So You Want to Lose Weight in 2024, Is Keto the Answer? 77

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I— it's very not very often that I do two solo episodes in a row, but it is the beginning of the new year. Today is January 3rd, and I really just wanted to do— I've done them in the past, but I'm going to do a Getting Started with Keto episode because there's so many people interested in keto at this time of year. New Year's is a time of resolutions, and weight loss is often a very big one. Next week's guest will also be focused, uh, Dr. Jamie Hammeier on weight loss. And so if this is a topic that you want to give some thought to, these episodes should be helpful. First, I want to start by saying, what is keto, right? It's actually a metabolic state. It's not a food. It's not, you know, we tend to call it a keto lifestyle, these kinds of things. That's not really truly what the definition of keto is. Ketosis is a metabolic state, and that's it. And the way that you get into ketosis is two ways: restricting your carbohydrates or through activity or fasting, actually. So that's 3 ways, right? But primarily, when people say that they're keto, they may mean that they actually eat in a way where they are definitely in a state of ketosis, or they may mean that they're just eating lower carb. Regardless of what it really is, doesn't make any difference, because as you know, my whole thing that I always talk about is eating whole foods. So eating the least amount of processed food as possible is going to be the healthiest way you can eat. It tends to be lower carb anyway when you switch to a whole foods-based diet. And then in addition, if you do go all the way to eating in a way that will put you in a metabolic state of ketosis, there are a few advantages to that. So the number one advantage probably is that you get rid of the hangry monster. So you might have heard me talk about this in the past on these episodes, but a lot of people, uh, this hangry idea, right? So that you're so hungry you just are angry, and it happens to you maybe multiple times a day. It happens when you don't eat for a couple of hours. If that's you, that's a sign that you could definitely use some blood sugar regulation. And going lower carb is a great way to do that, because if you get rid of eating highly processed foods or a lot of sugar, you avoid these blood sugar spikes, which if it spikes very high, then you come back even lower, and that's when you get the cranky, hungry, crazy feeling that a lot of people get. So again, if you're not even going all the way to keto, if you start thinking about eating in a way that mitigates some of these blood sugar spikes, you're going to just feel a whole lot better. So there's a couple of ways that you can do that. Number one is, is by eating, you know, foods that are not high in sugar, that are not high in carbs. Those will keep your blood sugar very even. There's another way that you can do it with— if you're going to eat some carbs in a meal, for example, you want to make sure that you have a good amount of protein with the carbs that you're eating. That's going to mitigate some of that high and low blood sugar effect. And then in addition, foods that are low glycemic index. So if you look that up, these are foods that have more fiber in them with the carbs, and that is going to slow down the absorption of the blood sugar to your bloodstream and mitigate some of that spike effect. So any way that you can eat that's going to keep your blood sugar more even is going to make you feel a whole lot better. So whether that's, again, strictly going all the way to keto, or just eating lower carb, or just eating healthier foods which are lower in sugar, lower in carbs It's generally going to help you feel a whole lot better. But if you're truly looking to get started into going all the way into ketosis to get that metabolic state— so I think we mentioned there are some benefits to that. One is that, that less hungry feeling. A lot of people find that they're able to intermittent fast very easily, easily when they're in ketosis, just because they don't have nearly as much hunger because their blood sugar is regulated. So that's a big advantage of eating keto. And a lot of people will say, well, it's just the calorie restriction, you just naturally eat less and stuff, but you— it's because you're feeling less of those blood sugar swings. You're feeling so much more even that you don't get those big hungry things, and it enables you to easily eat less. So instead of just going on a calorie-restricted diet but still eating a whole bunch of carbs and you feel hungry all the time, you're going to be eating a lot of really good whole healthy foods, and you're not going to be feeling as hungry as you normally do once your blood sugar regulates. And that can take a couple of weeks for that to occur by the time you actually get into ketosis, and by the time you kind of get used to eating in this new pattern. But that's one advantage. There's