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Nutrition I feel like a blimp...

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steve-in-kville

steve-in-kville

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My family got me an early father's day gift: one of those smoothie blenders. I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in. I knew it would be a change to my system but I feel like a blimp! Bloated, gassy and puffy feeling. I am told this will go away but I'm at this a week now.

Should I be doing something different?
 
steve-in-kville said:
My family got me an early father's day gift: one of those smoothie blenders. I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in. I knew it would be a change to my system but I feel like a blimp! Bloated, gassy and puffy feeling. I am told this will go away but I'm at this a week now.

Should I be doing something different?
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Maybe it’s just a LOT of food at once? Sometimes it’s WAY easier to drink an apple, pear, banana, etc... than it would be to eat them piece by piece?
 
I know that feeling.... Sometimes whey protein gets the best of me and I become public enemy number one to my family.
 
steve-in-kville said:
My family got me an early father's day gift: one of those smoothie blenders. I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in. I knew it would be a change to my system but I feel like a blimp! Bloated, gassy and puffy feeling. I am told this will go away but I'm at this a week now.

Should I be doing something different?
Click to expand...
What kind of greens are you adding? If they're cruciferous vegetables they could cause bloating.
 
steve-in-kville said:
My family got me an early father's day gift: one of those smoothie blenders. I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in. I knew it would be a change to my system but I feel like a blimp! Bloated, gassy and puffy feeling. I am told this will go away but I'm at this a week now.

Should I be doing something different?
Click to expand...
Difficult to digest all that raw product at once. I've had a Vita-MIx since 98. I used to make two full 64 oz veg/fruit/powder drinks most days. I noticed after a time from my work out notes than my training was worse when I was making the shakes, regardless of amount. For me, too many lectins,phytates,oxalates . Tired,weak,puffy,.
 
steve-in-kville said:
I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in.
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Fructose and High Fructose Corn Syrup

There isn't much difference between fruit juices, which a smoothie is, and the High Fructose Syrup in soda beverages; when it come how your body responds.

The fruit juice has fructose and glucose in it—just like processed sugar. Most fruit has 40-55 percent fructose, and table sugar is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. Source: Wikipedia

The most common forms of HFCS contain either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, Source: High Fructose Corn Syrup Questions and Answers

The disadvantage...is that when fructose is metabolized in the liver, it’s typically used to make fats.
Source: Fruit Sugar Vs Refined Sugar: Are They Both Bad For You?

The Evils of Fructose
www.t-nation.com

The Evils of Fructose | T Nation

Everything you need to know about fructose and its affects on body composition.
www.t-nation.com www.t-nation.com

As per Cassandra Forsythe, PhD...

Why fructose is a problem for dieters:​

If you have a lot of fructose in your diet, it only has one place to go: your liver. If your liver glycogen levels are full, which is the case all times of the day except before you eat breakfast, then that fructose is turned into fat!

Since your liver doesn't want to store this new fat, it ships it to other parts of your body; places you don't want it, like your abdomen or lower back.

Do you now see why too much fructose in your diet can be one of the biggest reasons you can't shrink those last few fat cells?

High Fructose Intake Causes Fatty Liver
www.nih.gov

How high fructose intake may trigger fatty liver disease

A study suggested that consuming high amounts of fructose may promote non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by damaging the intestinal barrier.
www.nih.gov www.nih.gov

Studies suggest that high fructose intake may increase the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), in which too much fat is stored in liver cells. Fatty liver disease can lead to liver inflammation and liver damage, resulting in a more aggressive disease called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

Summary

The essentially difference between fruit smoothies or juices is they contain some vitamins and minerals that soft drinks don't. That means if you took a vitamin/mineral tablet you'd come out about the same.

Eating fruits that are high in fiber ensure that your fructose intake remains within reason compared to having fruit juice or a fruit juice smoothie.

It much easier to drink a glass of juice or smoothie than to eat a lot high fiber fruit at one time. Mother nature designed it that way for a reason.

If Mother Nature had wanted us to drink our fruit, she's grown blender on the trees go with the fruit.

With that in mind, you might want to reconsider the number and amount of smoothies you consume at one time or in one day.
 
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silveraw said:
I’ve also heard Carnivores make the case that two weeks of uncontrollable diarrhea is healthy and normal
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silveraw said:
I’ve also heard Carnivores make the case that two weeks of uncontrollable diarrhea is healthy and normal.
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"Believe Nothing You Hear, and Only One Half That You See."

This is the kind of crap that makes me crazy; passing on vague information with no data or research to back it up.

This is one of the biggest issues with message boards; the perpetuation of myths, misconceptions and misinformation.

If you have some reputable information to substantiate this, I'd like to see it.

With that said, I doubt that the majority of individual who go on a carnivore diet have uncontrollable diarrhea.

What is even crazier is thinking that two weeks of it "Is heathy and normal".

The Problem

The problem for is that for some reason many people believe crazy post like this, without questioning it. That's what drives QAnon.

Examples

piratebum said:
weird.
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Don Fairbanks said:
Guessing it will take the microbiome a while to adapt to a new regimen.
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Both of these replies to some extent lean it to thinking it might be true.

Snowman

Snowman/Matt post on this site often.

Snowman is on the Carnivore Diet or has used it for lengthy periods of time.

He's a Pre-Med, geeky guy (a compliment in this case).

When I have a question that require more in depth information, I email either Snowman/Matt or Al Caimpa.

So, let's get Snowman's perspective on this.
 
