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technologically ignorant
I wondered if anyone else has noticed this problem or if it's just me.
I started Lighter Life about 20 weeks ago and at first I had very loose bowels (which are totally normal for me as I have a slight defect in my colon). After about eight weeks I started to get a few problems with constipation but nothing that a bit of senna tea couldn't sort out. However things got progressively worse to the point where nothing short of an enema would work.
I know that constipation can be common on diets, especially low carb - high protein ones but I don't think this is the entire story with me. After I came off Lighter Life I did a couple of weeks of Weight to Go which is not a ketogenic diet and has some real food in it along with three shakes a day. This diet made my constipation worse.
Earlier this year before I started dieting I went through a long phase of being very tired and I started using Red Bull (diet version) a lot to get me through work. After a few weeks I started to get badly constipated and since the Red Bull was the only difference in my diet I thought it may be the problem so I stopped it (went onto pro-plus instead) and everything returned to normal in a couple of weeks.
Now the commonality between Red Bull and many diet products is aspartame. I did some Googling and found a lot of claims about the horrible things aspartame does to you; constipation was mentioned although not that often.
I have now gone onto an aspartame-free real food diet in the hope that my insides will return to normal. Once they have I'd like to go back to Lighter Life but only using the aspartame free products (soups and chewy bars) and see what happens.
I would be interested in anyone else's experience or opinions on this. I would also be interested if anyone has ever found an aspartame-free diet drink I could get; I usually just drink water but sometimes a sweet drink can really help on a diet.
I started Lighter Life about 20 weeks ago and at first I had very loose bowels (which are totally normal for me as I have a slight defect in my colon). After about eight weeks I started to get a few problems with constipation but nothing that a bit of senna tea couldn't sort out. However things got progressively worse to the point where nothing short of an enema would work.
I know that constipation can be common on diets, especially low carb - high protein ones but I don't think this is the entire story with me. After I came off Lighter Life I did a couple of weeks of Weight to Go which is not a ketogenic diet and has some real food in it along with three shakes a day. This diet made my constipation worse.
Earlier this year before I started dieting I went through a long phase of being very tired and I started using Red Bull (diet version) a lot to get me through work. After a few weeks I started to get badly constipated and since the Red Bull was the only difference in my diet I thought it may be the problem so I stopped it (went onto pro-plus instead) and everything returned to normal in a couple of weeks.
Now the commonality between Red Bull and many diet products is aspartame. I did some Googling and found a lot of claims about the horrible things aspartame does to you; constipation was mentioned although not that often.
I have now gone onto an aspartame-free real food diet in the hope that my insides will return to normal. Once they have I'd like to go back to Lighter Life but only using the aspartame free products (soups and chewy bars) and see what happens.
I would be interested in anyone else's experience or opinions on this. I would also be interested if anyone has ever found an aspartame-free diet drink I could get; I usually just drink water but sometimes a sweet drink can really help on a diet.