Keto Bread, Keto Waffles, Fat Bombs & Beyond: How To Reset Your Metabolism With A Ketogenic Cleanse.

Keto bread.

Keto waffles.

Yes, you can actually make healthy bread and healthy waffles. Not just healthy, but stuff that's not.

Gonna spike your blood sugar through the roof.

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And now onto today's show about how you can stuff your face with ketogenic waffles.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

I'm dealing with a lot of metabolically damaged women, a lot of them going through menopause, really struggling to lose even five pounds. Most of the time it takes people two to three weeks to a month to adapt to hunger, going away, and that type of stuff. So a fat bomb, a lot of times would help people just get rid of that hunger. Like, I grew up, my mom told me, you know, finish everything on your plate. So I'm a product of the clean your plate club. And so I like making smaller desserts so I don't eat the whole thing.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, if you have ever wondered if there is such a thing as ketogenic bread, AKA keto bread, or keto waffles, specifically keto chicken and waffles, or, or keto fruit salad or any other kind of low carb ketogenic option for foods that you probably would have never thought could be low sugar or low carb, then you're in for a treat on today's show. Because my guest on today's podcast has not only written a copious a dizzying number of books on ketosis and ketogenesis. She is a nutritionist, she is an exercise physiologist. She, like I mentioned, is an author, she's a blogger, she's written the ketogenic Cookbook. She's written Quick and Easy Ketogenic Cooking. I recently read three of her books, the 30 Day Ketogenic Cleanse, Keto Comfort Foods, and Keto Restaurant Favorites. And my mouth was watering during all three. Even though I'm not even like a big ketogenic guy anymore. I love the idea of being able to control blood sugar with some of these foods. Even if you're not frickin, like, you know, measuring your blood ketones every morning when you wake up, it's still pretty cool to learn how to avoid a lot of these high glycemic starchy foods and sugars from a longevity and an energy and a gut fermentation standpoint. So I love it when books like this come around. And Maria, I want to welcome you to the show and warn you I have a boatload of questions for you about ketogenic cooking and the ketogenic diet.

Well, I am very grateful, Ben. Thank you for having me. And, well, thank you for reading my books. I really appreciate it.

And when I just tried to call you, you were like, hiking in the wilderness. You had to pull your car over for a solid Internet connection. Is that true?

Yeah. I'm living in a tent for a while. It's my little boy's eighth birthday, and we like to just fish and hike and swim and do all of that. And so we tried to hike to the top of this mountainous area and it really wasn't working, so we had to drive around, which I don't really like to even be in my car. So it's like, oh, bummer, we found a spot and it's all good. So I'm very appreciative.

Wow, cool. So you're just like, out living in a tent?

Oh, yeah, I think I was. I mean, in my past life, I was Native American that lived in a tent and that's where my happy place is. I just love to.

Just be with nature and be outside and I even have. I'm sure we'll talk about it later. But cold therapy, I have like a cold shower outside and Because I don't even like to go inside to do that.

I love it.

A woman after my own heart. And having written these, these ketogenic cookbooks, I'm curious what would kind of like your camp pantry look like as far as a replacement for, say, like, you know, graham crackers and s' mores and refried beans?

They don't even. My children are with me. They don't even know what that stuff is. But we have been Frying up some fish. We haven't caught any here yet. So we definitely, we pack some with. I always bring hamburger and we make hamburgers on the grill and gosh, you name it. My kids love my skillet spaghetti, which is really, really easy. And we'll just take ground up hamburger and we'll fry that up, put some seasoning in there and some tomato sauce that I bring with. And we'll just do that. And you know, you could put them over zoodles, but we just like it plain. So we do that a lot too. I mean, eggs and bacon.

When you say zoodles, I assume you're referring zucchini noodles.

Yeah, you know, the keto word for zoodles. But we don't even, you know, get into those too much. So we just eat it plain. But I mean, bacon and eggs are staple breakfast. And I don't know, I guess I've. I grew up loving food. Obviously it caused a lot of issues with my, you know, childhood. And, you know, I still love food. I just like to make it a little different. And like you said, whether or not you want to check your ketones, I'm a minimalist. I don't like gadgets. I don't like any of that stuff. So, you know, I don't test. But obviously we're, you know, my whole family, we're eating about, you know, 10 carbohydrates a day. I'm pretty sure we're in ketosis. It certainly feels like it. Anyway, our energy's through the roof and we don't touch caffeine or anything like that.

Yeah. Interesting. Well, I certainly do a lot of green tea and caffeine. And I believe my children had indeed, because they have a friend over today who travels with his cereal. I didn't realize children these days travel with their cereal, but he travels with his cereal. So my kids had his cereal. It wasn't too bad. It's like some kind of like a organic rice crispy thing with coconut milk. But anyways, they usually do bacon and eggs. And of course, I've got my plant based high fat smoothie that I do in the mornings. I've got some questions for you because you go into some stuff in your book that I hadn't seen before. You talk about maintaining lean muscle when you're on a ketogenic diet. Maintaining lean muscle. And one of the things that you talk about in that discussion and, and this would be in the ketogenic cleanse book. You talk about using potassium to maintain lean muscle when on a ketogenic diet. Why do you talk so much about potassium in that section?

