do you get shaky/weak between meals?

[familyfun]

lately i am getting hungrier and hungrier and despite eating 3 meals a day plus fruit/biscuit inbetween i am so hungry by mealtimes i am literally shaking. what could cause this?

Hmm, thinking about it now - when I lived at home, and was eating a good diet which was protein-and-vegetable rich, I'd definitely have said that I don't have a sweet tooth and much preferred savoury snacks over sweet. But since I left home, I have lived with a couple of different blokes and on my own and both of them have had pretty processed-food laden, salt and sugar heavy kind of food preferences which has obviously affected my own diet. And when I was on my own with DS I actually got sick and fish and chips because we ate them so often And I now crave chocolate, in particular, a lot, which I put down to having DS and pregnancy/breastfeeding changing my system in terms of cravings etc.

I have been breastfeeding for over 3 years now but DS only tends to feed about once a day - does anyone know if this affects things in the same way? Because I know breastfeeding is often said to affect things but my understanding of this is that it's based on breastfeeding for a shorter time, a year or so, and obviously the dynamics of it are quite different. I'm loathe to stop just to see if it makes me feel better, when DS will likely stop on his own in the next few months, anyway. I might try posting in BBF about it :)

I don't want to give up sugar in particular, but if it's upsetting my system and I could get back to that place where I don't particularly want it anyway then I don't think I'd mind all that much. It does help being able to imagine it. And I'm guessing as people have said that it would still be okay as an occasional treat type thing, or if food choices were limited etc. Kind of like someone I know is lactose intolerant but occasionally will just binge out on pizza or ice cream and suffer for it the next day, but feel that it's worth it. (Kind of like a hangover )

My main problem, I think, is that I am so often tired that eating well seems so much effort, so it's a vicious circle. But money is a bit less tight at the moment so if I put more into the food budget and concentrate on buying easy to prepare meals which I actually want to eat, that should help, I hope.

i have been eating better and feeling better, i havent had any crisps or biscuits and just a bit of dark choc at night.
when im bored i eat too much so ive been cleaning incessantly..
dd2 is 15 months and still bf 5 or 6 times a day and i def think that is effecting me, also period due this week so that makes me hungrier??

I have no idea by what mechanism a late breakfast one day would lead to grumpiness the next day.

My issue with not eating protein at night is that by morning my blood sugar is really low, which is why I feel rubbish.

Bertie, my own view is that at least some of the bf'ing tiredness isn't actually to do with bf'ing itself, but is due to the combination of bf'ing and not eating in the best way. On the RR group for those who are pg/bf'ing and doing the eating plan, there are quite a few who are nursing / have nursed toddlers. Those who've stopped said they needed to eat according to the bf version of the plan (ie protein every 3 hours in the day, and eating 50% more protein than other people) until their child was completely weaned, and then they reduced the amount of protein gradually.

The RR site explains how to calculate the protein amounts, as it varies according to your bodyweight, but for me it was the equivalent of 3-4 eggs for breakfast or 2-3 for a snack. (Obviously I don't eat it all in eggs!) Now I'm pg as well, I need to eat more - twice as much protein as a non-bf'ing, non-pg person. From what I can tell, those amounts seem to be about right - although my DS does feed fairly often: 4-8 times in the day and once or twice at night.

OP, glad you've seen some improvement.

I've suffered with insulin sensitivity for years. There has been some really good advice here about how to get off the sugar rollercoaster.

One thing I would add is to look at the overall glycaemic load of meals. I don't do this in a scientific way, but I know from experience that if I have two squares of chocolate on their own as a snack on an empty stomach, I will be hungry with my head spinning a short while later. If I have the same amount of chocolate after a sensible lunch with protein and complex carbs, I won't feel any ill effects. I guess it just doesn't make my blood sugar spike in the same way.

Perhaps the people who are reluctant to give up sugar could see if this helps them feel better? It works for me anyway.

Read The Harcombe Diet, by Zoe Harcombe. She talks about hypoglycemia in there.

You need to cut down massively on the amount of carbohydrate you're eating, so that you keep your blood sugar level stable. This means fruit as well as the obvious stuff like biscuits and chocolate.

Well, that's been useful even if you get nothing else out of it, Crystal. :)

Snacks:

nuts
seeds (sunflower, pumpkin etc)
sausages/sausage rolls
meat in sandwiches/wraps
quorn stuff eg sausage rolls
non-quorn veggie stuff eg cheesy/lentil type sausage rolls
milkshake with fruit & either cottage cheese (not as bad as it sounds) or protein powder - you can buy from health food shops but it's expensive

Hopefully other people might have more ideas as I struggle with snacks since I'm intolerant to lactose so my dairy options are limited, and nuts are out as DS has multiple nut allegies.