also a slight calorie advantage to being in ketosis. Some studies have shown that you actually burn 200 to 300 more calories a day by being in ketosis, so that's beneficial. And then again, you start to naturally maybe intermittent fast or actually skip meals because you're not hungry. That's also going to help. So, but to truly get into ketosis, for most most people, it takes eating less than about 30 grams of carbohydrates per day. So, and with most people eating in the neighborhood of— I mean, if you're a pretty healthy eater and you eat mostly whole foods, you might be somewhere around eating 200 grams of carbohydrates a day. But people that eat a standard American diet or that eat a lot of fast food, most of those people are up into like 300 and 400 grams of carbohydrate a day. So dropping down to 30 grams can be quite a shock to your system. And What I always like to say is to start slow because if you go into this more slowly, it gives your body a chance to adjust. It's going to be less of a shock to your system. It's going to allow your body to upregulate the metabolic processes that support ketosis. So there's a lot of reasons that going into it slowly is going to make it easier for you. So that's always what I recommend. If you're a person that just likes to go, you know, Type A, drop right into it, it's going to be more challenging. It's not to say that you can't do it. And again, it might depend on where you're starting from. If you're already a pretty healthy eater, it might be okay for you to drop down that quickly and you might not notice it as much. But a lot of people, when they drastically reduce their carbs right away that much for a sustained amount of time, doesn't make them feel very good because again, your body doesn't have the processes in this— in its physiology yet to support ketosis. And so it just kind of makes you feel crummy, and that can last up for a couple weeks. That's what people tend to call the keto flu. So again, going into it more slowly will definitely help with that. Keeping up with your electrolytes will help that because when you go into ketosis, it's naturally a diuretic, so your body's flushing a lot of water. The sodium-potassium balance is different in that process, so supplementing with a good quality electrolyte is going to help you feel a whole lot better while you make that transition. But if you go slower, you won't have that issue as much. Um, so how to get started with it, and again, I have— go back to— I know I probably say it a little different differently every time, and that's why I tend to do these episodes over again when it's a new year, or if I'm doing education for a summit, which I have two summits coming up. One, the Quit Sugar Summit, is starting January 8th. You can get a free registration for that summit by going to healnourishgrow.com/QuitSugarSummit. That'll give you free registration. There's so many good speakers this year, it's going to be amazing. You never know what nuggets you're going to get, and Mike has a really interesting way of interviewing. It kind of just is a conversation, so it leads to different places. This year when I did the presentation, we didn't even talk so much about— well, we talked about quitting sugar, but in more in terms of kind of habits and things. So it's not always like totally, um, weight loss based or the way that you might think of it. You're just going to get so much knowledge from all these people that are sharing their experience and and sharing their knowledge. A lot of them are doctors. So even if you don't want to lose weight or, you know, be in ketosis or do a keto diet, I think everybody across the board would agree that reducing sugar in the diet is a positive. So there's, there's no nutritionist that would disagree with that statement for the most part. So getting that information from the summit will be really useful to you, kind of no matter where you are on your health journey. So it's again healnourishgrow.com/QuitSugarSummit. The second summit that I'm speaking at is in February, and it is called the Keto Diet Summit, and registration is not open yet, but it should be open at the beginning of February. So when the time comes, you can go to healnourishgrow.com/KetoDietSummit, and that will give you free registration for that event, but it's not open yet. So if you're not hearing this— well, if you hear this later, it's going to be after February 1st, 2024. You can register for that for free with my link. Um, so how to practically get started with doing the keto diet if you're trying to get all the way into ketosis. Your goal is to significantly reduce your carbs on a daily basis. The things that you're going to need to quit, quit eating for the most part are anything that's got added sugar anything that's high carb. So carb is a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are sugar. Carbohydrates are starch. So it's things like rice and pasta and bread, and that's where people typically get most of their carbs. There are