Well the question of going to 'maintainance levels' of carbs, which is consistent with what DANDR reccomends is the question of how one figures out what that level IS... My interpretation is that the level varies depending on the individual and one is supposed to find out just what it is by experiment during OWL and pre-Maint, to find out just how much one can eat w/o gaining. Currently we are on what I call 'relaxed induction' w/ a target daily carb level of around 20-30g, and a tiny bit more slack on things like artificial sweeteners and food amounts, but still pretty close to that list. We have no data that would tell us what maint. levels would look like, and since she's supposed to be gaining some if PG, it would seem harder to guess. I've gathered the impression that around 60g/day is fairly typical, is that a reasonably safe guesstimate?

As to the diet, MGW takes a 'women's mega-multi' type supplement w/ heavy folic acid, and an additional FA supplement so that should be no problem, especially since we do eat a fairly good qty of red or green bell peppers in our salads (though that may cut back as the price has lately skyrocketed) I think we are in pretty good shape from the supplement side of things. (Though when I mentioned your comment about the choline to her just now, she said she wanted to have a bably, not a lab rat )


Well, I agree (to the very limited extent that I trust doctors) with taking their advice, but the question is in picking the Dr, how one finds one that will give honest advice, as opposed to using the excuse to express their anti LC predjudices.

At any rate MGW picked up a generic Walgreen's test today, and plans to use it 1st thing tomorrow AM. Assuming she is PG, presumably she would have gotten that way at least 2-3 weeks ago per the normal ovulation cycle, so the test should be OK.

Gooserider

If this has already been posted, apologies in advance.

MGW should be taking 1MG of Folic Acid a day. The amount absorbed from her food and megavitamin is healthy but probably not enough. At least according to my doctor, whom I trust implicitly, and who confirmed it yesterday. MGW's doctor can call in a prescription, which she takes through the third trimester.

Also, while the multivitamins are excellent, MGW might consider taking the pre-natal ones, which are formulated specificially for women trying to conceive. Regardless, her doctor should be the one telling her which supplments she can safely take, but I am positive about the folic acid one.

Another thing to consider is the consumption of the fake sugars while TTC. Obviously it is a personal choice, but I have had several medical professionals tell me it is not worth the risk of ingesting saccharin, aspartame, Sucralose and all the other sweeteners. I have also read this in various TTC books, for what they're worth (many use "scare tactics," I'm afraid).

Good luck with the test.

Why a prescription for Folic Acid? She is currently taking 200mg via the multivitamin, plus another 800mg in a seperate supplement, both purchased OTC, for FAR less than her insurance copay would be for a prescription!


Well I've compared what she is currently taking to those 'pre-natal' vitamins, and what she is taking far exceeds the pre-natal vitamins in both quantity and coverage. I've heard that the 'pre-natal' vitamins are really little more than a marketing gimmick to get women who are PG or TTC to purchase SOMETHING, but that a good multi does everything the 'pre-natals' do and then some. (And frequently they do it at a far lower cost / dose) We did show the Dr. at the fertilty clinic what she was taking and he said it looked fine to him. However when the current supply is gone, we might look at something else as she said something in these pills makes them difficult to swallow (I'll grant that they are horse-pill size, but there is more to it than that...)


Well we don't do aspartame because it makes ME sick and I've heard enough bad stuff about it to make me consider it suspect in any case. OTOH, I haven't seen anything reputable against sucralose and the others beyond causing some folks to stall and or suffer 'digestive flow upsets'. Do you have any pointers to legitimate studies (I share your doubts about TTC books that use scare tactics) that attempt to show a linkage to problems, especially in humans? (Note that animal tests aren't always conclusive, some critters do fine on meds that give humans problems, others have problems with meds that are OK for people)

On other fronts, no news yet on the PG test, she forgot to do it this AM, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Gooserider

Well, that all that matters then! If you have a good relationship with said doc, then that should be enough. My doc, whom I've been seeing for decades and whom I really trust (because she herself is suspicious of "managed" health care, which is really just disease control) told me that many multis contain things in excess of what's needed. When the time comes, she'll write me a scrip and I'll fill it because I know it will be cheaper than the multi I buy over the counter, but I'll fill it because I trust her and she's been delivering babies for a long time.

