Dave - You are not alone. Please read my post called 'Krimmel plan - worst crash ever' and other posts.
Stan has been helping me along the way. I am still having the same feelings as you. Depression eased up a lot but now this week it seems to back with a vengeance. I was having anxiety/panic attacks before I went on the diet and now they are gone. I have had a lot of dizziness which I thought was because I was not getting enough carbs so I added brown rice into my meals but still getting the dizziness so I think it is anxiety related. I decided to go see a counselor when this depression first hit me because it freaked me out. It has helped. For me, I am spending 24/7 obsessing about this and it has made it worse. Each person is different and reacts to food differently so it really is hard to follow one diet and find out what is right for you. I have not been able to find a decent doctor yet that will help me. The strict eating every two hours diet is helping but it is very hard. I switched from doing the Krimmel diet to Stans plan a few weeks ago because I was always hungry. But eating every two hours is very restricting. I can do it cuz I'm at home all day. You are right, there is a lot of different info out there, i think I have read it all. That's part of what makes this so hard.
I have seen a lot of improvements in symptoms in the last 8 weeks but I am so anxious to feel 100%. That is the hard part of all of this. The first two weeks of the diet was absolute hell for me - I basically went cold turkey on everything. And even though a few months prior to going on the diet I had given up caffeine, alcohol and simple sugar, I still had the worst time. Everybody said it was going to be hard, just did not think, for me at least, it was going to be so painful. Not sure if everybody reacts as badly as I did either.
I am going to see a natural doctor today, an acquaintance of mine who also has had really bad hypo said that I should not still be feeling this bad after almost 8 weeks on the diet.
Regarding your questions:
4 questions:
1. What do I do if i go out to a baseball game or somewhere where healthy choices won't be available for long periods of time?
You will need to pack your own food. I even sleep with a tiny cooler beside my bed as I have been waking up hungry at night. I am sleeping better now too. But having the cooler there with hardboiled eggs or cheese means that you can eat and get back to sleep without getting up. Drink lots of water.
2. Are Protein shakes/protein bars from GNC acceptable?
I don't use them and I think Stan is not of fan of them either. You have to check the ingredients very carefully. Suggest you search on this forum to see if anybody has found a good one.
3. Once I stabilize myself, should I expect to never eat pizza, bread and sugars ever again? I drank gatorade and vitamin water 24/7 for a couple years, so this is a big change already.
Both of those drinks have a lot of sugar so cut those out. Once you get stabilized, it depends upon the person, some people can tolerate the odd piece of pizza others cannot. I'm not there yet so I don't know. I'll be happy if I can just get to a point where I can eat only 5 or 6 meals a day instead of 9.
4. Has anyone else felt the same feelings I described above? And how severe we're you're feelings/mood swings?? It's kind of scary sometimes. I hope it improves... The moods do improve as you get more stable but can swing back & forth. Mine were/are severe but not as bad as some people I have read. I have been doing a lot of meditating/EFT. It is very scary but think of it as temporary.
