What’s the organic sprouted seed based protein powder you use?

I recently tried a whole-foods, plant-based diet, but it left me feeling weak and tired. I’m wondering if a boost in protein (and calories overall) would help.

Thanks!

I eat a “mostly Paleo” diet which improved my mood, eliminated my low blood sugar symptoms and food cravings. For my body type, reducing the carbs was the key. But I’m an overweight, over 40 woman who’s moderately active. Also, diabetes runs in my family so I suspect I am more carb sensitive than most.

I noticed that most of the comments here about negative reactions to eating low carb are within the first few weeks. This could likely be carb withdrawal, which corrects itself after a period of time. This happened to me… I felt terrible the first few weeks on paleo… tired, flu-like symptoms, weakness, etc. but stuck with it and felt amazing after about six weeks.

But who knows… this all could be about better nutrition and lowering calories.

In the end, I’m loving your site and want to thank you for offering a more sensible voice to the craziness out there.

I had some tests done by a metabolic typing specialist a year ago and he determined that I am what they call a “slow oxidizer”, meaning I digest food slowly, especially fatty foods. The diet he recommended to me restricts meats with high purine levels (beef, lamb and pork, as well as salmon and other oily fish), and I am supposed to get 60% of my calories from non-starchy carbs. Two salads per day, low-glycemic juices, steamed veggies, limited fruits. I have been eating a lot of fruit for years, having come off of a raw mostly vegan diet which eventually left me very depleted and weak, still I kept up with the smoothies and figured that was a good source of carbs. But the more I read about the Paleo diet, the more it made sense, and I got it in my head that I should be eating that way if I am building muscle. Well I have put on a ton of muscle since I was raw vegan, but also about 35 pounds of fat. Nasty.

So now I don’t know if I should keep on drinking my bulletproof coffee with a big slice of grass-fed butter and tablespoon of coconut oil, if I should keep letting myself eat chicken skin, the fat on my steak, full-fat raw dairy, if I should keep feeling guilty for every corn tortilla or slice of whole rye bread I eat…I am so confused. I have been jerking my body around from week to week and now my yoga pants don’t even fit. Last week in class I couldn’t do one of the arm balances we were being taught because there was too much of my fat in the way to get my elbow under my thigh.

I just started working with a trainer and he is about to give me a diet plan. It will be helpful to have objective advice on how many calories I should be taking in, as I have no idea. But I know he is going to suggest the typical low-fat, skinless chicken/fish, count your carbs sort of diet. I paid a lot of money to have my metabolism diagnosed and a diet recommended for me, so i am hoping this trainer can roll with that. What I think I’m going to do is get off the Paleo train, follow the diet I was given, and get serious about cardio and interval training. I don’t know yet where animal fat fits into this plan–people have such differing opinions on saturated fat, and I believe there is no one diet that’s right for everyone. Your blog re-affirmed that for me, so thank you again. I have been blinded by ideas, following gurus without paying attention to my own body, and the truth is that what I’ve been doing is NOT WORKING. I am getting fatter every week. Now I really don’t want to give up my grass-fed butter, but if you and a few others here say that you started losing weight once you added carbs back, I see that it is possible. And since I was told to eat 60% carbs, I think it’s time for me to allow myself that delicious oatmeal that I love so much. I need to figure out which carbs are good for me. I know potatoes are not, gluten makes me look pregnant for the next two days. I am 5’8″ and 190 pounds, enough of that is muscle that people tell me all the time I look fine, but my goal is 155 and then see how I feel. It may sound overweight for my height, but I’m kind of an Amazon . Strong is the new skinny, ladies. More power to you.

