Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I'm blaming The South Bitch Diet.

So, um, you know when you get a scary troll on your blog? And you go and enable the "moderate comments" dealie on the blog template? And you forget to, um, type in your email address in that thingy so that the Blogger software can let you know when a comment's been posted? And none of the comments get posted, for, like, six weeks, so you think nobody's reading your stuff and you start posting titles like "BOOBIES!" and stuff?

Just be glad I'm not a programmer or proofreader, people. I figured out the comments glitch today, and let's just say boy is my face red.

It should work now. I take back all the nasty things I said about you, Blogger. It was entirely my own fault, mea culpa. And thank you, various commenters, for the nice things you've said.

On to bigger and worser things:

All you folks who have done SBD or who know patients or family members who have done it, I have a question: How do you get the freaking headaches to stop?

I'm well-hydrated, I'm eating everything I should. Last night I was in the grips of a three-day-long headache and finally ate a pita sandwich. The headache disappeared and hasn't returned since. I had a half-cup of rice today, which I think might account for that. Is this headache going to continue through the first phase of the diet? If it's that bad, should I just say to heck with it and start with Phase II? I don't eat much in the way of simple carbs anyhow, so that wouldn't be too bad.

It was bad enough yesterday that I took four ibuprofen, something I never, ever do, and the headache *still* didn't disappear. It went from "making me afraid to try to drive" to "moderately distracting". And no, I haven't cut down on caffeine. I wasn't having that much anyhow.

I can handle hunger and muscle aches and bad skin. I can handle constipation, the Plagues of Egypt, bad relationships, and traffic. I just cannot handle unrelenting headaches of near-migranous intensity. Any help would be appreciated.

In other news, since The Boys are off at the AANS conference, I'm home today, huzzah! Things will begin to pick up on Thursday, when they return, but I'll be off work then and (I hope) refinishing my dining table. The Cat and I had a little mutual-admiration society going this afternoon, so she should be able to handle being not At The Forefront of The Human's Mind for a day or so.

Note on the last big post: The song lyrics in italics are from Barenaked Ladies's "The Old Apartment" and Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of A Heart", mixed up together. "The Old Apartment" can be found on the album Rock Spectacle, while "In the Shape of A Heart" is on Lives In The Balance. You can hear lots of Browne cuts on his website, jacksonbrowne.com, which almost makes up for him being a drunken wife-beater. And for imbuing me with a lifelong *thing* for skinny dark-haired guys with dark eyes.

And that is all for now. Comments remain moderated, but now I know how to fly this bitch, so we'll do fine.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jackson Browne is a drunken wife-beater? Hell's bells!

Jo said...

Um, yeah, sorry. Did you not know about Darryl Hannah?

Anonymous said...

This has nothing to do with *the* diet, but a few days after I stopped drinking milk, my migraines stopped. That was easily 30 years ago and they haven't resumed. Just food for thought from a fellow R.N.

Jo said...

Hmmmm. AnonRN, I don't drink milk, but I'll ponder that one. D'you suppose it could've been a food allergy?

Christy said...

I'm on day three, and have already lost four pounds. I haven't had any headaches yet, but I'm am very fatigued. I have cheated a little, and had a small handful of trail mix everyday. Perhaps the sugar in the fruit and tiny bits of chocolate are keeping me from having withdrawl. Its a good tradeoff for me.

Bardiac said...

I started Atkins a couple years ago, and had a nasty headache for three days, and then it was okay.

I'm guessing that on South Beach you could give yourself a few complex carbs, maybe some nuts and such as you start? Atkins, at least, got WAY easier for me after a couple months.

When I changed BCPs, though, I started getting nasty headaches around midday every day. Eating carbs specifically helped a bit (difficult to eat at that point of the day with my current schedule, though, but nuts and protein didn't help at all). (So I changed again, and that helped more.)

A friend of mine told me to think of my food choices as a "live-it" not a "diet" and that concept helps me a lot. It's about choices for me now, and not about thinking short term.

Good luck!

ps. Glad to see the comments thing is working again!

Jo said...

Good for you! In the first four days, I *gained* three pounds.

*sigh*

Brooke said...

Try Tylenol instead of ibuprofen. When I was doing a similar-to-SB diet last year at the gym (under a doctor's care, mind you), they warned me off ibuprofen and onto Tylenol. Something about swelling, which can't help headaches.

So that might help. Or 25 grams of whole grains a day might help. Some people just need carbs. Long-term we ALL need carbs or shit starts breaking down.

Good luck, kiddo. It is hard, isn't it? I've fallen off the wagon. Again. Already. Bad me.

Anonymous said...

From what we learned in physiology, your brain's main energy source is glucose... ..it'll use ketones if it really really has too.. but it much prefers glucose. So, most people have headaches for the majority of the time they are on these low carb diets, since you are in essence starving your brain. I'd much prefer to be fat and not have headaches. Ha! Sorry to be such a negative nancy.

Judy said...

My sister modified Phase I. She added a few carbs in the evening to fend off the headaches. She still lost weight. Suggestions to make those complex carbs sound reasonable.

Anonymous said...

Damn. It's 10 p.m. and reading this made me hungry =P. I'm doing it the old fashioned way...exercise + three sensible, small meals a day. Down 10 lbs, and 5% body fat in 3 wks. But ya..i'm hungry now.

Glad ya got the comments fixed!

~J