Day 8 - I'm not a doctor but I've watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy

So I'm super medication sensitive. I can't take many things. I get side effects to pretty much everything, which is about as fun as it sounds.

This morning I tried a little packet of Amazing Grass Green Superfood. You add it to water, milk, smoothies, etc, and it has a bunch of vitamins and herbs and grass. Surprisingly, it tasted pretty much okay. I got it in the Orange Dreamsicle flavor. I drank it with breakfast this morning, and then a couple of hours later, I headed to the gym.

Now today was the first time I've been to the gym since getting my House Targaryen t-shirt. I wanted to be all kick-ass and Mother of Dragons at the gym! But well, Daenerys would have been ashamed of me because what happened next was stupid.

I thought that I'd do a strength training workout and then finish with some cardio on the treadmill. So I got in there and started out with a workout that Seth had me do back when I first started. 30 minutes in, and I thought, "Well, I'll do some step ups and squats with the weights." Things were going fine and then BAM! DIZZY SPELL.

Luckily I was standing right next to a bench when it happened, so I sat down quickly. But as scary as it should have been, my main thought was, "Oh HELLLLLL no. I'm not going to be the fat girl who dies in the gym and then my story is told to high school girls about not killing yourself working out if you're already superfat."

So I sat for about 5 minutes until the dizziness passed, got my stuff, and drove home.

My first thought was that maybe my blood sugar got too low. Usually when I go to the gym, I go within an hour of eating but this time I went later. As soon as I got home, I drank some juice and got a protein shake. Then I thought, well, I must not have been breathing correctly throughout my workout. That does tend to happen when I'm lifting just because I'm so focused on my form and what I'm doing, I forget to breathe.

But throughout the day, I've felt "off." A little dizzy still, a little bit not right. I sat here thinking about what I ate and what it might be. The only thing different that I had today was the Green Superfood. Since Google is my friend, I looked up if there were any side effects.

Two things popped out at me. One was maca. Now a lot of people, TONS of people, take maca supplements with no problem. But in some people, it causes dizziness and nausea. Hey, bingo!!

The second thing was stevia. I'm not really familiar with stevia because since I tend to be a little sensitive to artificial sweeteners, I don't use them a lot. I tend to use regular sugar, or honey, or nothing at all. I decided to look up side effects to stevia.

WELL WELL WELL.

From 3 Fat Chicks, some side effects of stevia are: Dizziness, bloating and nausea, low blood sugar, and low blood pressure. Also, stevia comes from the ragweed family, and guess who is allergic to ragweed? This girl!

So I am going to assume that these effects are not long lasting and I'll feel better tomorrow. But unfortunately, I can't use the other two packets of Superfood I bought. This is definitely NOTHING against the product or the Amazing Grass company at ALL. But this does bring me to a big realization: I need to stop just taking supplements without doing a LOT of research first so that I know exactly what it is I'm taking.

I think that eating regular meals with real food will do me a ton better than all these supplements and drinks I insist on buying just because they claim health and good benefits. Real food, real exercise. That's the prescription I'm giving myself.