Has anyone been able to avoid getting headaches during a cut?
Before I get a “suck it up” comment…the reason I ask is that I have been suffering from chronic migraines and cluster headaches, at times daily, for much of this past year. I have made some significant, perhaps some may say drastic, changes to my life attempting to be able to shed the daily medication and the headaches themselves.
They are a bit better, at least less frequent now, and I no longer have to take medication daily. One side effect of the past medications has been fat gain. I am not concerned about single digit body fat or hot abz, I just want to get rid of the extra baggage. Question, once again, how to do this without headaches?
I have cut my calories by about 200 a day and already have been getting headaches so that is not promising.
[quote]elusive wrote:
Are you on a low(er) carb diet?[/quote]
Sure, I grab protein sources first for every meal and snack. I have done that since a young kid well before taking up bodybuilding. Dec thru Feb I increased my carbs (with protein) some to help get in some more calories because I was hungry all the time, also tried to work in more fruit.
I seemed to be gaining more muscle than fat for a bit, in fact seemed to lean a little, but then the fat came back with a vengeance. When I tried to cut back the calories, mainly through manipulating the amount of milk I drink, boom…headaches.
If you truly get migraines and/or cluster headaches, there’s something going on chemically in your brain that causes headaches. If you’re concerned about meds that cause weight gain, talk to your doctor about changing meds.
There are meds that don’t cause weight gain available- I won’t contribute to the bro-knowledge by mentioning them here, because you need to talk to a doctor for med changes anyway.
Make sure that the doctor knows why you want to change, and that you are not taking your meds now for that reason. Assuming you have a decent doc, you shouldn’t have any problems.
As futurepharm stated, your headaches may not be entirely diet related. However, the reason I asked if your diet was low carb was because sometimes people will get headaches when they drop their carb intake.
The body will stuggle with its small amount of glucose as it tries to produce enough ketones to overcompensate. In this case, either up your carbs or drop them more to allow your body to enter ketosis where your body will have plenty of ketones to function on.
Thats IF its diet related. You may be just getting headaches, just because. I can’t say I know the cause.
[quote]futurepharm wrote:
If you truly get migraines and/or cluster headaches, there’s something going on chemically in your brain that causes headaches. If you’re concerned about meds that cause weight gain, talk to your doctor about changing meds.
There are meds that don’t cause weight gain available- I won’t contribute to the bro-knowledge by mentioning them here, because you need to talk to a doctor for med changes anyway.
Make sure that the doctor knows why you want to change, and that you are not taking your meds now for that reason. Assuming you have a decent doc, you shouldn’t have any problems.[/quote]
The med combination that caused weight gain also stopped working so I switched to a different combination. The new combination had many more side effects - several more unpleasant than weight gain. This combo did not seem to help as a daily prevention - though the med for the migraine itself is currently working. I have gotten he most relief by reducing stress. Not much more I can do on that point.
[quote]elusive wrote:
As futurepharm stated, your headaches may not be entirely diet related. However, the reason I asked if your diet was low carb was because sometimes people will get headaches when they drop their carb intake.
The body will stuggle with its small amount of glucose as it tries to produce enough ketones to overcompensate. In this case, either up your carbs or drop them more to allow your body to enter ketosis where your body will have plenty of ketones to function on.
Thats IF its diet related. You may be just getting headaches, just because. I can’t say I know the cause.[/quote]
[quote]elusive wrote:
As futurepharm stated, your headaches may not be entirely diet related. However, the reason I asked if your diet was low carb was because sometimes people will get headaches when they drop their carb intake.
The body will stuggle with its small amount of glucose as it tries to produce enough ketones to overcompensate. In this case, either up your carbs or drop them more to allow your body to enter ketosis where your body will have plenty of ketones to function on.
Thats IF its diet related. You may be just getting headaches, just because. I can’t say I know the cause.[/quote]
That makes since. And while I do not think diet is the main cause of my headaches, if it is a contributing factor I would like to figure that part of the puzzle out. The times I remember being most free of headaches - vacations especially- tend to be time of less strict diet. So, although maybe antithetical for fat loss, I will try increasing my carbs first. The question then, do I reduce protein, fat or both?