Try Keto for Optimal Health, with Robert & Crystal Sikes @Ketosavage

Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast Live like youe Matter. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo and this is Dr. Ed Levitan. And today we're talking to Robert Sykes and his wife Crystal Sykes, who are keto experts. Robert Orion Sykes is a lifetime natural, competitive bodybuilder. He has since dedicated his life to learning and teaching others the benefit of following a well formulated ketogenic lifestyle. Robert now works along his wife Crystal and their amazing team to continually create content and add a ton of value within his community. His mission is and will continue to be empowering others to believe in themselves and truly tap into their full potential by optimizing their body and mind. Welcome, Crystal and Robert. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having us.

I know this is really exciting. Yeah, really. First of all, we were just saying before that we never had a couple. We interview us together and it's nice to have somebody else to interview together.

I know, like, have your back.

Yeah.

She's my better half. So anything that I say, as long as you're on the same page, there's.

Like a book of good husbands and those, those lines are in the book of good husbands.

Right.

We're also really like, keto is one of these things that is hugely popular and we want to talk about like, really what besides what keto is, which we have to define. But why is it so popular? What benefits? And like, really is it the same for men and women? So we love that you are both on to really get a. Give us perspective.

Yeah.

And before we dive in, I just want to add part of the thing that needs to go in the Good Husband's book is if you're going to go keto, don't do it after your wife makes like a month worth of meals that she stuck in the freezer for you that aren't keto.

Just words of wisdom right there for sure.

Tip for the Good Husband book.

Okay.

Are you done now?

I'm totally done for the moment.

Okay, good. All right, so maybe let's talk about what. What is ketogenic diet and why do we even care?

Yeah. So, I mean, at a very high level, I would say ketogenic diet is basically just a dietary protocol that forces the body to burn fat and ketones for fuel as opposed to carbohydrates and glucose. It's kind of hardwired into our DNA. From an evolutionary standpoint, we would become ketogenic in times of food scarcity, especially if those foods were carbohydrate based. And we're relying more on stored body fat or fats and proteins in our environment. We've been using it for. I've been using it for seven years. Crystal has been keto for six years now. And we do it from an athletic standpoint as well. But we found it to be very sustainable. She's recovered from a lot of digestive issues. It's helped my performance with bodybuilding, so we're just passionate about the lifestyle and passionate about sharing the information with others.

Pretty awesome.

So there's so many questions I have, but Crystal, can we talk about. You're pregnant now, right?

Yes. Yeah, I'm 37 weeks now.

Congratulations. Are you doing keto?

And you look great.

Yeah, you look. I mean, I said before we started, you don't have that pregnant face. It's amazing. You look fantastic.

Thanks. Yeah, yeah. I remained keto my entire pregnancy. Um, it's just for me, it's like a lifestyle. So it's not something that I ever go on and off or. Robert mentioned that I've been doing keto for six years. Um, and I don't ever. I don't really feel the need or it necessary to have a whole bunch of carbs. Even in like the first trimester, people get some of those sweet cravings or they want something to settle their stomach, but I just find alternatives that, that work really well for our life.

Okay, I have to do a disclaimer because we're talking about pregnant women. So this is not for everybody. Okay, Right, like people that. Just talk to your doctor. Yes, but talk to your doctor. We can't go on the book saying that every pregnant woman should be on keto. That's not good.

All right, so, Robert, you were a bodybuilder before you did keto, right?

Correct. Yeah. So I started bodybuilding about 14 years ago. And so I've been ketogenic half of my bodybuilding career. Competed several times with a lot of success pre keto. But after the first several shows, I kind of developed a bunch of disordered eating tendencies. I would kind of go through the big gaining and losing cycles. I mean, my first show I bulked up to £230 and then lost £80 for that show in 12 weeks.

And.

And then I put on like £20.

Wait, say that again. Slow that down. Because £80, you lost a person.

You lost my 12 year old.

So, yeah, the first show I'd ever done, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Everybody was saying you got to eat big to get big. And I was really small, naturally. I was 115 pounds when I started working out. Bulked up to 230 pounds with a heavily carbohydrate based diet. Lots of sugars, lots of processed foods, just a bunch of poor quality, quality foods. And then gave myself 12 weeks to diet down for that first show, which is not nearly enough time. I did everything wrong, but I lost 80 pounds in that 12 week span. Won the competition, but then was just incredibly restrictive in that dieting. So after that show was over, I put on 20 pounds literally overnight that next night. And that's when my eating disorders really started to take off. So for me, the ketogenic diet was a viable outlet to heal that relationship with food and not have to have the crazy shifts between the building phases and the cutting phases of competition.

How'd you discover keto?

