Starting Keto Questions and the 21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: 22

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Row podcast. I haven't done one of these kinds of episodes in a little while where it is me chatting with you about some things. Um, today I have something really different to share, and it's something that I've wanted to do, uh, on the podcast, but I kind of had to wait until it got going a little bit to be able to do it. And that is sort of answering more of listener questions, or answering questions from people that interact with me on social media on a daily basis, or after they've seen a presentation of mine, I often get some follow-up questions. So that's what the most of this episode is going to be about today, is this specific case of this person. Um, to protect her anonymity, I'll just call her Jane. That is obviously not her real name, but Jane had a bunch of follow-up questions after the presentation that I did at the Keto Diet Summit. So instead of just telling that on a one-to-one basis, especially when it's a very long complicated question and it's got some nuance to it, it's very difficult to write all of that out as a response. So quite often it's much easier for me to just record a video. And so I thought I would do that and share it with you as well so that hopefully some of the things that we might talk about here today might help you also. But before I get into that, I just want to share about— first of all, as you guys know, with the whole pandemic thing, it's been a very interesting time for a lot of us, right? And change in our routine, change in our jobs, jobs, possibly a change in our day-to-day experience. And part of the things that were happening initially in the pandemic is that I did decide that I wanted to do a podcast again. And I don't think I've ever shared on this show— I've shared this with some people in interviews briefly— but I actually had a podcast many, many years ago before it got to be kind of so popular again. And it was when I had my old business. It was called, uh, Diva Knitting, and I sold online luxury yarn and supplies. And had an associated podcast with this. And this was about back in 2005, so that's quite a long time ago. So that's why I do have a— I'm comfortable with this medium, I'm familiar with it. And, you know, I've been listening to podcasts in association with going low-carb and keto for, you know, going on over 6 years now, and have enjoyed so many of the voices that I have heard out there. And I listen not just keto podcasts anything health and wellness related, anything kind of nutrition related, getting new perspectives, listening to experts in the field on topics like protein or fat or heart attacks, or what are the latest thoughts on cholesterol. So all these sorts of health and wellness related things. And of course, this is just all a very long-winded way of me sharing with you some of the things that are the reasons why I decided to do this again, because whenever I was listening to these things, I wasn't always hearing a lot of stories of just everyday people. And I think, well, and when I say everyday people, I'm going to put that in air quotes because it's like everybody, or so many people, have really an extraordinary story or a story about their health journey and how they've gotten back on track. And I just find those stories and those kinds of information really not only inspiring, but you often just get some really good tidbits out of that. So Anyway, that's why, uh, when this question came up, I thought I would just share it with everyone because it's, it's just from somebody like all of us just trying to figure out what the right thing is to do and trying to learn about what's the best information that can help them. And, you know, for whatever reason, she connected with me on this, uh, presentation that I had and, and was liking what I had to say. And so she had these follow-up questions. But anyway, so Going back to the pandemic stuff. So during that time, of course, it's like reevaluating so many things, right? Like job, your life, your health. What are you doing? A lot of people started doing more healthy practices because they didn't have to commute and they had more time, and so they started walking or they started eating differently or whatever it is. But during that time, I started thinking about where I wanted to go with my business in my personal work where I wanted to have things go. And so part of this time during the whole pandemic was, you know, deciding that I would put out this podcast even though that there are a lot of podcasters in this space. You know, I have a different voice than they do, and I don't mean just my annoying voice that you're listening to right now, but just a different perspective or a different way of thinking of things, right? And so I think, you know, you just never know what's going to resonate with people. And so having different voices out there, I think, is really good. Having different perspectives out there is really good for people that are open-minded. And then I also started working on some things that I have been scared to do for a really long time. And that is, you know, I've put out my content in written and video form now for years. Like I said, when I had my old business, I also had an associated blog with that. I had the podcast. I had all of those things. So I've kind of gotten over the fear of certain things, of putting my work in the world, or trying to share my experiences, but other things I hadn't gotten over. And one of those things was writing a cookbook. I remember interviewing for a job— I guess it's been probably 10 years ago since the interview— and we were talking about that I was working on a cookbook then, which I was, and it was much different iteration of the cookbooks that I have now. But the first cookbook has been out for a little while. You know that you can go to— I, I will often put this in the edit for the show, the little ad that says you can go to cookbook.healnourishgrow.com for the cookbook. And that is, I believe I went through it again today because I hadn't counted how many recipes. This is a smaller version of a cookbook, it's 19 recipes, but they're all tested, they're all things that I make in my kitchen for our family on a regular basis. And for me, that was really kind of a proof of concept of could I do something bigger, or could I do a quote unquote real, you know, cookbook. And an