In this episode Courtney and I discuss living with type one diabetes. She is extremely active and involved in bodybuilding, which has made managing her type one diabetes more difficult. However, through a keto diet she is more easily able to manage her type one diabetes and keep her A1C down. Keto and diabetes just go together! More and more evidence is coming out that using a low carb diet to manage diabetes works amazingly well and quickly.

She gives some of her best advice for starting keto whether you have diabetes or not.

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Cheryl McColgan So welcome everyone. I’m joined here today by Courtney. Courtney is a wonderful lady that I have been following for a while on Instagram, and she utilizes the keto lifestyle to help manage her type one diabetes. Welcome Courtney.

Courtney Lillich Hi. Thank you.

Cheryl McColgan Thanks for joining me. If you can maybe just start out by… obviously, if people are listening to this on the audio version, I read your bio, and so they already know a little bit about you. But can you say in your own words a little bit about your background and how you came to start eating in this way.

Courtney Lillich So, I’m type one diabetic and I’ve been insulin dependent since I was three, now I’m 38, so it’s been quite a while. And because I’m very active, I do bodybuilding and boxing, all kinds of workouts and exercises, that sounds great like, “Oh, you’re gonna be so healthy.” But it’s hard to manage the blood sugar levels, they go up and down, up and down, and so my doctor, my endocrinologist has always had a hard time with me in particular, my A1C levels haven’t been great. And then I also have a coach for my body building competitions. And I did competitions probably for four or five years, and then my body just was like, “Okay, I’m done, I’m done with it for a while.” So I still… I kept… I still have the coach, and my body just wasn’t responding to the usual diet and workout regimen that typical bodybuilders use, like the carbs, and the diabetes I think it’s part of that too. So he just said, probably in 2019, I hadn’t even really heard of keto before. I’ve heard of it, but in my head it was like, “Oh, all you do is eat almonds and butter and fat, just bad stuff like that.” And I was like, “I would never wanna do that ever.”

Courtney Lillich But then he mentioned it and he said, “Hey, you’ve heard of keto, let’s… We should just try it out.” And I read more about it, and it’s not a… Like I said, it’s not a typical bodybuilders diet, so I said, “Why not, let’s just try it, and then I realized it was good for blood sugars and I just… It was really hard to switch over, but I’m super focused and dedicated if I’m trying to do something. I was on it for a year and it helped my blood sugar levels, and I was able to lose some weight on it, and yeah, that’s how I fell into it.

Cheryl McColgan That’s awesome. Well, so just to give some people background. Maybe some people listening to this aren’t as… I think everybody at this point is pretty familiar with Type two diabetes, which is an adult-onset process, usually brought on by poor metabolic health and sometimes as a result of years of abusing your body with a lot of processed foods and a lot of sugar. But type one is quite different because it’s really considered an autoimmune disease, correct? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl McColgan So at some point your body basically had attacked your pancreas and your body is no longer able to make any insulin at all, so is that how you would characterize the difference? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, when I tell people, ’cause people that aren’t familiar with the two different types, basically, but you look so healthy, you don’t look like you’re diabetic. But that’s the problem is it’s… You could be super healthy, but if it’s an autoimmune disease, it’s still attacking the pancreas and no matter what, you’re never gonna start having that insulin ever again. So, unless there’s some cure which of course I’m always hoping for, it’s pretty much… I don’t know anything else ’cause I’ve had it for so long. So I have to have… I had an insulin pump and also a continuous glucose monitor, which is a recent development in the past few years. But I also have to have the insulin attached to me, I can’t make any whatsoever.

Cheryl McColgan Because this is also a new idea to some people, I’ve done some reading of the research and seeing as you have a background, you have a doctorate degree in… Was it… Remind me again. It’s physical therapy, right? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, I have a doctorate in physical therapy, and then my undergrad is in athletic training, and then I got a certification in strength and conditioning.

Cheryl McColgan So obviously you’ve had a lot of education in how the body works, how physiology works, right? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl McColgan And yet for some reason, it wasn’t until the last couple year or two that you heard about possibly using a diet like keto to manage your blood sugar. I’d be really interested to hear what your experiences about diabetes and keto as you transitioned to keto and how managing your blood sugar has changed since you changed your diet.

