What should I eat to recover from eating only `raw' fruits and vegetables for 6 months? [closed]

Question

About 2 years ago I've been eating only fruit and vegetables for 6 months. After that I have chosen to return to regular, diverse food - meat and everything else included. Since I started to eat normal food again I have felt some difficulties with my health:

• After eating fatty food I feel like my blood vessels are being blocked, and my arms feel tense.
• I often get tired very soon, only after 2 or 3 hours of working (whether on computer, or outside) - BIGGEST PROBLEM!

I have talked to my doctor about the problem, but didn't receive any beneficial advice about my nutrition. I'm also a running-junkie, and while I'm running I feel fine, but soon after I finish, I feel like I'm very very low on energy. Now I'm trying to eat more carbohydrates, like rice etc.

Tu sum it up: after almost 2 years of being on normal diet again, I have feeling that I have quit being veggie just a few days ago, considering the problems that do bug me. Did anyone else have similar experiences? Any advice on nutrition or about whom should I consider talking to (I feel that professional health care workers don't know too much about these kind of problems)?

Edit 1.: Trying to clarify problem a bit. (I think that) I'm mainly having issues with food fried in oil or grease, because whenever I do eat that kind of food, if I don't go to walk or run outside in few hours after that I feel like my blood vessels are blocked (strange, uncomfortable feeling in chest, neck or hands). I asked about tiredness also because it seemed to me that it might be connected to this, but now I'm not so sure --- maybe it's about better balance of nutrients... Would be most grateful if someone made the same transition I did and if there were some of the problems I described.

Answer 1

Amazing you can run a lot on just fruits and veg!

Regarding that particularly sort of odd tingly problem you describe. I've got a feeling it might be a problem relating to hypoglycemia - a difficult and sometimes misunderstood condition.

It can lead to issues like migraines if (in short) you have problems with the dynamics of your bloody sugar levels.

I encourage you to buy this book: by Dr Wolfgang Lutz and turn to page 42 for details. Notice the graphs on page 43 - that seemingly tiny difference is a huge difference in your body operations. Since I guess you've lived on just sugar for a few years (most fruit and veg is just sugar), your body chemistry, anything could be happening.

If you turn back to the comparative graph on page 39 you will see exactly why fat people get fat, if their insulin response is stuffed-up.

Anyway the section on hypoglycemia (and indeed the whole book) may answer the questions you have. Alternately if you speak german consider that "point-diet" book that is popular in austria, etc. at the moment.

In short you will (IMO) have to carefully manage your protein and fat balance (and also any carbs you eat) perhaps for some time (a year?) until your body chemistry - basically the "decay time" of that insulin function - returns to some sort of normality. I bet that the problem you describe is some variety of hypoglycemia-like problem caused by your bloody sugar levels going crazy in one direction or the other.

As Berin explains, you should really carefully choose "slow" carbohydrates (G.I.) if you must eat carbohydrates.

As the caption says the dotted curve shows what hypoglycemia looks like (it can cause migraines and similar problems not unlike AnAnt describes), and the solid line shows a healthy person. Conceivably eating just right for a year or so could bring you to the "normal" situation.

Answer 2

Perhaps it would help to describe what your current diet is like on average. Fruits and veggies have certain benefits that you need to make sure you are continuing to get, although they also have some disadvantages.

Let's start at the beginning with nutrition. You need something representative of each macronutrient:

• Protein. Fruits and veggies have them too, but it's easier to come by in animal meat.
• Carbohydrates. Again, plenty of slow and complex carbs in fruits and vegetables.
• Fats. Yes, fat is important. It's also something that is in minimal supply with fruits and vegetables.

Along with the macronutrients, you need micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Some of the vitamins are water-soluble (like Vitamin C) and others are fat soluble (like Vitamin D). It is possible that you are not getting enough of these.

A very healthy spread for macro nutrients would be the 40/30/30 split. That's 40% carbohydrates and 30% each for protein and fats. For some easy math, an example would be 120g of carbs, 90g of protein, and 90g of fat. So let's say you need to eat 2000 Calories to maintain weight. With a bit of math, we find this would split into roughly 144g carbs, 108g protein, and 108g fat. (Divide the total number of Calories you need by 550 to get the number of grams to multiply by the percentages).

What this does is make sure you are getting a workable number of the macro nutrients you need. However, this doesn't address the micronutrients that you may or may not have. Raw food has better access to the micronutrients which are easily broken down by processing. You may need to use a multivitamin supplement if you can't get everything you need from your food.

Even when eating regular food again, it's pretty tempting to just go nuts and eat burgers and fries all the time. That will definitely leave you feeling like you described. Even having too many carbs can do that to you--particularly if they are absorbed by the body quickly. That kind of harsh cycling will give you a lot of energy for a short burst followed by a crash that leaves you feeling worse than before you had the carbs. It's best to stick to slow burning carbs (i.e. lower glycemic impact).

Take a look at your diet to determine if any one of the macro nutrients are vastly out of balance. For example, if you are eating food laden with fat and carbohydrates but very little protein, you will have energy problems. Same if you have any one of the macro nutrients way out of balance with the others.