also a lot of carbs in fruit, and certain fruit is a lot higher carb than others. Um, fruits— if you have to have your fruit, fruits that are keto-friendly are mostly berries. So blueberries, raspberries, strawberries— those are all pretty easily fit into a 20-gram-a-day situation. But for the most part, especially initially, cutting out those sorts of extra things like berries and definitely any other kind of fruits are going to make it a little easier to have a few carbs left to play with in the rest of your day. And after you've done it for a while, after you're truly in ketosis, if that's your goal— and the only really way to know for 100% sure is to test your blood. That's not necessary. If you literally cut your carbs under 30 per day, almost guarantee that you're going to be in ketosis, and you might be able to even feel it. A lot of people feel like some extra energy. Again, you feel like less hungry, you might sleep better. There's a lot of, you know, benefits that come along with it that are a little bit different for each person, but you'll— you may be able to tell that just by feel. You don't have to test your blood if you want to. And I have these meters because I talk about this all the time and I educated on it, so I do have them and I have discounts for them. You can just go to my page, healnourishgrow.com/shop, and you'll find the ketone meters there along with my discount. But again, not necessary to get started. There is nothing required for you to be in ketosis or to do a keto diet. No products to buy, no nothing. It's just eating whole foods and reducing your carbs significantly. So once you cut out all of those really obvious sources like sugary drinks, adding sugar to coffee, things that where you're adding sugar. Um, and it's helpful in the beginning to track somewhat. Uh, I like to use— there's a couple apps out there. Um, the one that I have a discount for is Cronometer, and that's on that same page that I mentioned. Um, that's a free version. You can sign up with a link. Uh, Carb Manager is another one that people use. MyFitnessPal. Often tracking what you're actually eating in the in the beginning is helpful, but getting rid of the bread, the buns, the pasta, the rice, any sugary drinks, that's going to get you most of the way there. If for some reason at that point you're still finding you're not in ketosis, it might require a little bit of tracking to kind of just see if you're getting sneaky carbs somewhere. In addition to that, some people, if you have had metabolic dysfunction for a long time, there might be some other physiological reasons you're not getting in ketosis. But for most people it is very, very possible. I'm not going to say it's always easy, but if you've done this for a few weeks in a row and you've really reduced your carbs under 30 per day, you're 99.9% going to be in ketosis, outside of a few people that have, you know, some trouble with that. Exercise is again another way to help get, get you into ketosis and stay in ketosis. So daily movement, in addition to— again, I mentioned fasting, but I would not even start messing with that in the beginning. In the beginning, you're just getting used to a new way of eating. You don't need to add 5 million things at once. You just need to start focusing on learning to reduce your carbs. And then after a month or two of that, if you start to get that effect where you're feeling less hungry and things like that, you could start playing with some intermittent fasting as well. And all of these things that I'm mentioning, I've either talked about on a podcast before. There's articles on my website. There's articles about how to— beginner's guide to keto is on the website. There's the keto resource guide on the website. All of these are free. There is the benefits of fasting article. It's got all the science links in there so that you know that where the science— what the science is behind it, how it works, what it's supposed to do for you. So all of these things are available for free on the website, along with podcast episodes where I've talked about this before. So if you want to try eating a lower carb diet for a while, there's plenty of resources there. And of course, the recipes— I didn't even mention the recipes, but a lot of the recipes on the website are focused on kind of replacement things for people when they're first starting. It's like certain things that you miss a lot or that you feel like you can't live without, there's usually a replacement form. Not all of them are perfect. Not all of them are exactly like what you had on your standard American diet. Like, in general, keto bread, it's never going to be like the real thing. It just isn't. But there's still a lot of things you can make that taste really good, that help you in the transition. At the end of the day, once you've done this for a really long time, like years and years and years like I have, I mostly don't make those kind of substitute things anymore. I just make whole foods dishes that