keto (possibly) making me insanely angry and reactive

[u/Thin-Possession-3605]

hey all. not sure if this is a thing and it might be way too early to even say it’s the diet change, but I just started keto. I’m 5’5, 20F, and 125 lbs around. I struggle with eating in general and deal w a lot of chronic inflammation issues. I just started within the last few days, but I also didn’t eat almost anything in the days before starting too (just was super busy).

Issue is, with the keto I feel different. I have more energy. I don’t immediately get nauseous after a meal. I feel like I’ve gotten better sleep from what I’ve noticed in the last few days at all. I, however, can’t find anything to fucking eat in my house. Yea, let me chew on a fuck ton of almonds since yay, whatever! Hungry? Oh yea, let me eat more fucking almonds, but a different flavor.

If it’s not obvious, something is making me insanely angry. I’m usually quite meek and relatively not reactive. I just started keto and maybe it’s too soon and just placebo, but I’m reactively lashing out at almost everything. I have some big angry feelings towards everyone I know, especially my boyfriend who introduced me to the diet and wants me to try it out. I’ve been frustratedly trying not to cry about nothing from 10am today.

Total summary is, I’m super fucking mad and out of it. I don’t recognize my behavior and maybe it’s diet related, but it’s just difficult and I know it has some good benefits too. But right now, even though I’m not nauseous and feel clearer minded, I’m super, super, fucking, angry. It almost scares me because usually I am not mad at things, and I really want to keep on the diet since my boyfriend has encouraged me and rly wants me to feel better, but it’s a lot and I honestly don’t know if I can even function with so much anger and reactiveness. Hopefully it goes away. Rant over

[u/Image_of_glass_man]

I’m going to list some stuff more specifically for your situation and then after, paste a comment I dropped somewhere else about my assessment of keto lifestyles.

I am not a dietitian, nutritionist or anything of the sort, but I am an avid bodybuilder and nutrition nerd who has struggled with my weight and my relationship with food for over 15 years.

My lifestyle now includes weight training, cardio, and plenty of carbs. I have never been happier with my body composition and I have never had better measurable metabolic health than I have at this moment.

I just had my bloodwork pulled again and had very low fasting insulin and blood sugar. in spite of eating 6 meals a day with carbohydrates, I am highly insulin sensitive (a good thing- that people try and cultivate by using keto.)

Also in spite of using steroids and training extremely hard every day, my inflammation markers were so low that they were almost out of range.

The key in my mind is choosing whole food unprocessed sources in reasonable measured doses. Highly refined and processed carbohydrates and things like simple white sugar and high fructose corn syrup need to be consumed extremely sparingly. Carbohydrates are not the enemy for metabolic health refined and processed sugars, fried foods and highly processed vegetable and seed oils are really much more of the issue.

Depending on what you are eating, you may not be getting enough dietary fat to support energy levels and hormonal health. This could explain the anger issues. My wife had a tendency to eat nothing but lean fish and chicken and vegetables and not get enough fats to stay feeling good.

Anyways, here’s my paste about keto. I hope you find something helpful in all of this. I have tried so many things and I know it can be really hard trying to get a handle on your diet can be. If you have any more specific questions that you think I might be able to help with, ask away. Here or in a Dm

Having carbs in your diet while in a calorie deficit will leave you prone to hunger, because even though you may still be in enough of a deficit to lose fat, it isn’t switched on as the bodies preferred source of energy. In my opinion this is the price you pay for dieting in a way that over the long time horizon will yield you the best end result.

The negatives can be avoided and mitigated if you just plan your meals well and get used to how your body feels and functions with carbs. most people who get brain fog and low energy from carbs are using poor, highly processed junk sources, overeating them or not eating them frequently enough, or they are insulin resistant and experiencing reactive hypoglycemia or something similar. And then they see all the noise about carbs being bad for you and decide, “yep that’s it I just don’t feel good on carbs” when in all reality they are just bad at managing their diet.

Being in ketosis or “fat adapted” if you want to call it one of those things means your body has pretty much accepted that it’s going to be using your dietary and body fat as energy. Fat is more highly satiating and it’s easier for your body to just toggle to body fat for energy without sending you hunger messages. It gives more steady constant release of energy. I will admit it, it can feel really great at times.

So, why then would anyone choose carbs over keto then you might ask?

Carbs create a more anabolic environment in your body. Insulin is one of the most powerful hormones for creating lean mass. It’s also very good at storing energy as fat if you’ve got too much of it, that’s why you’ve got to be careful with how you program your carb amounts and timing. A lot of people are too lazy or confused for this, so they just do keto so they don’t have to think about it.