So we started doing keto before it was really popular. It's super popular now. But I started doing it in 2015, which was before there was any books or podcasts or, you know, information at all really. And I was doing protocol by John Kiefer called carbohydrate backloading. So basically it's a lot of high glycemic index carbs at night and then relatively low carbohydrate throughout the early part of the day. And I found that I felt better in the absence of the carbohydrates. So I was doing carb backloading without carbs, which, lo and behold, is pretty much keto. And then I just felt really great. My performance continued to improve, my relationship with food improved. So I just kept diving down that road. And then, lo and behold, I realized what it was I was doing. I learned about the ketogenic diet. I learned about it being used in the 20s for children with epileptic seizures. And once I started kind of polishing that method from a bodybuilding standpoint, I just never looked back. I just felt so good with it. I didn't really see any reason to deviate and go back to my old ways.

Cool.

Crystal, how'd you get into keto? What came first, the relationship or the keto?

The relationship. So when Robert and I first met, he was competing and he had just started doing keto in the beginning of our dating period. And I was going through a lot of health issues, some GI distress and different things, and the doctors had me on a whole bunch of different diets and nothing was really working. So Robert said, well, why don't you try this out, see how it goes. And I did. And I tried it once and it was like, I don't really think this is for me. And then once I went back to carbs, I actually felt worse. So I thought, well, maybe what I thought maybe when I thought I wasn't doing well, I was actually doing better than I thought. So I went back to keto and since then haven't turned back.

Wow. What are some of the. I have so many questions.

Before we jump in, I want to actually step back a little bit. And I know we defined keto, which is a great definition, in terms of using ketones as opposed to carbs and sugars as food, but what this. Let's talk about your day to day. What does it mean to be on a keto diet? What are you actually eating? Because I think most people don't actually know what are you actually eating and.

Are you intermittent fasting on top of that or in addition to that or not?

Yeah. So intermittent fasting and keto kind of go hand in hand. I mean, when you switch over to fat and ketones, you don't have near the hunger swings because your blood sugar and blood insulin are much more stable. So we'll typically eat, you know, two meals a day. I'll do like a quote unquote fat fast in the morning hours. So I'll wake up, have a cup of coffee with some heavy cream. So I'm technically breaking my fast with that heavy cream because it does contain calories, but it's not really going to have much of an impact on blood sugar. So it's kind of like a fat fast they call it in the keto space. So I'll have that. Crystal pretty much does something similar. And then we'll have our first meal after we train. We train in the morning, so our first meal is typically around lunchtime, so somewhere between 10 and 2. And that consists of ground beef, eggs, chicken, some vegetables. Crystal likes yogurt. So something of that nature. Basically just higher fat, moderate protein, very minimal carbohydrate. And then we'll typically have a second and final meal in the evening hours. And that's pretty much typical day for us. So not too much to overthink as far as the nutrition goes. A lot of people think of keto as being incredibly restrictive and hard to find foods to make work. But I mean, we just take out the carbs, take out the bread and rice and the potatoes and it's pretty easy to do.

Yes, mostly we just like to promote that it's a whole food diet. You know, we stick to a lot of animal based product and Then add in some vegetables here and there and that's pretty much. That's pretty much it.

So what vegetables work and what vegetables don't work in a keto junk diet?

Usually all your lower glycemic index vegetables. So your dark leafy greens. I don't eat a ton of vegetables. I kind of gravitate more towards the ketovore carnivore end of the spectrum. I'll have vegetables on occasion. I do some brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, things of that nature. Crystal will have that. Berries, stuff like that.

Yeah, every once in a while I'll do just a small amount of berries, but I always pour heavy cream on top because it's real good. But we'll have a cauliflower mash or rice, cauliflower or a salad or broccoli, Brussels sprouts, things like that. Mostly we just stick to the green vegetables, asparagus and things like that.

Yeah. And just for listeners, things like carrots are probably out and beets and different zucchinis and things like that.

So it depends who you ask. In the keto space, there's a lot of controversy right now. So some people will say, that's what we're asking you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some people say, hey, look, as long as you're registering blood, you know, ketones, then you're technically in ketosis. And there's no foods that are keto or not keto. As long as you're registering those blood ketones, you're doing it right. So by that definition, which is much more lax, I could eat a banana. And based off of my activity levels, you know, my body would burn through that glucose in the banana relatively quickly and I'd be registering ketones in that same 24 hour period after consuming a banana. So some people might say that I can tolerate a banana in my ketogenic diet. But for me, I'm a much stricter version of the, you know, I'm not as loose with my, my dietary choice choices because that banana is not doing anything to contribute to my overall health and betterment as it relates to being keto adapted. So I'll skip things like the bananas, I'll skip things like the carrots because there are a lot more natural sugars in there. But I'll have, you know, like some, I mean, what are some other vegetables that we'll have?