opportunity came up for me with a publisher, and it's really exciting. But that— I don't want to say too much more about it because somehow I'm still afraid I'm gonna jinx this somehow. But right now we're literally in coded edits and, and have been going, you know, back and forth on a lot of the book. And so it's— I mean, you know, I don't know why it scares me so much, but it does. But it is happening. So that'll be out this summer. And the second thing that I've had in my mind to do for a while is a book that really combines all of the things that I've learned from all my years of working on this. And it's a culmination of things because the fasting stuff really became before the low— before the low-carb and keto, when I first started like learning about my dad's cancer and when I started to do more research because of my own health problems. And then, you know, low-carb, then keto. So all these things that I've been working on, studying, practicing, because I'm not one of those people that just does the thing and trust that it works. I want to know why it works. I dive into all the research. If you've read some of my articles on the website, you know that this is what I do. And it's also why I, you know, again wanted to do this podcast because I just find it fascinating. The more people you talk to, whether they're quote unquote those everyday people, people just like finding their way, or experts in a given field, getting to talk to those people and ask them specific questions really just allows you to refine your thoughts on a subject or your learning or your knowledge or expand your knowledge on any given subject. And so the thing that I came up with, and it's something I hear on keto from people all the time, is it's not sustainable, or they've tried it and it doesn't work for them, or they, they can't maintain it. And there's, there's all these issues with it, right? And I think it's because we have such an instant gratification society. We've heard about keto that it offers really quick weight loss, and a lot of times that's true. But if it's not happening for people that way, they start to get discouraged. They lose focus on all the other wonderful benefits, health benefits of keto outside of weight loss, and then they fall off the wagon, or they just give it up, or they can't find a way to make it work with their everyday life. And so it's almost really— this, this book, it's— it should have maybe been two books, but the first part of it is going into some of my background with keto and fasting and my understanding of how and why it works and my personal experience with that, as well as protein-sparing modified fasts. So part of the book is really telling people about fasting and low carb, how to get started with it, how to make it easier getting started, because people way overcomplicate it. And you've heard me talk about this sometimes in the past because I've done a how to get started with keto episode, episode. I've written stuff about this, I've done presentations on this. So it's something that I know people struggle with, and I want to try to help make that easier if I can. And then the second part of the book is this 21-day protocol for fat loss. And, you know, we want to say— we want to separate fat loss from weight loss. That's a big distinction for me because just moving the scale number is not what we're looking for. What we want to do is protect our muscle mass as we lose fat And the way that I designed this 21-day protocol, it's using— utilizing these different things such as pure fasting, protein-sparing modified fast, and a slight calorie deficit on other days. You get to do something different every day. They're combined in a way that makes sense with the weekends, that makes it more easy to sustain. And, and again, it really just lays it out. And then it's 21 days and you take a break. And this is not something that's very popular in diet culture, is the idea of taking a break, but it's serves a lot of really wonderful purposes, both psychologically and physiologically. So that is what I have been working on. That is why I have not been as present on social media, is because I've had all these projects going on and trying to maintain the podcast at the same time. So it's, um, but which, by the way, I'm, I'm seriously considering— I don't have a lot of budget for it, but I'm seriously considering either teaching someone how to edit podcasts, which is a great skill to have, by the way, because I've done it for all these years myself. But I would love to dish that off to someone, but it's not in the budget at the moment. I gotta plan for that in the future. Um, but so if you knew somebody that might want to learn something like that, or that has an interest in listening to health and wellness stuff, and if they're listening anyway, that they might be willing to, um, do some work like that, let me know. That's just sort of a whole separate topic. But anyway, so that's the update on what I've been working on, what you can expect here soon. That will be out in April. Again, I'm really nervous about it, but I finally just decided, like, it's been pulling on my heart and I'm like, I just need to put this out in the world. If it helps even one single person, I will be thrilled. Um, so yeah, so it'll, will have all been worth it. Uh, and I'll be interested to hear what you guys think when it comes out, because if you try it, I would love to hear what your results are, what your feedback is. And keep in mind, you know, again, putting your stuff out in the world like this is very scary, but I do think it could really help a lot of people. So all this said, let's move on to Jane. So Jane reached out to me, and I'll just read some of it to you first, and then I'll address sort of each point as we go. But so, um, the first one says, I've done a lot of research on low-carb and keto, and I'm not sure either are right for me. I need to drop around 100 pounds and this might be a way for me to get started and see what it's really like. Thank you. Because I, in my presentation to the people at the summit, I had mentioned the book and had said, hey, if you would be willing to read it and give me some feedback, you know, maybe this is something that can help. And so she was saying, hey, maybe this is how I can finally do it. So that was kind of the impetus of this conversation. And then let me read what the follow-up questions were because I said, well, you know, if you are willing to share