i'm only three weeks in but have DEFINITELY noticed major cases of the grumps and i'm usually an extremely sunny person!! i absolutely used food (carbs especially!) to self-medicate when i was feeling cranky before-- i think re-wiring our brains and bodies and finding that happiness elsewhere is just another part of the process.

hang in there! here for you if you need to vent!!

I actually find that I'm much happier and calmer on on a low carb diet, as I don't have all of those sugar spikes going on. Much more even tempered, except for last week when I restarted phase 1. I was in a bad mood for the first two days of my reboot, but then I settled back down to happier and calmer again.

Originally Posted by sweetsloan:
I do agree with you all , that I have used food to cope with stressful situations, and now I don’t have food as the coping mechanism, My point to all this is, NOTHING is causing me to stress or a situation has not happened and now I am stressed because I can’t go eat potato chips. The thing that is strange is I wake up irritated, my day starts off bad/grumpy and the more stupid people I come across throughout my day the more irritated I become. I have enjoyed reading all of you posts and I will keep an eye on it for the next few weeks. Thank you I am so grateful for each and every one of you.

Howdy Sweets!
Sorry to hear you are not feeling so hot.
Perhaps your doc can give you something to cut the edge for you? I take very low dosage xanax only as needed, but man, when I need it and feel that "edginess" it sure does help.
I am not saying drugs are the answer....but as we cannot have a hot cocoa with mini-marshmellows, the very low dose xanax works awesome for me.
I was always a bit cranky and on edge even back on atkins...so the xanax has been working for me for coming on 2 years and again, only as needed....so not everyday....
and the doc has a whole arsenal of meds for these problems. My dose of xanax is about the same as having a small glass of wine....simply takes off the edge and makes me feel more relaxed and normal.
Just a thought!
Jake

I used to be extremely critical of low-carb diets, because they threw my body and mind into a tailspin. I would feel lightheaded, nauseated, dizzy, shaky, irritable, and had brain-piercing headaches and moodswings so severe that the term moodswing was too gentle a word to use. Episodic homicidal rages would probably be a more accurate discription. (For that matter the headaches would be better described as lightning bolts of searing agony).

I'm normally a calm and nonjudgemental person. On very low-carb diets, I become an ill-tempered she-dog from Hades (had to be creative there to bypass the censor).

Reduced serotonin levels are no doubt partly to blame for some of these physical and emotional symptoms, but I think it's much more complicated than that. By experimenting with different carb levels, I think I understand more of the factors.

1. Carb-withdrawal, which is probably partially about serotonin, but it's also about blood sugar spikes and plummets. Researchers now say that carbs light up the same parts of the brain as narcotic drug addiction. Probably more than just serotonin is going on here. Also, the blood sugar drops cause some of this.

2. Hunger changes. I find that hunger is different on low-carb. I can't rely on my stomach growling, or all the other signs I've come to associate with hunger. On low-carb, hunger comes on suddenly (and often without notice). Hubby actually notices before I do (I get a mild headache at first, then I get grumpy, then the headache gets worse, and then the grumpiness turns to rage). Hubby recognizes that this means I haven't eaten and need to eat. To me, it just seems that hubby (and the rest of the world) have unexplicably become royal jerks and pains in my tuckus.

3. Blood sugar (which is kind of related to hunger). On low-carb, my hunger signals are related to blood sugar. Sometimes this is actually low-blood sugar (blood sugar below 60, say), or sometimes the blood sugar is in the lowish-but-normal range, but the blood sugar dropped quickly (this was harder to determine, because I didn't usually take my blood sugar often enough to realize that it was the sudden drop in blood sugar that accounted for the symptoms).

4. Caffeine withdrawal. Many low-carb diets (at least the ones I've tried) ask you to give up or drastically limit caffeine along with the carbs. So along with all the aches and pains and moodswings associated with hunger changes, carb withdrawal, and blood sugar issues, you also get the aches, pains, and moodswings from the caffeine withdrawal (Never again will I go "cold turkey" when giving up carbs or caffeine, it's too much for me. I can withdraw gradually and be fine, but cold-turkey? Never again).

5. "Deprivation" stress. A very low-carb diet is difficult to follow, not so much for physiological reasons (I actually feel much better on a moderately-low carb diet), but because it takes a lot more work to identify sources of hidden carbs, and because once you make it known that you've given up high-sugar carbs, everyonw becomes a sugar pusher (even, and especially our family members and loved ones).

6. Sleep and rest. Carbohydrates can be stimulating in the short-term (that candy bar for energy sterotype), but they're sedating in the long-run. On a low-carb diet, my sleep pattern changes tremendously and it takes a while to get used to that. I didn't realize (until I started restricting carbs), how much I had relied on a late-night snack to help me get to sleep. I had to find different ways to wind down.


I think some of these issues are related to serotoning, but not all of them. I also think that while I feel better in the long-term on a relatively low-carb diet, I do have to live a different lifestyle on a low-carb diet. I can't go many hours without eating. I can't sedate or self-medicate with foods. I can't eat the carbs I do allow myself alone (because it will only cause rebound hunger or a blood sugar crash later). I have to pay much closer attention to my hunger cues because they're more intense, but come on very suddenly. On a high-carb diet, hunger comes on more gradually and less intensely. I start thinking about food, my stomach starts to feel empty... but there usually is no sense of urgency unless I've gone many, many hours without eating... and even then the warning signs are obvious.

If I'm going to be away from home, I need to carry a protein bar with me, or hunger could make me desperate enough to eat off plan (I'm still not really good at being prepared. I often will end up in a poor choice situation, because I didn't prepare for hunger to hit as soon as it did).

I do feel better on low-carb in the long-term, but the transitioning form high-carb to low-carb can be a @#$%.

Originally Posted by sweetsloan:
I have been on IP for 3 months and down 30 lbs. The last week I have been so grumpy and everyone and everything is irritating me. I don't want to talk to friends and would rather just be home alone. I found this article on LIVESTRONG and wondered who else is experiencing this and how did you get over or through it???"
Although high-protein diets can help you shed pounds, they can be hard to stick to because they deprive you of serotonin, the brain chemical that makes you feel happy and calm. When serotonin deprivation starts to make you feel grumpy and stressed-out .

If you've been OP for 3 months and this just started, maybe it's not related to the diet at all. If you're concerned, might be worth a visit to your doctor. I struggled with depression for a while - we finally figured out it was a side-effect of another medication I was taking. It was bad enough that I was on antidepressants, and only after discontinuing the other med, I was able to stop those.

If it's really concerning you, it's worth checking out. Lots of things can mess with the chemistry in your brain...