No I cannot cite studies on sucralose being harmful or otherwise. I suppose I could google up a search, but you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. It's just that both my OB-GYN and the fertility expert I saw told me to ingest nothing artificial because there aren't enough studies done, especially nothing long-term with sucralose since it is relatively new. I will eliminate it from my diet when TTC, but to eat his or her own.

My prescription of folic acid was only $4 a month for a supply of 30. When I asked the doctor if my multivitamin and food were OK, she said no (and I brought in my bottle of Solgar VM-75 and a weekly sample from my food journal with nutritional breakdown. Again, she's not trying to sell anything.

But women of all ages in the past had healthy babies long before the medical establishment stepped in and told them not to smoke and drink (moderately) and scream that all babies will get spina bifida and to stop taking their allergy medications and so on. Then again, having a baby after 40 presents risks not present in a 20-30 year old. It would be my choice not to increase my risks and since there don't appear to be any positive studies on sucralose, I'll choose to abstain.

Otherwise, I LOVE Splenda in hot chai and I adore my weekly Pria CarbSelect Chocolate Peanut Crisp bars!

Test says I am not pregnant yet. The test line was very clear and the pregnancy line was not there at all, even lightly, and this was labelled as an "early" test, which suggests to me that a false negative is less likely, although always possible.

We'll just have to keep practicing.

MGW

Always a pleasure to see you post. You really are doing very well. Your symptoms could be caused by a variety of things and the food plan and weight loss may be all or part of the reason. I wouldn't be too worried but I would monitor the situation.

I was 225 at my highest weight and I lost 65 pounds fairly quickly (15 years ago). I started feeling really cold and had never had that "problem" before. I still feel cold a lot and am one of the few people in my community (in central Florida) who loves the long HOT summers here. Our winters are mild but we have much cooler weather in the winter and I really feel the cold. So for me, weight loss quickly brought on "feeling cold."

Regarding BMs. I was always a very regular girl and frequently had more than one per day, generally of large volume. Since LCing things are different. Sometimes I miss a day, sometimes volume is small, often it is harder and more difficult to pass. But then I have days when I have more than one, volume is large and they are softer and easier to pass. I haven't as yet been able to correlate it to any variations in what I eat. I don't worry about it but I would intervene if I missed more than one day or went too long without having a "good" movement because it is possible to have an intestinal blockage and still have BMs but they are just not normal. The gas problems could be directly related to the changes in BMs.

Hope you feel better soon.

Practice makes perfect! (or at least it's fun tryin'!)

It is an interesting question the issue of just how much one should listen to Dr's and the medical 'experts'... It sometimes takes an effort not to reflexively follow the old mantra of 'Do whatever the Dr says', yet at the same time most of us are here on this website doing the LC thing DESPITE all the medical experts advising us to eat a low fat, high carb diet, w/ minimal amounts of meat, etc.

I know that I personally, after years of study and resarch have reached the conclusion that the leading cause of illnes and death is life! not

I tend to believe what the MD's say and go to them for 'break - fix' type problems, such as broken bones, heavy bleeding, and other assorted trauma. They do pretty well with that. Illness of the 'disease' variety, they sometimes can help with, but usually it seems like if you go to the Dr, you feel better in seven days; if you don't it will take a week...

I read a rather barbed paper once that pointed out how in many ways the modern medical profession has a position in society and law not unlike that of religion in ancient days - those who question the standard advice are treated as heretics, if they act against it, and especially if they assist others in acting against it, they risk being persecuted (er, prosecuted) by the governmental authorities. But if one dares to look behind the curtain, their results aren't all that great, and often the 'cures' are as bad as the disease.

In terms of whether something has been 'proven safe' or not, again there is considerable debate. What defines 'Proven Safe'??? How many studies of what sort does it take to 'prove' _ is safe??? This is a negative proof, a question that philosphically falls in the same category as the existence of UFO's outside the pages of the Weekly World News.

I can point out in endless detail how little proof there is, and even if all the evidence is accepted, it won't prevent one from landing on the White House lawn tomorrow and doing something unspeakable to the President (one can always hope!)

Likewise, no matter what the issue, one can't say that something is 'proven safe' no matter how many studies have been done on it, because the next study to come along might prove that it isn't.

