Faint Spells

The last few days I've been having dizzy/faint spells... It's like the room takes one big spin all of a sudden that makes me want to just drop to the ground. It can happen walking, training, or even just sitting in a chair. I also get blackouts, where suddenly everything starts going black on me and I have to hold on to something, in case I pass out.

I have yet to completely lose consciousness, but I am finding myself grabbing onto things to keep myself up, and wait it out. The problem is, this starts first thing in the morning, and after the first one, it feels like someone poured acid onto your brain, and it's just fried, and then it feels like that the rest of the day. Which leaves me 12-14 hours still ahead of me at that point. It makes you feel like lying down and wanting to take a nap, but I can't. Not only do I have to go to work and be enthusiastic, and encouraging to the clients, but I'm spotting them on movements. If I pass out in the middle of a session, I'm fucked, and so is the client. That's my only worry. I can handle all of these unpleasant side effects of this diet and training, but I can't let it effect work either.

There are a few theories floating around right now as to what is causing it...

One is that my blood sugar levels are low, which they are. My diet currently contains little to no sugar at all. There's plenty of Equal, and Splenda going around, but not any real sugar. Nor do any of the foods contain much natural sugars.

Another is the recurring problem of low carbs. My carbs don't need to be as low as they are right now, but I have this calorie ceiling over me, and I'm trying to keep my protein levels high to maintain as much muscle as possible in this process. However, high protein foods have little or no carbs in them at all. So I'm cramming as much protein into the calorie limits I have, but am therefore sacrificing carbs.

And lastly... In my current state my brain is working twice as hard to maintain cell function in all of my various systems in my body. It's focusing so hard on this, that it does tend to let other things slip. One being my breathing pattern. My breathing could be speeding up into short breaths, and I don't even realize it. This causes hyper ventalating, and then ultimately the blacking out/dizziness. To alleviate it, I was told if I hold my breath for a minute, and burn up some of the excess oxygen, that will help level me out, and then I have to set a slower breathing pace, so as to show my brain how I should be breathing...

What a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I'm working on all of this, and trying to figure out where I need to make adjustments. This is all part of doing a competition for the first time. Figuring out what works for YOUR body, and what doesn't. If I were to do this all again, I would obviously have a better idea as to how I could do it all more efficiently.

This is all a good example of why bodybuilding competitions, are not particularly healthy for you. There are benefits... flushing your body clean of toxins, removing all the body fat inside you and starting over clean... but there are negatives obviously as well.