Sleep Problems

This is a copy of my comment on a post at Jimmy Moore’s regarding sleep problems

Post from tcbsoc:

Hi All.
I started low carb this week and have done induction since Wed. Since starting, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and having horrible nightmares. Anyone deal with this before? Any suggestions on what to do?
Thanks.

My response:

Hi tcbsoc,

Starting a low carb diet is probably one of the biggest changes your body has had to go through in its entire life. In fact the changes going on in your body both chemically and hormonally, you could liken, to going through puberty yet all condensed into a week-long period. 

There are principally, five reasons that I can think of off the top of my head why your sleep will be disturbed since starting a low carb diet. As Mackay has rightly said, it could be just a lack of magnesium and perhaps there are physical things disturbing your sleep.

Other things you need to be aware of are the fact that a low carb diet particularly in the early stages, will mean that your body is having to deal with higher energy levels which leads neatly on to the next thing that you may not be getting enough physical exercise. Another thing that you should pay attention to is the amount of protein that you’re eating or more specifically the amount of protein compared to the amount of fat. It is not uncommon for many people who start a low carb diet who concentrate more on meat and bacon and eggs and that sort of thing and not consume enough fat to balance out their protein consumption.

Coming back to the nightmares though, it may be that you have commenced a diet which although it makes sense to your brain, doesn’t make sense to your emotions because you don’t have a big enough reason why. Without the big reason why, our own conscious mind which nearly always tries to move towards the status quo will be fighting with our conscious mind. One of the outcomes from that will be things like nightmares. So do find yourself a big reason why you want to get fit and healthy.

Something that many people overlook is the way that low carb affects men and women differently. So it would be helpful to know whether you’re a man or a woman, as again, hormonal changes can affect drastically how we react to a change in diet, particularly in the early stages.

Lastly, one other things has just occurred to me, you don’t mention what type of diet you’re on, only that you’re in the induction phase on a low carb diet. So is that low carb Atkins, low carb South Beach? Frankly, a little bit more detail would help us to help you enormously.

Lastly I would say, if you’ve only started your diet this week, then because of your metabolism, history or current weight and many, many other things; it can take time to get into a low carb diet. Every one of us here can testify that the beginning of a diet wasn’t always plain sailing but it was well-worthy effort to persevere.

Hope that helps,

Mark