A 'positive proof' is far easier, because all it requires is evidence that something DOES exist. A UFO is proved to exist by coming up with one, a substance is shown harmful by producing evidence of the harm and a definite causal link.

This is why you may have noticed I tend to ask for evidence on assertions such as Badger Girl's latest mention that one should avoid artificial sweeteners when PG because 'they haven't been proved safe'. I would assert that they CAN'T be proven safe, because there is always a possibility that they could be proven harmful under some circumstance. OTOH, I think that if after some reasonable but fairly short period of time (a great deal depends on how many people are using the stuff) there is no evidence of harm, then they should be presumed safe.

In the case of the PG question, the harm would have to be either defective kids or incomplete pregnancies, and their numbers would have to be significantly higher than the ones for people who were NOT using the fake sweeteners. AFAIK, all of the stuff on the market in the US currently has been around for years, and has not had this sort of evidence shown for it.

Gooserider

I noticed it's been a while since my last post on this thread, so I thought I'd stick in an update.

Just before the holidays, we had tried the experiment of getting rid of the artificial sweeteners for two weeks, and found that didn't seem to make much difference. (Note that we weren't using huge quantities in any case.)

We then tried having her stick to allowed foods but getting rid of the portion control, which seemed to be working better.

Then we had the holidays which involved serious messing with our schedules for meals, sleeping, and general way of life. (She had to take 2+ weeks of accrued vacation time) Between the different feastings, we were pretty good (not perfect) about not eating 'forbidden foods', but did go pretty overboard on quantities, and missed a lot of exercise time. As a result we both had minor gains, but nothing to serious. Because of the irregular diet and so forth, it was hard to tell, but MGW had no significant hunger problems.

Now we are pretty much back on track, and both of us are back on the downward path and have gotten rid of the extra we picked up over the holidays.

MGW is continuing the pattern of allowed foods, but no portion control that she began just before the holidays, and it appears that she is no longer getting the hungries. The downside though is that she is not loosing as rapidly as she was before we ditched the portion control.

Now we need to decide whether we want to play more with what she is eating, try to ease back into some portion control, or just let it ride for a bit to see what happens. There was a point just before the holiday break where she said she was bringing similar quantities of food to work every day, but not eating all of it, so possibly the situation will take care of itself after a bit.

Gooserider

Excellent! I have been wondering and hoping that you both made it through the holidays without any major setbacks!

BTW: Some friends of mine are having a baby via a surrogate. My friend was very, very obese and before she lost her weight they had to do a hysterectomy because she had cysts in her ovaries. Just bringing it up because there's always that route if all else fails.

You might try to ease portion control in, just don't do it drastically. Its hard to make do on suddenly much less calories. And you might want to go for food that has more volume but less calories. Like switch to lower fat stuff, but still low carb. Like mayo, cream cheese (if you can stand it -- I can't).

As to doing what the doctor says... I was just reflecting how when I was a baby I was cheated because doctors back then told mother's not to breastfeed, that formula was better for babies. And I remembered hearing about how the formula manufacturers sold that bill of goods to doctors and mothers and cheated a generation of babies out of the benefits of breast milk. And now they're doing it again based upon pressures from agra industry and pharma.

Gooserider-
Has MGW had a fasting glucose tolerance test specifically testing for insulin levels? You have to ask specifically to get the insulin levels.

The hungries she was having, the trouble with weightloss, the cold, everything sounds to me EXACTLY like insulin resistance. Sufficient levels of insulin resistance causes you to make way too much glucose out of protein, causing blood sugars to remain slighly off balance, or be very easily skewed.

I've done variations of low carb on and off for years due to severe hypoglycemia. Recently I was finally able to convince my new dr. and get tested, and I was finally put on metformin.

Metformin is second only to albuterol (for asthma attacks) on my list of better living through chemistry.

It helps your cells be more sensitive to insulin, it helps your pancrease make less, and it makes your liver store less glucose. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I could eat an apple without a serious sugar crash! My muscles are actually *getting* the fuel they need for excersizing without punking out on me after only a few minutes.

Anyway, do some research, talk to her about that test if she hasn't had it. As a temporary assist while losing weight (which *may* eventually solve the problem) it could be extremely helpful. Just remember if she is going for the test, she'll need to eat a maintenance level of carbs for about 4 days (say about 100) to get a true picture.

