Worse Met effects w/low carb diet

latinsoulcyster · 05-20-2004, 04:18 PM

I've been on Metformin for about 2 months now. At the beginning I was not eating healthy at all and had no side effects from the Met. Now that I've started the South Beach diet, I've started to get diarrea. Anyone know why this would happen?

christyz · 05-20-2004, 06:31 PM

Hmm..that's a puzzle. I have never read or followed SB diet, so could you give us an idea of what you are eating? Maybe it will help.

Feel better.

latinsoulcyster · 05-20-2004, 06:53 PM

I'm only in the first two weeks of South Beach which is just like the first two weeks of Atkins. No potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, sweets. My breakfast is usually 2 hard-boiled eggs and 2 strips of turkey bacon. Lunch is usually either leftover meat from the night before with salad. Or a big salad by itself with some kind of meat and garnishments. Dinner is usually some kind of meat with either salad or veggies or both. I don't really snack in between. If I do, it's a few peanuts, string cheese, or pork skins. I drink 8 glasses of water and take a prenatal vitamin (TTC), which I've been taking for about 4 months now. The strange thing is that I did Atkins a little over a year ago and was fine. The only difference was that I wasn't taking Metformin. That's why I'm thinking it was the Met combo with an extremely low carb diet. I have been taking 1500 mg of Met for about a month and half, so it's not due to increasing my dosage recently.

shirleycat · 05-24-2004, 12:56 PM

Personally, I can't do low carb on Met. I am not a fan of low carb diets anyway, but I find I have a lot of stomach problems if I take the Met and don't eat carbs. I exercise a lot and I need the carbs for energy, especially in the morning.

I try to eat a balance of whole grain carbs, protein and fat. That helps my stomach issues on Met.

KYBluegrass · 05-25-2004, 12:29 PM

For me too, Atkins didn't make me feel very well. I felt kind of shaky, and I was tending to nibble more. I don't know if it is a combination of what the met is doing in our bodies that it just doesn't play well with others, but for me, the IR diet worked well, and I still eat that way today on maintenance. It does allow a little more in the carbs department, and during my entire weight loss, I stayed in the range of 75-90g of carbs a day...downright sinful indulgence by Atkins standards, but I still lost weight in that range.

I'm just throwing out possibilities here, but on many low carb diet plans, there tends to be more fat allowable than on some others. Eating higher fat foods, and more greasy food, like bacon and stuff, can cause diarrhea with met. Also, it seems that iceberg lettuce does a number on us too. Just a thought....

ShawnaMarie · 05-25-2004, 04:59 PM

Disclaimer: This is just MY opinion.

I don't do low-carbing on Met. I hate low-carbing with a passion. I hate any kind of dieting. It leads to me being totally obsessed with food and depressed all the time. The Met seems to control my PCOS by itself without low-carbing. Was the Met helping your PCOS? If so I wouldn't bother with the low-carbing. The way I see it the Met makes me like a normal person (physiologically! LOL) so I don't need to low-carb to lose weight. I'm exercising and eating healthy and I will lose weight that way.