Forgetfulness, brain fog, and loss of focus on Keto for a month

(Kat Lavry ) #1

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to get some help regarding this issue I’m having.

I started keto and intermittent fasting a month ago. I eat minimal carms (just from zucchini, cauliflower, bell peppers, I avoid any vegetables that have carbs rate higher than 8g per 100 g of product). I eat between 12pm and 6pm. I usually would eat lost of green vegetables, egg or avocado, some type of organ meats (liver, lungs, heart) or other meat. I also eat cheese everyday (brie, cream cheese). I always had a sweet tooth so I like to make keto icecream from heavy cream and erythritol, fat bombs, cheesecake. I also drink wheat grass powder everyday and take apple cider vinegar.

Besides being happy with what I eat I still get very hungry after meals and crave sweet alot…

Another major issue I’m having is terrible forgetfulness that I never experienced before. I tend to forget why I walked into the room or what I wanted to get from the cabinet 2 minutes ago. I’m usually very organised and remember to complete tasks in my mind. I thought this kind of side effect would have passed by now that I have been on keto for a month already.
Any advise on how to deal with this would be greatly appreciated!!!

#2

That list sounds like a bunch of carbs all over the place, even if the individual things aren’t “high carb”. Are you measuring and figuring out how much carbs you are getting every day? Are you sure you’re in ketosis?

If you are, make sure you are getting enough water (a lot) and salts (sodium: 5,000mg, Potassium 3-4,000mg, Magnesium ~400mg), and make sure you are just generally eating enough (mostly on the protein and fat side). Too little food can cause issues if you don’t have the right context. If you are just jumping in to both keto and IF at the same time, it can be hard to get that balance right and the body is going through a lot of adjustments, so you might try going easier or dropping the Intermittent Fasting for a bit while your body adjusts to see if that makes you feel any better.

You also may want to see if taking out some of those foods or ingredients for a bit may help, as you may have some kind of problem with any particular thing (erythritol, cream, wheatgrass(what is this even for?), etc).

At lot of factors here and a lot of things depend on particular details and context. If things keep up you may want to talk to a doctor to help figure it out.

(Kat Lavry ) #3

Thanks for the prompt reply!

I eat probably 200g of meat and and about two eggs in some cooked form with a large leafy green salad with a whole bell pepper in one sitting and at the end Ill eat a fat bomb and a slice of brie cheese. At that moment I’ll be quite full but within 2 hours I’ll get hungry again. It might be because during my old eating habits I’d eat a tiny bit but about every 2 hours which I did for most of my life…so maybe thats why I still get hungry often…

I do add a bit of salt in my food. I probably consume a tea spoon of sea salt flakes a day with about a table spoon of pure almond butter when I really crave something. Sometimes I’d eat a teaspoon of salted butter when I get really hungry between meals too.

I don’t consume that much erythritol. When I’m craving something sweet I’d eat probably 50g of keto icecream (I don’t put much erythritol in it, its not very sweet). But I had a huge sweet tooth all my life too so maybe its still withdrawals from that…

I read that brain fog can come from a deficiency in vitamin B1 and B5. I bought some vitamin B5 but I couldn’t find B1 in nutritional yeast capsules so I’ll just add some nutritional yeast to my food and see if that helps.

Maybe I do need to slow down on IF due to my old eating habbits because I feel hungry almost all the time…I just don’t know how often I could eat to train by body to only eat twice a day…

#4

Alright, sounds like you aren’t really measuring your carb intake all that carefully for one.

You may need to also try harder to figure out just how much salt you are getting. I often found it hard to get enough sodium and other minerals when not eating carby food and when salt isn’t being smothered by sugar in every food. This is something else you may need to do the numbers on and really track.

If a particular food is a problem for you in particular, it may not need very much.

All in all, sounds like you may be jumping in a bit hard and your body is telling you it’s not ready and not fat-adapted enough yet to handle the regime (or isn’t in ketosis but also not getting enough carbs, or something else is wrong).

Some people can just dive into things without a problem, some can’t, and there’s a whole lot of factors to account for here.

(Carl Keller) #5

Hello Kat and welcome.

Here’s an article that might help indentify your source of brain fog. You can also try adding some coconut oil to your diet. I take a tablespoon in my morning coffee it gets my brain perked up in an instant. Just try a small amount at first beause it can cause mild stomach distress in some people.

#6

Hi Kat and welcome

Firstly I think @djindy and @CarlKeller have given sound advice, so give that a go.

