OMG What if!?

So I've been cold, hungry and there are days I have horrible bloating and cramping.  There are days when my weight loss is nothing or 1 pound a week.  This all happened last time.  So what have I done...I went up to 800 calories with the shakes.  That didn't benefit me.  I was still cold, not as cold but I was cold and oh LORD was I hungry!

I went back on the 70 calorie shakes, added another shake and 2 soups.  I'm still cold, not as cold, but I'm cold and hey wait I'm still a little hungry.  That bloating is back too and now its more days than not.  So I started reading last night.  I had some theories.  The gum.  This diet gives you the worst breath!  I chew a lot of gum.  I cut that out and the bloating went down significantly.  So...whats in the gum?

Then I started reading about soy.  Some people build up an intolerance to the soy.  My shakes are soy based.

Wait...what's in the gum dammit because I really like the sweet flavor of the damn gum!  I started looking up ingredients.  Sucrolose.  I probably spelled it wrong.  I drink 2 propel waters a day...I added those recently to up my electrolytes...what's in those?  Those are yummy!  Sucrolose.  I drink a life water too cause of the added vitamins and it's yummy!  Sucrolose.  Those delicious syrups I put in every single one of my shakes...sucrolose!  I'm starting to see a trend here.

What the hell is sucrolose?  Splenda.  I loves me my splenda!  I like to call it splendid indeed!  Then I started reading about that.  People can build an intolerance to that.  Symptoms...migraines (not me), bloating (ME!), weight gain (SHIT!) and a plethora of other junk.  The stuff just doesn't seem like a good thing to ingest.  Did you know it was discovered by accident?  Yes it's derived from sugar, but they were actually trying to make insecticide!  I don't know what dumb ass thought, hmmm I'm gonna try this in my coffee and see if it kills me?  Probably some desperate soul on Optifast!  I can relate.

So each night I prepare my flavored syrup waters for the next day of shakes.  Last night I brewed a cup of cinnamon tea (ingredients:  cinnamon and black tea)  Put it in my blender ball with 2 teaspoons of fiber and this morning added my vanilla powder.  Not brave enough to have this shake with just water yet but at 10:30am I better get over it, because that's coming!  I sit here with my black cup of coffee typing this.

I can't cut out the shakes to see if its the soy, but sure as hell can cut out the artificial sweetener to see if that is my problem!  AND WHAT IF that is why my weight loss has been so slow this go around, what if that is why I'm cold, what if that is why I feel so bloated all the time?  Wow!