some more information, I might be able to like direct this, um, answers a little better towards you. And so she said, my internist has already recommended low carb or keto in the past, which, okay, amazing. How many doctors actually recommend low carb or keto now? I think the important thing to note about that, and since, um, Jane said she had done some research on this already, is a lot of the things that we thought we knew about nutrition in the past are being debunked or have been debunked. And so people are really exploring these sort of quote unquote alternative ways of eating. And really, I would ask anyone that's not sure about if this way of eating is right for them to think about how we ate in the past, how our ancestors ate. And this is another thing you've heard me talk about before if you've listened to me. This is that how our ancestors ate, how people eat so differently now that the access to really highly processed, highly palatable food, it's available all the time. It's not like in the past where you had to go out and kill your dinner or go gather whatever you might be able to find in the forest to eat that night. So it's quite different. So we evolved to eat meat, to sparingly eat plants whenever we could find it. If number one, if we were starving, you kind of had to eat whatever you could find. It might not be able to kill an animal that day. So you have to go find something, but that we'd preferentially eat animals. These other things aside, there was no sugar. There was no things in a box. There was no flours. There was no highly processed foods in our diet. So I would just ask anyone to think logically. If you're wondering about if this way of eating is right for you, I'm not going to say it's the easiest thing in the world because there is this proliferation of this easily available, really tasty food. But if it's actually good for your health or good for your weight, I think you can just logically think of that from how we used to eat and how we're eating now. Evolution moves very slowly. Our bodies aren't designed to eat like this. They're not able to deal with the amount of sugar and garbage that we're putting in in them. And that's why we're having all these health problems. In my opinion, diet is a huge part of overall health and wellness, and what we're putting in our— to our bodies could be a huge cause of all these kinds of diseases, of cancers, of everything else that have become more and more prevalent in our society. Let's look at, you know, how we're eating in relation to that, because how we're eating now is a relatively new development in the scope of things. Um, and then, so she goes on to say the internist had already recommended it. She said she turned 54 this past February, and I think I forgot to follow up with her on whether she's perimenopausal or menopausal, but we can guess from her age that she is at least perimenopausal, if not menopausal. And so those being in that space carries with it some additional challenges to weight loss, cuz that was her main thing. She said she needed to lose about 100 pounds. Then she said, she went on to say that she follows a number of low-carb and keto enthusiasts, including Insulin IQ, Dr. Ben Bikman— he's awesome— Diet Doctor, and others. And she's also been in the Levels CGM beta for a few months now. So as you know, I had an episode in the past about the continuous glucose monitor. I have a discount code for that. It is a fantastic tool for behavior change. And she actually said that that has been helping her a lot, that looking at the effects of what she's eating on her glucose levels have really been an eye-opener. So if you're the kind of person that needs some additional motivation to make changes to your diet, when you put on a continuous glucose monitor and you can see in real time what the foods you're eating are doing to your blood sugar, and by extension your overall health, you can really start to make it a powerful behavioral change because you're almost like not want to eat a certain thing because you know it's going to make your glucose go up. You know it's gonna— you're gonna see it on the monitor, and somehow it's much more real for people. So I would say as a behavioral and habit change tool that a continuous glucose monitor is one of the best things that you can use for that. Again, I'll put the link in the show notes, but I have a discount with Nutrisense, and that was definitely my experience with testing the continuous glucose monitor, is it gave me a whole lot of insight and it was very motivating. And they are on the pricier side. I would expect over the next years that they'll start to get more and more affordable, but as an investment in your health, it really is a huge advantage. So I would just encourage you, check out the programs that they have, check out the price, use the discount code. If you can only do it for 2 weeks, do it for 2 weeks. Do some tests on your favorite foods. You will be shocked at what you learn from putting that on your body and just seeing what you can learn from it. Again, you can go back to the previous episode with Molly Downey from Nutrisense I can't think of the episode number, but I'll put it in the show notes and definitely just check that out. She then went on to say she feels like she has so much knowledge, but she's unable to narrow it down for herself, and she can't decide which level of carb restriction to use. She doesn't know how to determine how much fat she should eat along with the carb restriction to be effective for weight loss. She also has some— I don't want to say the names of specific products, but some like meal replacement kind of supplements that she would like to use. I know I can't go crazy with all the cheese and yummiest foods in those kind of programs, and that doing that might not be good for weight loss goals. So that's what I'm looking for. I want to start with confidence that knowing what I'm doing with the safe weight loss as the focus, not just the benefit of controlling glucose levels. So she said a lot in this, uh, couple of paragraphs, and what I want to start with is people can get information overload and you can start to question, you know, what's the right thing to do? What's the right way to approach this? What do I need to do? Well, the first thing I would say is you— she's already gone down all the roads. She's been following these people in the space that are really respected. Ben Bikman, all the people she named, Diet