u/Optimal-Nectarine227

I keep thinking about how many things are socially normalized for women...

Being exhausted. Needing caffeine to function. Sleeping badly. Dreading your period. Painful cramps. PMS. Anxiety. Living on snacks and coffee. Overworking. Drinking wine to cope. Saying “same lol” when someone says they feel awful.

But then the habits that might actually support the body, like eating enough, balancing blood sugar and having enough protein, protecting sleep, not drinking coffee late, getting bloodwork, tracking symptoms, resting, saying no, taking period pain seriously, are often treated as “too much" or even obsessive.

It feels like we normalize female depletion, then pathologize the woman who tries to stop participating in it and help herself.

Has anyone else experienced this? Especially socially with family, friends etc?

What did people say to you when you started changing your habits? I wonder how we can normalize healthy habits, syncing our lives to our cycles, not trying to live like men...

I don't have a formal autoimmune diagnosis, but I do have fibromyalgia (so, maybe some crossover) and a lot of pain, fatigue and sleep disturbances. I've had elevated CRP and mildly raised positive speckled ANA, so perhaps this indicates some autoimmune activity going on? I wonder whether there could be immune responses to food even in the absence of autoimmune conditions.

I have some great days, some terrible days and a lot of tolerable but not great days, so keep trying to figure out whether it's PEM from exertion or reactions to something I'm not tolerating. eg. I had lentils and chocolate for 2-3 days in a row and felt fine-ish. Yesterday, I had GI symptoms in the morning, but felt great all day apart from that. Today, I've woken up feeling like I was hit by a truck and with muscle and joint pain. So, could it be the food? Or did I crash from being too active yesterday...

It's tricky when there's also histamine involvement, potential SIBO, salicylate issues, blood sugar dysregulation, etc. eg. eating fruit is not great for me, which makes AIP tricky without going full carnivore/keto..

Has AIP helped anyone with general symptoms like sleep disturbances/insomnia, anxiety/wired feelings, PMS/PMDD, etc? Or mostly your diagnosed autoimmune condition/s?

Thanks a lot!

I'm considering doing AIP properly. I'm wondering the following:

1. How long did you do the elimination phase for before introducing foods or moving to modified AIP? How long did it take for a trigger to cause symptoms? What symptoms did it cause and how long did it last?
2. Did working on healing leaky gut help to tolerate more foods or do you continue to have a reaction to your trigger foods?
3. Did you eliminate coffee? Not sure how I'll manage because I'm already so fatigued..
4. I'm currently consuming dairy only in the form of goat butter. I guess I should switch to ghee? Or use a different oil for some time? How did you approach this?
5. Any unexpected lessons or findings on this journey?

Thanks a lot! I'm trying to figure out whether it's food that I'm reacting to. I'm still consuming eggs, lentils, buckwheat, goat butter, coffee and chocolate. Yesterday, I had some GI symptoms after breakfast but felt great all day. Today, I've woken up feeling like I was hit by a truck and with muscle and joint pain. Could it be from yesterday's food? But I think I had those foods the previous couple of days, too. Could it take 2-3 days to show up? Keep wondering whether it's PEM or immune reactions to food.

Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

I’m about a week into high fat Carnivore/Keto and I’m wondering if anyone else experienced a very physical “heavy body” feeling during the adaptation phase -not just low energy, but almost like your legs don’t want to move.

Yesterday I did around 15,000 steps, and towards the end of the walk my legs felt like they physically couldn’t keep going. It was mostly a heavy-limbed / “legs made of concrete” feeling, with a little bit of general exhaustion towards the end. When I got home, my whole body felt heavy, even my arms.

Today I feel absolutely wiped out, although I also slept badly, so that may be part of it.

I’m especially curious because this isn’t about high-intensity exercise. I’m talking about normal movement: walking, going up stairs, general physical activity. Did anyone else find that even basic movement felt much harder in early keto?

A few questions:

• Did you experience heavy legs / heavy limbs / difficulty with walking in early keto?
• How long did it last?
• Did it improve with time/fat adaptation?
• Did electrolytes help? If so, which one made the biggest difference for you: sodium, potassium, magnesium, or something else?
• How long did fat adaptation take for you?
• Was it your first time doing keto, or had you done it before?

For context, I was keto for about 6 months around two years ago, so I’m surprised it feels this difficult this time around. I expected it to be easier to get back into it.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m about a week into high fat Carnivore and I’m wondering if anyone else experienced a very physical “heavy body” feeling during the adaptation phase -not just low energy, but almost like your legs don’t want to move.

Yesterday I did around 15,000 steps, and towards the end of the walk my legs felt like they physically couldn’t keep going. It was mostly a heavy-limbed / “legs made of concrete” feeling, with a little bit of general exhaustion towards the end. When I got home, my whole body felt heavy, even my arms.

Today I feel absolutely wiped out, although I also slept badly, so that may be part of it.

I’m especially curious because this isn’t about high-intensity exercise. I’m talking about normal movement: walking, going up stairs, general physical activity. Did anyone else find that even basic movement felt much harder in early Carnivore?

A few questions:

• Did you experience heavy legs / heavy limbs / difficulty with walking in early keto?
• How long did it last?
• Did it improve with time/fat adaptation?
• Did electrolytes help? If so, which one made the biggest difference for you: sodium, potassium, magnesium, or something else?
• How long did fat adaptation take for you?
• Was it your first time doing keto or Carnivore, or had you done it before?

For context, I was keto/Carnivore for about 6 months around two years ago, so I’m surprised it feels this difficult this time around. I expected it to be easier to get back into it.