Like tomatoes. We do like, do like a Raul's tomato sauce. We just try to choose one with no added sugars to it. But it's, it's kind of up to each individual as far as what you're willing to do or not do. And again, like Robert said, we're a little bit more strict than some of the other people. But again, like I do have some berries every once in a while and for some people that's like a no, absolutely not. Um, but I feel okay with it. Compare or pairing it with a little bit of fat as well. So just some of those are going to be a good option for some people and then not for others. We don't do things like squash and potatoes and things like that. Whereas other people may use that and use it as like a carb up or a carb refeed or whatnot. But we don't really, we don't really play around with that.

What's a carb refeed?

Basically just a bolus of carbohydrates to replenish muscle glycogen. Liver glycogen. But the beautiful thing about a ketogenic diet is once you become truly fat of that your body's ability to replenish muscle glycogen is pretty much just as efficient as someone that's consuming a lot of carbohydrates. You may not super compensate muscle glycogen because you're not getting that bolus of carbohydrates. But this is illustrated in the faster study by Finney and Volek. But if you're fat adapted, your body uses less muscle glycogen because it's more preservatory towards that. And then its ability to replenish that muscle glycogen is also quite efficient. So there's not really any need to have big boluses of carbohydrates throughout your diet once you truly become fat adaptive.

I vaguely remember we had heard Terry Wahls speak, I mean we're talking five, six, seven years ago about that. Some people do really well with keto and some people don't do well with keto. But either way that you should take a break every six months or so. What's your sense of that you and.

Mechanism you don't do that.

They don't do it.

They don't do it. But what. Because I've read some people get depressed if they don't have enough carbs.

So where I think we just. For me, that's the one thing I want to say just for people out there is some people, there's no one diet for everybody. And you have to make sure that you do what's right for you and your body and listen and talk to your physician because I think it sounds like you're doing amazing work. So I love it. And there's no one diet for everybody.

Right? Right.

Okay, yeah, we'll back that up as well. We don't ever tell everyone, oh, yeah, this is the only way to do it or the only, you know, that's why there's so many even little areas in the keto community. There's different avenues that people have taken and decided that that's going to work better for them than maybe something that we're doing. So, yeah, we totally back up that statement.

So sects within keto, different keto sex. Totally. Okay, totally.

But to elaborate on your question, there are definitely a lot of proponents, a lot of people that say that you cannot do a ketogenic diet long term because it's not optimal for hormonal health or you lose some metabolic flexibility, so to speak, if you do not incorporate more carbohydrates when it comes to that from a hormonal standpoint, a lot of people that have adverse hormonal effects after following a ketogenic diet are experiencing that. Not so much because they're following a ketogenic diet per se, but because with the removal of carbohydrates and the satiating nature of a higher fat diet, many people aren't consuming ample calories. So if they're not getting enough fuel coming in, their hormonal shift will likely downregulate and that will have some adverse effects. So oftentimes clients will come to me, they've been chronically undereating for far too long and, and that's gonna be the primary driver for that drop in hormonal health. But if we bring those calories back up, they're taking in more fuel, all from ketogenic sources, but just more fuel in general. Their body's able to, you know, regain that hormonal balance and not really have the same issue. So I would argue it's more an issue with caloric intake and overall energy consumption as opposed to the fact that they're following a ketogenic diet when it comes to hormones. And then with regard to losing metabolic flexibility, some people advocate that, hey, if you're not eating carbohydrates and sugars on a regular basis and asking your body to be able to assimilate that nutrition, your body's gonna lose its ability to do so. But in reality, there may be a, you know, just as you become keto adapted for the first time, there's a little bit of a shift there. Your body has to learn to use ketones and fat for fuel. So there may be a little bit of a, you know, transfer lag there, so to speak. But the same is true when you switch back to burning carbohydrates and glucose. Your body doesn't forget how to use glucose. It may be, you know, 24 hour, 48 hour shift, in which case you, you may not feel optimal, but then your body upregulates those pathways to use carbohydrates and glucose. It's not like it forgets how to do so.

Yeah.

Do you remember that we were in some IV conference and he started to talk about how ketogenic diet has this huge increase in carnitine. But then he said, people who start a ketogenic diet need carnitine. And I went up to him and I said, you said sort of the opposite thing. And he said, well, yes, when you start a ketogenic diet, there's this massive requirement for carnitine. So often people need to supplement. And then once they get to steady state, that ketogenic diet is upregulating carnitine, which helps the mitochondria and improves energy. But in that gap, people often need to supplement right, sort of at the outset. So before the mitochondria catch up. Remember when. I don't remember why, because I went to ask that of him, I was like, I don't understand this, I always need to know why. And he explained that was why.