Doctor, all excellent sources of information, all very well-versed in the low-carb sort of paradigm. And I think you got to let go of information overload. You know all the things now, your doctor has even recommended it, you just need to start. And so on this very day, uh, Jane— I almost said her real name for a second there— on the very day that Jane hears this, I want you to— and she may have already started doing this obviously because she's been trying to do some of these things, but she doesn't know what the right things are for weight loss, and I am going to get to that. And I agree with her that doing it slow and safely is not only the easiest way psychologically, but it's also the way that it's going to be the most long-lasting and most sustainable weight loss. Because if you do something like a crazy quick program that's just to like hit a certain date for a high school reunion or something like that, you're much more likely to backslide. Where if you implement these changes slowly over time and it just becomes a habit and the way that you eat and the way that you approach things every single day, it's much more sustainable. So at the beginning, you just need to start. And so what is it I always suggest? And it can be a little different from everybody. And if she has follow-up questions to this, obviously I will get back with her. But I would say just start with the basics. Start with the obvious sources of carbs. So no sugared drinks, like no, no fruit juice, no sodas, no colas. Don't drink your calories unless they're wine. You know, I do. That is a vice of mine. Um, But no, in all seriousness, if, if weight, if weight loss is a goal, limiting your alcohol as much as possible is also very, very important. And we can talk about more about that, why later. But initially starting out the obvious sources. So cut out all the sugary drinks, cut out all the bread, cut out all the pasta, cut out all the rice. So those highly processed obvious sources during this little transition period. And I would say to do this for a solid week to 2 weeks to 3 weeks, it could even be. And you can go at your own pace. You could stay at that level for a month or 2 months if you wanted to. But if your goal is weight loss, eventually you kind of want to start moving things along. But so start with those highly processed sources of carbs and sugar. Cut those out. During that time frame, you might still choose to eat some more carby foods that are natural-based though, for like potatoes or other tuber kind of vegetables that you like that are higher carb. You might choose to keep those in for a little while while you're in this transition phase, because that just makes it easier. If you go from eating 300 or 400 grams of carbs a day, boom, down to 50, you're going to feel it. And so if you can take this little few weeks where you start to gradually reduce your carbs, it'll be a much smoother transition. So that's how I would look at it to start with. And finding the level of carbs, you know, that are right for you, again, it depends a lot on your health goals. And so if, if she had nothing else besides weight loss, You can lose weight a lot of different ways. You can lose weight with a Twinkie diet. You can lose it, you know, it's the energy balance. And you've heard me also talk about, and this is in the book, the sort of hormonal theory of weight loss and this more calories in, calories out theory of weight loss. And so I go into that a lot more detail in the book. But for now, suffice it to say, there are lots of ways to lose weight. So finding your perfect carb level, maybe you don't need to go all the way to keto. Maybe you just need to eat a healthier whole food foods diet, which a lot of people will say, you know, that they eventually went to paleo, which cuts out a lot of the processed foods, and that is a great place to start. Um, but she shared with me some of her other numbers and some of her other health issues besides just weight only. I will say that her other kinds of markers or health are looking pretty good— cholesterol, triglycerides, all of that surprisingly really well for somebody that eats a standard American diet. I almost think she probably eats like somewhat more like standard American diet but on the healthy side, but just because of some of those numbers. Although she does have an A1C that's high even though her fasting glucose was low. So that tells me she's having a lot of glucose excursions, and that's one of the reasons why she's probably seeing that stuff on her continuous glucose monitor and saying, wow, I'm getting a concept right now of how even though I have a fasting glu— glucose number, that's a good number at 75, my overall average of my blood sugar is higher and into the danger zone of diabetes. So she needs to work on that. So because this is her specific health problem, I would say in her situation that she should definitely, you know, go that transition period, but for at least some period of time, a couple of months going super low carb is going to get We're going to get all those numbers back under control. And then at that point, depending on how she's feeling, depending on how sustainable she feels like that is for her, she might start to experiment with a new carb level. With the, um, you know, using a continuous glucose monitor is an excellent way to figure out what that new balance might look like. Or you could even just do finger pricks to find out, you know, I ate this thing and then 2 hours later my glucose is still high. You do miss a lot with the finger pricks, but it's a lot more affordable for people So if that's what you have to work with, you can still make that work. And then she also sent her— she had an InBody scan, which is— was— showed a very high body fat percentage. I think it was around 40%. Like she said, she had about 100 pounds to lose. The other thing I want to mention here is that she hadn't had tested yet that I recommended is fasting insulin. Now a lot of doctors, they don't really know what to do with this number, but it is literally one of the best markers for metabolic health. If you listen to any more, more progressive doctors, more people that are focused on functional medicine, they will always say to test fasting insulin. And so we don't know what that is right now, but I did want to talk about it because she said she was going to ask for that, or maybe do it through— again, I'll put a link in the bio. There's a really inexpensive testing