Bat Spit (that's quite a moniker!), did Metformin help with your weight loss? I'm having a hard time losing on low carb too.

Nancy LC-

Thanks. Bat Spit is something my friends and I used to say instead of swearing. When I joined my first web board everyone had really cool names, and I decided that should be mine.

Has metformin helped with weightloss? Probably.

See, when I first went on it, having completely controlled blood sugars was SO EXCITING that I kept testing it. And adding in more carbs and really enjoying things that I hadn't been able to eat in years. We went on vacation in December, and for the first time ever, I didn't have a sugar crash, even though I ate anything I felt like. And I didn't gain any weight at all.

So I'm guessing if I'd been eating like a sensible person, I'd probably have lost weight.

Of course, all those bad choices caused my blood pressure to shoot up, and a lot of other things caused my DH and I to decide to low carb together. This is the first time since I started taking the drug that I've paid close attention to what I'm eating.

I can say that in the past when I've low carbed, I'd still have sugar swings, and now I don't, and we all know that not getting hungry is the first best way to stay on any food plan.

I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who doesn't have an insulin problem, because it could wreck a healthy system, and because there can be embarassing side effects, but if your insulin system is out of whack, I think it can be a real miracle.

It's been a while, but MGW did do a fasting glucose test back before we started doing LC. I'm not sure if they did insulin levels or not, but they said her sugar was in the normal range (but on the high side) and did not go out of proper range while she was doing the test. As such they said it was certain that she did NOT have diabetes, though she is at some risk for gestational diabetes if she does get PG. (Hasn't happened yet, but we keep trying )

The fertility clinic did find she had problems with her thyroid, and is now on meds to get her thyroid hormones (drawing a blank on the right name for it) back down to normal. They were doing periodic tests to get the med level right, but that seems to be OK now.

The latest issue they are working on is that her prolactin is also to high. They were hoping that fixing the thyroid would take care of that, but it didn't, so now they are working on getting the levels of meds right to get the prolactin down.

Hopefully once that is taken care of, she won't have any other problems that will need more intervention.

I hope they can stop all the blood work fairly soon because she has lots of trouble with it. In part because of her weight, they always seem to have trouble getting a vein and they usually have to stick her 2-3 times before they get the sample - This does not make her a happy camper to say the least.

As to the notion of surrogates, it is something we have considered, but I'm sort of reluctant considering the current shaky legal status of doing surrogate arrangements. However if it turns out that we aren't able to do things any other way it's an option we might explore further.

Gooserider

MGW and I have been reading T.S. Wiley & Co's "Lights Out - Sleep, Sugar, and Survival"book, and something she saw in there MAY be an explanation for the "Hungries" problem. Thought I'd mention it as something that anyone else having similar problems might want to look into.

As part of our stuff working with the fertility clinic to try and get MGW pregnant, she's been doing a bunch of blood tests, and they said that her thyroid was low, and her prolactin was high. They put her on meds to address both issues, first thyroid stuff, then the prolactin. This was a fairly lengthy ordeal for her with lots of repeated tests as they adjusted the dosage to get the med levels right.

It hadn't occurred to us as related at the time, but as they increased the meds, the hungries problem had slowly gone away. (I think we saw it as something related to the various changes we had been trying, or just her body finallly getting used to the LC WOE) Now I would say that MGW may still be eating a bit more snack type foods than I might like, but is no longer having the hungries to any great extent, and her portions are getting fairly reasonable.

Wiley's book is complex, and spends a great deal of time dealing with hormone and body system intereractions (it could use a good flow chart perhaps?) but one relationship that is specifically mentioned is the one between PROLACTIN and LEPTIN. High prolactin is supposed to suppress leptin production, and leptin is one of the hormones that makes us feel full! (Supposedly at least one line of the 'genetically fat' mice is leptin deficient)

It wasn't specifically tested, but it seems reasonable that if MGW's prolactin was high, then her leptin would have been low, causing her to feel more than normally hungry. As the meds brought the prolactin down, presumably the leptin would have come up, turning off the hungries.

I could be wrong, but I don't think prolactin is a major factor for guys; however any ladies with appetite problems MIGHT want to consider having their prolactin checked.

Gooserider