So, yeah, there's definitely an upregulation in metabolic pathways once you do switch over to keto. It's called like monocarboxylic transporters, MCT transporters. Those all upregulate to help shuttle lactate, pyruvate and ketone bodies. So once that upregulation process occurs, you're able to clear lactate much more efficiently. You have a higher lactate threshold and you're just able to, you know, deliver those nutrients, deliver that energy source to the cells, to the brain much more efficiently. So, yeah, people that switch over to keto, they're probably not going to feel their best self instantaneously, but once they have time to adapt, they feel much better. Typically, which, that adaptation process takes a little bit different length of time for each individual, but if your electrolytes are dialed in, if everything else is dialed in properly, you can usually start experiencing the benefits after about a month or so.

Now just go back slight bit in terms of, you were saying hormone, a lot of people with hormone balance have part of the Reason is not eating enough. So what is eating enough? Like how do you tell if you're ketogenic and you're not hungry? How do you know if you aren't eating enough?

That's also going to be very different for each individual, honestly, based off of their activity levels, based off of their age. So Crystal, for instance, what is your caloric intake right now?

Uh, right now I am also pregnant. Um, so I'm eating about 28 to 3,000 calories a day. Um, when I'm not pregnant, I'm usually eating around 2,500 calories.

Yeah, so I'm consuming about 3,000 to 3,500 with my training load. Um, we get so many clientele that are, we see this in both males and females, but a lot of females especially, they've just been chronically restricting and they're consuming sub 1000 calories for months or years at a time. We never take any of our clientele that low. I mean, when I'm working with a female athlete that's stepping on stage in a week, the lowest I'll take her calories is like 1300 and that's only for a week or two time period. So it's really important to bring those calories back up and fuel the body appropriately. Granted we're doing a lot of physical activities, so our caloric demands are going to be a bit higher. But even with a basal metabolic rate, I mean you should not expect someone to be able to function at an optimal level just throughout their day to day Life at sub 1000 calories.

If I do nothing, my whoop says I burn a thousand calories and that's doing nothing. And so someone who has a higher muscle content is going to need more calories, I mean more protein to sustain that. What are some of the common pitfalls people hit when they're in keto?

Well, a lot of people just, they don't eat enough food because of the satiating nature of the ketogenic diet. Oftentimes there's been a big push lately. It's interesting because I've been in the space so long that we've seen all these trends come and go. So about two years ago the trend was incredibly high dietary fat, very minimal protein because everybody was scared of gluconeogenesis and they assumed that protein would turn into chocolate cake and once it hit their bloodstream, which is not the truth. And then now the exact opposite in the spectrum, protein's been given this halo and you see people just consuming protein in excess at the expense of not enough dietary fat. So really, getting that ratio dialed in is incredibly important because if you're trying to optimize from a ketogenic standpoint, you're taking in far too much protein, not near enough dietary fat. You're not really going to have a great energy level because protein is incredibly important, but it's not a great substrate for energy. Your body can use gluconeogenesis to create energy from that protein and amino acids, but it's not going to be an efficient process. So making sure you're taking an ample dietary fat and not overdoing the protein is also very important.

So where are you guys getting the fat?

Oh, the fat. We're getting that from the fattier cuts of meat that we consume from the animal products, like the red meats, fatty fish. We also, we have a product that we make which is largely based out of cacao butter. So cacao butter is the highest source of stearic acid, which is a very high quality dietary fat. So that's an option for. That's one of our sources of fat. But, like, olive oil, avocado oil, things of that nature.

Okay, cool.

Honey, what happens at birthdays? I mean, so this is your first kid? Is this your first. Okay, what happens at. I mean, maybe we're the only ones where the family member's like, but I made that for you.

Right?

That emotional blackmail of, how could you not eat my pasta dish? Ravioli, cake, whatever. How do you navigate social events, particularly birthdays, weddings, bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, when people are behaving differently and expect to cut loose? What do you tell people? How do you do it yourselves?

Or even alcohol?

Well, right?

Like, go out, drink. Well, you can drink vodka, right? That's. Is that.

I mean, you can have a little bit of alcohol. So, like vodka, you know, whiskey.

You said, be careful what you're mixing it with. And then making sure that you're not, like, ordering a margarita or something like that. You usually just have it with, like, a club soda. Yeah.

So for vodkas, you were great. And then you're like, like, margarita, fifth drink is the problem.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So how do you handle those events?