I noticed this:

This may be part of the issue. You don’t train your body to only eat twice a day, your body tells you it only needs 2 meals.
Do you track what you eat, as in actually weigh it out? It could be that the green veg and sweet peppers have more carbs than you think, and what’s wheat grass powder? That sounds suspicious to me - wheat is carbs.
As has already been suggested, I would say pull back on fasting, track food to make sure you really are on minimum carbs and eat protein and then fats until satiety. I’d ditch the salad and replace with more fats - a buttery, creamy sauce (use arrowroot or flax to thicken rather than flour or cornstarch) over the meat, scramble the eggs with double cream and cheese, add butter or coconut oil to coffee… there’s lots of ways to tweak things to increase the fat & protein intake.

I’m another who always had a sweet tooth but now I hardly ever have sweet stuff. I might try some recipes when I’m feeling more secure in my keto management but at the moment I’m riding out the cravings, and I’m really surprised at how much I’m not bothered about not having them.

Remember that keto is about hormonal change- getting everything back to healthy levels. While erythritol doesn’t affect blood glucose levels it might well be spiking insulin which, on it’s own, is good enough reason not to use it.

If your body is used to eating every couple of hours then it will still be expecting that woe. You need to retrain your body (and your mind) away from grazing on carbs to big meals with fat as the primary energy source. Try not to snack between meals, and make sure those feelings are hunger. I thought I was hungry to start with but it turned out to be a mix of cravings and thirst. I did something about the thirst and ignored the cravings.

Anyway, you’ve got lots of ideas to try now do KCKO and keep us updated

(Running from stupidity) #7

If you’re hungry, eat.

If you’re not tracking, you’re guessing.

#8

If you get hungry very often, you could just as well eat 4-5 times a day. But eat instead of snacking. Add protein and fat to every meal, that should start teaching your body something about eating habits. A lot of protein doesn’t really matter all that much, it is very filling, and can help raise your metabolism.

Wheat grass isn’t too different from spinach or broccoli. Powder contains 4g of powder per tbsp. I don’t see any clear health benefit here, but it might cause an interesting insulin spike in rats with drug induced type 2 diabetes. I don’t think anyone knows what implications that has for humans.

Try to eat less salad. Salad is very filling and low in energy. The food you eat should be high in energy (lots of fat) and satiating rather than filling. The perfect meal is something you could easily eat more of, but you still suddenly feel like you just don’t want any more. It’s like how you won’t get full by eating butter, but at some point your body will tell you to just stop because it’s enough.

You could also look for hidden carbs, but even non-keto low carb will (after a little more time) make the constant hunger go away. It is enough fat that makes you feel full, and lack of fast carbs or insulin spikes thay makes hunger slow in returning.

(MooBoom) #9

So much great advice here, and I really strongly echo the call to weigh and measure what you’re eating, and cut back on salad/veg and up your fatty protein.

Something else to consider is the sweetener you’re using. Some people can have ‘keto’ sweeteners and they are fine, others (like me) find it triggers hunger and reinforces the drive for sweet foods. Consider cutting out the sweetners cold turkey for a month, just a month- anyone can do almost anything for a month. See how you feel at the end of that month and add the sweetener back in- watch what happens. It will tell you a lot.

(Bunny) #10

I know exactly what your talking about, been their, done that! (“…forget why I walked into the room or what I wanted to get from the cabinet 2 minutes ago…”)

Things that come to mind in my own self-observations when transitioning into a Ketogenic lifestyle is that you have not been doing this that long and your metabolism is evolving to understand what you are doing to it, so you may want to take baby steps instead of taking giant kangaroo hops:

  1. …adrenaline is going to be on high and peaking hard…

  2. …not enough carbohydrates, your restricting too many carbohydrates too soon and your metabolism is going into starvation survival mode, which is causing adrenaline to kick-in so your metabolism sees it as a threat or flight or flight reciprocity i.e. forgetfulness, short sleeping and waking cycles, hyper-vigilant, easily angered, easily frustrated etc…

  3. …Spreading your eating windows too far apart, to soon to allow your metabolism to adapt (even after a month or more-in you”ll be throwing hypoglycemia on top of that adrenaline…and wow look out!)…

  4. …It takes 6 months or 27 weeks for your body to adjust (in reality) to restricted carbohydrate intake; restricted intermittent fasting eating windows and extended fasting regimens…

I like to do this naturally and let my body tell me when to eat, so what eventually happened to me is I started to notice after about 6 months-in, that hmmm I am not hungry at all even though I have not eaten for a long period of time without feeling hypoglycemic or constant rushes of adrenaline, yet I can eat 200 grams of carbs and still be in ketosis?