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Since @kennycro@@aol.com was nice enough to grab me, I'll toss in my two cents.

Note that excess gas and diarrhea are actually from two different causes (broadly speaking).

The gas is usually a result of too much sugar, starch, or protein making it through the small intestine and into the colon. The colon doesn't absorb much in the way of nutrients, just water, so gut bacteria in the colon will go wild with all the extra (easy to digest) food you're giving them. As a waste product, they produce gas, and that gas makes you feel bloated until you, ya know, get rid of it (public enemy number one style). Those bacteria also digest fiber, but not as quickly, so most folks don't have fiber-related bloating issues unless they're eating quite a lot of it. That said, high loads of fiber can interfere with full digestion, so a high fiber meal can "carry" carbs and protein to the colon.

Diet-related diarrhea is usually due to the colon not absorbing enough water out of the liquid coming from the small intestine. If you abruptly stop eating fiber (a la carnivore, or something similar), then you're colon has to step up it's water absorption game to absorb the water that would normally be bound up by fiber. This can cause watery stool for a week or two while the colon is adjusting. This isn't a bad thing or a big deal (as long as you have reliable access to the john), but I would hesitate to call it "normal and healthy". Being terrified of sneezing is no fun :p. If you're taking in a lot of electrolyte or have a lot of undigested nutrients in the colon, that can "hold on to water" via osmosis, and make it very difficult for the colon to absorb it. This means that taking in more nutrients than you can digest can cause both bloating and watery stool, culminating in explosive diarrhea. So that's neat.

Fat can also cause some osmotic diarrhea, but usually the diarrhea related to excess fat consumption (#ketoallday) is just because fat is liquid at body temp, and fat that get through the small intestine unabsorbed will continue on through the colon.

To bring things back to the OP, his bloating is likely due to him taking in more starch/sugar than his small intestine can absorb, which means he's feeding his gas-producing gut bacteria all sorts of goodies. This is another situation where the body should be able to adapt, so @steve-in-kville can either A) cut back on the smoothies to the amount that his small intestine is actually absorbing, and slowly increase from there, or B) just keeping blimping it up until his body gets itself sorted out. Neither is a "bad" option, but there is a financial argument for option A, since option B means you're buying food that's not actually feeding you. You could also take in the same amount of stuff, but spread it out over more smoothies throughout the day.

I'm not convince that main-lining plants is all it's cracked up to be anyways, but that's another discussion entirely.
 
steve-in-kville said:
My family got me an early father's day gift: one of those smoothie blenders. I always liked smoothies, mostly fruit based although I've been known to add some greens as well. Anyway, I aim for two smoothies/day to get my fruits and veggies in. I knew it would be a change to my system but I feel like a blimp! Bloated, gassy and puffy feeling. I am told this will go away but I'm at this a week now.

Should I be doing something different?
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We look forward to updates on your condition.

Me, I'm convinced that if G-od had wanted us to drink smoothies, he would have given us blenders instead of teeth.

:)

-S-
 
kennycro@@aol.com said:
"Believe Nothing You Hear, and Only One Half That You See."

This is the kind of crap that makes me crazy; passing on vague information with no data or research to back it up.

This is one of the biggest issues with message boards; the perpetuation of myths, misconceptions and misinformation.

If you have some reputable information to substantiate this, I'd like to see it.
Click to expand...
Honestly one of the biggest things I don't like about Carnivore is the near complete lack of formal research and the willingness to dismiss a very large body of nutrition research. Granted it is a very new idea, I expect a lot of stuff to be published in the next few years as it becomes more popular (same thing that happened to Keto).
It seems that you and I read a lot of the same research and come to vastly different conclusions. Which I enjoy because you always tend to challenge my ideas and make me re-evaluate them.

I will say there is a lot of studies on fiber's effect on diarrhea, I didn't find any that focused on the removal of fiber causing diarrhea in a carnivore diet.

My statement was based off of the famous JRE interview where Joe talked about the carnivore diet. Taking a look at the pro carnivore websites out there, it seems the majority of them have a section on overcoming diarrhea associated with it.

So, to directly respond to your statement about having reputable information, I got nothing outside of what I mentioned above.
 
Snowman said:
Diet-related diarrhea is usually due to the colon not absorbing enough water out of the liquid coming from the small intestine. If you abruptly stop eating fiber (a la carnivore, or something similar), then you're colon has to step up it's water absorption game to absorb the water that would normally be bound up by fiber.
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Is there a concern about the lack of fiber and research on low fiber diets and it's impact on the gut biome diversity (and all the metabolic conditions associated with that)?

not to derail the thread or anything
 
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silveraw said:
Is there a concern about the lack of fiber and research on low fiber diets and it's impact on the gut biome diversity (and all the metabolic conditions associated with that)?

not to derail the thread or anything
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Most of the research that's been done on this supports the idea that eating foods that support a healthy human will also support a healthy gut biome. People have exhibited what we think is a healthy gut biome on a variety of dietary practices, from high fiber to zero fiber, and people generally exhibit a "better" gut biome within a few months of making dietary changes that help them improve other markers of health. The common denominator is that healthy people tend to have healthy gut biomes. My opinion is that pursuing health by improving your gut biome is putting the cart before the horse. Nothing wrong with taking in some fermented foods or whatever, but putting sauerkraut on some ice cream isn't going to help anyone. Least of all the ice cream.

The exception would be people who have absolutely wrecked their gut with infections or medication, like lots of antibiotics. In that case, pursuing a healthy gut biome as a goal unto itself may be completely appropriate.
 
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