feeling run down....help!!!

[carloil]

hey everybody, ive only recently decided to become vegetarian and i feel tired alot of the time. i take a supplement that has pretty much the daily reccomended in take of vitiman a,b,c,d, thiamine etc. emm its called centrum.....neway take one a day in the morning. before i decided to become a vegetarian i only eat chicken and turkey......and basically the only diff in my diet is i ate a slice of turkey in my sandwich and a chicken fillet in my stirfry.......

heres what i eat now:

breakfast:
porridge, with a lil honey, chopped banana, green tea and an apple r pear r something, or 2 slices of toast,banana, or some sort of fruit

Snacks/drinks: generally popcorn, or diet coke

Lunch: vegetable soup, r like a cheese,lettuce,cucumber sandwich, or maybe a fruit salad with mango,kiwi,pear,orange,strawberries,rasberries.

Dinner: every night i have steamed veg. cabbage,broccoli,green beans,baby corn, asparagus, and then toss it in with garlic,light soy sauce,onions,peppers and mushrooms.

emmm i drink bout 3pints of water a day. i dnt know what im doin wrong. like i go to college so get up round half 7 and by half 7 at night im ridiculously sleepy......please help what am i doin wrong.....i hav a feeling its my protein intake but i dnt know how to increase this??

any help wud be great,
carla

[LovelyPerv]

There are a lot of reasons you could be feeling run down, maybe you picked up a virus, aren't sleeping well (without realizing it), winter blues, stress, etc...

As far as your diet goes, it all looks great, except you need more grains, beans, legumes, and seeds/nuts. <-- these are packed with nutrients you can't really get elsewhere in great abundance.

Throw some lentils, beans, or cooked pearl barley in your soups, or toss them in with whatever you're stir-frying. A $5 bag of of almond slivers will last you a while...they are fab mixed in with green beans! Other nuts can be mixed in with your porridge, or a fruit salad!!!

My best source for nutritional info was "Becoming Vegan." There's also "Becoming Vegetarian"...and I assume it's the same thing. But, the info you get in "Becoming Vegan" makes you want to swear off of eggs and dairy, too. :sealed:

"Becoming Vegan" isn't a very fun book to read...a lot like reading a chemistry book. BUT, 97% of the information in there is stuff EVERYBODY should know...not just veg*ns. I highly recommend it!

All that said and done...if you're feeling run down fuzzyness doesn't go away, there may be another issue. You may need some bloodwork done to make sure everything's working like it's supposed to...you may have some little issue that picked now to rear it's ugly head.

Plus, any sudden change in diet and sometimes compromise your immune system a bit. You may have caught a bug.

Still...you really need more grains, legumes, beans, nuts, and seeds in your diet...big time.

[bluesand]

Go and get a blood test and sort out any issues (if there are any ) . also your rice, pasta , tofu , beans (dahls etc ) , you might want to introduce more .

[rabid_child]

I'd add in more fats, proteins and whole grains. You're mostly eating just fruits and veggies, and a lot of it raw, and while that's a great start it's not especially high calorie. You may be eating a lot in volume, but not a lot in calories. Adding protein, fat and whole grains at every meal will help keep you full longer, which may give you more energy.

[RetroHousewife]

After so many posts lately from new veg*ns who are feeling ill, I did a little reading. I didn't have that experience, I felt much better after giving up animal products, so this was news to me. I have read a few times now that getting animal products out of your system can make you feel lousy at first, as your body feels like it is starving. It isn't getting the foods it is used to, and is having to find it's nutrients in new sources.

I have heard it likened to giving up coffee. Say you drink 10 cups of coffee a day. If you go a day without coffee you may have a headache, get the shakes, feel foggy, grumpy and out of sorts. The quick fix would be to drink a cup of coffee. But, if you hang in there, within a few days you will be used to not having it in your system, and you will begin to feel better. Sometimes you have to feel worse for a bit in order to feel better.

Hang in there, this will pass. Good luck.

[carloil]

aww thanks for the replies guys...im going shopping later today and beans and rice are top of the list......thanks for the advice...carla

[ginkgo]

First never use diet products like diet sodas. They contain artificial sweeteners. Lots of bad stuff discovered about aspartame and probably the newer one is worse. I used it once, sucralose, and my tongue had a green coat. Centrum is probably the worst vitamin supplement. I tried one time (sample) of Rainbow Light (possibly the best) and felt sick. Vitamins can kill you. They are not foods and do not exist in nature by themselves.

See site below for more on how bad vitamins are and see the type of supplelments that are good for you. The home page tells about a great diet. Possibly your body is having trouble digesting your combinations of foods. Refined wheat is terrible stuff. Instead of buying food at the fat and sick food store, try buying it at the health food store. See Superior Nutrition (http://www.phifoundation.org/nutrition.html). Make sure to eat some fungus (mushrooms). Do not eat rice. It is not a whole grain and horrible for health. But brown rice is great for health. :angel:

[Libellula]

Carla, Vitamin supplementation is a great idea, but you want to try to get the majority of your vitamins from the food you eat. A Vitamin supplement should be seen as a "backup plan" just in case. I take a multi vitamin, l-lysine, and extra calcium just in case i'm not eating too well-balanced right now.

You want to look at your overall diet and see where you can improve. Gingko makes a really good point about the benefits of whole grains - you get all the benefits, fiber, and they take longer to digest which helps keep you full. However, you may find that you want white rice with say, your chinese food, and that's perfectly okay. I LOVE to make sticky rice with chinese food and because it's my favorite way to eat it, that's how I make it.

Best of luck!

[emkay]

One thing that happens with a vegetarian diet is that a lot of the times meats are removed and instead of adding beans/legumes people end up eating more dairy and more pasta/bread. I'm not the carb police by any means, carbs are very important...but buy whole grain breads/pastas, they're lower in sugar. For me, sugar always makes me feel super run down...and I always thought of sugar as just like, cake and ice cream and cookies...but really, there's sugar in lots of things that we take for granted because they don't taste 'sweet' or whatever.

In other news, I've recently been transitioning off dairy slowly...I'm just adding a dairy-free day to each week that passes. I'm up to 3 days right now, but after the three days if I happened to have some cheese or something I feel like absolute crap...I'm really tired and lazy and I feel bloated and just overall uncomfortable. It could just be my reaction to dairy, but since I've been eating less of it I seem to have a ton of more energy.

[LucidAnne]

I'd add in more fats, proteins and whole grains. You're mostly eating just fruits and veggies, and a lot of it raw, and while that's a great start it's not especially high calorie. You may be eating a lot in volume, but not a lot in calories. Adding protein, fat and whole grains at every meal will help keep you full longer, which may give you more energy.


agreed!

in the morning, add some ww toast/ eng muffin and top it with pb or another nut butter.
you could simply add a chik pattie/veggie burger to your lunch and dinner. use them to top salads.
throw nuts and dried fruit into your bag for a quick on the go snack.
soy (or regular) yogurt w/ fruit and granola.
hummus or pb with veggies, pita, pretzels, fruit, etc.

basically, you want to add more protein to every meal and snack...it helps extend the energy from your food.
if you tend to get tired at the same time each day, make sure you try to head it off, before it happens, by having a snack before it usually occurs... often the intense fatigue can be a low blood sugar.