I would also like to say that I had a lot of digestive issues (to the point of seeing a functional medicine doc) but since cutting back on fat (I found myself standing around binging on almond butter just to feel some sort of satiety which always led to digestive distress) and eating more fruit and healthy carbs, my digestive distress has pretty much disappeared (eating grains doesn’t make my tummy feel bad or, in other words, I’m not gluten intolerant). I would also like to note that I had blood work done pre strict Paleo and it was fantastic. I then had blood work done about a year into strict Paleo and it was WORSE. Cholesterol shot up (although HDLs have always been high so doc wasn’t as concerned but was surprised at the jump in total). C-reactive protein shot up (which also could have been my over zealous HIIT routine and not enough recovery). Anyway, that was a bit of a wake up call. Here I was thinking I was on my way to nutritional, fitness nirvana and my blood work was worse and I felt like sh*t. Looking good, feeling bad. It was the beginning of my wake up call but it would still take me a while to completely come to as the diet gurus had me convinced that I was on the right path. At one point in 2011 I even did a 30 day “paleo challenge” (which was pretty easy because I was pretty much already doing it all the time anyway) and when I completed the 30 days I had some of my niece’s birthday cake. I waited for the “you’re going to feel really awful after” moment and NOTHING HAPPENED. I felt no different. I had no intestinal distress or whatever. Grrrrr….

Anyway, I wanted to thank you Go Kaleo as you have been a bit of a life saver for me. This is a long comment but wanted to lay it out there because I spent so much time stressing about food, etc. and doing what the diet gurus said. So I guess my tagline for my life during that time would have been “Looking good, feeling sh*tty”. Maybe my experience will help someone else out there.

Thanks again.

Two weeks in on strict paleo I felt exhausted, hungry all the time and was constipated which s a really really bad sign, as the digestive system is overloaded and the partly food stays in the system too long, creating toxins and ultimately disease. I was even dreaming of vegetarian food, prepared by vegetarian friends!

I made reference to Ayurveda, which shows how legumes are made digestible by the use of herbs and spices, and I eat them at midday when my digestive fire – an aspect of metabolism – is highest. Indians have always understood the need to temper legumes with spices to improve digestibility.

This article is a good place to start if you want some info on legumes and preparing them from an Ayurvedic perspective

http://www.mapi.com/ayurveda_health_care/newsletters/beans_&_dahls.html

Peace and blessings of good health

So I went back to eating plants. I felt better almost immediately, and dropped the weight fairly effortlessly. My lifts got back to where they'd been and working out felt good again.”

Yup! Same happened with me. Within a few days of going low carb paleo, I knew without a doubt that that was not the right diet for me. I brought back in generous amounts of fruit, cut back my meat consumption (heavy and slow, with blood sugar swings and needing to sleep in the middle of the day, urgently, is how I feel when I try the whole “meat at every meal” deal) and felt better immediately. I share about this in detail throughout the 30 day trial I posted below.

Listening to your own body and its feedback, and heeding its distress signals when it sends them, is so important. So many people attach themselves like barnacles to a diet guru or certain diet philosophy, and disregard the feedback their body is sending them. Trusting your own body’s wisdom is difficult, but crucial. I commend you for carving your own path, and encouraging others to do the same! A woman after my own heart…

I thought you might like to read of my own dietary experiment with paleo, when I conducted a 30 day trial of that diet after many, many years of strict vegetarian and vegan diet regimes, culminating in a total infatuation period with the 80-10-10 diet, which taught me the invaluable wisdom of avoiding diet dogma like the plague and not drinking the Kool-Aid. High five to that, sister!

Keep blogging, you have an important message to share…

http://www.my-healthy-eating-secrets.com/paleo-diet.html

I really liked this blog post, too.

People really are different, and how their bodies respond to things is different. Ever since I was a kid, I preferred fruits and veggies to starches and meats. And I loved eggs.

Today, i pretty much eat veggies and fruit (most by volume, least by calories though), and then eggs, and then meat. I’m finding that I’m currently eating meat much less — probably harkening back to my vegetarian/vegan days.

There are days where I wish I could go back to veganism (health issue makes that not possible) — I do miss it. And, I probably could go back to vegetarian — but with eggs and without dairy. I wonder if I would tire of the eggs? Hmm. Anyway. . . it’s not that dogmatic in my world.

I really like the formation of your diet. Very cool.