Well, when you do, you know, a low carbohydrate or a ketogenic diet, what, what happens is a lot of people complain of low energy or even sometimes low moods or heavy legs walking upstairs stairs. And what's going on there is carbohydrates help retain water. And when you go on a low carb or ketogenic diet, obviously you don't have those carbohydrates to retain water. But along with that water loss goes a lot of electrolytes like potassium. And the important thing about potassium is it combines with magnesium to help aid in muscle contraction, control and growth. And you know, protein needs potassium to hold onto those amino acids in your body. And so if you don't get enough potassium for you losing it because you don't have that carbohydrate to retain those electrolytes, along goes that energy. The muscle contraction is not going to be there. So your runs or exercising is going to be more difficult. A lot of times when people say, well, I tried low carb or ketogenic diet and it just didn't serve me well, a lot of times it's those little tips that you need that will get you past those issues that happen in the beginning.

Yeah. And I know it happens a lot of times in terms of the sodium potassium ratio, getting it would be larger when people are on a ketogenic diet and you can't exactly eat potassium obviously, or you can't exactly eat bananas in copious amounts when you're in ketosis. So when it comes to potassium, I know that magnesium is important because it helps aid in the absorption of potassium. And for a lot of people who are on a lower carbohydrate or a ketosis based diet, doing like a transdermal or an oral magnesium or something like that is a good idea. But when it comes to potassium, do you actually recommend for people who are, who are on a ketogenic diet to supplement with potassium or do you have like certain higher fat, lower carbohydrate foods that would be more rich in potassium that you would do instead or both?

You know what's crazy? What? Most people don't realize you when you think potassium, like you said banana or some people think potatoes. You know what's great? Beef. Beef is where it's at. Beef is where it's at. And so many people are afraid of beef. But you know, we get a cow from the neighbor, a grass fed cow and beef is where it's At. So don't be afraid of your beef. Get that on.

Avocados have quite a bit of potassium too.

Yes, they do. Yep. So there's other ways to get it. I do have people that do need to supplement with it in the beginning just to get them pass that plateau of that low energy.

Yeah. And one other I'd throw in there, by the way, would be squash. You talked about zoodles, and I know squash is kind of, you know, it's definitely not a high glycemic index carbohydrate. And I would say it would definitely be something that a lot of people who are eating low carb or slow carb would be able to handle just fine. But that's another decent source of potassium as well. So, yeah, there. There are things other than. Than bananas that you can eat to maintain. But. But I. I do appreciate that you go into that in the book, that a lot of people will salt their food because they hear they're supposed to do extra electrolytes on a low carbohydrate diet. And that's certainly important to maintain energy levels, you know, as you dump glycogen and as you dump minerals. However, the specific two that I think people really need to go out of their way to do that, I wish I'd have known more about back when I was doing a lot of Ironman triathlon competitions. In full ketosis is potassium and magnesium, specifically, like going out of your way to get those. You talk about in the part of the book where you discuss healing the mitochondria. You have a whole bunch of tips in there. One of the things that you describe is the keto snow cone. What is the keto snow cone?

Well, I'm gonna get in trouble with all the dental hygienists out there, but we make shave ice. We stay in Hawaii over the winter. Wisconsin could be quite col cold. And they have that shave ice everywhere. And so we make our own. We got a little shave ice machine and we make it just about every night. My kids love it too. And then we just add our own little natural sweetener that, you know, basically stevia based to give it that little bit of, you know, flavor to it. But even just plain ice, if you wanted to go there, and I'll say with those dental hygienists out there, say, don't chew on ice. Shave ice is very fine. You basically just suck on it. But this is just getting your body temperature down. Too often we're told to take warm showers before bedtime or anything like that, but shrinking that mitochondria makes it much more efficient. And like, you know, being an athlete, that's another great way to grow your mitochondria too is getting your exercise on. Too many people think that exercises for like the whole calories in, calories out thing, it's more about building that healthy mitochondria, which is gonna benefit you way longer in the long run than focusing in on that. Calories in, calories out.

Yeah, I interviewed Dr. Mercola and we geeked out on mitochondria quite a bit. Probably his new book, Fat is Fuel. Dave Asprey has a good recent book called Headstrong that's also a great resource for mitochondrial health. But ultimately you are correct. Movement is one of the best things that you do. Movement, light, air, water, those are some of the biggies. But to return to this keto snow cone, just to make sure I understand here properly, you've got a shaved ice machine just like one of these basic shaved ice machines. And you're just doing shaved ice with stevia. That's it.

Well, it's like, it is basically a mixture like a stevia, but they make fruit punch flavored and different flavors that you could add whatever gravy.

Now why wouldn't you put like, you know, coconut milk or I guess you could use like an MCT oil or something like that to add extra flavor or texture. But why wouldn't you kind of add in other things on top of the shaved ice or have you experiment with things other than just like stevia?

Well, you certainly could. However, that would take you out of your fasting. So if you have that within your fasting, I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting.

Oh, so you're going, you're going 100 calorie free. So this would be like a lot of people do like a high fat ice cream or something like that in the evenings. You're just saying what you would do, what you would use this for would be if you just want to do no calories at all, it's just basically stevia and shaved ice.

Right. And you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted to add, you know, some fat to it or whatever, but that's, you know, going to take you out of your fasting window.

Okay, got it. Well, I'm a big fan of Omica organic stevia. I get a three pack from them about every month. It's vanilla and butterscotch and plain and it's really good stevia. It doesn't have maltodextrin and stuff in it like some of the Coca Cola brands do. Now you also talk about how one of the common mistakes people make when they're on a ketogenic diet is consuming too many seeds and nuts. Why do you say that?