Courtney Lillich Well, the level… Again, I’m not… My A1C still is not perfect ’cause I still work out a ton and we’re… It’s always a process for me, but I noticed with the keto, when I first first started it, the first week, my blood sugar levels were perfect and they didn’t go up and down and up and down, and it’s just ’cause you basically take those carbs out. ‘Cause when you have the carbs, it’s like the body didn’t have the insulin, and things kind of go all over the place. But my A1C level did go down initially, and then my body just wasn’t responding after… I was on keto for a year. So my coach said, “Well, let’s go off it for a while, do the carbs,” and then I noticed everything was spiking again the second I stopped keto. I went off of keto probably for four, five months, the beginning of 2020, and I said, “Hey, I wanna go back on keto, I wanna see if maybe I just needed to be off it for a little bit,” and so I’ve been back on it for eight weeks now, and I lost five pounds and then my A1C level went down.

Cheryl McColgan And also, just in case, I think probably people that are listening to this are pretty familiar with A1C, but that’s actually your average blood sugars over the last three months, right? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, yeah.

Cheryl McColgan And so, what would be typical in trying to manage your diabetes before? What was your A1C before you really started to get a good handle on it? 

Courtney Lillich Well, it’s very high still, but just going… I had spiked up when I went back on carbs. It was at 8.9, which is very, very high. But then after only seven weeks on keto, it went down to eight-ish. So that’s a big… That’s a big jump down decrease just in seven weeks. And my doctor wants me around 7.0, but non-diabetics are probably five or 6.0 if we look at the reference.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah. Actually, I think I have to look at the reference range and maybe I can put that in text here on the video. But I think mine has been in the fours since I’ve been on keto, but I’m not type one diabetic though, so that’s a little easier for my body to accomplish. But I think you actually start getting out of the reference range, maybe in the high fives. I know six is definitely diabetic or pre-diabetic. For most people they want some range between maybe four and a half and five and a half, something like that. Because you don’t have a pancreas, obviously your body has more of a challenge in maintaining that level.

Courtney Lillich Yeah, then it’s… All my other lab work, blood work, everything else is perfect, but it’s always that A1C that… ‘Cause I’m diabetic. So I’m always trying to control it, but still do the workouts and everything I love to do. Hopefully, it keeps going lower and lower if I stick to the keto.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah. And it’ll be interesting to follow up with you ’cause I think before… How long had you been on it the first time that you tried it? Because you initially tried it more for the body building than for blood sugar management, right? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah. And then, I just happened to see how good it did go on the keto and nothing against my endocrinologist, but no one had ever mentioned keto to me for diabetes management. And… But it was my coach that actually was the one that brought it up and I’m like, “Oh my God, this is helping both.” So that’s how I… That’s why I liked it. It was like two things in one.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah, no, that’s pretty amazing. And just for other background information on managing diabetes, so you have… I think you told me you have an insulin pump, correct? That’s basically it installed in your body at this point. And then, use the continuous glucose monitor. For those that aren’t familiar with the continuous glucose monitor. It’s something that goes… I’ve had one too. You probably saw that just for fun or for purposes of what I write about is I tried one. It goes on the back of your arm. It actually has a little teeny and then it doesn’t hurt to put it on, but it has a teeny little pin that goes into your interstitial fluid, which is actually a proxy for your blood sugar. It’s not a direct measure, but it basically shows trends throughout the day. So maybe can… Did you have the glucose monitor prior to trying keto or no? 

Courtney Lillich Prior to keto? I had just started it. Yeah, I had just started it, so I haven’t had the the glucose monitor the CGM. I haven’t had it that long. But this is the insulin pump.

Cheryl McColgan Oh, nice.

Courtney Lillich This is what gives me my insulin. I’ve had this for a long time.

Cheryl McColgan And so does it… Does that monitor your blood sugar as well? Or you just release that when you need it? 

Courtney Lillich Well. The glucose monitor talks to the insulin pump and now… Which is what makes it so great. It talks to the insulin pump and it adjusts the insulin levels for me. And that’s something else that’s been helping with my blood sugar levels along with the keto.

