Today on The Ask Prof Noakes Podcast we touch on the LCHF Diet side effects and ask Prof. Tim Noakes about withdrawal symptoms when cutting down your carbohydrates and sugar. We chat about the effects of taking sugar whilst suffering these symptoms.
Banting Diet Side Effects: How to deal with them
We touch on LCHF or Banting Diet side effects today on the Real Meal Radio. Jerome Cupido popped us a mail and he was asking about withdrawal symptoms on the low carb high fat diet when cutting down your intake of carbohydrates and sugar.
He said he has recently had pain in his muscles with night sweats and he gets cold shivers. After three weeks of being on the LCHF or Banting diet, he went to his doctor and they could not find anything wrong with him.
After that he kept on being told by people that he needs to take some sugar and that is an interesting suggestion, what should he do? Those Banting diet side effects that he mentions are very, very common aren’t they?
Prof Tim Noakes: Yes, the extent that he describes them but I think that he is just going to hang in there and see what happens. Those Banting diet side effects are not going to last forever and I certainly would not want him to take sugar because that will just push him back to the old ways.
If he takes sugar and he has a sugar addiction, he will get back straight back where he is on. It is like giving alcohol to an alcoholic, they just go back to what they always had, so I think he just needs to hang in there for a bit longer and see what happens.
Is cutting sugar the cause of your Banting diet side effects?
If it does not work, what he can do is just increase slightly his carbohydrate intake. You know, I think that many of us we are eating 400 grams, 500, 600 grams of carbs a day when we are doing lots of exercise and then you suddenly cut to 25 or 50 grams, perhaps that is probably a bit of a big jump.
Maybe he could increase his carbohydrate intake a little bit to eating more vegetables and perhaps some more berries and that will increase the carb intake just a little bit and maybe that will be enough.
Another good example might be instead of eating sugar, take some berries and that might help.