Well, in school we all learned that carbohydrates or nuts are in that carbohydrate family. A lot of people think of them as fat or protein, but they're actually in the carbohydrate family. And a big mistake that people do is they subtract fiber from the total carbohydrates to get net carbohydrates. And if you want to be successful, you're going to want to count total. I mean, do I have a lot of athletes at your caliber? Absolutely not. I'm dealing with a lot of metabolically damaged women, A lot of them going through menopause, really struggling to lose even five pounds, doing everything that they are trying. And so I'm dealing with that very metabolically damaged population. And that's where we cut nuts and seeds and especially flax and chia and all that type of stuff that's very estrogenic and that's that belly fat that you are concerned about for, you know, women and even some men.

So you would, you would say that when people are eating nuts by the handful and assuming like let's say macadamia nuts, right. Those are very popular as a ketogenic food. I think they have about 4 grams of carbs in an average serving of macadamia nuts. And maybe two of those are compared to comprised of fiber. And so a lot of people will say, well, I only count that macadamia nut as being, not to get too orthorexic here, as 2 grams of carbohydrates. And what you're saying is you count the full 4 grams. In addition to that, you're careful with mouth stuffing with too many seeds and nuts when people are trying to maintain ketosis because a lot of people don't realize that both the normal sugars as well as the fiber based carbohydrate in something like a seed or a nutritional can actually keep you from, for example, restoring insulin sensitivity or restoring pancreatic cell activity or doing some of the other things that you would want for someone who would be using full on ketosis for something like management of anything from diabetes to Alzheimer's or something like that.

Right. And when you chew crunchy things, whether it be nuts or chips or something with crunch, there's something called sensory spaces specific satiety. Try to say that really fast, but that means where it's not even in your mouth that you're feeling this, it's in your ear. And it's an addictive thing that happens and it feels fantastic to your body. And so you usually overeat anything crunchy, whether it be chips, crunchy cookies, nuts. And also if you hold, you know, nuts in your hand, in each hand, and one has, you know, 450 calories, one has 250, they almost look the same. I mean, it's really easy to overeat them. But also dairy and nuts are constipating. And that's something that I do see a lot with my clients, is that, okay, I started this diet and now I'm not going number two. And there's a whole bunch of issues going on. But you know, if you want to have success, you want to cut, you know, dairy and nuts to get. Because you want to go number two every day. That is an issue. If you're not and your doctor says, oh, well, your body's always been like that, you're normal. That's not what. You don't want to have that happen because those estrogens get reabsorbed. It's a whole nother issue that's going on.

Estrogens get reabsorbed? What do you mean by that?

If you aren't eliminating daily, that's how you eliminate toxins and all of that. So there's three different types of estrogens that a woman produces. One is only when she's pregnant. I'm not talking about that. One is from her ovaries and not talking about, about that. I'm talking about external estrogens, whether it be from alcohol, environmental factors, topical products. They're all very, they're producing this estrogenic like effect and that's estrogen dominant cancers would be like prostate cancer in men. So they can have that. Thyroid cancers, ovarian breast cancer, those are all estrogen dominant cancers. And so they get reabsorbed and basically locked inside those fat cells, making not just weight loss very difficult, but causing that unwanted belly fat. And a lot of health issues like the cancers I was just describing.

Okay, got it. So essentially the takeaway here is that if you're trying to do a ketogenic diet and you're having difficulty getting some of the therapeutic effects of it, be careful with seed and nut consumption and especially be careful with excess consumption of some of the more potentially estrogenic seeds like flax or chia, etc.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, absolutely. Got it. Now, man, I would love to dive into kind of like the, the potential anti breast cancer effects of things like some of these estrogenic foods when we look at them in Japanese cultures. But.

I don't have time to delve into that right now. But I certainly have my own thoughts on some of these estrogenic type of foods when it comes to the health effects of some of them and their food fermented and properly prepared forms as you find in a lot of Japanese or Okinawan cuisines. And I, I certainly have plenty of high, high quality misos and you know, fermented forms of soy natto, things along those lines upstairs. But, but yeah, I think that's, that that is different than like powdered flaxseed. I agree.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Anyways, discussion for another day, but I want to delve into sweeteners. What are the top sweeteners that you like? You mentioned stevia. You also mentioned in both your books keto comfort foods and also the keto cleanse. You mentioned how you blend sweeteners sometimes. So fill me in on sweeteners and some of your best practices for sweeteners and the ones that you like.

Well, I'll say this, some people are like, why do you even allow that? But I want to say that like I told you earlier, I grew up, you know, loving food. I love to entertain. And having a keto dessert for my son. He was 8, he turned 8 yesterday and we had a big old party and you know, when he sees everybody else having cake on their birthday, you know, I want to be able to offer that to him. So, you know, that's why I do allow that type of stuff.

Okay. When you say you wouldn't allow it, I think the argument a lot of people make is that you would still see from the taste of something sweet an increase in some of what are called your incretin hormones, perhaps a small surge in cholecystokinin which could spark appetite or, or a surgeon in insulin, potentially even from simply tasting something sweet like stevia, even though it's hypocaloric. And some people say, well, that spikes your appetite later on in the day or you still get a little bit of a hormonal response. And again, I think part of it kind of depends on whether we're talking about hardcore athletes trying to limit carbohydrates versus someone doing it for full on therapy and medical management. Kind of depends what camp you fall into. But I'm kind of in your bandwagon. Like I Don't want my food to taste like cardboard. If I'm gonna have shaved ice, I don't want to just like chew regular ice. I'll put stevia on it. Darn it. Yeah. So for you, what are, what are the sweeteners that are your go to sweeteners?