Thanks!

Has anyone found that they tolerate buckwheat or other pseudograins?

I currently rely on lentils and buckwheat to stabilize my blood sugar, although I want to do AIP properly. I react to so many things that I am just not sure what to think.

Do you take your LDN in the morning or evening? If evening, how long before bedtime?

I've been taking mine in the morning, as I experience issues with sleep anyway, but I'm thinking of switching to night. Not sure how I'd switch over - by skipping the morning dose that day?

I have issues with pain, fatigue and sleep, so not sure what timing could be best.

Thanks!

How do you decide to leave a "high functioning" alcoholic when he is kind, caring, so patient with you, intelligent, ambitious, etc. I'd always imagined alcoholics to be lazy, abusive, aggressive and unable to work, so it's difficult to get my mind around this. I sometimes look at him and think "surely not...".

And yet, he showed up drunk (perhaps tipsy, but still) to our fifth date because he was afraid that I was ending things (I wasn't). He has smelled of alcohol very often after work. He has admitted to being an alcoholic and that it was "much worse" in the past and he even ended up with physical dependence and hallucinations. He says he wants to stop drinking and that all it takes is a decision. Yet, the driving factor is our relationship and prior to meeting me, he didn't seem to want to address this. Or he did, but relapsed. I don't know. Or he wants to drink once every two weeks (ha). He also says his health is affected by it, and he feels even more withdrawn the day after drinking (leading to more drinking, I think).

When I type out these facts, it's clear that he's an alcoholic and there's no future for us. I'm 38 and hope to see meet someone to have a family with, so cannot waste time. However, when I talk to him or spend time with him, he's so charming, so affectionate, so kind, so understanding with me, so thoughtful and clever....it's just mind boggling.

Edit: I'm also particularly health conscious, so on the one hand, it's important for me to be with somebody who also values a healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder whether I'm being unreasonable because I don't drink at all, so perhaps these are more "normal" patterns for the majority of the population?

Yesterday I posted about a guy I've been seeing for the past 2.5 months, saying that I need to find the strength to leave because he's an alcoholic. I received so many kind responses.

Now, I keep questioning whether or not he's truly an alcoholic or "just" has problematic drinking behaviors. I guess I'm the one in denial now.

He told me on our second date that he drinks too much and is thinking of cutting down or even stopping. On our 5th date he showed up drunk (he always smelled of alcohol, even on other dates) because he feared that I was going to break up with him due to vague wording in my texts just beforehand?! He also often smells of alcohol when I see him after work, and told me that it's from the night before - but then how much is he drinking?

He told me he's going to stop drinking when he's with me. Then he told me he's going to just stop drinking in general. Now he says he will mostly stop, but attempt to have one drink every couple of weeks when in the company of others, and if it doesn't work out, then he will stop entirely. Shortly after this, he ended up drinking on days when he was not with me. He says that when he was with me at the weekend, he didn't feel the need to drink, but when he's alone he now ends up drinking even more to make up for it.

Recently we went to an event where he was served wine and he ended up having some sips. I ended up very bothered and told him I can't be with him. He asked why other people are able to drink and not him, to which I responded "because they're not alcoholics". He looked surprised and asked whether I think that he is one and I said yes, although I don't think I felt sure of it myself. He responded with "yeah, I also think that...and it means I can't really stop drinking once I start. Even when I've gone for 1-3 months without drinking, if I have another drink again, it gets out of control."

He told me that at his worst, he was drinking a bottle of wine a day, but now it's "just" 3-6 beers on most days. We were also talking about psychedelics and he seemed keen to try mushrooms, which surprised me. I asked whether he has ever had a hallucination (implying that it may be risky to try such things with his profile) and he said yes, but that he doesn't want to discuss it further and that it happened in previous years, but not 2026. I assume now that it must have been from withdrawals? I know that he took a two year career break - guess he lost his job due to drinking? He said that things went downhill at his old workplace.

Today he joked about being a "crazy alcoholic" and then said "look, when you imagine an alcoholic, you probably imagine someone ruining their life, where alcohol has serious consequences. But I'm not planning on letting that happen. I'm an alcoholic because once I start drinking, I can't stop, but I'm going to just control it."

Well, now that I've typed this all up, I'm seeing more clearly that he's likely an alcoholic. But I still have doubts. What if it could be as simple as a decision to stop? Or am I completely deluded?

Edit: I somehow struggle to believe this because he appears so "normal", has a successful career, has a tidy and organized home, is intelligent, kind, caring, etc. How could this happen?!
He says he's also concerned about his health because it affects his sleep, his stomach, etc.

We started dating only 2-3 months ago, and I'd never really connected with anyone like that before. So many things line up and we're compatible in so many ways. I'm 38 and hoping to have a family soon.

I guess the signs of alcoholism were there early on. He actually told me on the second date that he thinks he drinks too much and needs to stop, but I had no idea it could be this serious. On our 4th date, he showed up drunk because he was afraid that I was going to break up with him (misinterpreted some of my texts). Long story short, it's only now, at the 2.5 month or so, that I'm realizing that it's serious. He admitted recently to being an alcoholic, says he experienced withdrawals before, always relapsed after a few months of sobriety, but apparently now he will definitely stop. He says his main trigger was/is loneliness and he doesn't have anyone in life, but now he has met me...

As I write this, it seems so obvious that it's a huge risk and I need to find the strength to leave. It's just so difficult because I think he's a wonderful guy and we connect so well. However, I'm already constantly stressed about whether he's hiding drinking, whether he'll be okay, his health, etc.

Does anyone have any words of wisdom?