don't include rice or pasta, and that's pretty much how I approach it. But then there's a lot of people that enjoy really making like these things like substitute cinnamon rolls that are, you know, keto-friendly. Or I do, I do actually like my chicken crust pizza, which is on the website. Super easy to make. You just make the crust out of chicken and eggs and cheese, and then you top it with with whatever you like. It is actually good in its own right. It's not exactly pizza. It's not going to be like, you know, when you went to Naples, Italy and had the most delicious pizza in the entire world, but it's a pretty good sub. So using things like that. Drinks, mostly sticking to water as much as possible is awesome. Of course, coffee and tea are calorie-free. If you're going to use substitute sweeteners, and man, I've been wanting to write this article for such a very long time, and I just can't seem to get around to it. But sweeteners to avoid and sweeteners to use when you're on keto. So the very best one, I think, and based on my research and the science behind it, is allulose. And so allulose is a sugar substitute that actually will reduce your blood sugar, which is crazy. It's a sweetener, but it actually will And as your body metabolizes it, it takes some sugar, like some glucose, out of the body with it. So that's a super interesting one. It's my favorite one. Stevia is also a great one, and monk fruit is also a good substitute. Now, that being said, all of these are like sort of not really— they're naturally occurring. For example, like monk fruit is a naturally occurring sweetener, but we don't tend to— you wouldn't get them in the quantities that you do when you're using them as a substitute. So I'd say, you know, minimizing them is best, but again, if it helps you transition, I'm all for it. And so using some of those substitute sweeteners, or if you're making a dessert, those are great to use in place of sugar so that you can still occasionally have dessert when you're having keto, when you're eating in this way. But so those are the top 3. Other ones that are kind of, I would say, neutral: xylitol, erythritol, And they all have different things. Like erythritol tastes kind of cooling in the mouth, so some people don't really like that. So again, it's never going to taste exactly like real sugar, but it's a great substitute. And there is some more research coming out recently that shows some of these substitute sweeteners are not good for your gut microbiome, things like that. So again, minimizing them is probably best. Or even, you know, a lot of things, if it's truly like you can't live without a little bit of sweetener in your coffee, maybe you have a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee. For some people, that will not kick you out of ketosis. It just depends on your goals. It depends on, you know, what you're trying to accomplish and what you're more concerned about. So this gut microbiome stuff that's coming out is pretty interesting. Sweeteners that I would definitely avoid: maltitol, aspartame, kind of any of the ones that you can get in the traditional grocery store. Those are the ones that you want to avoid sucralose, maltodextrin, if I didn't already say that. All of those are almost as— I don't say almost, they're almost as bad as sugar in that they are no calorie. However, a lot of them spike your insulin in the body as if it were sugar, so you're kind of negating any benefits that you're getting aside from the negative calories. If you're still increasing insulin, that's creating a situation in your body where you could store fat. So anything that's raising your insulin like that, especially as an alternative sweetener, when there are ones that you can use that don't do that, I would avoid them. So again, those are pretty much the ones you can get in the grocery store— Splenda, aspartame, you know, the pink packets, the blue packets. None of those are great. You're going to want to stick to allulose when you can find it. That's better for baked goods and stuff. And then if I'm using something in coffee, I'll usually use monk fruit or stevia You can get the liquid forms, very easy to add, mix is great. So what else? A lot of people come to ketosis because they think it's going to help them lose weight quicker or better or those sorts of things. So let's talk about that for a minute. So when you initially go on a keto diet and if you again reduce your carbs that significantly, the effect is that you have your body— I mentioned it's diuretic, number one. Number two, you're going to create a state in your body where you're flushing out water. So traditionally, a carb in your body is holding on to 3 grams of water along with it. So when it's stored in your muscles, the glucose, it actually stores water at the same time. So if you think about that, if you go into a diet where you're you're reducing your carbs and sugar significantly, your body's gonna go and use up those stores around the body. So like your glycogen