Well, I say I work with a lot of type ones and type 2 diabetics. I actually have recipe testers that are in both camps and they test themselves with my recipes and sweeteners and they don't have response whatsoever on those, so I'll just lead with that. But I do love stevia, like you said, with no additives. Like you said, meltodextrin, that stevia in the raw, that has meltodextrin to bulk it up. And you know that's a corn derivative. You want to stay away from that. But my favorite stevia is called stevia glycerite because it's a non bitter form of stevia. It's a thick, honey like substance. And so I usually always add a little bit of that to anything that I'm either baking or cooking. And know that once you bake something, if you're tasting the batter, some of the sweetness will bake off. So it'll be less sweet, you know, once you bake it. But I do love swerve. Swerve is an actual brand and it's not because they pay me to endorse it whatsoever, but it measures.

Swerve is a brand of stevia.

It has, it's a brand of erythritol and they have some other blend in there. I think it's monk fruit or. But it doesn't have that cooling effect like erythritol does, which is a sugar alcohol that doesn't raise blood sugar whatsoever.

Okay. The other one that you mentioned was stevia glycerite. And stevia glycerite, what you're saying is that that doesn't have a lot of the benefits, bitter effect or the bitter taste that some of these other forms of stevia can have.

Right. It doesn't have that, that bitter aftertaste that turns a lot of people off when they taste something with that. So I usually.

And is that, is that in this swerve stuff?

No, it is not.

Okay, okay, Gotcha. So that would be something different. But you, you kind of, you kind of pick and choose these. I know, I know you have a lot in your book about them, but. But you would say like having a stevia glycerite and then having something like this swerve stevia would be like a pretty good one.

Yep, yep. So I would put, you know, if something called for a cup of sugar, I would probably use a half a cup of swerve, a teaspoon of stevia, glycerite and then maybe a little bit of monk fruit, maybe a teaspoon of that. Just to, when you blend them, they end, they act more like what you want when you're baking it. It's all a science. And they also taste a lot better too.

Yeah. And you're okay with erythritol?

Yes. That's the only sugar, alcohol that doesn't affect blood sugar. When you get into like xylitol, not only is that dangerous for dogs and stuff because their intestines aren't long enough to digest it, they do have some glycemic effect in them.

It's great. It's great for the teeth. Xylitol is, I don't, I don't mind it on, on gum, but you're correct. Erythritol. Yeah. It can't get fermented by dental bacteria. It doesn't affect blood sugar, it doesn't affect insulin. And perhaps most importantly for a lot of people, the body absorbs it so it doesn't pass to the colon for fermentation. So it doesn't cause the same amount of GI distress as a lot of these other sugar alcohols. Dr.

Yes. I made the mistake of having, when I was much, much younger having those sugar free candies and that was not comfortable whatsoever. And it makes you just. So I come from.

Yeah, yeah. But erythritol I'm pretty cool with. So as far as recipes, I want to delve into some of your recipes. So one is something that I hadn't had for a very long time until I rediscovered it at a, at a kind of like a private health retreat I was at. And they actually served this. I don't know if they got it from your book or what, but they served this chicken and waffles. Right. Southern comfort food. Total Southern comfort food recipe. And I'm not a Southern boy, I'm from Idaho, but I do like chicken and waffles. And you've got your own version in keto comfort foods of chicken and waffles. So tell me about how somebody can have chicken and waffles for breakfast or any other time of day really and have it be like a low carbohydrate, low glycemic index meal.

You know, there's a lot of different ways you could make waffles. You know, you'll see different ones on the Internet using almond flour, coconut flour. But like I told you, I try to avoid nuts and seeds. And so what I did was, you're gonna think it's crazy, but to make the batter thick, I use hard boiled eggs, and I use a little bit. You could use beef protein powder if you wanted to do like that, or collagen, but that's how I make them. So there's no almond flour, there's no coconut flour. So there's no. Anybody who's very metabolically sensitive will see no rise in blood sugar with those waffles.

Walk me through this. How are you using hard boiled eggs and beef protein? I know to make the waffle. Just walk me through how I would actually make a waffle.

Okay. So I guess I don't have it right in front of me, so I'm.

Gonna tell you that's okay. Give us the basic idea.

I'm gonna put two raw eggs into a blender, and then I'm gonna put two peeled hard boiled eggs into the blender. So it's about a one to one ratio. And then I'm going to put about two tablespoons of beef protein powder. You could use other ones, like an egg white protein powder or something like that. They make some really tasty, you know, flavored protein powders. And then I'm going to add a little bit of stevia glycerite to make them sweet, maybe some cinnamon, a pinch of salt. Salt makes sweet things. Salt is a flavor enhancer. It's not just to make things, you know, savory. It's a flavor enhancer, whether it be sweet or anything. So adding a little bit of salt to your desserts will let you add less sweetener because it's flavor enhancing. You could also add some of that butterscotch stevia that you have, and then.

Oh, that should be pretty good.

Yeah, right. And then, you know, have your waffle iron super hot, make sure it's greased well. And then you. It's gonna, you know, blend that up and then you pour that mixture and you could blend. What I do oftentimes is I'll put everything in the blender. The evening before I want to do something like waffles because it seems like mornings are always like rush, rush, rush, or I'll make the waffles and then I'll freeze them just like they're an Eggo waffle. And then my kids can toast them in the toaster oven by themselves.

Yeah. Now, my only concern, and again, I don't want to get too orthorexic with this podcast, is I'm pretty careful with egg white protein powder. The main reason being because I get concerned about oxidized cholesterol from the actual protein. There's some minimally processed whole egg powders with very little oxidation. They can be kind of expensive, but a lot of, like, if you're just grabbing, like, egg white protein powder off the shelf, in many cases, it actually is pretty oxidized. So I'm. I'm kind of careful.

