Leptin Reset update #1

Leptin Reset- First post

I have now been on the Leptin Reset for just over 7 weeks. I’ still eating the BAB (big ass breakfast) although it isn’t quite so big or so fast. Today was 4 eggs, 4 slices of bacon and decaf coffee. A bit under 50 g of protein and I give myself a full hour to eat it now. I’m still not snacking. I do find that if I slack too much on my breakfast I want a snack later in the day. I had a big shift in my symptoms right at the 4 week mark so I took that as a sign that I didn’t need to be quite so strict anymore.

A very interesting thing happened last week. I have been drinking 3 cups of coffee daily for several months. Once I started the Leptin Reset I was drinking 2 with breakfast and 1 with lunch since I don’t like my coffee black and coffee with cream counts as a snack. Then suddenly one day I drank my first cup of coffee and got jittery. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. One cup of coffee seems like nothing. The next day I drank half a cup and was jittery. Oh dear! My precious coffee was betraying me! I felt so rejected! But the next day I drank no coffee in the morning at all. Just some hot water with lemon (not nearly so satisfying). By noon I was dragging so I had a demitasse mug of coffee. That was plenty. The next day I had a shot glass of coffee also at noon. I’m not sure why I choose to use those cups instead of putting a small amount in a regular mug but I did. Then I was done. 1.5 days after my last tiny cup of coffee a caffeine withdrawal headache hit. At bedtime oddly enough. I decided to sleep it off but it was still there when I woke up. I pushed through till coffee hour at church and had a half a cup. Way too much. Jittery once again. That was the last real coffee I have had. I did go ahead and invest in some decaf coffee and I drink a cup of it every morning. I do love the taste even if it doesn’t have any oomph but I don’t feel compelled to drink more than one cup of it.

Now today I have a caffeine headache again. It has been more than a week since my last cup of real coffee. I’ve decided to put up with it for now but if it is still here tomorrow I may see if a thimble full of coffee will fix it without the jitters. (I wrote this last night and this morning that headache was finally gone but again today I am really dragging and longing for my coffee pick me up).

In all I think that my body rejecting coffee like that is a good sign that my adrenals are healing and don’t want that extra stimulation any longer. I have also stepped down my own adrenal support to just a tiny dose this week. One other big change is that I have switched myself back to my compounded natural thyroid medication. I am hopeful that I will do well on this and be able to stop taking my expensive cytomel. So far I feel pretty good but I’m having to play around with my dose a bit. In another week or so I’ll go in and get my thyroid labs run and see what they say about how I am doing with the change.

So with the Leptin Reset so far I have:
More energy
More mental clarity
gave up coffee almost cold turkey
decreased my adrenal support significantly
possibly fixed my reverse t3 problem
Reduced my carbs down to a very low level without side effects or blood sugar issues
Increased sweating

What I haven’t seen that I am watching for.
Weight loss. Right now I haven’t lost anything.
Feeling of calm and sleepiness.

I’m going to continue on very low carb for now. It makes sense to me that humans should eat few carbs in the cold weather and it is the middle of winter right now. If I was a hunter/gatherer I wouldn’t have a lot of carb calories available right now. No fruit or grains are growing at the moment in my climate. Animals however are available year round and would be my main source of food in the winter months. So I’m sticking with a low carb high fat diet for now with plans to increase plant foods when the weather warms up. I feel pretty good on it even if I’m not losing weight. I’m hopeful that is coming soon. I also haven’t been faithful with exercising a lot. In part because I seem to be moving from one cold to the next cold this winter. I suspect this is in part because of this detox piece of the leptin reset. My liver it trying to detoxify my body but because of my MTHFR mutations (read about that here) it is short on the raw material it needs. Right now I can only handle my MTHFR supplements every other day. If I take them too much they make me jittery Like I had too much coffee. On the good days they make me feel great. Lots of energy and clarity. On the off days I don’t feel as good. I suspect I can’t eliminate 40 years worth of built up toxins overnight and my methylation pathways probably won’t get straightened out overnight either, even if they are given the building blocks they need.

Some pieces to the leptin reset that have really helped me along the way.

My Fitness Pal I have this both on my computer and on my android phone. I can enter my foods and get carb and protein counts for them. (I ignore the advice about how much I should be eating of each). You can also enter an entire recipe and it will calculate the values per serving for you.

F.Lux You can download this for free to your computer or smartphone and it will adjust the lighting depending on the time of day where you are. This means that at night you won’t be getting all that blue light that interferes with sleep (at least not from your computer)

You could also get Blue Blocking glasses or screen covers to protect your eyes from the stimulation of artificial blue light after dark.

Some have also asked how I made breakfast and ate it within 30 min. I always had my stove clean and ready for breakfast and made sure whatever I planned to eat was thawed. Oh and I plan what I will eat for breakfast. When you only have 30 min seconds count and I can’t spend any time in the morning thinking about what I might want.
I cooked bacon in the oven at 300 while cooking eggs on top of the stove most mornings. We like our bacon on the floppy side and that also lets it have more fat in it which is good for the leptin reset. If I was ready to go I could get the bacon going in very little time and have it ready in about 15 min or so. Eggs are even faster so I start them second but usually start the cast iron pan and oven heating up the moment I enter the kitchen. I wouldn’t let anyone get in my way of eating right away. My younger daughter is supposed to set the table for breakfast but I would go ahead and get my own place set and start eating while cajoling her to do her chore. Now that I have gotten through the initial phase I have an hour to eat breakfast and that makes a big difference in my flexibility in the morning.
One favorite quick breakfast that I made I called a sausage scramble. It was just 1 lb of ground pork, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of ground sage. I would put them all into the frying pan and while I broke the pork up to brown it I would be mixing in the salt and sage. Often I would fry a few eggs in another pan at the same time and eat them together. Some mornings I would also have a slice of grain free bread like my Ginger Bread. It is low carb and has lots of eggs so I figured it could work for this program.
If you don’t have kids to convince to eat with you then anything can be had for breakfast. My older daughter has thyroid issues and really does well with a BAB but if she doesn’t like what I am serving she will just not eat or eat very little and then have a lousy day because she is hungry. So if you can eat anything just crock pot a chicken over night and have that for breakfast, or a roast. Also left overs make for a very fast breakfast. Some people make lots of meat ahead of time and just plan to reheat it with breakfasts and a side of eggs or whatever they want. I store all of my leftovers in pyrex containers and so I just pull off the lid and throw them into the oven to warm up. Bacon, sausage and even eggs warm up nicely the next day and that can make for an even faster breakfast. One more idea to get eating even faster is to make my egg drink. I have made it with twice as much everything but water when I needed to get a big breakfast in fast.

So I know several of you out there are doing the leptin reset. I want to hear from you. What is working and what is hard? What questions do you have? What ideas do you have to share with others to make this easier? Let’s learn from each other here and move toward health together.

Go here to read Leptin Reset Update #2