stores in your muscles are going to get used up. And when it uses that one carb, it also flushes out that 3 grams of water. So it doesn't happen for everybody because there's, you know, there's a lot of factors that happen in weight loss and a lot of factors in how your body balances water. But in general, apologies for that. Um, In general, people flush out a bunch of water at the beginning of keto. So does that mean you lost weight? Well, yes, you lost weight on the scale, but you're not losing fat. You've just lost a bunch of water. But it's still encouraging to see that number go down for a lot of people, so that's kind of nice. But will it make you lose weight faster? No, you're going to still want to and mostly achieve a healthy weight loss per week. So if you're somewhere like up to 40 pounds overweight, something like a pound or two per week is a very reasonable and healthy number to shoot for. If you're more like 50 to 100 pounds overweight, then that could be like 2 to 3 pounds a week might be more healthy, because it's mostly as a percentage of your body weight that you're going to lose, right? So the other thing I'll mention is we don't want to start too many habits at the same time, which, you know, I've always said that. Start slow. And for weight loss, it's mostly your diet. And you'll hear Dr. Hamer had the same thought I do on this. Like, I think I mentioned it in my book, it's like, it's 80 or 90% is what you're putting in your mouth, and activity contributes a much lesser number to that. Now, that's not to say activity can't help you achieve your goals in a lot of other ways. Like, exercising regularly will make you feel better. It increases your happiness hormone. It will create more muscle mass in the body if you're doing the right kind of exercise. And all of these really contribute to better body composition, because when you lose weight, what you're really wanting to lose is body fat. You don't want to lose muscle for so many reasons, and you can go back to some of my other content if you want to hear me talk about that. But basically, you want to maintain muscle because it's your metabolic goldmine. You know, it helps you— when you have more muscle, muscle burns more calories at rest, and so you're going to more easily maintain your weight without having to do a bunch of activity if you have muscle. So the kinds of activities that create muscle obviously is not like a whole bunch of cardio and stuff. You've got to do some resistance training, you've got to do weight-bearing exercise. So, but again, if you're just switching to this diet, if you're already a regular exerciser, 100% keep doing whatever you're doing. I highly encourage you to add in some resistance training and weight training if you're not already doing that. But if you're just starting this and you don't exercise yet, I wouldn't add those two both in at the same time, or at least not in a crazy amount, just because you're less likely to stick to either one if you're trying to do too many things at once. So kind of getting used to a way— new way of eating over a month or two, and then if you want to add in exercise, or at the beginning if you want to do, say, like, I'm going to do 10 minutes 3 times a week, something like that, that shouldn't be overly taxing for most people. But a lot This is— you have to know yourself and you have to know what you're going to be able to stick to and what makes sense for you personally. But always starting off slowly is better. Um, what else about getting into keto? So yeah, I would say do it over— ideally do it over 2 months if you can, just slowly reducing your carbs. Again, it's going to depend on where you're starting from. If you're starting from eating a super high amount per day, then you know you're reducing week by week. If you're already at a point where, say, you're really only eating maybe 200 calories, you could probably do it in 4 to 6 weeks still and not feel too many ill effects or feel bad from it. I always, I always had a pretty whole foods diet before I started reducing my carbs, but so where I started from when I first got started from this, I was probably— I was tracking at the time, so I do know I was eating probably 150 to 200 grams of carbs per day because I was still eating bread and pasta occasionally, but not, not at every meal or anything, and not to the extent that a lot of people do. So I'd say that for me it was a relatively easy transition. But if I had been starting from 300 or 400 grams of carbs per day, I would say it would have taken me a whole lot longer, because I, I probably did it in 3 to 4 weeks pretty easily, got down to a level where I was truly in ketosis. But it's again different for everybody, and it doesn't have to be a big rush. Especially if you're doing this for weight loss or for your health, either one. You want it to be like a long-term situation, right? So you just move into it more slowly, and that's going to make it easier to create this new habit of not eating, you