I'm.

I'm careful with, like, bone broth powder for the same reason I've never had bone broth powder. Yeah, yeah, that's a big thing. Now. People are, like, powdering bone broth, and you oxidize a lot of the amino acids and a lot of the cholesterols, and I think it winds up, you know, unless you get a very low heat processed type of. Type of bone broth powder, which I'm not aware of right now. Yeah, you got to be careful with some of that stuff. But ultimately, it's a very interesting recipe. I hadn't. I hadn't thought before about using, like, whole boiled eggs and then something like a protein powder as a batter.

You know, I just played around it with it and I needed it to be thicker, and I was like, oh, I don't want to add any type of gums or, you know, things like that to thicken it. What could I use? And so it just came to me and. No. Knowledge is power. I love that you're throwing this stuff out there, because I've never heard of. I mean, bone broth is so easy to make. I do it in the slow cooker. And why would you want to do a powder?

I do. No, admittedly we make bone broth, but I also order it because there's a company. I've interviewed him on my show before. Kettle and Fire does, like, a really good. Yeah, really good organic bone broth. Chicken and beef, and. Yeah, we keep that around, too. What I like about that is one box is a perfect amount for my morning smoothie. So I can use one box of my morning smoothie. And it's like, the exact texture that I need.

And it tastes so good.

Yeah. And they have a new one now. They're taking their chicken bone broth and combining it with mushrooms.

Oh, nice.

Meaning, like, like lion's mane mushrooms and cordyceps and stuff like that. So it's kind of a. Kind of a cool little combo but yeah, I interviewed them on my show. So for those of you listening in, I'll put a link to my, to my interview with the folks from Kettle and Fire on the show because it's pretty good stuff.

That was my first, my son's first food was bone broth besides breast milk.

Yeah, it's amazing, amazing stuff.

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show.

At the time that you're listening to this show, I'm in Finland and when I go to Finland I harvest mushrooms. And on my last mushroom harvesting trip, I actually had a chance to chop Chaga off of birch trees and do a dual alcohol and water extraction with.

It, which was quite laborious, but which.

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So another thing that you talk about is something I used to stick into the microwave when I was a teenage boy almost every day and eat like it was going out of style. And that is a keto pocket. All right, well, for me, it wasn't a keto pocket, it was a hot pocket. You have something you talk about called keto pockets. So what, what is a keto pocket?

So a keto pocket is. I, you know, again, I grew up with all of these crazy foods too. And what I did was I just played around and mortadella is kind of like, what do you say, an Italian bologna, would you say?

Mm.

And it's very thin and you can get this at Trader Joe's or whatever, but you would scramble your eggs and make all the fillings and then you're gonna use a piece of mortadella around it and fold it like a hot pocket. And then you just fry that up to make the mortadella a little crispy. And you can make. Like I was saying, you know, I kind of, I plan ahead for meals. And so I'd make a few of these and then just keep them in the fridge and then fry them the morning of that. We wanted to have those for breakfast.

I love it. Very cool. And mortadella, by the way, for those of you listening, it's kind of like bologna. And a lot of times it's flavored with spices like I discovered when my wife and I were riding our bikes across Italy. Like, they'll put black pepper in it or berries.

Oh, yum.

Like sometimes pistachios or different kinds of nuts will be in there. Depends on what you get. But it actually is pretty tasty stuff. And you're basically using that to make your pocket, but you're using that as the actual wrap for the pocket.

Yes, for the outside.

So you're using that in the same way that someone might use butter, lettuce or kale or nori or something like that as like a carbohydrate free wrap. You're just using meat?

Yes, we're using. We, we joke that we are carnivores.

Well, I like it because that's a thin enough meat to where you can kind of wrap it. Now, now we do, we do like these big long tubes of meat that we order from us Wellness meats like Braunschweiger, which is like a mix of grass fed beef and then grass fed Beef liver. It's kind of very similar to, like, like a liverwurst. They do a liverwurst as well. The liverwurst is liver, heart, kidney, and beef. And these work really well for my kids to, like, scramble up with eggs or to just, like, toss in the stainless steel skillet with some olive oil. But they're, they're kind of crumbly, so you can't use them as like a wrap. It sounds like this, this mortadella that you're using would be a little bit more conducive, be a little bit less likely to fall apart if you were going to use it as a wrap.

Yes, it doesn't fall apart at all. And I know exactly what you're talking about with Braunschweig, because my dad, he loved that on, you know, Ritz crackers. And it was always the stuff that had a lot of bad fillers in it that, you know, he just.

Yeah, I would imagine where you get your mortadello would probably be something you'd want to take into consideration as well. You know, obviously for sure, you are what you eat 8. So make sure it's the good organic stuff. But, yeah, that's really interesting. I will. By the way, for those of you listening in everything that Maria and I talk about for recipes and her books and stuff, I'll link to if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Keto Cleanse. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com keto cleanse. So another thing that you talk about is it seems like every ketogenic book has this in it. But I'm curious to hear about your twist. A fat bomb. Tell me about the fat bomb. What's the fat bomb?

Well, a fat bomb is something that I utilize to help people in the beginning when they're still having, you know, cravings, whether it be sugar cravings or hunger. Most of the time it takes people, you know, two to three weeks to a month to adapt to, you know, hunger going away and that type of stuff. So fat bomb, a lot of times would help people just get rid of that hunger because that's what fat is. Very satiating. And many times you'll see fat bombs made with, like, cream cheese or, you know, peanut butter and nut butters. And obviously this book is dairy and nut free, so it's none of that. So I usually use, you know, like, coconut oil. And you could use that butterscotch stevia. I need to get some of that because I love butterscotch.

