LCHF / Keto & Mental Health?
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Welcome back, WTG, Violet! Regular exercise is definitely helpful and you'll get back to your diet, one step at a time! Hugs!1
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Violet_Flux wrote: »Just a little follow-up to this...
Still having trouble really getting 100% back into the diet / WOE like we should. Going to make another push to try and get over the self-sabotage etc. Excercise has been ok though, as in we still do it every day, still hitting our daily activity goals.
The good news is, finally got the name change stuff out of the way. Both here on MFP with a new username, but the big thing is we did a legal name change so we're moving forward as the new (and hopefully improved) version of ourself.
Thanks again to everyone for being so supportive here!
-Violet
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Nice to see you stopping by. Come hang out!1
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@Violet_Flux welcome! Nice to see you back and moving forward with life, the diet stuff will come when you are ready and the important stuff is what you have achieved recently
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Hey folks! - So it's been like 6 or 7 months I guess since we were last active in the forums here. Figured today was a good day for a follow-up. Cos it was one year ago today that our big breakdown happened and we like doing these 'aniversary posts' like Steph did lol.
It has not been a great year unfortunately. We've gained like 30 pounds which sucks. Dunno the exact amount but maybe we'll get on a scale this week or maybe end of November.
We're still doing our daily cardio. Had to take a 2 or 3 week break cos we had to have surgery in September but we're back at it, averaging like 70 minutes a day right now and hoping to get it up to 90 minutes/day by the end of the year.
The food thing has been our biggest setback health-wise. Our endo doc says it's normal, like our body lost a ton of weight and now it wants to gain it back again. We think its all psychological. Maybe its a bit of both?
Like, I can be committed to the diet, but if one or two others aren't, then it just takes a day or two a week of them snacking and cheating to mess up our week. So the other day we had a sort of team meeting and I laid down the law. We're all on low-carb, we're all in it together, and we all gotta work on this cos we all get sick or healthy at the same time.
It's only like 2 or 3 days since then but so far we're being good and nobody's complained about things. We did this for like 2 years before the breakdown and we know it works. We've had a year of messing around. Now it's time to get serious again.
So that's where we are for physical health.
Mental health is another work-in-progress lol. We just switched therapists and started with someone who's got actual knowledge and experience in this stuff. Early days with her but we're hopeful that'll help a lot more than the first one.
Maybe the hardest thing to accept has been the realization that life is never gonna be how it was before. Stuff that we've forgotten or lost - like memories, as well as skills, knowledge and stuff like that - we may never ever get back. Best we can hope for is to just learn to live with the new reality and accept the new limitations and stuff like that.
We're super lucky about being self-employed and that Steph set up work and stuff the way she did, cos the tough reality is if we were in some 9-5 job, we'd be out on the street by now. Either been fired or had to quit for medical leave or whatever. Cos we're just not as capable of all that stuff as we used to be. Even the self-employed work is a challenge but at least it's flexible enough we can sorta do the work when we're able, and take breaks when we need to.
And working from home, dealing with people by email and phone means its easier for us to pretend to be a stable competant mature grown-up like they expect, lol.
So, I can't promise we're gonna suddenly be as active again in the forum as Steph was, but we're being serious about the diet again and we've been reading the forum for a few days now, working up the courage to join in again.
Hope everyone's having a good weekend. Keep calm & keto on!
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@voilet_flux This is a really good thread about need for a diet break. Most of the really great links are in the beginning of the 200 some pages.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks#latest
If you've not looked into leptin and ghrelin, the hunger hormones, you might want to search that info about how the loss of fat has an affect on the hormones and what can be done about it
Good to see you posting and hope your new therapist is of benefit to y'all.1 -
Thankyou @kpk54! We read the first few pages and several of the links in there. That was interesting stuff about the hormones. I am sure we read some of that stuff before, Steph read several books about lowcarb and fasting and that hormone stuff was familiar.
We'll try and keep in mind about taking breaks now and then, but I think we've just finished like a 52 week break lol and need to get back into the lowcarb zone haha. 1 -
Hi @Violet_Flux! Nice to see an update, wondered how things were going. Hopefully your new therapist can be even more helpful for all of you. Out of curiosity, do you fill in your therapist on your eating plan, and are there some suggestions they have to help with LC compliance from all your identities? Admittedly, I don't know much about DID, but is there a way to come to a consensus with all your identities without one in particular 'taking charge?' Or is that way of dealing with things unhelpful? I understand if you choose to limit what you share here. (((hugs)))3
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Hiya @canadjineh! They only just met the new T and just started yesterday so they havent really talked so much yet. SMaybe soon they will get to talk about eating. Violet is the one who is around most soshe sorta acts like the boss lol. We dont hafta do what she says but too much fighting makes us all tired. Its sad not getting to ahve icecream and candy
but its no fun being sick so we'll try to be good. Violet says we gotta learn other ways to have treats instead of food. Do stuff thats fun instead of eating snacks. 3 -
Hey everyone!
