Food Poisoning...Or Was It?

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(Carl D Black) #1

Sooo…been Keto for 11 days…lost 10 lbs so far…and then, decided to go to a local restaurant to have some breakfast. Omelette with cheese, sausage, steak onions, etc. Fairly Keto, but not the most nutritious obviously. Went to work, got a little hungry, ate some pecans…couple hours later and into the night was violently ill, vomiting continuously and diarrhea, cold sweats, horrible muscle spasms, dehydration (couldn’t even keep water down)…In short, about 6-7 hours of hell. Took all the next day of bed rest to recuperate.

At first I kept thinking it was because I had eaten too much fat and was very low on protein, but this was TOO sick for that. The muscle spasms were ridiculous along with a headache I was convinced it was low electrolytes, so I took some supplements the next day and tons of water. Also, I ate a banana for some potassium and something that was soft and easy on the stomach. But, obviously, there went my whole day’s carbs (20g per banana). And then I had some clam chowder, again, throwing me further off my diet (potatoes, etc.)

So I guess my question is how badly will this throw me out of ketosis, if in fact I was ever IN ketosis, which I wonder at. I was very careful for the first week to keep my carbs down at least less than 50g. I was (and am) still learning what I can and can not eat to keep carbs down to 20g.

In short, I’m getting BACK on my horse again. I am determined to not give up on this. I am DONE with being obese and feeling like shit. But I have to say that this has been a royal pain in the ass. Having to be my own doctor, spending countless hours learning shit that doctors are SUPPOSED to know is seriously pissing me off. I wish I could go and do this under the care of a physician, but who for God’s sake??

Anyhow, sorry for the rant, but completely re-learning how to eat is extremely frustrating.


(Running from stupidity) #2

If you were only at 50 or so then you may or may not have been in ketosis, but it really doesn’t matter. Just concentrate on getting under 20 and go from there, and it’ll happen when it happens.


(Diane) #3

FYI: I’ve been told that if you don’t get sick very quickly after eating (within about 30 minutes), you don’t have food poisoning. You might have had gastroenteritis. Neither of those conditions is directly related to eating ketogenically.

I agree with @juice, just work on getting your net carbs below 20 grams per day and ketosis will happen once you’ve depleted (or re-depleted) your glycogen stores.

It does get easier. Good luck!


#4

Actually it does sound much like food poisoning. And it can take several hours for it to affect you. It’s not always an early on-set thing. I contracted food poisoning just before Christmas, presumably from eating bad raw oysters. It took about 8 hours to hit me and I mean I was sick as a dog for about 24 hours or so and felt slightly queasy for the next week while my gut healed. I lost seven pounds over the course of the illness and four never came back. NSV?

Two RNs and one professional chef in my immediate family just about guaranteed me it was food poisoning and not some 24-hour virus. No one else in my family contracted a similar “virus.” The medical community is now leaning more and more toward food poisoning as being a common occurrence and not the old popular 24-hour virus thing.

Look at it this way, it was painful but you got a thorough cleansing out of the ordeal. And you should now be ready to cleanly Keto on.


#5

Definitely sounds like food poisoning to me. I’d suspect the sausages but ???

Keto shouldn’t be the reason. It’s just normal food minus the carb food.

When I went keto I didn’t want to change too many things too quickly. Then if there are issues it’s very hard to pin-point what caused what.

I don’t think fat would make you sick, too much protein can make people feel drowsy and even sick …


#6

I got sick too, granted not as sick as you, OP, but it has me wondering.

I’ve been feeling more confident since starting keto last month and have also dropped 10lb (yay!). Because i felt so great, I’ve been adding new keto-approved foods to try. But this morning i woke up at 6am with horrible sweat and waves of nausea. I thought for sure it was food poisoning, but then it just went away. I’m wondering if it’s something I ate, but am unsure as it didn’t turn into much more than general queasiness and a headache 5 hours later (now, gah!)

Has anyone had any negative reactions to: pork rinds, shirataki noodles, or macadamia nuts? These were all new foods to me that I tried yesterday and the only things I can think of that may have caused the upset. Or, can people just get sick a month in on keto? The pork rinds in particular stand out to me. I know people here love them which is why I tried them, but they were disgusting to me and I only ate a few…what do they normally taste like? Can they go bad?


(mole person) #7

My husband had the worst keto flu I’ve ever heard of. He vomited 11 times and couldn’t stop until I gave him a banana which fixed him right up.

Make sure to get an entire teaspoon of extra salt every day at a minimum. My husband took it in 4 quarter teaspoon doses each day and never suffered any nausea as long as he did this strictly.


#8

have you any thoughts on what causes the vomiting? it seems that in your husbands case it was his level of essential nutrients, but you’d think that would result in body aches or low energy levels, not an attempt by the body to expel its stomach contents. what a terrible reaction, I’m glad you figured out a solution!

in my case i measure out a teaspoon of salt in the morning and make sure i use it throughout the day, i take a magnesium supplement, and based on what i’ve calculated i’m pretty sure my potassium levels are high enough based on the foods i’m eating (avocado, leafy greens, dark chocolate, nuts), but i’m still feeling crappy and am wondering what’s going on.


(Danielle) #9

As a general rule, food poisoning takes about 8-12 hours to set in, so if you were showing symptoms two hours after eating, I’d consider that it was something else.

It’s also difficult to “diagnose” food poisoning, because its symptoms are very similar to a run of the mill stomach virus.

Either way, the treatment tends to be the same. Immodium, clear liquids for 24 hours, followed by a bland diet for 24 hours - my doctor (and others) refer to it as the BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Apples, and plain Toast). None of which are particularly keto friendly, but you do what you need to do in order to get back to normal!


(mole person) #10

I think some people just vomit more easily than others. My husband and I just had the exact same stomach flu a few weeks ago but had entirely different reactions to it. He vomited 14 times in 24 hours and I didn’t even feel the slightest bit nauseated. Instead I had an awful stomach ache, which he in turn, barely had at all.


(Running from stupidity) #11

Just to reiterate - “keto flu” isn’t any kind of ACTUAL flu at all, it’s simply a catch term used by someone initially who wasn’t smart enough to see that what he thought he was smart wasn’t anything like as smart as he thought it was.


(mole person) #12

Oh my goodness, thanks for catching that, in the second post I was talking about an ACTUAL stomach bug. I never even got “keto flu” myself. I was trying to make the point that some people just vomit more easily than others.


(Running from stupidity) #13

Gotta go with what you’re good at!


(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #14

Hey Jane, look up Dawn Phenomenon. It was still happening to me even a month into this way of eating and those were my symptoms. I think my body was still adjusting. I haven’t experienced it since I was a carb hog and my first month on a keto diet.


#15

I don’t have diabetes, but wow, I read a couple of pages online about the Dawn Phenomenon anyway. Fascinating. Our bodies are really so complex, aren’t they? Thanks for the reply. How long have you been keto?


(Running from stupidity) #16

Only to the science deniers! It’s simple eighth-grade physics otherwise!

:slight_smile:


(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #17

Four months now. But I did it for a long time in my 20’s.

I’m not diabetic but my A1c was higher than normal and my doc said I was heading there. I checked my fasting AM glucose for a while when I started too.