Yeah, it's the omica organic stuff.

Oh, mica organic. I will look that up.

Yeah.

But it's basically just a little fat bomb to help with things like that.

Okay. Okay, got it. And so the recipe again, just for people who want to make their own fat bomb. What's the go to recipe?

I use coconut oil, and there's a little bit of coconut milk in there. I use cocoa powder. So this one is a chocolate one. It's very, very easy. A lot of kids really like it. I actually use a little English toffee stevia in there and a little bit of cinnamon. You stir it all up, and then you can pour it into molds and then cut it into squares. So it's like a. It reminds a lot of people of fudge.

Okay, got it. Cool. I have my own little version of this where I'll take like a full fat coconut milk. Like a native forest, for example, does like a BPA free coconut milk. And then I'll put some unsweetened coconut flakes in there. Typically some kind of like a dark cacao powder. And then that same stevia I mentioned. And I'll whisk all that up and just stir it up really quickly and then throw that in the freezer. And if I do that before dinner, by the time dinner's done, I'll take that out and it's kind of got the consistency of ice cream. And you can also blend it. But if you just.

Where's your cookbook, Ben?

I've got a few recipes in my beyond training book. And that one. That one actually is in there.

Awesome.

Okay, so back to things that we wouldn't traditionally expect to be ketogenic fruit salad. You've got fruit salad on there. Fill me in on how you can do a fruit salad that's like a low glycemic, ketogenic food.

It's kind of a joke because everybody's like, oh, Maria, do you eat fruit? And I'm like, absolutely. We love olives and we love tomatoes. And so it's kind of like all those. Not like caper berries, capers and things like that, which are more salty than anything. Cucumbers, that type of stuff. So it's a fruit salad. It reminds me of a Greek salad with olives and capers, tomatoes, cucumber. It's basically a Greek salad, but it is technically all with fruit.

Okay, are you using, like, low glycemic index fruits, like berries and raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, things like that, or.

No, no, it's cucumber olives.

Okay. So there's no fruit at all.

That is fruit, though, technically.

Yeah, I guess you're right. They are. Those are the ovaries. Those are the ovaries of plants. Right?

Yeah. So that's why it's kind of sneaky. Yeah, it's. It's the way we enjoy our fruit. It's, you know, low glycemic and all of that. It's more of a savory Greek salad.

And what's. And what's the. Yeah, I was gonna say it's more like Greek salad. What's. What's the dressing that you're using?

The dressing is using that MCT oil and then some Greek seasoning, that type of stuff. You could use olive oil if you had that instead. A good quality one.

Okay. Okay. Got it. Cool. So that's obviously the fruit salad. That's not really. I would. I would. Honestly, if it were me, I would still throw blueberries in there. I'm a big fan. If there's one fruit that I'll eat that you'll actually find around my house, it's blueberries or another one that. Well, there's two that I harvest from our land here is very small tart berries that really are extremely low on the glycemic index. And from a nutrient density versus a calorie standpoint, or a flavanol and a polyphenol standpoint, or they're very. They're very sirtuin rich, too. S I R T U I N. And that's a. That's a class of proteins that's associated with. With anti aging, actually. So. So it's very interesting. They have a lot of what's called deacelase activity. But any of. Any of these very dark kind of tart berries are pretty rich in sirtuin, so.

Oh, I'm not judging. I. It was just kind of a joke. You.

Oh, I hear you. I get where you're coming from. You're a lot more strict than I am with some of this stuff. But I love to go through your recipes here. Which brings me to the next one. Keto bread. You do a keto bread. So I'm curious what your keto bread looks like, because we do a low glycemic index bread, which means that we take local non GMO red wheat berries from the palouse, and my wife ferments them and makes a sourdough. And when you ferment, of course, you. You lower the glycemic index. And.

That, of course, is one way to do it. But I think you're not even using like wheat or coconut flour, almond flour or anything like that. Is that correct?

Nope. And the cleanse, and that's why, like, I don't, you know the word cleanse. People don't they think that it's like I'm gonna be drinking my calories and things like that. Nope. I love everything about chewing your food. I think it's so satiating. And everybody likes the bread. And so.

The thing, the reason why I called it the cleanse is because it's dairy and nut free to make it really successful. So what you do is you take egg whites, you separate your eggs so you have your yolks and your whites and you put the whites, preferably into a stand mixer because you're gonna wanna whip it for about eight minutes. And I have a video on this because it's a little tricky. And you whip it until those whites are really, really stiff. And then you're gonna add your, you know, your quality protein powder, whatever form it is. I don't like whey first because it's dairy and it also dumps into your bloodstream faster than other protein powders. So I describe all of that on how to choose one. And then you can slowly stir those yolks back in there so you get that, you know, the nice soft yolks. And then you put that into your bread pan and bake them and you can make them into buns or whatever. But that's basically the keto bread.

What's the texture like on those?

People say it's like wonder bread.

Really?

Yeah, because it's just like white bread. But the problem is, especially in the summer, if you have a humid house, if you touch those whites at all with a spatula that has a touch of water, or you put it into a bread pan that has a touch of water, they're going to fall and you're going to get a gummy bread and you're going to come and complain to me. If you have cream of tartar in your house, you could add a teaspoon of that to stabilize your whites. But I would say the biggest mistake is people under whip them because they read that if you over whip them, it's gonna ruin them. But I'll. I'll let my stand mixer go for 10 minutes. I'll go outside and water the plants or. And then I put it.

