Can Eating Healthy Make You Feel Bad At First?
When you’re starting a program of eating healthy, but start to feel bad after a few days, it may not be a coincidence. Your cells have a lot of projections coming off them that actually makes them look like pin cushions. The pins or projections are actually receptors that affect the cell behavior. They tell the cell whether to make or or less of a chemical, create a health risk or determine how you feel. The chemicals the receptors receive determine it. They may be nutrients, hormones or neurotransmitters. If you’re ingesting substances that aren’t good for you, the chemicals might include caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, sodium or food additives. Switching from junk food to a healthy diet changes the cell’s normal situation to one that’s abnormal.
If you’ve ever given up sugar and then eaten more than a little at one sitting, you know how it feels.
When you have a lot of added sugar throughout the day, it’s your normal. However, if you’ve never had sugar, or don’t eat much, then really overdo with candy bars, colas, cake and ice cream, you’ve probably experienced a sugar buzz, maybe even get a little sick. If you do it two days in a row or follow the sugar low that you eventually get, that buzz and sick feeling isn’t as bad. Little by little your body adjusts and too much sugar becomes the normal. Your cells change how your body functions and you need that sugar high to feel normal.
Take that sugar away and now you how cellular conflict.
Your body has worked hard to feel normal, even though you’re not feeding it everything it needs and too much sugar. It’s made the changes to allow your poor eating habits to be interpreted as feeling good. Now that you’ve quit, there’s different information to the cells and change the way respond. It doesn’t feel normal and you don’t feel good. It takes a while for the receptors and cells to change over and recover, as much as a week, but once they do, you’ll start feeling good again. The same occurs when you go on a keto diet. Your body takes time to make the switch.
There are other reasons you might feel sick.
Cutting alcohol, dairy, gluten and sugar from your diet might make you feel like you have the flu. It could be from the change at a cellular level as noted previously, or from a change in your microbiome. Your microbiome are the critters in your body, which include candida, a fungus, that normally appears in your body, but it can get out of control and overproduce for a number of reasons, one of which is overuse of antibiotics. Candida-die-off, also called Herxheimer reaction, comes from too many yeast dying at once, releasing endotoxins, which creates inflammation and an autoimmune response.
- Candida-die-off releases 70 different toxins and produces symptoms that include foggy brain, fatigue, sinus problems, insomnia, digestive issues, anxiety, dizziness, fever, chills and even swollen glands.
- Some people suggest a water fast for a day or two before switching to clean eating as a system reset. You’ll still go through a bad feeling, but you can blame it on the fast, not healthy eating.
- Smokers and addicts of all types undergo the same withdrawal symptoms, but often longer. Nicotine, alcohol and drugs are their normal and going without makes them feel bad.
- People who switch to a keto diet often have the Keto-flu when they first switch. It comes from the change of burning glucose to burning fat. It lasts up to a week. Drink plenty of water, exercise and sleep to make it easier to transition.
I love seeing people get fit. That’s why I started my programs in Sterling, VA and Fairfax. However, I also know that for various reasons, not everyone can join. That doesn’t mean you can’t workout. There are a number of workouts that don’t require expensive equipment and some may use inexpensive equipment like a jump rope for a full body workout. There’s a reason you see boxers in movies and real life jumping rope. It’s super healthy and can get you in shape fast.
It’s not the push-ups or the tough cardio that’s the biggest problem getting fit, it’s staying motivated that really ends most people’s fitness plans. No matter how avidly you searched the internet for the best fitness plan, if you don’t stick with it, it will do no good. In fact, someone that simply walks for a half hour a day will actually do better than someone that has a surefire workout but only continues for a week. If people would see a difference in their energy level and body within a day, everyone would look great. Personal trainers specialize in helping people stay motivated, which is one reason they often get the best results.
If you’re wondering whether supplements are a waste of money, what you’re really asking is whether you really need to supplement and if they help. I get the same question from people in Fairfax and Sterling, VA. They hear about these miracle pills on infomercials that tout the benefits of certain herbs or juice concoctions you can buy at a health food store. Do you need them? That depends on a number of factors. What’s certain is that they don’t replace healthy eating! There are situations where supplements may help. Smokers, people under stress and seniors may benefit from additional vitamin C, for instance.
Clients in Sterling who want to build muscle mass, often come to me with questions about taking steroidal types of supplements. Not only are they illegal, they’re extremely dangerous. There are healthier and better ways to build muscle tissue naturally that aren’t just safe, but also boost your overall health. It all starts with healthy eating and the right type of workout.
Every day there’s a new miracle diet that will help you shed pounds quickly or some new supplement that makes it easier. That’s one of the reasons there’s so many fat loss mistakes that not only can slow down your progress, they even make it harder to lose weight. One of the biggest mistakes I often see is doing too much cardio. Yes, cardio does burn calories, but it also uses both lean muscle mass and fat to secure those calories. That means you’ll lose more muscle mass. The less you have, the slower your metabolic rate, since muscle tissue requires more calories than fat tissue does.
You may not realize how much controversy there is about going grain free. People on one side of the issue say it’s a healthier lifestyle to exclude grain, while others keep grain in their diet. Even clients in Sterling, VA will vary on what they do, unless they have gluten intolerance, then grain free is the right choice for them. Grains are tough to digest. Consider the outer coat of the seeds. It’s tough and meant to pass through the intestines of animals, while protecting the seed. That’s why it’s only useful when ground.
You should already know about the health benefits of working out and how it helps you look your best, but did you know that exercise helps your sex drive? It’s easy to understand, since it makes you healthier and being sick, tired or too weak to participate definitely isn’t an aphrodisiac, quite the opposite. It’s also one reason I suggest couples start a healthy living program together. Of course, sharing the common bond of working out and focusing on healthy eating together also makes their potential to achieve success greater than if one started it without his or her partner.
You might think you have a lot of time to get your body ready for summer, but you don’t and it’s the perfect time to start. It’s time to throw away your excuses and put healthy food on your plates, while you boost your energy at the gym. A healthy diet and regular exercise doesn’t have to be hard to achieve. It all starts by taking the first step.
Abs are made in the kitchen. That’s what I tell clients in Fairfax and Sterling who want that sculpted 6-pack. You can do sit-ups galore and leg-lifts until your face turns blue, but it won’t make any difference. Nobody will see all the work you’ve put into building muscle if you have a layer of fat covering your abs. That’s why what you eat is so important and the reason I say that abs are created in the kitchen.