[stunzorz]

Hopefully this is the right place to post this. Basically, I am just curious to hear what experiences the rest of you are having regarding your mood/mood fluctuations while you're dieting.

My personal circumstances involve a lower carb (between 50-70g of carbs daily) and low calorie diet, and my mood lately has been WRECKED. For the first two weeks, I was eating slightly more carbs, but even then my mood was pretty low. Unfortunately for me, I was not having as much success as I wanted, and so I dropped my carbs a bit and while the weight loss has been going swimmingly, I'm a tightly coiled little ball of angry nerves, waiting to snap at the most innocent of bystanders. It's kind of a pain that with dieting comes irrational anger and snottiness, but I suppose you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

[Veela]

How many calories are you eating? If your calories are too low or if you are not eating large enough portions then hunger and dips in blood sugar and seriously affect moods.

[stunzorz]

I'm positive it is blood sugar, but there's not much I can do if I want to lose the weight. I eat around 1200-1300 daily, which isn't especially low for someone my size (5'1", 160ish lbs).

[Veela]

The calculator I used says that someone your size needs 1500 calories just to sustain your current weight so 1200-1300 for weight loss seem about right but that's only if you aren't exercising.

I mean when your caloric restriction is getting that low you need to start making up the difference through exercise rather than restriction.

You also said that you are using a low carb diet which means that you have to seriously increase your uptake of protein and healthy fat so that you can maintain a stable blood sugar level. A good idea would be to include a lot of slow digesting proteins like cottage cheese and egg whites along with lots of bulky vegetables and even if your diet doesn't allow it I highly recommend including lots of beans and lentils since the fibre and protein in them helps you to feel full longer and actually help to stabilize blood sugar.

Also how are you measuring your food intake? Are you using a food scale or measuring portions? I wonder if in your caution you may be severely underestimating your portions.

[sontaikle]

If it's blood sugar, you might also want to look into the timing of your foods. Perhaps you need to eat certain meals closer together, or further apart. You might need to make a meal smaller and add a snack to keep you going between meals.

If I go too low on my breakfast and lunch calories, I am grumpy. I found I needed at least 500 or so before dinner or I would lash out until my next meal. Even now with maintaining I will get grumpy if I go too long between lunch and dinner.

[stunzorz]

Hmmmm, okay, I will lay out my day and you guys can tell me where there might be room for improvement:

For measuring, I typically use a food scale and go by the grams. I try to avoid measuring with tablespoons or cups (although I did on the first diet go around).

Breakfast: 300
Egg whites from carton-90 cals
morningstar garden burger patty(publix brand)-100
slice of cheese-60
assorted veggies (spinach, mushrooms, onions, asparagus)
Coffee w/ milk-50

Morning snack: 140
baggy of almonds-140

Lunch: 350
2x eggs-140
pepper w/hummus, spinach-70
string cheese-70
more almonds-70

afternoon snack: 180
plain greek yogurt w/ cinnamon (sometimes a few berries)-100
apple-80

dinner: 360
2 tilapia filets-300
a vegetable w/ olive oil-60

Total: 1120

It falls a little short of 1200, but that wiggle room gives me a bit of space for bites and nibbles of other things since I'm usually with other people when I cook/eat.