place that you can use. You just go to your local— you get this order, you go to your local lab corp They draw the blood, you get the insulin number. You don't even have to go through your doctor if you don't want to. And I think it's around— it's between $20 and $30. So if that's some knowledge that you just want to know, I use it all the time. I'll put the link in the show notes. I think they're actually having a sale right now, like 25% off all their labs, so it'd be a good time to purchase that if you're interested. Um, but what they say— so I don't know if you know this about labs, but with a reference range, when you get back and it says it's normal, it's comparing you it's not comparing you to other healthy people. It's comparing you to all the people that that lab gets results from. So generally, when people are getting a lot of blood work done, for the most part, these aren't healthy people. These are people that are sick. And so they've made these reference ranges based on an average of people that are already not very healthy. So if you're coming back and you're in that range, you can assume that it's probably not optimal. Health where you are, it might be something a little different. If you— functional doctors tend to have a much tighter range on certain numbers because they're comparing it to a more, a more healthier population, which is what all of us want to aspire to be, right? Not to be an average in an already sick population. So all that said is the reason I wanted to back this up, because insulin of under 25 is kind of considered normal with regular lab ranges. But if you look at functional medicine docs and people that look at, uh, greater research, actually any insulin level over 7 has been associated with significant risk in the future for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. So if your fasting insulin is already over 7, even though it might show kind of normal on the blood test, it's under 25, but if it's over 7, you're already at increased risk for these things. And the time to act is not when it's 25, 35, 45. The time to act is when you catch it now, and it's not that bad. You can rein that in and get it under control pretty quickly. And as you've heard me talk about before, having optimal metabolic health protects you from so many things. It protects you from more easily getting viruses, it protects you from obesity, uh, it protects you from all kinds of disease processes. The more metabolically healthy you are, the more healthy you are overall. And it's gonna, it's gonna prevent a lot of trouble down the road if you can start to get a handle on these things now. So again, under 7, um, most of the doctors that I've been listening to lately and that talk about insulin from a functional medicine perspective and really being optimally metabolically healthy, you want to have that number under 5. So I would just challenge anyone that's listening to this, if you have it at all, any interest, or you're out there and you're thinking you're very healthy and but you've never had any of these kind of numbers tested, you don't know what your HbA1c is, you don't know what your fasting glucose is. The fasting glucose is actually one of the least useful ones of all this. The fasting insulin is the probably the most important one. HbA1c is an okay, um, and it's okay marker, but it can be affected by a lot of things, so it's not exactly accurate. Using the CGM is a wonderful way, like I said, but it does— it is more expensive right now. Um, so all those things being said, to get back to her question, these are just, you know, things you want to think about overall health. Since her main goal is weight loss, what my recommendation would be: get in that 3-week period where you're reducing significantly all those things that we talked about, all the processed foods. Then going into week 4, and you're— oh, the other thing, you know, people talk about keto flu. That's the thing they're most scared of. It's not a flu. It is an easily avoidable thing. All you need to do is take electrolytes, because when you're going to lower carb, the lower carb you go, your body starts to deplete your glycogen stores. Glycogen is the storage form of glucose in your muscles. And so whenever your muscles are holding this glycogen, it's also holding on to— I always forget, it's 2 grams of water or 3 grams of water for every gram of glycogen that you're storing in your muscles. So once you start going lower and lower carb, at some point you're going to deplete all of your glycogen stores out of your muscles and start to deplete them out of your liver, which is really good for, you know, your overall liver health, getting rid of fatty liver. You can actually reverse fatty liver through, um, you know, doing this process of low carb, but Once all of those, that glycogen's gone, the water gets flushed out with it. And that's why you often see a quick loss on the scale when you first start to go super low carb. If it doesn't happen, don't be worried, nothing's wrong. But people often will see that because of this, of this release of glycogen from the body and taking out the water along with it. Well, that messes with your electrolyte balance, so you want to get a high quality electrolyte. I have my favorite ones, again, I'll put those in the show notes as well. But you don't want something like this from the grocery store. Like, I don't even know how they call Gatorade an electrolyte replacement. It's full of sugar and it's got barely any salt, not a significant amount. And I don't even know if it has the other electrolytes at all, any magnesium or calcium. You want a balanced, high-quality electrolyte. Fortunately, now that it's a lot easier to find several good ones, as I mentioned, um, so as you're doing that transition to more strict, really low carb then I would definitely start supplementing with electrolytes then. If not, even during the second or third week, you can always start adding some in. And then once you get to really the keto levels of carbs, you're going to want to have those electrolytes for a while. I, I've heard various people talk about this in the past. Some people say they still need them all the time. I feel like your body kind of finds balance eventually, or at least mine has. But I have heard a lot of people say that they always need electrolytes no matter how long they've been low carb. It's just that, like I said, that physiological process of what you're causing in your