18-26/09/2023, no weight records taken
Something is wrong. I'm back to being tired all the time. This is a very familiar feeling to me, especially since the pandemic, but I haven't had much of it these last few months, only occasional bouts, and infrequent at that.
Now it's my normal state again.
When I first came home, I was full of bounce. Actually feeling well again, like I have been for the last few months. My family remarked on it.
Over the first three days or so that bounce faded out, and I became more and more sluggish.
At the moment I feel like there's a veil between me and the world, a layer of I'm-tired-and-I-can't-be-bothered. Everything's an effort.
It feels more like a lack of will than anything else, but that's what chronic fatigue feels like. A shortage of spoons, as they say.
It's more acute in the morning, and I tend to become more lively as the day goes on. In the evening I'm often fine.
Sometimes my daily walk (always the same distance, to the pub in Stannington for a coffee and back, maybe three miles up and down hills in total) seems easy, hardly any exercise at all, and I'm walking quickly with a spring in my step all the way.
Sometimes it seems a shattering distance, and I'm shambling along like a very old man pushing himself painfully at the limit of endurance.
Weirdly I'm also pretty consistently too hot, and I'm still reducing my thyroid dose to stop that. A couple of days I've come back from a walk and jumped straight in the shower because I'm too hot and sweating badly.
That's strange. Earlier in my mad thyroid-taking career I had a choice between sluggish and cold vs. hot and energetic. It seems strange to be hot and sluggish at the same time.
But temperature always seemed to be a bit of a lagging indicator. I may just have reduced the thyroid dose too fast.
I don't think I'm overeating massively. Usually a bowl of fruit for breakfast, and then not much except occasional snacks until the evening, when there's always one very large dinner. I'm not that hungry most of the time. I don't think I'm binge-eating, just eating to satiety plus a bit more because I don't like leaving good food unfinished to be thrown away.
I think the big difference, apart from slight maternally-induced overeating in general, is that my diet has become much more carbohydrate-based. Lots of bread, chips, and fruit added to the yoghurt, cheese and beef that I've been living on recently.
So I think I'm going to tentatively conclude that my carbohydrate metabolism is still not working as well as my fat metabolism, and that the sudden shift in favour of carbs is what's put me back into this tired state.
I'm not going to make any changes. Thyroid dose I will keep adjusting to keep my waking temperature as close to 36.6 as I can.
Apart from that, I will wait and see what happens.
P.S. Ever since I wrote this this afternoon I’ve been bouncing around manically, full of energy….
Interesting. It could be that it takes time to really fix The Issue (tm), and low-carb/keto are band-aids that will help reduce symptoms until you get there. So as long as you're keto-ish you feel fixed, but introducing enough carbs will bring the symptoms back?