Tuesday, 9th July 2013: Oh, that headache!

My manager at the time was (and probably still is) a “Yo-yo” dieter. A busy young executive, he worked long hours, had a young family, drank too much, and inevitably put on weight. Then he would crash diet and drop 10 kgs and start the process over again. I was completely up front with him when I started down this path. Initially I had my specialist appointment on a Monday. I had to leave work early. The next day I emailed my boss and told him I might need a couple of weeks off soon. He was immediately concerned but I assured him everything was OK. At that stage I didn’t tell him of my intentions. I hadn’t even decided then what I was going to do, and after that first appointment I was pretty blown away by my options and feeling as though I was being forced down the path of the gastric sleeve. When I finally made my decision, three weeks later, I told him and another work colleague what was about to happen. They were shocked, to say the least, but supportive nonetheless. It was the day after I had started the Optifast regime. My boss, with his vast experience of these things, gave me some very sage advice. “Beware the ketosis headache, and whatever you do, don’t break and have any carbs because the headache will come back again.” I don’t suffer from migraines. In fact, I rarely suffer with a headache, and when I do I usually drink some water and it goes away. In extreme cases I take a couple of pills. This was one of those extreme cases. The headache had started the day before my conversation with my boss, on the Monday that I started the Optifast. I had gone from eating probably hundreds of grams of carbohydrates daily to only 50 or 60 grams overnight. I didn’t know about Ketosis. I had stayed up late on Sunday night to watch a Formula 1 race on TV and had blamed Monday’s headache on that. Tuesday’s journal entry reads, “Headache has persisted throughout day despite three lots of pain killers.” By Wednesday the headache had started to dissipate during the day and by nightfall I had what I call a ‘headache hangover’, where the pain is gone but you can feel where it has been. On Thursday I wrote, “Headache mostly gone. Occasional twinge and headache hangover like a tight hat.” Friday’s entry signified the end of my ketosis headache. “No headache – YAY!!” So what is Ketosis? The Optifast website has a very good description. http://www.optifast.com.au/Optifast-VLCD/What-is-Ketosis Click here to see an (abridged) extract from the Optifast website: Monday, 8^th July was the start of my weight loss journey, that’s if you exclude the four kgs I lost in the few agonising weeks when I pondered this life changing decision. It would be 81 days before I recorded by first day eating more than 1,000 calories.