And then you just use one of.

The countertop stand mixers.

Yep, yep, I just let it go work.

Well, my wife does a lot with that as well.

Yeah, I told you, I'm not a gadget person. That's something I use all the time. All the time. Those hand mixers are just. They just don't do it.

Yeah, you just let them go and walk away. That's what I like about the stand mixers. They need to do something like that. Except it's like a latte frother. Because I've been making a lot of green tea, matcha green tea lately. And matcha green tea, whether it's hot or whether it's cold is really good if you whisk it. So if anybody knows of any good ways to do similar to a stand mixer, but a walk away and let it froth type of mixer for tea, leave a comment over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Ketocleans because I'd totally check that out.

I'll watch.

Okay. Refried beans is another one. Tell me about how you make healthy refried beans.

Now you're talking about the restaurant.

Yeah. You talk about this in your restaurant book.

Yeah. So a lot of people are afraid of smoking foods. They just, they look at a smoker, they're intimidated. Oh, man, it is so easy to smoke food. And especially the vegetarians I work with, they want that meaty flavor. And what I do is I smoke eggplants. Or you could smoke your zucchini like you were talking about the squash earlier. And you actually puree this with a couple different ingredients, but it makes this bean like texture that people just miss because beans aren't on the ketogenic diet. But it tastes great with any Mexican type food. You could add, if you aren't vegetarian, some bacon to that adds even a better flavor. And the bacon fat goes right in there. And you puree that up until it's smooth, just like a refried bean.

Okay, so walk me through this one more time. You're actually. So how are you making these?

Okay, so there's two different ways and there's two different recipes in that restaurant book.

One is a vegetarian way where you smoke the eggplant. So you slice the eggplant thin into slices, and you're gonna salt that up and you're gonna put it into a smoker. And I have a video on how to smoke foods. It's super easy. It's one of my favorite ways because it's a very low temperature. It's not causing issues with meat and things like that that you were referring to earlier. And then you're going to. You would take the peel off too. Unless you want to keep it on there. It's going to add a little bit of texture. But you throw blender, you add some salt, you could add some, I guess I don't have it right in front of me, but that's basically you puree it up into beans. Now, if you wanted to do it over a stovetop, if you don't have a smoker, you would cut up pieces of bacon and fry that up and leave the bacon fat in there and add your cubed eggplant. So you peel it and slice it into like inch size pieces. It doesn't really matter, but you're going to fry that up and that eggplant, it soaks up all that yummy bacon grease flavor. And you know you want to add some bacon fat.

Wow.

That was actually one of my son's first foods was I used lard and bone marrow and eggplant and I would bake that, the bone marrow right over the eggplant. And as the bone marrow cooks, that slimy stuff comes out. Most people scoop it up with bread, but I let it soak into the eggplant and he just loved that.

I may have to try this. My kids and I are making dinner tomorrow night and we're gonna do some wild plant foraging and I want to go out and get nettles and make this new nettle recipe I read about. It's kind of like an old Native American recipe with a little bit of raw milk and raw local honey and some of our nettles and nettle seeds kind of made into a little bit of a tea. And that's about as far as I've gotten so far for planning dinner. That's how we're gonna start dinner off.

But that sounds awesome.

I'm going to have to try some of these health defried refried beans because I've got bacon fat and I can hunt me down some eggplants. So I'll have to try this one out because I actually like this idea of using eggplants and bacon fat. That to me sounds like a pretty good one two combo. So I'll give it a go and let you know what I think.

Awesome.

Okay, so we've got refried beans, we've got ketogenic bread, ketogenic fruit salad, unquote, this amazing chicken and waffles recipe that I really want to try. And then you kind of get into some other things that I wanted to touch on in your restaurant book and in your comfort foods book. One thing that you talk about in the restaurant book that blew my mind, because a lot of people who are doing, like, a low carbohydrate diet will get omelets or some type of an egg mixture at a restaurant when they go out to a restaurant. Tell me what you say in the book about omelet batter, because this one, I was totally.

There are some diners that actually will add a little bit of pancake batter to. But what was really disturbing to me is I was at a hotel, and it was kind of a pretty nice hotel in Breckenridge at the low carb conference that I was at, and I was scooping up some scrambled eggs, and someone said, you know, those are powdered eggs. I was like, what are powdered eggs? And like you said, they were just eggs that were powdered. They added milk to them. And so it was probably quite high in carbohydrates, highly processed. I was like, easier than cracking an egg open.

But you have a huge, huge amount of milk sugar in most of the powdered eggs that you're gonna find at hotels. And even some of these, like you mentioned, like the fancier, nicer buffet breakfast they actually had. They had a lot of milk. They add, as you mentioned in the book, they'll add, like, pancake batter to the almond batter. They've certainly done studies, and you can find these in PubMed on oxidized cholesterol levels and cholesterol particles in the body. And, you know, the things that are a probable primary cause of atherosclerotic lesions. And one of the primary components of this are just basic commercial dried eggs and dried egg powder. It's one of the worst things you can do for your body. We all are aware now that egg yolks are probably pretty good for you. And there are books like Eat the Yolk and this idea that eggs are not responsible for cardiovascular disease. But when you heat them and you dry them, you can create some pretty big issues. And, yeah, I mean, that's why I even recommend. And again, a guy I mentioned earlier, Dr. Mercola, who I had on my show, he talks about a lot about, like, even when you're making your scrambled eggs. And I give my kids this lecture because they do scrambled eggs now every morning, cook it at a very low, low temperature. And you cook it just the minimal amount that you actually need to.

