Anna – Thanks for your response! I find that my body adapts to coffee the more I drink it… after being off of it for awhile, even an ounce or two will affect me greatly. Over the holidays though, when I tend to not worry about anything – I drink a LOT of coffee and eat a lot of carbs.. my cycle is then usually very regular Jan, Feb & maybe March.. then it starts skipping months again when I go back to my “healthy diet”. (I have a very irregular cycle and history of low metabolism).. So that makes me think that in the long term, coffee is an aid. I’ve been increasing my carbs and lowering my fat and protein, which has been helping with overall mood in general.. I feel great so far.. but it’s only been about a week. My morning temp on the 25th was 97.1, the 26th was 97.4, and today was 97.6… so it’s possible my body is finally starting to get over the immediate adrenal effects of coffee and switch to the more long term positive effects.
Erin – I was a huge proponent of the pulse test and kept very detailed journals.. coffee was actually one thing that didn’t raise my pulse. But I only had about 5 foods that were in the safe zone, and total they equaled about 10 calories, so I was doing a lot of metabolic damage and stressing myself out over trying to follow the rules. On the other hand there were some major offenders, like bacon, which doubled my low 60/65 pulse to about 120 – those I still avoid. I also found that when my metabolism tanked with the low carb diets, my pulse reactions were much more extreme.
I have undiagnosed IBS, which I’ve had for about 4 years. I have a holistic nutrition background and I’ve tried literally everything, eventually settling on a WAPF diet, which has helped in certain areas but keeps me metabolically low.. it’s also possible I just don’t eat enough food. The GAPS diet and sugar control diets were the absolute worst things for my health.. so I’ve been fixing the downturn I took with them as well. My blood sugar was insane.. my insulin levels were super high.. anyone who recommends these diets to people with low metabolism are NUTS. When I went back to eating carbs, white flour, sugar, etc.. my blood sugar became fairly stable again.