Yeah, so when we. I first started, I think for me it was a little bit harder, especially when I would go visit my family, and it's been a while since I've seen them, and they have all those dishes that you've eaten your entire life, and then all of a sudden you're not partaking. So the first thing I do is make sure I'm set Up for success. And I will go to the store if someone has to drive me or if I need to go myself or whatever, make sure that I have the food that's going to sustain me, rather than trying to rely on them to provide what's going to work best for me. And then the second thing I think is just telling them that it's important for you and your health. This is important to me and my journey. And I understand that you may have made that special for me or something special for the family or whatever, but. But really it's not serving me and my body, so I'm gonna choose to not have it. And if they have an issue, then it's probably more an issue with them and their connection to the food than it is you and your choices for your body. Um, and I think that that took a little bit of time to, like, navigate that and put those boundaries down. But once the boundaries were down, people didn't mess with it anymore. They just say, okay, Crystal will bring her own whatever. And it's really helpful when you are able to put your foot down and just say, you know, that's not gonna serve me well. So I'm going to choose to bring my own thing or just not have that item.

I would say I always. So I have celiac, and I pretty much don't eat anything unless I can trace it from A to Z. And so I rarely ever eat in people's houses as a result.

But.

But I always say ahead of time, I'm going to bring my own food. So I think it's really important to give people a heads up because I've shown up places and I cooked for you. I'm like, I can't eat any of that. I really can't eat any of that. So thank you. But I have my own food, so I think not surprising people is really important so that they know ahead of time. And then I always bring my husband as emotional backup so that he's like.

My sort of emotional support dog.

I almost said that. I was like, that's so terrible. I can't say that. No, like the.

The.

That he. Sometimes I'll be a little lenient. You know, someone will put something in front of me and I'll be like, oh, maybe. And he's like, no, no, not worth it.

No, not worth it.

Bringing a buddy who can advocate on your behalf is often very helpful because you have no qualms about being the bad guy. You're like, nope, nope, not worth it. Well, because you have to live with Me, when I get exposed, it's terrible.

So.

So, yeah, I mean, I think bringing. So. Setting good boundaries, telling people ahead of time, bringing food as needed. And then something you said, Crystal, that's so poignant is like, you made it sound really casual. You know, I go to the store, I have someone take me. But those moments can be really challenging for people. When you get somewhere and it's all busy and happy and you're trying to fit in, but prioritizing what you need is so critical. And so what you're saying is you have permission and you should do it. You need to, right?

Yeah. If you feel like this is the best choice for you, whatever it may be, maybe taking care of your celiac, maybe being keto, whatever it is, if you truly, in the bottom of your heart, feel like that's the right choice for you, stand behind yourself, have that backbone to say, this is what's going to work best for me, and that is not going to do my body good. So, you know, what other alternative can I make? Or what choices can I do? What kind of choices can I make to make this the best situation for me?

Have you talked about what will happen when your baby turns one and there's that traditional birthday cake and the baby's in it and everyone eats it? Like, what happens then? Have you figured that out yet? We have a counseling session for a couple.

Mary, that's good.

Yeah, we're making. I mean, when we got married, we made all of our own food. We had, like, a keto cheesecake that we made. Like, we had keto cookies that we made.

There's even a bakery. It's about three hours from us, but they make pastries and cakes and cookies and all these things that we can actually have, which is so, so wonderful. And they're popping up all over the place. So for us, we have alternatives. There's a ton of cookbooks, things like that. And for us, we're going to make the best decisions for our child until they're able to make those decisions for themselves. And then at that point, they have.

To make those decisions, and then they'll become a teenager. Just you wait. Yeah.

And at that point, that is their decision. But hopefully we will have not just told them, we don't eat this, we don't eat that, but actually educated them on why we don't or why we do eat certain ways, and they'll be able to make their own decision.

We didn't do Halloween until we had, I think, three kids, and our oldest was, like, 10 because the youngest was like, wait, why aren't we doing that? And I was like, oh, busted. You know, we just didn't do it because we don't eat that candy, so why would we collect it? But then once we collected it, we would say, okay, there's a lot of people like the soldiers and a lot of other people, let's give this away because this isn't food that we're going to eat in our house.

So our kids actually make it fun to just. They make it a challenge how much you can collect, but they don't eat most, 99.9% of it. But it's nice. I actually have a. And Crystal, you can choose to decline, not answer. But breastfeeding.

Can you breastfeed keto?

I'm assuming you can. But have there been a lot of women that I'm assuming? Because if you have a mostly fat based diet, a lot of the hindmilk is fat based. So do kids actually get bigger, faster? Like, I'm just curious.

Yeah, that's a good question. So I do have clients that I coach and I've helped a lot of women transition into keto even as they're breastfeeding, and they do extremely well. And I think that the important part is just making sure that if you're going to make that choice again, speak with your doctor. But also, you know, make it a slow transition. Make sure that you're getting plenty of calories in the first place. You still need lots of protein, um, and then lots of fat as well, as well as keeping up with electrolytes and water and things like that. Um, but I have not seen a, a difference in the size of the child, whether they're gaining more fat or more, you know, muscle or moving faster or moving slower. It's all pretty relatively about the same. Um, and I, I believe, and I'm not really sure, but I believe it's because in your, in your body, your milk will produce what your child needs. It's not just gonna take all of your fat and then just give it to the child. It's gonna break down and give the child exactly what it needs, whether it be carbohydrates, proteins, fats, the nutrients that goes through your breast milk and all of that.