body that you might do better with more electrolytes. And it certainly makes a lot of people feel better and avoids keto flu. So once you've eliminated those obvious sources of carbs, then you might have to start to track to get down to those really low carb levels, because there's a lot of hidden carbs if you're, if you're still eating any kind of food that has a label, meaning, you know, anything in a package. So if it's not a fruit, it's not a vegetable, it's not a piece of meat. Those are all like whole food sources of food, real food. If it's in a package and it's got any kind of processing to it, you're always going to want to look at the package. One of the most shocking things that I found when I was doing research for the new cookbook that I was talking about before, and it's more focused on grain-free eating, which is essentially also low-carb keto, but, um, Even turkey slices that you buy in the grocery store have cornstarch in them. I mean, how ridiculous is that? Instead of just slicing turkey, they had to put all this, you know, preservatives on it and other things to make it more palatable, generally to make it last longer. That's the only issue with packaged foods is if they're going to make it last longer, they've got to add things. There's cornstarch. And so if you're grain-free, you're not eating corn-derived products in addition to many other things, of course. But it just shows you how careful you have to be. I mean, I've been at this a long time. I read the labels. On everything. I don't generally buy packaged turkey, so this is probably why I never noticed that before. But when I was like looking at that to confirm any kind of ingredients that could be problematic— because this book is for beginners, for people first starting out with this lifestyle, it's like you're gonna, you're gonna have some pitfalls, you're gonna have some mistakes because you think that, you know, you're like, turkey in a package, it's got to be just be turkey, right? Well, it's not. And that's, that's the case with so many packaged foods. Um, so you'll have to start tracking a little bit.. And so it's sometimes it's good to like what you think you're going to eat, actually put it all in your calculator first so that you, um, so that you don't accidentally eat some too many carbs that you weren't intending or too many calories that you weren't intending. So there's all kinds of really great, uh, trackers that you can use. I use Cronometer. A lot of people like MyFitnessPal. There's several, but you're just looking for a, you know, a macro tracker. Then her other question was about she didn't know how much fat and stuff to eat for weight loss. So there's a few different schools of thought on this. Um, first I would say fat is never a goal. That is used to just create satiety. So when you go, I have a revamped macro calculator at the website. It now includes PSMF days for protein sparing modified fast. That's because that's going to be in the book and you'll need to know like, what do I do for that and how many macros do I need? So that's part of the calculator. And you can also put in a custom calorie deficit in the calculator, and it will calculate traditional keto macros. So traditional keto macros have a higher percent of fat, and then also calculates higher protein macros for keto, which has a lower percentage of fat and more protein. So the thought leaders that I have been listening to and, and reading lately are all very focused on the importance of protein, and it is particularly important not only for people over 40 and over 50 and over 60, but particularly in women. Women tend to chronically undereat protein. And so if you've never been focused on it before, it's quite shocking. I mean, for a person of any size, um, Jane is 5'6", so she's probably going to be shooting for around 130 grams of protein every day. 100 at the minimum, at the minimum. But that— because it's hard for people sometimes to— they're like, how can I even eat that much protein? Well, the thing, if you think about it, you're cutting out these other things, right? You're no longer having a bunch of carbs, and you're having a certain amount of fat, a fat that's an amount to satiety. Because one school of thought on is, if you have a lot of fat to lose on your body, you might not want to eat too much dietary fat, because if you eat too much dietary fat, your body focuses on breaking that down more than it does on focusing on breaking down your body fat. Now, nobody knows the exact right answer to this question, but I would just say again, especially when you're in transition period, I would recommend shooting for that optimal amount of protein, doing the best you can with it from, from whole food sources as much as possible. But believe me, I understand since I've tried to up my protein, it is difficult. It is not as much— as much as I love a giant delicious ribeye, like, you can only eat so much meat before you kind of start get to get like fatigued of the flavor and tired of chewing. It's, it's gonna be difficult. So if the only way that you can get your protein in is to have a protein shake, hey, I'm not gonna judge. Just get a very high quality protein— whey protein is great— and, and use that if that's what helps you get to your protein goal. I mean, I wouldn't do that all day. I'm generally not a fan of meal replacement shakes or those kinds of supplements. I would rather have you eat real food. But I understand that it can sometimes be difficult for people. So if that's the case, I would say the one particular thing she mentioned, like, don't go for— you don't need to go for like specific keto shakes or flavors or anything like that. You want a high-quality complete protein. So unfortunately, collagen does not count for complete protein. And if so, if you're using it for this way and to get like more complete protein in your diet, you'll want to use a whey protein. I would stay away from any plant-based proteins. I mean, you can probably find some high-quality ones, but there's been some studies in the past where those are very contaminated with things like arsenic, um, uh, heavy metals, all kinds of things. That was out a few years ago. I haven't checked on the state of that recently, but for many reasons, I wouldn't recommend a plant protein. I'd find a high-quality, um, egg white powder would be another great one. That's a pure source of protein. So anyway, so probably have belabored that point enough, but focus on