What low carb eating has done for me

Due to +Mickey Blake's recent insulin resistance diagnosis, we've been eating a low-carb diet for the last several months. While I don't have a diagnosis myself, I have followed the diet, initially mainly to make cooking easier, but after a while also because it just made me feel better in several different ways:

Disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor or even close, this is just what changed for me.
  • I have noticeably more energy. Where I would usually wear out in the late afternoon with my mind just fizzling until I got some food, I now keep fresh throughout the day. At the end of the day, I feel tired, but more in a physical way rather than a mental way. I still like to take a short nap mid-afternoon, especially on busy days, but I can certainly keep doing more things for longer than before.
  • I need less sleep. My daily sleep need has dropped from 8-9 hours down to between 6 and 7 hours. Even when I stay up late, like this New Year's Eve where I didn't get to bed until 2:30, I still got up at 8 and was quite fresh. I also less often feel tired when waking up.
  • My shirts have started getting smelly faster. Usually I was able to wear my shirts for 4 days at least, but suddenly I found them getting noticeably smelly after two or sometimes even just one day. It might have become less extreme recently, so maybe it was just the body flushing out some smelly bits now that it had stored and previously not been able to process. Why this only seems to affect my shirts and not, say, my socks, I really can't say.
  • I lost weight. I wasn't really overweight to begin with, with my BMI at about 25, but I did have a bit of tummy rounding. Without me really changing my exercise or trying to eat less, I just lost 6 kilos - actually, I have done less exercise since late October since fighting stopped. I seem to have settled at between 82 and 83, or else the Christmas food and less biking is showing. 
  • I don't get hangovers anymore. This was probably the biggest surprise. At the various Christmastime parties, I didn't hold back from drinking, and was quite surprised on three out of three mornings after just waking up as normal, no headache, no extra tiredness, no nothing. All I can figure is that with the liver no longer having to deal with excess carbs, it can process alcohol much better.
  • I don't wolf down sweets. Every so often, I will get some of my old favorite sweets, but I don't go through them nearly as quickly. A Ritter Sport marzipan that would previously have disappeared within 10 minutes lasted almost 10 days in my pocket. A small bag of peanut M&Ms that would usually have disappeared instantly and left me craving more has been partly consumed over a couple of days and then forgotten.
  • Sweets are sweeter. This is no surprise, really, since we had previously done a very strict 2-week no-sugar experiment, and ended up finding that even carrots tasted sweet. But now, when I eat something that's high in sugar, it almost stings on my tongue, possibly just overloading the receptors.
The extra energy and less sleep seems less pronounced now than in November, but I'm liking how I feel. What I don't like is how many things at the supermarket are full of sugars and simple carbs. We've picked up more cooking and baking out of necessity, but it's frankly weird to suddenly see sugar everywhere. And it's a cruel irony to move to a city full of great bakeries, only to switch to a diet that make the bakeries useless. I hope I can convince some that low-carb is at least a useful a thing to sell as gluten-free - there are probably more people who can benefit from low-carb than from gluten-free food.

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