I think there are carbs and carbs IYSWIM. If you're sensitive to sugar, glucose tablets might not be the best idea as they'd exacerbate the swings in blood sugar levels, but wholegrains / roots / legumes would be good sources of carbohydrates.

I've found that by eating more protein my carbohydrate consumption has naturally decreased (although it took a while for my body to catch on, so I was eating lots of both for a while).

YY to what eurochick said about eating things like chocolate after a meal / snack instead of on its own. It makes a huge difference IME, and helps reduce it triggering further cravings.

Those snack ideas sound really nice - just the kind of thing I'd want for a snack but feel like I "ought to" save for a meal

Seriously starting to feel there is something to this for me. I'm going to try and give it a go. I went without sugar in my tea and coffee today and didn't notice at all. I had one of the really meaty subway sandwiches for breakfast/lunch (was in a rush getting a bus) and for dinner we had fajitas, so chicken, onion, peppers and tortilla wraps and that was it, and I feel surprisingly good considering I only had 4 hours' sleep last night and a 2 hour nap this morning. This could be me just imagining things, though!

Probably going to eat rubbishly tomorrow as I'm going to London for Million Women Rise and will have 1.5 hours on the train with a toddler to entertain. I might boil some eggs in the morning to take with us as snacks, though. (Or should I do it now and fridgerate* them?)

*Why is it re fridgerate, even the first time?

Is porridge a good snack BTW? Those instant porridge pots which have been springing up everywhere are in asda for 4 for £3 apparently. Or you could make your own if instant is no good (they look like normal oats to me, though) by mixing a pot of oats and whatever flavouring you like, pinch of salt, or dried fruits or cinnamon or sugar(??) and enough dried milk powder to make up the required amount of milk. Then just fill with hot water when out/at work etc. Most cafes will dispense hot water for free or a nominal 20, 30 pence.

I think porridge is good - you could add nuts or seeds to increase the protein in it. We used to make porridge with milk powder that way when we went camping - yum.

I think all the easily-portable protein snacks are dull, except for hot sausage rolls and nuts (which sadly I can't have).

Other ideas:

baked beans
bean/lentil soup
dahl

Watching this with interest as I have always suffered from low blood sugar periodically and every time I try to reduce my calorie intake (to lose weight), I tend to really struggle with lows.
I do not have a sweet tooth and eat very little sweet stuff, apart from when I get the shakes when I will eat whatever I can get my hands on but I find that the low sugar can come on very suddenly and quickly make me feel absolutely dreadful.
As I have dc, I always have a snack of some sort in my bag, and have been dipping into them a lot recently.
The whole carbs thing is one my dh and I are just getting into as he is overweight (I'm not), and type 2 diabetic and his nurse recently suggested that he should reduce carbs intake by 25%.

hilly, that doesn't sound like you're sensitive to sugar then.

Other ideas (I'm on a roll):

fish cakes
salads with meat / fish / beans / lentils - using wholemeal pasta / rice / bread would help
leftovers from meals

The scotch egg one is good too. And I suppose you could also have something posh like smoked salmon

Cocktail sausages are nice, and easy to buy the big frozen packs and batch cook for snacks. Houmous? Is that protein-y? With some carrot sticks or cucumber or something to dip?

I suppose I always think of snacks as things like fruit, crisps or chocolate so these things seem exotic to me! Cold sausages were always a treat when I was little. How about things like mini pork pies? Or is the pastry not good? You can get all sort of flavours in the supermarket, pork and pickle, pork and mustard etc.

I can't eat cheese myself but looks like there are plenty of options.

Also, having a toddler has taught me that almost any food can be made into a portable snack with the addition of tiny little tupperware pots. I like the sets of nesting ones you get in Paperchase, they're not totally watertight, though. Like these would be so perfect for our London trip tomorrow

What about the snack pot/lunch things like Dairylea, are they too processed to be of any use? DS likes them. I don't think he is sensitive to anything though.

So glad to find this thread, I have had this on and off all my life but it seems to have got a lot worse over the last few months and I'm not sure why.

I definitely have a bad reaction a couple of hours later if I eat scones or paninis but now it seems to happen if I have white rice as well - annoying as I love my lunch time sushi. I have been cutting out the things that trigger it, but finding it hard to lose weight as eating nuts when I feel hungry which seems to happen a lot.
Apparently exercise is good too,I did a lot of running last year and didn't seem to have as many dizzy spells so perhaps this is true.

Boiling up 4 eggs for the journey tomorrow! I will have porridge for breakfast too, if I feel like eating. If not it might be very bad cereal just to get me going.