A friend of mine recently shared her low carb dieting experience with me. Although she successfully lost weight on her program, she also experienced some nasty side effects, as a result of mercury toxicity. As detailed in this post, fish like tuna is often contaminated with heavy metals like mercury, and consumption should be limited accordingly. 

I asked her to put a post together to share her experience with you. So with no further comments, I’m handing the podium over…

Low carb diets. No matter how you slice them, they are one of the best ways to burn fat if you are careful. By careful I mean being religious … and not getting carbs from so many hidden sources.

My personal experience with a low carb diet had its pros, but it also had a major con. I went on a popular low-carb (less than 20 grams a day) that allowed me to eat unlimited low fat, animal-based proteins. In otherwords, lean chicken, lean beef and fish. (I don’t eat pork.)

I quickly learned that success meant I needed to have the protein pre-cooked. Now, I love fish and there were no limits. So I decided to bake a nice, big farmed salmon every other day to help me get through moments of pain from carb cravings.

After a few weeks I was in ketosis – great, I was not only losing weight, but burning fat! The only problem was that I started getting disoriented. I was exhausted. Words were slipping … instead of saying “that big fat liar” I’d say “that fig bat liar”. My memory felt rough. Then I went to Florida for 5 days, indulged in a lot of fish consumption, including 3 amazing servings of Aha Tuna, and suddently had what I thought were signs of severe food poisoning.

Now I’m lucky, because one of my best friends is a doctor. While chatting with after my return from Florida she raised a major red flag and told me to stop eating fish … she was convinced that some of the weird symptoms I was having could be mercury poisoning. I didn’t really believe her at first, but completely cut fish from my diet. Three and a half weeks later I finally decided to get a mercury test, to be honest because I wanted to go out for sushi!

The blood results confirmed what my friend had suspected. By overeating fish on a low-carb diet I put myself in a pretty severe state of mercury toxicity. Not from canned tuna, but farmed salmon, smoked salmon, seafood, sushi and of course all that great fish in Florida.

It doesn’t take much reading online to realize just how dangerous mercury toxicity can be. So take it from me … do try out some of the high-protein, low carb diets. But when you do, make sure that you moderate your fish consumption!