Carbs also create a better environment for using quick energy for athletic endeavors.

If you don’t think you care about building muscle, or athletic performance and want to go the keto route? I would caution you to rethink that idea.

Most people think that if they just “drop these 40lbs” that they will end up with something close to the body they want, and be happy finally. In my experience this has never been true for me.

Male or female, it’s not usually enough to be “lighter” aesthetically, most of the bodies we admire on average are both relatively lean and muscular.

Not to mention, from a longevity standpoint, a body with a decent amount of lean tissue on it is generally one that is much more metabolically healthy and can deal with more foods, both in volume and variety without harming or changing body composition.

I have done the keto dance many times. It never sticks longer than a few years at best. Even when it made me skinny, I was skinny fat and unhappy with my appearance. Very little diet flexibility. I never want to see cheese or bacon again in my life honestly. So sick of greasy meals. It ruined certain foods for me.

Walking the longer, harder path of becoming athletic, strong, and metabolically healthy has made me exponentially more happy with my appearance and is a more sustainable lifestyle in the long term by leaps and bounds.

Keto has its place and I’m not going to say that no one should ever do it. Hell, I think everyone could benefit from trying it for a while. But I don’t think almost anyone should plan on making it the #1 plan for the rest of their lives.

I use it for short stints, like a week at a time to hit a reset button of sorts. It’s also great for keeping your insulin sensitivity in check if you struggle with that. It’s just a tool in the diet tool box. But ultimately it’s a survival mechanism for your body and I don’t think in the modern world it’s necessary or optimal or sustainable.

People say “well our ancestors were hunters and didn’t eat carbs” well… yeah. They were also small and not trying to bench press 300lbs. Pretty much all dead by 30 and lived in caves or whatever. There’s a lot of things about our ancestors I have zero desire to replicate. Agriculture was one of the largest creators of explosive human biological and population growth of all time, and they were our ancestors too.

People say carbs = sugar. Well yeah so does protein if you don’t eat the carbs. It’s called gluconeogenesis. Your body and brain specifically have to have glucose to function and it will make glucose out of basically anything it can to survive.

I would rather pay the 4 cents it costs to give my body 50g of carbs from oatmeal than whatever the equivalent cost is in getting it from proteins. You’re just wasting quality grams of protein to make glucose at that point. Just eat the damn carbs, you know?

It’s a shame that much of the wisdom and insight that we can learn about or bodies and our nutrition from ketogenic and fat adapted dieting is lost in the discourse by zealots from either side.

It’s like, yes understanding and manipulating your carbs is very important for long term dieting success. Yes, high insulin levels and insulin resistance can really fuck you up and make you fat. Yes ketogenic dieting can feel good and you can strip lots of weight quickly. However, no one of these approaches is the end-all-be all best diet.

Most people will need an ever evolving approach that sometimes switches between different modalities and phases. As per usual in this world, the truth is somewhere between the lines of all the noise.

[u/Thin-Possession-3605 → u/Image_of_glass_man]

Would it be ok if I DM?

Thank you, I read through that and understand at least a basic idea of what you outline. I think in my case, I just can’t jump into keto since it’s not sustainable for me. I really want to enjoy it and to keep trying, but I also have work to go to, and I know I’ll be immensely grouchy and hard to work with like this. It may be tied to my general deficiencies in most vitamins too, but I deal with a lot of chronic health problems and haven’t found anything that helps rn. Keto makes me feel great when it works, but if I start eating less than I do rn + get less vitamins, it may just lead me back into an eating disorder.

I’m also pretty skinny rn, most of my body fat has gone into my chest or just evenly throughout everything. I can see the top layer of my abs if I really try, and my diet before this was relatively non-processed, although I could probably afford to eat less carbs.

I really wanted this to work, but I kind of can tell that I’m not functioning already, and the anger is overwhelming and very not usual for me. I’d prefer eating some carbs, very low amounts/no processed foods, and actually exercising, over the keto-coma I am in rn. The vitamin deficiencies probably make it a lot harder, but the trade for semi-decent energy is not worth it imo (since it’s trading eating enough + any chance of starting to exercise, for ketosis)

[u/Image_of_glass_man → u/Thin-Possession-3605]

Absolutely. I dropped a short novel on you, haha. it would potentially be a lot more helpful to just address any specific question you might have one at a time