Gonna do an update to our 'crazy thread' here lol. Its been a while and there's been a buncha big changes and stuff with us again. As usual lol.
So its been like over 2 years now since the whole breakdown thing. For folks who don't wanna read the whole thread, we have DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and it was like, stealth / undiagnosed for most of our life, then 2 years ago everything fell apart and the person we were for most of our adult life disappeared and a bunch of us had to take over and try to figure out how to live life and stuff.
We found out this is generally referred to as a "DID crisis" where like, your whole life falls apart and everything seems crazy. It can last a few months, a few years, or it can just be like forever. For us its 2 years & counting, and maybe this is how its gonna be forever. We dunno.
There's like, almost 20 of us sharing this body and we're all way younger. We don't all like, take over and use the body, most of us just live 'inside'. The ones who do use the body mostly are like, there's 2 teenagers, 2 young adults, and a couple little kids. We all have different names and stuff, different like, interests and opinions and whatever. And different education and stuff I guess? Like some of us are more wordy and whatever than others.
So every time we think stuff's finally got sorted out and starting to settle down, stuff gets all shuffled and messed up again. After like 2 years we finally gotta accept that the mental stuff's not gonna get solved any time soon, maybe not ever. So we gotta just live with it and get on with the other life stuff? Including looking after the body and eating right and stuff.
Except I've been the one doing most of the fronting (being in the body) since like, October, and I was really bad at that stuff. Like, carb addict, junkfood addict, and I don't know how to cook so all I was eating is like, processed heat-n-eat kinda stuff. And junkfood.
I knew it was bad for us and stuff but its like, I was addicted. Couldn't stop. 
So - this is where it gets crazier lol - I know cats are obligate carnivors and that's kinda keto/low carb right? I got the idea to become part-cat. See the profile pic lol! Call it magic, hypnotism, or just crazy lol but we have someone inside who's got power and stuf and I had her change me. And it worked!
Overnight I stopped craving carbs and junkfood and soda and sweets and all the other stuff I'd been binging on constantly! Nov 24th I went to bed a carb-addict an Nov 25 I woke up hardcore keto! We started logging Nov 25. Not strict carnivor like i have a bit of spinach every day.
I gotta be careful tho with what i eat cos i've found out the hard way that stuff that's toxic to cats makes me sick too. Like we had some earl grey tea one day and that made me really sick, so we read about it and found out its got 'bergemot oil' in it which is toxic. Orange pekoe is ok tho, but i gotta limit the dose cos caffein.
On the plus side, catnip makes me mellow & giggly, so there's some advantages too! And I've tried eating catfood (dry kibble) and kitty treats lol! The catfood is ok but not my first choice. The treats are good for like a little crunchy snack.
I still can't really cook yet, but I know how to make like bacon&eggs, and I can reheat leftovers. So I make bacon&eggs for breakfast and reheat leftovers for dinner. older Violet takes over once or twice a week to cook up a bunch of proper food, like a big roast or whatever, and then theres lotsa leftovers for me for the rest of the week.
I'm trying tho to get Violet to teach me to cook more... like lastnight I tried making a steak and i overcooked it and burned my hand but gosh it was yummy!
Even if all this stuff is 'crazy' its working! Like I feel great, happy , positive. Eating healthy now!
Oh and yeah we're still in therapy. When I told our T about all this stuff she said it was a good creative way to solve the diet/health problem.
Anyways so that's where we are! I'm Viola, I'm a 17yo 'catgirl', stuck looking after this old-lady body and stuff. But so far we're sticking to the lowcarb / keto thing, we're keeping active and doing workouts and stuff, and even got some good cooperation going on inside with all our mental stuff.
For now it's mostly gonna be me here, but sometimes older Violet will be here instead. We don't like 'sign' our posts or whatever, but folks will probably notice the difference cos Violet 'talks' / types different than me. 6 -
I had a therapist ask me to write a “parts play” once. I rolled my eyes about this exercise but looking back it helped me to discover all of the different personalities that resided in my brain and how each one of them took over to solve different kinds of problems. They were all different names and ages too. Although I had never thought about it before, I inherently knew who they all were, their backstories, how they got along with each other. I don’t have DID or any mental disorders, but I do think we are all on a spectrum and use coping skills to varying degrees. I legally changed my name too.
After years of inner work I’d say all of my parts are well integrated, but She-Ra is the main character in my play now. She is my favorite because she is so calm and has her *kitten* together, I feel very safe when she is on stage. Cats are pretty calm too, but playful. There’s a great documentary called Kedi about the cats that roam around Istanbul. The female cats in that movie were very clever and fun to watch.
Hopefully older Violet can agree to do some meal prep for you every week, there’s a great subreddit for this!1 -
Thanks @chickencereal!
We appreciate reading about your own experiences, it helps us feel less wierd & stuff. That's really cool about She-Ra! And the whole parts-play thing, we haven't heard of that before but it sounds really neat!