Before you got pregnant, you also did bodybuilding or in competitions. I'm assuming they don't have a genre for pregnant women, right?

Not yet.

Not quite.

Not yet is a great response. Right. So what's the difference for women who are listening, who are. If you're on the Bodybuilding track, you already know what you need. But if you're sort of trying to figure out well how do I put be more muscular and burn fat versus.

Let'S go back and what is the advantage of ketogenic diet? Like we haven't even talked about that. Why would people want this? You talked about bodybuilding, but that's majority of people aren't interested in that. So what are the other advantages? And then we can get into the woman but like can we talk about that.

Yeah. As it relates to bodybuilding or just.

What are the advantages to achieve? It doesn't relate to bodybuilding.

Okay, okay. Yeah, totally. So one of the big ones honestly is just that you get more stable blood sugar and blood glucose being blood sugar obviously. So you're not going to have the crazy swings, the highs and lows from a blood sugar standpoint.

So what does that pause for a second. I'm going to make it dummy it down for me because I don't know what blood sugar does to me. What would I feel in my body, what are the highs and lows that I would actually feel? What are the benefits I would actually get?

Yeah. So most people, like for instance, let's think about Thanksgiving dinner. People have go to Thanksgiving dinner, they eat all the pies, the pecan pies, pumpkin pies, all the good desserts. Then they go into a food comatose. Afterwards they have a massive spike in blood sugar. Then they're pretty much paralyzed for the next few hours because of that drop. Huge rise in blood sugar and then that corresponding drop as their insulin secretion picks up. So we basically avoid all of that. Like we don't fixate on food, we don't think about food all day long. We eat twice, sometimes just once a day. So my productivity is just on a whole other level because I'm not constantly hungry, I'm not craving, I'm not ever feeling those sensations. So it's much more even keel energy. There's not these crazy spikes and then dips. So just from a practical standpoint, I think that's one of the biggest appeals to it. And then you start looking long term from a longevity standpoint and having too high of a blood sugar over time, the glycation that that brings to the body, that's very inflammatory, it's not really great from a longevity standpoint. So all of my blood markers have improved since adopting a ketogenic diet. My HbA1C is, I don't know, in the tank. I mean I don't have any inflammatory markers as a result of higher glycation levels. So that can all be mitigated by not having that much sugar in the diet to begin with. So those are some high level points that people typically look at when they're adopting a ketogenic diet.

Yeah, I want to emphasize that because productivity, I think not only are you more productive, I think your brain gets clearer too when you get rid of the sugars, which makes you think clearer and actually make that thing up there work.

Yeah, there's no hangry. We don't ever get hangry either. People get hungry and they get angry and then your productivity is obviously non existent because you're just fixating on food. So we don't really have that either.

Well, I have a friend that just went ketogenic probably two, three months ago. And one thing that he remarked, which was really cool, was before ketogenic, he was constantly thinking of his next meal. Like so much of his mind was he ate something and then he had a meal and the next thing he was thinking about is where he's going to get his next meal. Like it was occupying so much of his time. And when he went ketogenic, that goes away like, or at least that was his experience. And it sounds like it's similar in terms of not having to think about, you're not hungry, so we're not as hungry. So you eat when you need to eat, but you're not constantly searching for food.

Right. I mean, if you think about it from just a physiological standpoint, if you're eating carbohydrates and glucose, your body can only store so much of that at a given point. So you eat a meal, your blood sugar rises, your body secretes insulin, your blood sugar drops. As your blood sugar drops, you become hungry. I mean, you have this increase in hunger, whereas once you become ketogenic and fat adapted, you don't have these swings in blood sugar. So you have that working in your favor. Plus, when you, when you do deplete the little bit of blood sugar that you do have, you don't automatically feel hungry. Your body's able to tap into your stored fat for energy very efficiently. Whereas even if you have quite a bit of body fat that you're carrying, if you're not fat adapted and your body doesn't know to naturally go to that for a fuel supply, you're going to feel hungry and you're going to go for your next carbohydrate meal. Whereas once you become ketogenic, your body is able to use the, the dietary Fat and proteins that you consume. And then after several hours of that meal where you would normally be hungry again, your body just simply transitions to burning stored fat. So there's not really any break in that energy cycle and thus you don't have those cravings, which is why people can fast for extended periods of time once they become fat adapted without feeling totally distraught as a result of not eating food very frequently.

Did you talk about it and I missed it? How long does it take to become fat adapted?