So, yeah, and that's just that they usually cook them in vegetable oil and stuff. I speak on the low carb cruise a lot. And going to the buffet, I always say, could you use the real eggs and Then I usually hand them a pat of butter. So I feel that even if you do have dairy issues, that's better than the vegetable oil that they're using.

Yeah, yeah. And then of course, you look at the fact that they're kind of languishing under heat lamps for several hours, exposed to heat and light and air after having been cooked in industrial seed oil. Yeah, it can be an issue. Okay. So another thing that you talk about in your comfort foods book. And by the way, how would you define a comfort food?

What's that? How do I define it?

A comfort food? Because for me, I just think back to things I liked to eat when I was a kid. But I'm curious if there's like an official definition of comfort foods, because I don't think I've actually had a comfort foods author on the show before.

I guess that's how I felt. Things that make you. Foods that you think about, that you remember making, you would sit down and have with your family, or just something that makes you warm and fuzzy inside when you think about it. That was kind of what I thought about. And then I also thought about Southern food that people just. I mean, the Southern food really makes like chicken and waffles, you know, that type of stuff. Or gumbo.

Crawfish, etouffee. Those type of things really make me think of comfort foods.

Right, exactly. It's the. What I, what I always do when I get home from a long journey, whether or not I've eaten on the airplane or in the air, airport or not, I walk in the house and I open up the refrigerator and I look for the foods that I know are going to be in there that I consider to be now my comfort foods. You know, my comfort foods back when I was growing up would have been, you know, the 29 cent hamburger from McDonald's, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and of course, those Hot Pockets. And now when I open up the refrigerator, I definitely look for mom's or my wife's homemade kombucha. Big fan of that stuff. Usually she has something pickled or fermented. Like she'll have like some kind of like a pickled or fermented radish or carrot or green tomato and those again, like, like, it's just like this, this thing. I open up the mason jar and I grab it. It's the feel, it's the texture, it's the pop in the mouth. Yeah, I, I am a fan of taking out some of that sourdough bread and I'll toast that and have that with. With a couple slices of whatever, whatever protein or fat I can happen to find in the refrigerator. But there are these little things that I grab and you, of course, get a little bit, I guess, more fancy in your book on comfort foods with all sorts of different comfort foods. But what would you say if you could choose your favorite recipe from your comfort foods book as far as something that you think should be on everybody's bucket list to try, what would it be?

The Bananas Foster for two.

All right, fill me in.

It's just, I think a lot of times, and I have this problem too, like, I'm a product of, like, I grew up telling my mom told me, you know, finish everything on your plate. So I'm a product of the clean your plate club. And so I like making smaller desserts so I don't eat the whole thing. But I love Bananas Foster and I think that it's just fantastic. And the caramel sauce is amazing. And there's actually no bananas in it. I use banana extract, an organic one.

So while Bananas Foster, which I've had before, a big part of that is kind of like taking your fork and slicing through the banana, going through the caramelization and the hard part, then you have the soft banana inside. How are you achieving that?

So I made little cakes that were, you know, long tube, like, like a banana. And so you have, you know, basically three little Twinkie type looking things that have banana flavor. And then you have a scoop of keto ice cream and some whipping cream whipped on top of that. And then you put your caramel sauce on top of that and then some walnuts. The comfort food book is not nut free and it is not dairy free. I'll tell you that. It is all about, you know, comfort keto foods.

Yeah. So it's still extremely calorie rich, just not carbohydrate rich.

Absolutely. Yeah. For me, my journey was a really long one. Some people, they really want to heal super fast. They want to lose weight, like, you know, you really, super fast. But for me, it was a slow process. And that's why I really love these books because if you just want to start lowering your carbohydrates and still be really satisfied, you know, it works that way too. You know, like you said, you still have, you know, squash and things like that if you want it to be slower. And, you know, it works that way too.

So, yeah, you. The books are jam packed with all sorts of food porn and mouthwatering recipes. So I do highly recommend that if you're listening in and you want some new ideas. And I am going to try this review fried bean recipe. I think tomorrow night I'm gonna.

Awesome.

Because my kids and I love to cook stuff together for mom sometimes because she works so hard. Usually some days of the week cooking, we like to put some food on the table every now and again. And for me it's usually trying weird things that I've talked about with people on podcasts.

So fun.

So anyways, if you want to try any of these recipes, then check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com KetoCleanse and over there I will link to Maria's ketogenic cleanse book, but then also this keto comfort foods book and the Keto restaurant favorites book. And then also for you guys who want to buy any of the things we talked about, I'll link to that liverwurst that we order from yes, Wellness Meats and the Kettle and fire bone broth too, along with some of the forms of stevia that we talked about. Maria, thank you so much for taking a break from your hike today and joining us.

You'll have to check out the hike we took to try to find you Try to find Internet service. I posted it on Instagram. If you check that out.

Oh, you did?

Okay. We were in some bad thunderstorms the last few days, so it's a real watery hike. You'll have to check it out. Looks like we're hiking through a waterfall.

Nice. And that's with just you and one of your eight year olds or all your kids?

My six and eight year old. Yeah.

Six and eight year old.

Nice.

I love it. All right, cool. I'll check that out on Instagram. Maybe we'll use that as the show artwork. Anyways, well, thanks for joining me and enjoy the rest of your time in the wilderness out there. Take a cold shower. I will and I'll keep in touch.

Thank you so much. I'm very grateful.

All right, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Maria Emmerich, the author of a whole host of books on ketogenic diet, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com KetoCleanse have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.

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