your protein no matter whether your goal is weight loss or not. Getting optimal protein is going to help you with health outcomes in the future because it's a big problem in— as we get older in the population, we lose the ability to easily put on muscle. We lose a certain amount of muscle mass every decade if you're not actively maintaining it through eating proper protein and through some resistance training, you're just going to lose it. And the more you lose, it has effects not directly on your metabolism, but you're going to burn less at rest because muscle is the most metabolically active, um, thing that we have. So you want to maintain muscle. The— if you lose it, you're automatically burning less calories at rest just because you lost that muscle. So you want to eat the optimal protein, do some resistance training, but at the very least at least eating properly is easier. Like, not everybody likes resistance training. I'm one of those people. I've shared that a million times before. I do my best, but it's not my favorite thing. But I am way more focused on it now after having learned everything I have with health outcomes, muscle mass, um, the fact that, you know, eating more protein also has a thermic effect. So if you are eating, say, 100— or say you ate 1,000 calories of protein, effectively in your body that's only 700 because about 30% of the energy is used to actually break down the protein into amino acids, which is what our body actually needs to build muscle. So lots there. I think I covered all of the things that Jane was looking for. She said she hadn't made— she began to experiment with low carb but hadn't made the full commitment yet. I would just say, Jane, commit to it for 3 months, go through this process of reducing carbs, give it a strong 2 months of doing Endo Keto Macros, but just based on your personal— because I know what your goals are and I know what your numbers are. So we do need to work on the blood sugar, getting to a more, more appropriate level. And I know that low carb and keto does this because it's been shown in studies now with diabetics It's also tons of anecdotal evidence in the low-carb space and all the people that I listen to— Low Carb MD, Diet Doctor— all those have had just these wonderful success stories with their patients. Once you're committed to it, it will bring your numbers back down, your blood sugar numbers. You don't have to worry about that part anymore. Then we just need to get more focus on the weight loss part. And once that happens— so after that initial period, you've also heard me talk about this before— your body becomes metabolically metabolic flexible. What does that even mean? So you can either burn sugar for energy or you can burn fat for energy. Most people's bodies quite effectively burn sugar for energy just because that's what it's been trained to do. They— it very rarely takes advantage of this other metabolic process that we have to easily burn fat. So how most people ever burn fat that aren't keto or low carb is that they have some kind of calorie deficit, an energy imbalance. So they're either ramping up the exercise, cutting the carbs, or sorry, cutting the calories or both. And so they will have an energy deficit. And so the body will start to burn body fat. Then it's not— keto and low carb is not the only way to lose weight or to lose fat. However, when you train your body to use this metabolic pathway that is not as used, you train your body to use fat for fuel. Your body makes ketones. The brain's really happy on ketones. Ketones act as a signaling molecule in the body. The keto diet is very anti-inflammatory. So there are all of these wonderful metabolic and physiological changes that happen along with keto that have nothing to do with weight loss and that are really awesome for your health, and you should consider it for that reason even if you don't have to lose weight. At the very least, restricting your carbs is very helpful. But if you can do a period, a true period of keto for 2 to 3 months, your body will adapt to the process. It will learn to efficiently use fat for fuel, a whole bunch of physiological processes in your body get upregulated so that you can do that effectively and easily. And then you have metabolic flexibility because then you can easily burn sugar for fuel, or you can burn fat for fuel, and you can move between those very easily. Now, a lot of people on keto don't do this, and it's, it's a per— it's partially a personal choice, it's partially a personality choice, because if you're the type of person who has a serious sugar addiction or abstainer just has issues with, like, if you suddenly— some people are better off abstaining and some people can moderate. So if you're an abstainer, that means like you might not need to ever have pies or cookies or carbs or whatever. Like, if you eat any of those, all of a sudden you kind of like go off the rails and then you just go the other direction. Whereas if you're a moderator, you might be the kind of person where like, hey, if you want to have one cookie, like you're generally metabolically healthy, you don't have serious diabetes, you don't have other reasons for being in ketosis all the time, maybe you eat a cookie here or there. Or maybe you have a day where it's a higher carb day, or carb cycling. There's all kinds of carb cycling things. Um, and then you can go right back to low carb. So it depends. It's partially knowing yourself, it's partially how your body reacts, it's partially your goals. I think it is a slippery slope for people that are losing weight to suddenly go off of it after a few months because you might not be ready for that, and it might take you a really long time to get back on it. So those are just all things to be thinking about. But the main point of this thing is I think think that Jane has all the information she needs. I think she has studied it enough, she's listened to the right people, she knows how to do it, and now it's just, just need to do it. And I, I don't think there's any right or wrong. I think the fat thing, how much fat, you just want to eat it to satiety. My keto calculator is a great way to place to start. Of course, I would recommend the higher protein version, but when you're in that first, you know, 3 weeks to 5 weeks, eating a little more fat might help because you're getting rid of carbs, which is difficult. And so fat is very satiating. It's, it's very, um, nourishing and, and like comforting to