Nausea, feeling ill - down 40 lbs in 79 days.

dgabbies wrote: »

Congrats! Change is difficult mentally & physically. There’s new research (scientific based not based on associative animal testing) around feast & fast cycles and our human circadian rhythm (similar to sleep rhythm but nutrition related) that may help.

A great audio book (or paper) that gets into the human studies/results (and tons of a’ha! moments) is by Dr Fung called The Obesity Code. For shorter 5-10 min reads, Dr Fung is also on the app “Medium” and gets into body set rate monitor, carbs & insulin, hormonal responses to diet, etc. all impact mental clarity and energy, and sometimes need extra TLC after periods of over indulging.

Long story short, could be what/when you’re eating (or not eating) that’s draining you, not just the actual calories in/out. Low electrolytes, insulin rushes, etc can give you nausea or flu like aches & headaches especially combined with detoxing body of alcohol or other indulgences. With age and frequent indulgences, we don’t bounce back as easily or quickly. Good luck!!

Dr. Fung is a quack. There's no reason to complicate OPs life with random restrictions and bogus scare tactics involving insulin and eating windows.

CarvedTones wrote: »

Incredibly similar story except I quit drinking before starting to lose. BTW, it will get easier - day 475. I also drank a lot of calories and would binge eat, polishing off a bowl of ice cream and a few oreos while waiting for the cheese to melt and then cool a little on my chips in the toaster oven. I also went overboard at pretty much the same rate; I lost 32 pounds in 65 days before posting here and after arguing with people for a while and getting threads shut down for advocating unsafe weight loss, I finally started following some of the links and reading some of the concerns. They are legit. If you are like me, and based on your story you are a lot like me, this is about turning your life around and being healthy and there is a big concern that if you don't make it happen as quickly as possible that you will slide right back into old habits.

It turns out that doing it really quickly makes failure more likely , not less. You need to know how to eat to maintain it when you get there and you need the energy to start being active. Try to get into some activities where you meet some new people that don't have your old habits; meet ups for cycling, hiking, paddling, etc. I am into SUP paddling big time now and have a new social circle to do stuff with besides getting trashed.

My labs were all awesome also, which is one of the reasons I didn't believe people at first. But they don't measure where the weight loss is coming from when you drop too fast. They don't measure adaptive thermogenesis (starvation mode is a myth, but AT isn't). They don't pick up decline in organ function until they cross into territory you don't want to get into.

if you switch to healthier eating habits and slowly increase portions as you appeoach goal, it is much easier to adjust to maintenance. It's been about 7.5 months since I hit goal and I still have to monitor my intake, but this is working.

It's worth doing right.

I can vouch for everything that @CarvedTones said.

As a data point how much you're eating means ZIP-NOTHING-NADA... your rate of loss tells us all we need to know about the deficit you're achieving.... and your rate of loss reflects a deficit of approximately 1750 Calories a day.

If you're eating 2000 on average, based on your rate of loss you're spending 3750 on average (TDEE=3750) which is quite likely at your current weight.

While it CAN be argued that 1% loss of body-weight per week is not unsafe; there is a difference between unsafe and the best option for YOU.

And I don't think that anyone can argue against the fact that if 1% is not too unsafe, a range of 0.5% to 0.8% of your body-weight a week is even safer.

The argument with slower weight loss becomes whether it is de-motivating for the person undertaking the exercise.

However feeling low energy and dizzy is, in my opinion, MORE de-motivating than feeling full of energy and losing weight slower...

plus all the stuff @CarvedTones mentions including setting yourself up for maintenance and the even bigger one which is giving yourself a long enough time while you're losing to embed some of these new behaviours and ways of living into your daily existence.

In any case, a 25% deficit while obese (20% deficit while overweight or normal weight) has much fewer side effects than the 47% deficit you're attempting as evidenced by your current weight loss.

Based on your results I would suggest sticking to a 2lb a week goal deficit right now (1000 Cal a day is just over 25% deficit and would have you eating 2750 Cal a day or so).

And reducing the deficit to 750 Cal and 500 Cal down the road.

And no, you don't have to gradually increase to that level... you can do it immediately and without major issues and there is no benefit in a prolonged slow increase at this stage of the game.

In fact you should NOT be afraid to have days of smaller deficits... the accumulated deficit over time is what will help you lose fat and you don't need to be pushing 100% every day. You DO need to be pushing for finding SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS / OPTIONS for yourself that you keep at once you've lost the weight.

Experimenting is your friend and experiments sometimes fail. The benefit of having the deficit target is that you can quickly get back on track.

You may also want to start inputting your weight into a weight trend application or web site (I use trendweight.com, libra for android, happy scale for iphone are other ones people use).

if you find the motivation, lifting some weights or even body-weight strength training exercises would be good things to do ;-)

You mentioned a 7-hr gap between lunch and dinner. That would leave me dizzy and nauseous all by itself.

countcurt wrote: »

Actually, at your weight, the rate of loss is not overly excessive. I’d hazard a guess that there was a lot of loss in the first couple of weeks related to water weight. But your loss appears to be about 1% of body weight per week, on average.

Your arithmetic is off by nearly 25%. OP has averaged close to 4 lbs per week loss and is now just over 300 lbs.

And lack of energy is far more likely to be about calories (aka energy than about types of food or meal timing. Horses, not zebras.

Eat at maintenance for a few weeks and see how you feel. I get dizzy, tired, and overall feel like crap when my calories get too low. BP and HR drop also. I would have urges to eat everything in site. I realized my body didn't do well on 2000 calories. I bumped up to 2400 calories and haven't had this problem since.

Losing a half pound a day is aggressive to sustain. Do you use an activity tracker?

adamyovanovich wrote: »

So, i recently quit drinking alcohol, about 45 days ago. When i drank i drank a lot of calories and binge ate. When i don't drink my diet is really good, i stick around 1800-2000 calories a day. Sometimes around dinner i feel like crap, dizzy, nausea, ill. And today this morning i feel the same, no energy, blech....
I have lost 40 lbs in 79 days of dieting, and i am in no way starving myself.
Im wanting to know if anyone else has had this, is it the calorie intake, toxins releasing into my blood stream or anything else.?

I had blood work at the doctor and he said i am healthy, good bp, cholesterol, no other issues.

Not knowing your stats, yes you are starving yourself imho. I lost weight too rapidly and am actually having to regain to feel half normal again. I know you won't listen to me, because I didn't listen to people around me, but slow it down. I wish I had known about the mfp forums during my initial weight loss. Just my 2 cents. Take it as you will..