How Do You Feel?

Since I didn't have enough energy to train for the last couple of months, I experimented with my diet a bit in an attempt to make myself feel better. Rather than than eating to change how I look, I ate to change how I felt. And I discovered something interesting about myself.

In March, to give myself more energy, I decided to up my carb intake to around 55% (from oats/quinoa, sweet potato, legumes, veggies and fruit) and dropped my fat intake to around 20%. Near the end of the month I had the worst PMS ever. Cravings, irritability, depression, frequently bursting into tears, etc.

So the next two weeks I bumped my fat back up to about 30%, and dropped carbs back to 30 to 40%, with the majority of carbs coming from veges - a LOT of veges - and oats with flax seeds at breakfast in the second week. By the end of the second week (just prior to Easter) I felt great - relaxed, increased libido - better than I've felt for a long time. I ate a lot of starchy carbs over Easter so the following week I dropped carbs way back and pushed my fats even higher during the week (up to 60%), relaxing and including more carbs again this weekend just gone. Yesterday I was surprised when my period arrived, because I had no PMS symptoms.

So at this stage I'm not sure if it was the fats, the HUGE amount of veggies, the tablespoons of flax seeds, or the large amounts of starchy carbs that I ate in the weekends that made the difference, or if it was a combination of all four, but I want to keep working it out, as after feeling so crap for the last couple of months, feeling great feels, well, great!