know, whatever it is you like to eat on a normal basis, or that you just have never thought about. For example, like, one of the things I like to think about is bread or buns. People just do it because it's what we're used to, right? You eat a sandwich for lunch pretty often, or so it could be like just a regular sandwich, or it could be a bun. But honestly, what you're trying to get to— you want the protein, you want the cheese, or whatever else is on that. The bun in general, for most people, especially if you're eating at a lower quality thing like let's say McDonald's or Wendy's or whatever, it's not like the bun is even very good. If you just had a bite of the bun by itself, it's kind of like it's just bread. It's not exciting bread, it's not really good like amazing French bread or a wonderful French croissant or a freshly baked sourdough out of your oven. It's nothing like any of those. So I found that kind of getting rid of that stuff is fairly easy. And then the beauty is, after you've been doing this for a really long time, you become more metabolically flexible. And if you know yourself and you know you can eat one thing and kind of then be back to normal, you'll find if you're not particularly sensitive to gluten, maybe you have those things on occasion. But I would say make it worth it. Like, don't just eat garbage bread for the sake of eating it. It's not good for you, it doesn't taste good. That's probably one of the easier things to get rid of, in my opinion anyway. And again, this is all different for everyone. You gotta know yourself, you've got to know your habits, you've got to know what, you know, makes you happy in your food habits and things like that. So it takes a little bit of patience It takes some practice, and it can be useful to either talk about it with somebody else, having an accountability buddy or a partner in this, whether it's somebody that you know in real life or somebody that you find online or coach or a program. Those can all be very helpful when you're trying to make this kind of change. So what else? I don't think, thinking anything else at the moment that I've left out. Obviously, if you come up with any questions or there's something that you'd like to hear me talk more about in relation to this, uh, please let me know. But in general, I would say people overcomplicate this diet. It is not— and again, you don't have to go all the way to keto to get the benefits of it. Just reducing your sugar, reducing carbs, eating more whole foods, all of that is so wonderful. It's going to make you feel so much better and be healthier. That that's a wonderful place to start. And then if you want to experiment with going all the way into keto, obviously I believe in that. I feel good doing it. I think it's helped me in a lot of ways. It's definitely helped my brain health. So there's lots of reasons to try it out. But yeah, that's, that's all I can think of for now. I didn't have any bullet points before this episode. Obviously, again, I've been doing it for so long, kind of teaching it for so long, that I think I can hit on most of the points without having, um, really a regimented schedule. But there's— it's likely that I did forget something. So if that's the case, please, uh, drop me a question. I'll answer it on a future episode. I'd also love to hear from you about YouTube because something that I've been toying with is doing more YouTube content. And it's amazing to me that, like, what does well on YouTube and what people are into. And it's like, would you find it interesting, like, what do I eat in a day, or vlogging about those sorts of things, or what my workout looks like, or I don't know. It's just very interesting to me what people find as useful on YouTube. So if you're into YouTube and you'd like to see more content there that's in the realm of what I do, you know, all health and wellness, heal, nourish, grow kind of thing let me know because I'm very curious and it's something I've been toying with doing more of. Maybe even going live there in January because not only is that scary, but it is the time of year where people tend to have a lot of questions and could answer some kind of live questions in real time possibly. So anyway, that's kind of some thoughts on content that I've been having lately, so I'd love your feedback. But anyway, if you— whatever you're doing, for your New Year's resolutions, or if you didn't make a resolution, that's fine too. But everybody, um, for the most part, I think should always be at least a little focused on their health. So whatever that looks like for you, maybe it's more about exercise for you this year, maybe it's more about the food, maybe it's about the quality of your food, maybe it's about the amount of sugar you're eating. It's all of these things are things that you can play with and things that can improve your health. It doesn't have to be just one thing. So until next time, have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will talk to you again soon.