Greetings,
I found this forum yesterday.
I am perimenopausal, was vegan for decades. Recently I discovered that I had gained twenty pounds in the last six months. I've always been very physically active, fit, thin for my height, the opposite of sedentary. What happened is my body just couldn't handle a high carb diet anymore. Even though I was good about eating only complex carbs, no junk!

I developed very chronic migraine--had always struggled a bit with migraine, but the past year it became a weekly ordeal. In order to avoid a migraine daily, I had to eat ALL THE TIME. As long as I was eating carbs, I was hungry ALL THE TIME, even if my diet was "balanced" with meat and dairy. I figured it was my hormones, since I've been blaming them for everything else these days anyway. I think the fresh goat's milk was a big culprit in my weight gain....

I was also overreacting to every little thing that didn't go my way. My mood swings became insane.

I've been eating nothing but unprocessed organic free range meat and eggs for the past two weeks now. I can go for three hours without a snack and still not get a migraine. I am eating very small portions of cooked greens. I am pretending to be a carnivore, so I am imagining that the cooked greens I am eating is about on par with a big cat eating the contents of the gut of an herbivore....sometimes I'll have some radishes or a celery heart, but oddly, I have gas on those days. I have read a lot lately debunking (is that the right word) the myth that lots of fiber is good.

I have lost ten pounds. I hit a plateau I think because I was eating too much fat, like Atkins said could happen.

I am all of a sudden quite a bit more emotionally stable.

I am taking supplements, mainly chelated calcium and magnesium. Fish oil--frozen fish has something in it that triggers migraine....otherwise I would eat it often.

I just hope I didn't do too much damage to myself as a vegan all those years, when I thought I was eating so healthy....

I am still vegetarian at heart, the ahimsa (nonviolence) of it, but I was getting SUICIDAL on the carb diet, so....

Please feel free to email me if any of my story resonates with you. I need some one to one fellowship.

why are you only having " small portions of cooked greens"? Which diet are you following?

I've never been a vegetarian, yet I gained a lot of weight and had a form of migraine most of the time during the last years of perimenopause & menopause. I tried to combat the weight gain with Weight Watchers, but it just wasn't that effective for me anymore. I wish I'd known more about low carb in those years; I think it might have been easier for me.

__________________
~~~Teelbee
Back to GOAL!!!
start weight: 176/goal range: 137-134/now: 138
Reached goal in Aug. 2003 - 4rd year of maintenance.

LCandria--when I was a vegan I constantly had gas. Constantly. Even if I eliminated common gas causing foods. The first time I tried low carb, one thing I noticed right away was no more bloat, great reduction in gas. But I went back to being vegetarian, adding milk and eggs (raw fresh goats milk and raw "free range" organic eggs) to my vegan diet after learning how good I felt eating some real protein. Now that I am back on Atkins, I have decided to really pay attention to gut symptoms. If I eat more than small portions of veggies, I get gas. I think a little tiny bit of gas is normal--I am talking emissions like from a horse....but not so sweet smelling....

I have corrected gut dysbiosis, but maybe I have more correcting to do. I do take a good live form of probiotics, but not every day....but I have always had gas from veggies, even when much younger and was probably not suffering from dysbiosis (candida, etc) (I also suffer from endometriosis and low and behold on Atkins I discover that grain consumption, even sprouted grain, really aggravates this problem, not to mention beans...)

Now that my mind has been so opened diet-wise, I want to keep opening it.
I have read a lot lately about fiber causing problems rather than fixing them. I am considering the bentonite treatment to clear out all the bad microbes I have built up over the years, and then reestablishing probiotics, but I am still reading too much mixed info on bentonite (some can contain heavy metals).

To all,
My diet can be considered eclectic. Would go Eskimo diet if I lived coastal. People think that carnivores are pure meat eaters, and that is not true. They always eat the gut contents of herbivores. And, they eat the feces. Ever see your dog chow down on some cow pies? They let the herbivores do the "predigestion" for them. And guess what else Inuit people traditionally ate besides meat...gut contents. You don't normally find this little factoid in all the webpages touting the health benefits of eating like "Eskimos."

No, I won't go that far. But I think cooked greens approximates eating the contents of the guts of an herbivore. We don't digest cellulose, right? I have read a lot about the possible increased nutritional absorption of cooked as opposed to raw veggies. I tried the raw fooder diet for awhile and thought I would pop or at least jet myself away on it.

Important: I am not experiencing any constipation even without fiber. I believe this is because I get enough magnesium every day. I believe that magnesium and calcium supplementation including all trace minerals is of utmost importance. There are exhaustive studies that because of the poorness of our soil, we are no longer getting enough minerals just by eating "healthy" foods. Am I echoing Atkins here?

I am still so amazed at how being a "carnivore" has improved all my perimenopausal symptoms in just two short weeks! Last time I did this diet the same thing happened, but I was a very stubborn vegetarian and would not pay attention to how my body's reaction to carbs had changed.

I am not going to post here anymore. I am just not the forum type, too long winded for it. I just want to correspond with other longwinded people like myself. So please email me if you don't mind my "know-it-all" sound and wordiness.

I am fully aware that I have an eating disorder (preoccupation with diet and weight) but achieving optimal health through diet has now become a hobby. Some people would call me a fanatic. They are welcome to their opinion as long as they leave me to my simple pleasure. I do believe in live and let live, now just as long as I don't have to eat you.

(I called myself gooey here because I equate a gooey diet with a gooey emotional and mental state.)
Cheers and peace.
Lisa

Well, I have to ask you... did you read the whole book before beginning this way of eating??? I'm very happy for you that you are finding better health and peace by eating this way. That is a common story!

The reason why I ask is that you should be eating quite a lot of veggies on the Atkins plan. It is NOT the *no vegetable* diet everyone thinks it is! And fiber is very necessary. I have not heard anything about a fiber controversy.
I *do* know that with this woe (way of eating), "fiber is our friend." Fiber is the ONLY carb gram that you can *officially* subtract from your total carb count in a meal. And there is no question about its benefit for the colon...

You have not hit a "plateau;" you said you have been eating this way for 2 weeks... you are experiencing a "post-induction stall" -- VERY NORMAL & very necessary. This is the time for your body to *regroup*. You can't keep losing at the current pace or you would have baggy, elephant skin hanging all over you! It is very normal for weight loss to slow down or pause after the initial shock.

Ten pounds in 2 weeks is WONDERFUL! Congratulations on your success thus far.
I hope you will continue to post and update us on your progress.

__________________
Summer

Oh, I see we were posting at the same time...

Well, you are not the *only* former vegan here nor are you the only one who is educated in matters of natural eating and the *hobby* of managing diet & nutrition.
But if you want to go, cest la vie!
I wish you the best.

__________________
Summer

did we cross post here?

Sorry, but there is info out there that fiber may not be our friend at all--that it may in fact promote the very microbes we are lately attributing to cancer. I am not into debating. I am into empirical investigation because that is all we really have, no matter what book we read from cover to cover. Don't get too attached to any particular "truth--" don't make the same mistake I did.
Cheers, and Peace,
Lisa

I am not "going." Anyone here is welcome to email me any time and I will respond. I just prefer personal emails to forums. Thank you for being here for me to introduce myself and seek fellowship on a more private basis.

Lisa