Am I supposed to feel this tired?
 

Hey guys, I'm only 2 weeks into my diet. Yes, I cheated a couple times, but overall my calories and carbs i've kept pretty low. I can tell I'm on the right path.

But I have a lot of mood swings. I go from energetic to lethargic quite fast.

Is that normal? I would have thought I would have more energy cause that's what some say, maybe I was misinformed.

Are you otherwise healthy? If so maybe you just need a good multi-vitamin.

Recommendation?

Centrum always made me sick to my stomach.

My doc gave me prenatal vitamins! Kinda freaked me out at first lol but she said its a great multi vitamin!

How many calories are you eating, and are you eating real food (as opposed to mostly "diet" processed food? A vitamin is a good idea (try chewable and take with food) but it can't make up for not eating enough. Hope you get that energy back soon!

What are your calorie and carb levels? I suspect your calories may be too low.

Ya they're pretty low, isn't that the point tho?

Probably 1500-1800 calories

It took about 50lbs before I got the "energy" all the dieters talk about.

Mine came from all the exercise that I was getting and the healthy food choices too. Of course I was going to the gym 3+ times a week! LOL :carrot:

I take prenatals too and I'm even on birth control so it has noting to do with the plan to become pregnant. My doctor said that if they work for me then she highly recommended them because they are actually very good for females even if they aren't pregnant because they have a bunch of extra vitamins that are necessary to women.

My doc suggested prenatals too -- said all menstruating women could benefit from the extra iron and other things.

A.

If you are cutting your carbs way too low, you will feel like that. You need carbs for energy.

I've been on weight watchers for the last 15 weeks, have lost 9 pounds and I've never felt like that.

Why don't you think of signing up for WW's as well? You can eat anything that you like, just in moderation.

Could also be lack of water. Nothing makes me more lethargic than to get a bit dehydrated.

Suzie Parker You do not need most carbs (if any) in the sense that people think of carbs - rice, potatoes, bread, pasta, sweets. You get plenty of good carbs (I keep mine around 100 net grams a day) from fruit, veggies and beans.

I've been eating 'lower' carb for 5 months now and I'm no longer having blood sugar issues. I have lost 52 pounds, my blood pressures is now almost normal without meds and my cholesterol has dropped 40 points. AND, I have more energy than I've had for a decade or more.

We simple don't need starchy carbs.

You should be aware that the fashion for low-carb eating is still very controversial, and is often taken to very unhealthy extremes. There is oodles of research out there on the health benefits of whole grains, including for weight control, and conflating processed sugars with whole grains is not wise at all. Carbohydrates are an essential part of the human diet. As with all parts of a healthy diet, there is an upper limit as to what is healthy, and you may find this page useful in that respect. Remember that quality is not the same as quantity, and there are similar good fats and bad fats, as well as variation in the quality of proteins (though the latter tends to be more about how you combine proteins than needing to avoid any particular type).

Bribarian, the level of mood swings and energy problems you describe sound like, well, a problem for you. Calorie suggestions aren't much use without knowing your height, weight, and approximate activity levels. Could you tell us those, please? And give us some idea of what you eat on a typical day? It sounds to me like you could be getting wildly fluctuating blood sugar, although that's just a guess.

Were you like this before your diet too? Eating healthier for a couple of weeks, unfortunately, is not a magic fix for having mood swings.

If you weren't like this before, it may just be that you are a little hungry as your body gets used to eating less food. Give it some time to adjust. Try eating more vegetables too (I don't know what your diet looks like) so you can eat larger quantities of food for the same calories.

In my opinion, it's one of the common myths of dieting. My own experience is that it took a long, long, LONG time for me to actually start to feel different. I had to lose 40 or 50 pounds - that took me almost a year - before I really felt more energetic at all during the day. At that point, I don't believe it was because of a magic nutrient formula - it was because I was hauling around 40 or 50 fewer pounds!

One more thing about being energized - people say exercise is supposed to energize you, and I didn't quite find that either. When I first started exercising in earnest, it tired me the **** out! Even later when I adjusted to it, it might have given me more energy during the day (though again, that might have just been being less fat) - but it made me more tired in the evening. This was good, as it helped to regularize my sleep pattern, but it does just highlight that these common pablums of "diet and exercise give you more energy!" are a little overly simplistic and tend to set up unrealistic expectations.