Today I had a setback. I was doing well early in the morning, but as the day progressed, I got increasingly fatigued and the muscle weakness came back to the point of my needing to use the rollator for support.
My body feels like there’s a war raging inside. I’m hot and cold, sometimes, have chills, and extremely tired. My balance is bad and I feel like I don’t have full control of my legs. I have full range of motion, just very little strength, I force myself to move, but it takes so much energy that I’m exhausted.
My diet hasn’t changed. I’ve been following Dr. Gundry’s lectin-free program…..except yesterday I had two jalapeno garlic stuffed green olives as part of a cocktail snack. Hard to believe it could be the two little pieces of jalapeno in those olives. I also had several white pickled cocktail onions. I’ve had pickled garlic with no after effects. I checked the ingredients on the pickled onions and it looked fine.
I’m hoping this will pass in 24 hours and I’ll be back to my full energy and muscle strength tomorrow. Today I will be extra careful with my diet.
11-23-2025 Update
Today I’m much better. My body spent the greater part of the night purging, evidenced by my need to get up to pee every two hours after midnight. This morning I have more muscle strength back and am walking independently around the house. I have more energy as well. So the battle in my gut is mostly over and the good “gut buddies” are winning.
As I reflect back about what caused this relapse, I think it wasn’t just the few bites of jalapeno pepper in the olives. Over the past month, I’ve allowed myself to have a few squares of 72% dark chocolate. The problem is I didn’t just have one square. I had 4 or more. On some occasions, I also had Hersheys dark chocolate nuggets with almonds.
The main culprit here is the sugar. My body doesn’t react instantly. I should know that. The good gut bacteria were probably busy fighting off the onslaught of bad bacteria caused by the sugar until it got overwhelming, and they went into major battle yesterday. This caused my fatigue, muscle weakness, headache, and neck pain.
I stayed true to my diet yesterday and will continue to do so until Thursday, Thanksgiving, when we join our neighbors and friends for the holiday meal. I will be as cautious as possible, but I can’t just eat salad.
She’s making a butterball turkey (not pasture-raised or organically fed). I will eat only the appetizer and the green salad I’m bringing, a slice of turkey. a little of her sweet potato djsh, and have a glass or two of wine. The goal will be to eat as close to the Plant Paradox guidelines as possible and avoid as much sugar as possible.