Our T says that too about everyone being on a kinda spectrum and stuff. Like everyone has sorta 'parts' and stuff, what makes folks with DID different is just our parts are more separate and stuff - like memories and stuff, taking over the body & doing stuff and nobody else knows, & the amnesia & stuff like that.
I heard of that movie about the cats in Istanbul but haven't seen it. We have 4 cats here so we get lots of exposure watching them & all! They are all crazy little characters!
I'm sure older Violet will keep helping & stuff. (We also call her V1.... and there's a V2, who's teen Violet lol.) We do have some like, emergency frozen food, like chicken wings & stuff, but its not satisfying anymore - like real homemade is so much more yummy.
And I still wanna learn to cook better & stuff too - I made steak again tonight & managed to not burn myself this time lol! Still kinda overcooked it tho. 
V1 should be back tomorrow tho cos its time to buy groceries & do up another roast & stuff. 1 -
I’ve never had amnesia but there are definitely some very specific characters that come out suddenly in response to different stressors, moreso than the average population. I know it’s not the same but I can relate on some level. Your therapist sounds like a good one. I had one for years and now I’m doing fine on my own. Being fully accepted by a responsible adult was a new experience for me and helped me learn how to re-parent myself.
Back to the topic of the thread, I’ve had some not so great experiences (to put it *very* lightly) and all the other stuff that goes along with that plus some medical issues and I can say that over the long-term, keto/LC is one of my best tools for stabilizing my mental and physical health and keeping my weight/binging in check (which stabilizes my moods too). I’ve done a lot of research on this. There are times when I need the serotonin boost from carbs but as long as I keep returning to this state periodically it levels me out somehow. I hope it works for you in the same way.2 -
Thanks @chickencereal,
Unfortunately we also have experience with the not-so-great aspects of all of this... DID is a traumagenic disorder, and many (most) people with DID also have PTSD. That's where most of our problems lie - not with being multiple, but with the flashbacks, trauma responses, etc associated with PTSD.
Lately we're experiencing the 'vivid dreams' that sometimes come with keto/low carb, which is unpleasant as we generally don't experience 'good' dreams... but we're working through it.
Its 2 weeks now since the 'big change' we mentioned a couple posts ago, and that's still working out, better than I expected. We know from experience that this WOE works best for our body, its the only thing we've found that feels good & healthy & also provides managable weight loss, so I'm very happy we're back at it again finally.
Yesterday we made up another big roast so there's leftovers to last at least till Wednesday, maybe Thursday. And this morning after our workout, we're going to try making something other than bacon & eggs for breakfast.
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Lol so V1 tried to get me to make a stirfry for breakfast this morning. Like, that used to be a daily thing for us in the past, spicey pork stirfry for breakfast almost every day. I made it but... blah.
It wasn't yucky, but there's like way too much not-meat & like, I don't really wanna eat that stuff lol. I dont even know if its all safe to eat? I just picked out the pork and tried abit of the other stuff, but mostly i just got rid of the rest.
Theres one more porkchop, maybe i can do that with some eggs tomorrow. 1 -
I understand, I experienced persistent capital T trauma too (I’ll just leave it at that), I don’t mean to minimize your experience by comparing it to mine. I’m sorry about the dreams. They come up so unexpectedly and knock my entire day out of alignment. It gets worse and it gets better but it does get better. I’ll put that subject to rest because boundaries and the internet, heh. *hugs* regardless.
Spicy pork stir fry sounds so good right now, thanks for the idea.2 -
Nice to see your 'kitty-plan' is working.... keep it up 2
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Thanks @canadjineh.
Our resident 'cat' isn't around today... but I'm happy to say her plan has been working perfectly. She's been eating keto for almost 4 weeks without any temptation or cheats.
Today we're going to have a planned cheat day & she made sure she wouldn't be around for it. I'm kind of embarassed about the whole 'feline' thing, but very impressed by how effective it's been. 1 -
Violet_Flux wrote: »Thanks @canadjineh.
Our resident 'cat' isn't around today... but I'm happy to say her plan has been working perfectly. She's been eating keto for almost 4 weeks without any temptation or cheats.
Today we're going to have a planned cheat day & she made sure she wouldn't be around for it. I'm kind of embarassed about the whole 'feline' thing, but very impressed by how effective it's been.
Whatever works.
So glad you are all doing so well!
Not sure why that hug won't line up properly. But it's cute so I had to use it.
Have a great day!
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Thanks for the hug @baconslave! 😸
Their 'cheat day' yesterday went ok - lotsa carby food & snacks & stuff, but they didn't eat all the stuff they wanted. I dunno if our stomach got smaller or our body got like allergic to carbs or something after 4 weeks of keto? Whichever, there were tummy aches yesterday so about half the stuff they wanted to eat got ignored.
Still feeling kinda yucky this morning, but looking forward to being back on track again now! 😺4