You can start producing ketones after 24 hours. So you're technically producing ketones in ketosis once your blood ketones register 0.5 millimolar, but you're not really fat adapted at that point. Your body's not efficiently using fat at that point. For that to really take place, I recommend giving it at least a good month. And then it just continues to get better the longer you do it.

So it's additive over time.

Exactly.

And it sounds like people will burn fat as the longer they're on keto, the more they're going to utilize or the more consistently they're going to utilize the fat on their bodies instead of looking for carbohydrates. So do you notice that people get lean over time? Is that a side effect of keto?

Yeah, that's typical.

I mean, you definitely are going to have to equate for calories still. I mean, you can definitely get fat on a ketogenic diet if you're over consuming. But as you become more fat adapted and become more ketogenic, your body becomes incredibly efficient at using fat, both dietary fat and stored fat. So as long as you're moderating your intake correctly based off of your goals from a compositional standpoint and activity levels, obviously, then your body can become incredibly efficient at tapping into that stored fat as that primary fuel source and composition improves.

What role do you think toxins are going to play in people who have success with. I had to go there, right, because we talked about toxins together. But if you think about it, your fat storing your fat, your bones, your organs, they're storing your toxins.

So.

So now if you're utilizing your fat for energy and you're releasing that, you're going to be releasing toxins into the bloodstream. So for me that's something that would be a sweet spot. I'm not sure if you've seen people who get really sick with keto because they're having such an influx of toxic, stored toxic chemicals and substances into their bloodstream when they start. Do you Ever see that? Because that's something, of course I'm thinking about.

About.

Yeah, I'm sure that exists. I haven't seen a whole lot of that. You know, I hear about people sweating out toxins when they're like in the sauna and things of that nature. I had a firefighter on my podcast who actually worked during 911 and they had, he just had a whole bunch of toxins in his system and he would start doing the sauna and he was like sweating blue after, after doing it, which was the strangest thing. I never heard of that before, but yeah, I mean, I would assume that if you're storing a lot of toxins in your fat tissue and you start tapping into that fat tissue and burning that, it's going to release. You're probably going to release that even if you're not following a ketogenic diet and you start losing that fat, that adipose tissue. But I would imagine, you know, if you're doing a ketogenic diet and weight loss as you go and you're burning into that fat, then yeah, you're definitely going to be releasing those toxins.

So a plug for detox as you go.

Well to that though, is there any supplements that you recommend in general or anything? Any other supplementary.

Supplementary.

Thank you. Well, just. Is there any supplements?

Sorry, I'm totally wrong.

No.

Is there any supplements you recommend? Is there anything specific that you need on a ketogenic diet? I mean everybody needs vitamin D, right? So that, that because we don't work, don't get outside as much as our ancestors did. But is there anything specific for the ketogenic diet that you don't get that you need to supplement?

Honestly, our supplementation is pretty minuscule. You're on some prenatal supplements, but from a ketogenic standpoint, the only thing I'd really recommend is just proper electrolyte intake. So a lot of people, 1 gram of glycogen holds about 3 grams of water. When people first adopt a ketogenic diet, they often about talk times, flush out a bunch of water weight, they lose that initial 5 to 10 pounds. And then that's probably why keto is so popular for a lot of these people that don't want to do short term weight loss, but when they do that, they flush out that water. The kidney's also flushing out all their electrolytes. So it's really beneficial to increase supplemental sodium and potassium and magnesium once first adopting a ketogenic diet and then also probably just good habit to get into continuously after that, so probably increasing your sodium and potassium intake. But other than that, from a supplemental standpoint, I mean, we do vitamin D, creatine, but that's pretty much it.

Yeah. We try to get most of our minerals and vitamins and all that through our food. So sometimes introducing some organ meats or things like that, it's a good choice. And I'm not an organ meat person, but I will eat some, like, liverwurst or even some desiccated, like, pills, capsules, and that is really helpful. And then I think for anyone on any diet, being able to test those, get those tested, and make sure that you're absorbing correctly with the food that you're ingesting, no matter what diet you're on, is a big benefit as well.

I always thought it was counterintuitive that organ meat was so good for you, because, I mean, think about it. Your liver's cleaning out your toxins, so let's eat. That organization makes no sense to me, but it's so good for you. And in fact. So we have four kids, and I never ate my placenta because I always pictured eating a placenta, and I just could. I couldn't even get my head around it. I was like, nope, nope.

Let's make sure people understand what that is in traditional Chinese medicine either.

And then she told me about it. So my eyes have been open to that as being even a viable option.

Hashtag horrified. Right.

In the traditional Chinese medicine, what used to happen, and now in our culture, a little bit happens, is they used to dry out, clean the placenta, dry it out. And then the woman would eat that, Take. Take that in pills, so that all the hormones and everything, nutrients that were lost, you would come back, and it decreased postpartum depression, things like that. So now you can.

