Carbohydrate Addict's Diet Got Me Pregnant!
Written: Jan 05 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: I got pregnant, you can eat a wide variety of food durning your reward meal, I felt good while doing it
Cons: I was very sensitive to carb overdose, I might get pregnant again
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| lizf's Full Review: Carbohydrate Addict's Diet |
Well OK, my husband helped a little. But I credit the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet (CAD) for my quick pregnancy.
When I was 18 an endocrinologist told me I had Polycistic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). He said I shouldn't really worry about it, but when the time came to get pregnant I might have a little trouble. But he really underplayed the problem. He left me with the feeling that I'd just pop a pill or two and WHAM! I'd get pregnant just like any other person.
So, I went on with my life. I filed he PCOS diagnosis in the back of my mind, but I never really gave it serious consideration.
Fast-forward almost 20 years later.... I was ready to have kids. So I went off the pill and started doing some research on PCOS. Turns out the good doc had given me the WRONG impression. It can be very difficult to get pregnant with PCOS. I started to get scared that I had waited too long to get pregnant, so I put my research in overdrive.
It turns out there is a link between PCOS and a condition called Insulin Resistance. At that time (about two years ago) there was early research regarding the use of diabetes drugs Metformin and Resulin (now off the market) to treat woman with PCOS. These drugs helped control the Insulin Resistance. This early research showed that once the Insulin Resistance was under control these women had an easier time getting pregnant. This sounded promising to me.
I continued to research the literature and discovered that low carbohydrate diets caused the body to naturally control Insulin Resistance in the same way that Metormin and Resulin worked. I decided to try a low-carb diet before going for infertility treatment.
The two diets I considered were the Adkins Diet and the CAD. I quickly ruled out the Adkins Diet because it seemed too restrictive to me. You were required to seriously limit the amount of carbs that you ate. Since my ultimate goal was pregnancy, I felt uncomfortable cutting out important food groups like fruits. Also an endocrinologist warned me against the Adkins Diet. She said that she had several patients who had serious side effects to the diet. She reports such adverse events as complete hair loss and nail deformities. She told me that once her patients returned to eating a balanced diet the side effects were reversed. Like I said, my goal was pregnancy and any diet that could cause such severe side affects due to being imbalanced didn't seem like a good idea.
This same endocrinologist wasn't excited that I was going to try the CAD diet, but she felt it was somewhat safer than the Adkins Diet. I strongly recommend that anyone considering either of these diet plans discuss their individual situation with their own doctor.
I was on the diet for about five weeks. I got pregnant the very first cycle where I followed the diet religiously. This diet is not recommended for pregnant women and nursing mothers so I stopped following the diet as soon as I got a positive pregnancy test.
Aside from the big positive of getting pregnant... I had very mixed feelings about this diet. First let me tell you how the diet works. During the day you can eat as much as you want as long as it's low or no-carb. There is no calorie counting, no portions to measure, no set limits on what you eat... so long as it's low-carb. For one meal each day (in the CAD terminology they call it your Reward Meal) you can eat almost anything you want. You start the meal with a salad. Then you have a meal that consists of 1/3 protein, 1/3 veggie, and 1/3 carb. You can have all the carbs you want as long as you eat equal amounts of protein and veggies. But there is one big gotcha... this meal should be completed within an hour. It's also recommended that this meal should be consumed at about the same time every day. That's the diet in a nutshell.
I found this diet pretty easy to stick with when I was in complete control of my food. In other words, when I was cooking for myself it was very easy to follow and easy not to cheat. Knowing that you had a reward meal coming gave me the will power to stick with it. For example, one day a woman at work brought in homemade chocolates. It was much easier to say, "I'm going to take mine home for dinner." than to say, "Oh, I can't have one." Let's face it... if I didn't have a reward meal we all know I would have cheated and eaten that homemade candy right then and there.
However, I found it very hard to stick to the diet when I ate out. Restaurants just don't cater to this kind of diet. The worst time I had was during a weekend trip. Breakfast was a real killer! I'm seriously allergic to eggs so I couldn't eat those. If you take all the eggs off of a restaurant breakfast menu... what's left? Pancakes, waffles, French toast, bagels, rolls, muffins, and cereal are all carbs. I didn't want to "waste" my reward meal on breakfast when the point of this particular trip was to attend a 60th Anniversary Party at an Italian Restaurant... Let's just say that weekend was not pleasant in the diet department (but it was the LAST weekend I was on the diet *wink*)
Another big plus for the diet was the way it made me feel. I felt much better when I followed the diet. I had more energy than ever before. But this great feeling came at a big cost. The first three days of the diet were pure torture. I guess it was some kind of "detox" period because I was a really crabby witch. Everything made me angry; I was short-tempered, and very, very sleepy! I had a killer headache for three days. I felt like I could kill someone if they looked at me the wrong way, but then again I didn't have the energy to actually do it. I felt like doggie-do. It was hideous. But on the fourth day I woke up with so much energy and great spirits... I couldn't believe I was the same person.
But here's a major warning... if you accidentally eat too many carbs during the day YOU WILL FEEL IT! One day I had to go to a luncheon and I did my best to eat low-carb but there just weren't many choices. I also think some of the things I thought were low carb had hidden carbs. That afternoon I went back to feeling like doggie-do. It was awful. My husband even commented on how witchy I had become again. The next day I had a bit of a "hangover"
My own sensitivity to this diet was a big downer. That's the main reason I haven't gone back to it. I lived in fear of an accidental carb overdose. Maybe that means I really need to eat that way, but our society doesn't cater to it. I found it very easy to "overdose" and turn into a witch. So I chose not to go back to it. But if we decide we want child number two... watch out world! I'll be doing the CAD diet again. (Maybe I'll be nice to my friends at Epinions and not rate articles during the reentry period *wink*)
Recommended:
Yes
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lizf
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Location: VA
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A writer is a controlled schizophrenic. Edward Albee
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