new high on the scale, I decided I was going to cut out all refined sugar. For the first week, I cut sugar cold turkey -- the obvious sugars: Soda, sweets, desserts, pastries, etc. For some reason, this was easy (possibly because I never identified as a sweet tooth... I was always more of a salty and savory snacker). Then I decided to take it a step further and cut out refined and processed carbs such as white bread, pastas, rice, etc.

That's when I started experiencing overwhelming dizziness like I have never experienced before. The dizziness came IMMEDIATELY during or AFTER meals, which had me perplexed. When I did online research, the majority seemed to suggest it had to do with blood pressure or blood sugar. Well, I have diagnosed HBP and take medication for it, and I have a BP monior at home. Over the course of a few days, I checked my BP every time I felt this dizziness. It was always in the normal range.

So blood sugar, then? I have an A1C of about 5.5 -- Still in the normal range, but a little higher than my doctor would like. He has me on pre-pre-diabetes watch, but I'm determined never to reach that point. My boyfriend's father is diabetic and he has an at-home blood sugar tester. During a course of dizziness, I tested my glucose levels. Now to be fair, at that point, I had eaten a salad at noon and hadn't eaten dinner yet and I was testing at 7pm. So this isn't consistent with the usual "dizziness after eating" thing, but I wanted to see my baseline. The glucose reading was 101, which is the higher end of "normal".

To be complete, I should've tested my glucose after I ate dinner and seen if the number dipped low, but I wasn't able to do that without my own testing kit.

So I'm still confused, but I may have an answer that I found makes sense for me.

While my numbers don't have me at diabetic YET, and are still showing as technically "normal", I believe my body was very very accustomed to having high levels of blood sugar coursing through me. I think I was on the road to insulin resistance, meaning my body was already in the habit of pumping out tons of insulin all the time and in response to meals because they were always high carb, high sugar, high everything bad. I think the extreme dizziness came about not because I was low blood sugar but because my body thought NORMAL blood sugar was the same as LOW blood sugar.

There's actually a condition called reactive hypoglycemia or postprandial hypoglycemia that describes this phenomenon of your body reacting to meals by surging too much insulin, which causes a dip in blood sugar to low levels. Personally, I don't know if this is happening to me, but I know that this is a HUGE change I made and I made it with no sort of gradual diminishing of sugar and carbs.

Most of the advice is to continue on with a low carb/low sugar diet and allow your body to adjust (because this is basically the path to improved health!) and true enough... It has now been 20+ days on the new "lifestyle" and I'm still battling dizziness but it's not as bad as in the beginning.

Of course, none of this is for sure, which is why I have a doctor's appt with my familiar primary doc next week to go over everything. He may refer me to a nutritionist too, for good measure. But I thought it might be helpful to someone if they also searched the phrase "dizziness after eating" and found this old thread.

Good luck!

JeromeBarry1

That's a nice try, @kyucifer , but @AlyM725 hasn't been using the myfitnesspal diary for a long, long time.

kyubeans

Yes I noticed But I figured, it might be helpful for the next person who wonders.

pinkhippie

kyucifer: Just wanted you to know that I searched dizziness after eating and this thread popped up. Only mine is between breakfast and lunch and sometimes between lunch and dinner, very rarely between dinner and bedtime. I have been going crazy trying to figure it out, as it only started a few weeks ago.

please update on what your doc said!

kyubeans

Hi, I just wanted to update with what my doctor said. I explained the dizziness sensation, and that it came after eating specifically. He stated that although my A1C numbers don't put me in the scientifically defined "diabetic" range, everyone's bodies react differently to sugar in the blood. So basically, even though I wasn't scientifically classified as diabetic, my body's reaction to a complete cut-off of sugar means that it is operationally diabetic or at least insulin resistant and trending toward diabetes. He enthusiastically supported my choice of a low carb, low sugar lifestyle and said there's no "treatment" or solution to the dizziness other than continuing to eat low carb and cut sugar from my diet. Basically, eat like a diabetic person so your body can recover.

It's been about a month since I did this drastic cut-off of sugar and started my low carb eating pattern. I still experience some dizziness after eating, but it's not as overwhelming and debilitating as it was before. I think it's been getting better and better. We did a blood test to see what my new A1C levels are, so I'll get those results in a week and see if one month change in eating made a difference.

Now, this might not be the case for everyone but it is why my body was acting this way. I would encourage anyone experiencing dizziness after eating to talk to their doctor about it and about any changes to your diet/exercise regime.

Good luck!