That said, is why I don’t sit their and try to micro-manage macros, count calories with dieting software and weigh out every little bit of food and obsess over how many carbs might be over 20, 30 or 50 grams in veggies because I finally figured out I was wasting my time…

One last little note: If your thyroid is messed up and your trying to lose weight (burn body fat) doing keto and you go one carb over you”ll experience plateaus and stalls that will boggle your mind to no end…

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #11

Hi Kat,

Welcome.
These are related. You are eating a lot of fake sweets, and conditioning yourself to crave sweets at the same rate you did before. You will not get over the love of sweets and the craving until you dose the sweetness down, and have the treats as that, treats.

If I might offer a word of general advice. Simplify. Eat when you are hungry, log foods for a month, do not worry about macros, but limit yourself to 20g of net carbs daily. Count erythritol as .5g per serving, just to be safe.

Do not worry about eating organ meats, wheat grass, apple cider vinegar, intermittent fasting, or any of that. Do monitor your salt, ensuring that you get ENOUGH and maybe take a magnesium supplement. Keep it simple until your hunger subsides and your fog disperses.

(Running from stupidity) #12

:metal::metal::metal::metal::metal:

#13

Hi Kat and welcome,

Tweaking is definitely par for the keto course.

Most people report more energy and extra mental clarity not fog. We need a lot more sodium (salt), daily! Lack of sodium will cause fog.

But all that talk of “cheesecake” and “keto icecream” … - a simpler diet, especially in the first couple of weeks, is highly recommended to make sure we get into keto first time, every time. Then once you are established you might think of adding one flamboyant food a week or two and see how it all goes …

You’ve also said you’re hungry all the time … Once we get into ketosis and we’re burning stored fat we lose appetite. Don’t feel like eating breakfast or lunch or whatever.

There are too many things going on here, it could be lack of sodium, knocked out of keto by this or that, too many hidden carbs? …Fasting?

If you take so much as one pill, for anything, that may or may not change everything.

In my first week I targeted 20g Total Carbs, basically just bacon and eggs for breakfast, meat and veggies (I was too scared of butter then). Plenty of sodium.

I avoided all sugar, including fake sugar, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes …

I also avoided all wannabe carb food, no “keto pizza”, “keto ice-cream”, “keto cake” … they just complicate everything …

As I said before once we get established, then we might think of more elaborate food.

Hope that helps

(traci simpson) #14

Hormones
Lyme disease
Alzheimer’s etc
yup…could be medical. It is for me!

(Rob Grantham) #15

Kat that is a lot of food in one sitting especially as you have not been doing this that long. That sounds like a large amount of protein to be eating in one sitting from the meat alone you have upwards of 60g then the fat bomb and cheese on top of that… Is there any way to spread your food out?

(Anne Marie) #16

When I get sweet cravings (I blame hormones) I found that making a dessert fat bomb curbs my sweet tooth. It has to be fully satiating (fat-filling) not just a sweet treat replacement. For me, not doing something about that craving just makes it worse.

(traci simpson) #17

What’s your favorite fat bomb recipe?

(Anne Marie) #18

Chocolate chip cookie dough is my favorite. It’s got 1/4+ cup coconut oil, 1 cup of almond flour, Swerve (I forget how much maybe 2-3T), 1/4tsp vanilla, & 2-4T Keto chocolate chips.

However, I refuse to pay $6+ for a tiny bag of Keto chocolate chips. So, initially I just added a Keto chocolate syrup to it that I had already made. It was a good substitute in a pinch.

Long story, I then made my own Keto chocolate “chips” from unsweetened chocolate liquor disks from Bulkfoods.com and Swerve.
I used to make hand-dipped candies, so I knew it could be done.

I melted the disks slowly in the microwave. It’s okay to do so long as you don’t rush it. But next time I will use one of my chocolate melting pots so that the chocolate starts liquidy while I add the Swerve.

After the disks and Swerve were mixed together, I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper, poured the chocolate out and spread it out. I put another piece of parchment paper on top and put it in the fridge to harden.

After it hardened (and before my husband could eat it all), I broke it up by hand and chopped it up with my Osterizer; put it in an air tight container and put that back in the fridge.

I had to add a little extra coconut oil to the fat bomb dough because my chocolate is dry. But they are delicious!

(Anne Marie) #19

Yup. I know my brain fog isn’t due to Keto either.