My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Join the chat on our Weight Loss forum.

Weight loss chat

dieting and "emotional detox" - anyone have any experience?

1 reply

vezzie · 29/10/2009 15:05

I started the Harcombe diet on Monday (phase 1, no caffeine, no refined foods and hardly any carbs) and it was the first time since 2003 I had been without caffeine for more than a few hours. (that time it nearly killed me and didn't last long.) I was in a rut of being exhausted, binge eating, feeling even more heavy and tired etc and it seemed that this diet, with its focus on directly attacking food cravings, was right for me.

Anyway here I am on the 4th day and I hope I am over the worst of the crushing caffeine withdrawal. But... I feel emotionally... weird. Strange and tearful, but not sad. All the time. Even as I am desperate to cry there is happiness inside me. I keep re-living the first days of dd's life (she is 6 months) and everything that was good and bad and overwhelming. (I did not have a horrible birth or anything traumatic, the only overwhelming things were just all the normal things, including the lovely things.) I feel very very tired and as if I just want to be alone in a quiet place to think about things and cry.

Is this a normal side effect of a physical detox? If you have been putting away your feelings and using carbs and coffee to keep going, when you stop, do you have to go through everything you put away instead of dealing with at the time?

2 weeks ago there was a horrible event that is still unresolved but it is all this other stuff, which should be perfectly fine, which is making me feel weepy.

Anyone had experience of this? What should I do? How do I get over it without going back to all my bad habits?

OP posts:
Report
toddlerama · 29/10/2009 16:53

For me, yes this has been normal. I think I use food to distract me from my emotions and when I stop doing it, they all need to be addressed!

Let it happen. You are supposed to feel things! Have a good cry when you need to. This is, in my experience, part of realising what an numbing thing overeating / caffeine / sugar highs can be!

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.