Yeah, so I never. Keto, like our first placenta was like the tiniest, rattiest thing because I starved the poor kid. I had celiac and didn't know it. And I mean, she just was.

It was the worst placenta I've ever seen.

Yeah, I know. We were in the delivery, and I was like, oh, man. She was 33 weeks. She was growth restricted. It was not good. And then, I don't know, we went just. I don't know. We never got around to eating the placenta.

So we.

We.

I guess the royal we.

I think it's something to think about, especially on keto, because you get all the minerals and nutrients.

But to go back to the organ meat, which is where we started, this.

Coach I got from Placent.

And it works. It works. It's all kind of in tandem there still.

It is an organ, so.

Right.

But organ beets originally came from like even like I just found this out only like a year ago or something that like in nature the first thing that predators eat is the organ meats. Like lines will preferentially eat the organ meats and leave the muscle tissue, they leave the entrails because they are so nutritious.

Our cats love organ meats. I know that.

That's great.

Yeah.

I mean it really is mind boggling. Like if you were to compare, you know, kale or broccoli, you know, one of these hailed superfoods to the micronutrient profile of like beef liver. I mean it's, it's pale. Is a comparison like beef liver far and away outdoes everything else. Grass fed until grass federated. Yeah. I didn't realize that until here recently, but yeah, it's pretty impressive what you can get from good quality organ meats.

Yeah, it's amazing.

And I do want to put a plug, which we haven't talked about, which is meat 100%. I get the importance. And it really should be grass fed, grass finished, organic, all that stuff because then you can accumulate the toxins. If you're not doing that.

Wait, think about the cows that eat the grass that's been sprayed with glyphosate and then they have it and then you eat that. So. Yeah, 100%.

And then the other part is you were talking about fatty fish. Mackerel's amazing. Ahi tuna, which is the 600 pounds, 2,000 pound tuna. Not so much.

Well, because the tuna. Because the mercury.

Yeah, the predatory fish.

Don't say herring.

Oh, mackerel, herring. Yummy.

Oh, he's got this dish that his family makes. It's like in.

It's not family.

What's it in? It's herring. It's in vinegar and which I. Yeah.

Oh, the pickled herring. Yeah, yeah.

Is that.

I like this stuff. We actually had a. We made keto pizza last night. Crystal made keto pizza last night and we put anchovies in our pizza, which I love anchovies, you know, so that's all good stuff.

Yeah. No, all the small fatty fish are really good for you.

You know, I love anchovies, but what they do to herring. Can't do it.

Anyways. All right, what else should we ask you guys that we might have not thought to ask? While we're off on our own tangents.

Now, we're, I mean, we're an open book. Anything that y' all want to dive into.

Actually, speaking of books, you have a new book. How is it doing? I bought your book.

Good, good. Oh, you did?

Of course I did.

You didn't have to do that.

Well, it was in the promo period. I bought it.

Well, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know. So what's the name? Come on, give us some.

It's called Ketogenic Bodybuilding, A Natural Athlete's Guide to Competitive Savagery. So basically, it's all I've learned over the past seven years as ketogenic bodybuilder, past 14 years as a bodybuilder, and really how to optimize composition from a hormonal standpoint, from a health standpoint, from a longevity standpoint, while leveraging the ketogenic diet for bodybuilding. But, I mean, the principles that I use in that book are the exact same principles I use for my clients that are also not bodybuilders. So there's a lot of crossover there. I mean, it works. We're all human, so it works whether you're going to compete and step on stage or not.

Yeah, a lot of people are looking. A lot of people start keto, not as much for the lifestyle like Robert and I do, but they will start it for weight loss, which is it. It can work for many, many, many people, but they'll start it as a fat loss thing, and sometimes it turns into their whole lifestyle. But he'll use, again, like, the same principles he used in that book for, you know, his clients that are not bodybuilding. And even if you read some of the reviews, they're like, I am not a bodybuilder. But this was helpful because there's just a ton of information. I mean, it's a huge book, but it's. It's. It's. Yeah, it's awesome.

It's amazing. It's been truly a pleasure to have you guys on the podcast. Yes, I've learned a lot, so thank you.

Where can people find you?

Thank you for the opportunity. Ladies first.

So all of my stuff is going to be at Lady Savage. So Instagram is the Lady Savage. My web is ladiesavage.com and then I also have a Facebook group that you can be a part of as well. Only if you're a female, damn it.

Mine's all things keto savage. So ketosavage.com, keto savage on social. Yeah, Keto Savage.

For me, we'll put everything in the notes so people can find you both.

Thank you. It's been awesome.

So thanks for joining us for another episode of the Five Journeys podcast live like youe Matter. Our guests today were Crystal and Robert Sykes. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Thanks for having us.