The FastDay Forum

Hi everyone,
just a quick message to ask for some advice. I'm doing 5:2 but not eating the 500 calories, sticking to liquids and some milk in tea and coffee. I'm near my goal, recently reintroduced some 500 calorie meals but gained weight. I drink a lot of water on my fast days and find that it helps a lot with hunger pangs. My problem is that several times a day I get hypoglycemic, I get the shakes, feel like I've cotton wool in my head, feel quite anxious and get the whole blurry vision thing (in patches). I'm just curious to know how others handle this, I was considering buying a bag of hard sweets to suck on at these times. I'm trying to get this fasting under some kind of control-I don't and have never found it as easy as some people seem to and sometimes, for example, when I can't answer a simple question or provide a straightforward explanation due to my fuzzy head, I sometimes wonder if I'm doing the right thing.
Any advice would be much appreciated,
many thanks,
Kiki

Bother, it's affy late and I'm heading for my dog basket BUT...

IMHO it is highly unlikely that you are experiencing *real* hypoglycaemia - that's quite a nasty medical situation - you're probably fine! That said, if you've other medical conditions, please consult a medic!!

What you are describing sounds much more like something called "metabolic inflexibility" which, essentially, means that your body is stuggling to switch between glucose burning and fat burning modes.

If you're doing your "fasts" effectively, your body is likely to be pushed into fat burning mode (a *good* thing - this is what you want) but, for various reasons, it can sometimes struggle to get there.

Don't worry about it. Make sure that you stay well hydrated and take in plenty of salt (yes, see Labs for why, these things explain nausea / fuzzy head / constipation and more), and relax! You should find that, after a little while, switching is pretty un-noticeable and the 'hypo' feelings are things of the past.

There's lots of stuff on the forum about this, unfortunately I'm too dead tired / miserable to go dig - maybe someone in a different time zone can help - but please, be assured, that (unless you've other medical conditions) what you are experiencing is perfectly normal (and avoidable: with water & salt as above).

All the best, FatDog.

Hi
Bit late for my brain to function too but I would avoid sweets if possible. Best thing might be a cube of cheese. If you have sugar your bg will peak fast and then drop off just as fast causing peaks and troughs. You can wait it out and your liver will release some glycogen stores to restore balance but its a horrid feeling and you just want to make it stop.

I used to get dreadful hypos. I do have a meter so I know for sure thats what it was. My bg would drop to around 2mmol. That was before 5:2. I haven't had any since I went low carb so it might be worth looking at your carb intake and/or the quality of the carbs you eat.

[carorees]

What they said. If your body is used to getting carbs regularly, it resists burning fat (metabolic inflexibility), reducing carbs a bit on feast days and/or ensuring you don't snack in the evenings so you get a reasonably long overnight fast (dinner to breakfast) will help your body to learn to burn fats. Eating good quality fats, especially coconut oil, is also meant to help.

There was a scientific study done on people who got your kind of symptoms during a fast and they found that the people were not actually hypoglycemic, just sensitive to small changes in blood sugar.

There was a scientific study done on people who got your kind of symptoms during a fast and they found that the people were not actually hypoglycemic, just sensitive to small changes in blood sugar.

Oooh, that sounds interesting - please do you have a link for that @carorees? Ta everso.

Yes please do share more on metabolic inflexibility now my interest is piqued (or some such word)

Hi everyone,
just a quick message to ask for some advice. I'm doing 5:2 but not eating the 500 calories, sticking to liquids and some milk in tea and coffee. I'm near my goal, recently reintroduced some 500 calorie meals but gained weight. I drink a lot of water on my fast days and find that it helps a lot with hunger pangs. My problem is that several times a day I get hypoglycemic, I get the shakes, feel like I've cotton wool in my head, feel quite anxious and get the whole blurry vision thing (in patches). I'm just curious to know how others handle this, I was considering buying a bag of hard sweets to suck on at these times. I'm trying to get this fasting under some kind of control-I don't and have never found it as easy as some people seem to and sometimes, for example, when I can't answer a simple question or provide a straightforward explanation due to my fuzzy head, I sometimes wonder if I'm doing the right thing.
Any advice would be much appreciated,
many thanks,
Kiki

If you look at my blog you will see I overcame hypoglycemia. I did it by cutting out sugar and carbs basically. What are you eating

I'd be interested in that too Caroline. My GP was always sniffy as to how someone with a high fasting glucose (and not on any medication) could get a BG of 2! Like the others, my problems resolved as soon as I cut the carbs. Even now I can't eat much carb without it all starting up again. I worried about fasting but I was already low carb when I started and I get hungry but I don't hypo unless I've had a carb binge the day before.

[carorees]

Here is the abstract of the study I mentioned about symptoms of vs actual hypoglycaemia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17522614
The key sentence is this:

During the fast, the sensitive group reported significantly higher scores on 'irritation' and 'shakiness'. However, no hypoglycemia occurred and the lowest detected blood glucose concentration was 3.7 mmol/l.

Re metabolic inflexibility:
Obesity and sedentariness is associated with metabolic inflexibility. Most people who are overweight, especially if they have abdominal adiposity, will be insulin resistant and have high levels of insulin, which means that fat cannot be mobilized from stores as insulin prevents this (though there is evidence that the insulin-mediated suppression of lipolysis is blunted in obesity), therefore they have to rely more on glycogen. The reliance on glycogen when fasting could contribute to the unpleasant symptoms described by many new fasters.

This fascinating article gives some interesting theories about metabolic flexibility, insulin resistance, hormesis etc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678135/

Here is another paper about metabolic inflexibility in obesity: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21692967

This study (albeit in mice) shows a link between a high GI diet and metabolic inflexibility: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19934403

This review and associated study describes how obese individuals tend to burn less fat for fuel than lean people: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19133411 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18175746

Wow! Thanks for all the replies and advice guys. Looks like I'm going to just tough it out and lake the water into me. It's been the odd day that I've felt really, really bad-generally I've been ok. To be honest, I was very low carb for five years until I discovered I was gluten sensitive so I began introducing back small amounts of gluten free carbs. It didn't effect my weight. I just couldn't do the no carb thing anymore-it exhausted me, and the winters were hell, I just had enough. I have a good diet now and I certainly wouldn't be high carb by any stretch. I include all the low GI foods, legumes etc now.
Thanks again,


K