a lot of people. So you might be eating a little bit more fat those first few weeks when you're in transition. And then down the road, when you're more used to it, when you've fully transitioned, your body can easily burn fat for fuel. Then you might transition into experimenting with slightly less fat, doing this more high protein approach. It's just, there's so many factors. That's why when I get questions like this, it's, it's very challenging because to me, I mean, some people think they have the exact right answer and they tell you, do it this way, this is the right way, that's the only way. And I'm really not interested in that paradigm. I'm really interested in people, you know, finding what works for them, but not using a lot of excuses about why switching to this way of eating is not a good idea for them or You know, it can be challenging. Like I said before, with all the food that's available and the highly processed food, nobody said it was easy. But when you really have your future health in your heart, you want to, you know, be able to be there fully for your family, you know, play with your grandkids, watch your kids get married, all that kind of stuff. It's finding that why. And you've heard me talk about this before too, but it sounds so cliché, but really finding that why, getting those reasons for changing your behaviors makes it so much easier. Like, if you— and not that weight loss isn't a good goal or something that, you know, people will feel better by doing, but often getting to those deeper levels. And if you go back to my, my interview with Dani, she had this really good way of keep asking your questions until you peel off the layers of onions that gets to the root of why you want to do these things. Like, why do I want to lose weight? Well, so I can, you know, feel better in my body. Well, why do you want to do that? Well, so I can, you know, get on the floor and, and play with my grandkids. That's, that's a deeper reason. A lot of the reason that people, you know, want to lose weight is because they feel uncomfortable in their body. But it's not about like looking good in a bathing suit or something. Well, nothing wrong with that. You've heard me say before, you know, if vanity is a motivator, whatever whatever motivates you initially is just a good, good way to go. But, you know, to have long-term success with your health and with changing your way of eating and creating new habits, you really have to have sort of a deeper why. And if you can't find that, it might be very difficult to lose weight or to, to make these kinds of changes. And, and, you know, hey, nobody— again, nobody said it's easy. It's simple. You just need to cut your carbs, need to make good healthy choices with food. I mean, eventually at some point after you've lost weight, you might move to a little more flexible way of eating, whether it's more paleo or whether it's, you know, cycling and some of those things that I mentioned. But initially, it's making the hard changes and having a reason, a strong reason why you need to do that or why you want to do that will help you so much. So this ended up being a way longer answer, and I know I can be tangential sometimes, but hopefully I eventually come back to the point, and hopefully in just sharing about these things. I quite often find that there's things that I forget about, or there's things that I don't talk about on a day-to-day basis. But when I'm answering these type of questions, or when I just start kind of flowing more with talking about the way I eat and why I do it, that some more interesting different things come out. So anyway, uh, hopefully for Jane that answered some of her questions, and I'll be interested to share with you what I hear from her in the future if she starts doing this. Maybe she already did start doing it since she's been waiting for me to get this video live. But yeah, that's about all I have for you now. Um, if you liked this format and if you are a person that has some health and wellness related questions that you want to explore, I've thought about, you know, bringing people on and having the question and answer things sort of live, um, in the future, or at the very least just recording it with a person, having them ask whatever questions they want to ask and having me kind of coach them and work with them like I would in, you know, with people that I do this with. Or, you know, if that's a little too intense, having yourself on camera and asking the questions you want to ask, it can be like this where you ask the questions anonymously. I'll give you some kind of name, like I just gave Jane a name that's not her name, but I will still answer the questions and still maybe talk about some other things around the question that I think can be useful to people, because that's a lot about coaching, right? It's like if you just focus on the weight loss, you're going to be okay, eat this, this, and this. I give you a food plan, I can give you your macros, I can tell you what to eat. But what really people struggle with is not that, it's all these emotional and psychological things around weight loss and around habit change. And you know my background is that's my passion along with nutrition is my training and my schooling is actually in psychology. So for me, they all kind of fit together wonderfully well. And that's been a real beauty of, um, finally starting Heal, Nourish, Grow, the website and the ultimate wellness site that I intend for it to be, is that it's not just about what you put in your mouth. It's all these other things that we talk about all the time, like sleep and stress and finding your why and just getting yourself to a place where you're a little bit better every single day. So have, have a wonderful rest of your day wherever you are. Maybe you were listening to this while you're getting some chores done or while you're out for your walk or something like that. It's the way I like to listen to podcasts, and so I'm rarely just listening to podcasts unless I'm in my sauna blanket, which More information on that is coming, but I have gotten a sauna blanket that I've been using. I think I've only used it 3 times at this point, but I'm going to be writing and sharing more about my experience with that soon. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about it, I'll put the link in the bio and you can go investigate for yourself. So anyway, I will talk to you again soon and have a lovely rest of your day.