Cheryl McColgan So that’s a more automatic thing somewhat now that it used to be having it attached to the continuous. And so, what did you notice if anything with the continuous glucose monitor, what were some things that you were surprised about? And I think most people get freaked out when they test their blood sugars, because they don’t know that exercise increases your blood sugar level, right? Which is maybe one of the challenges that you have with your A1C, because you do work out a lot. So maybe you could talk about that relationship and what you noticed on the monitor.

Courtney Lillich Well, what I was noticing was that I would do cardio and I… You can see the graph of your blood sugar and it would start dropping. And I didn’t even noticed before I had the glucose monitor, but then I noticed when I started lifting weights, cause I’ll do cardio, then I’ll go lift some weights. When you lift weights it makes the body release the glycogen out of the muscle and which starts increasing your levels. So it really helps me to be like, “Okay, my blood sugar is dropping.” Maybe I should stop the cardio right now and switch over to lifting the weight so that I don’t have to eat something instead and make things… Yeah. So I’m trying to do it without eating and spiking any more insulin.

Cheryl McColgan No, that’s very interesting application of that. Probably some most people wouldn’t think about? 

Courtney Lillich [laughter] No.

Cheryl McColgan And you also did some when you’re saying bodybuilding I also notice you did bikini contest at one time, is that something you’re still doing? 

Courtney Lillich Yeah, it was a bikini division that I did. Gosh, I did a ton of different shows and it requires a lot of working out and diet and you count your macros and it’s very specific and I fell in love with it. So I did all of those shows, but the last one I did was in 2018 and I said, “Well.” I did them for years in a row. So I said, “I gotta take a break.” So I took a break, but I’m still doing all the crazy workouts and the dieting too. I’m hoping at some point I might be able to go back, but for now it’s just the workout.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah. And how was that when you would do the shows with having the insulin pump? And did you notice that the stress of doing a show had any impact on how you were feeling in blood sugars and that sort of thing? 

Courtney Lillich Oh yeah. Especially on the show day, ’cause you’re just really stressed out and… So my blood… I didn’t have the CGM at that time, so I would just take my blood sugar level with a finger prick, and it would be in the 300s when I’m about to walk out of the stage, and it’s just… It was crazy ’cause you didn’t want it to be super low, ’cause if you get low, then you get foggy and dizzy and you can’t… You might fall on stage, and you don’t wanna do that. So you’re eating candy on the side just to make sure you’re fine, and it would… Yeah, it’s very stressful. And then, once you’re done with the show, of course, all the body builders, the first thing they wanna do is eat donuts and go get a hamburger, or my thing was nachos. So I would try to take a ton of insulin after my show and try to counteract everything that my body hadn’t been eating for months, and it just… The roller coaster was… With the blood sugar levels was… It was difficult.

Cheryl McColgan Well, yeah. More challenging for you than somebody that is not diabetic, obviously. But I think it’s something that’s under-appreciated by people, is the effect of stress and sleep on blood sugar management. And I think that becomes more apparent when you wear a continuous glucose monitor, whether you’re diabetic or not because you can see how individual situations affect your blood sugar outside of food. Diabetes and keto go so well together for blood sugar managment.

Courtney Lillich Well, and then have you heard of the dawn phenomenon…

Cheryl McColgan Yes.

Courtney Lillich When you first wake up? Yeah. So I didn’t even… I was just like, I don’t pay… I wasn’t paying attention to that. But because of the CGM, it was kinda showing me when I first wake up, it would go up, and I was like, “Oh wow, that… ” I just didn’t realize this stuff was happening. And I work out really early in the morning, so that kinda helped it would go up a little bit. And then I do my cardio, and that will kinda lower it a little bit. It’s just a bunch of trial and error with what little things that could affect your blood sugar level that people don’t realize, because… Especially if they’re not diabetic, ’cause their body just kinda reacts to it. And it’s like I have to every… I think there’s… I read something, that diabetics have to make 300 decision a day or something based on what they’re eating, how much they’re eating, the insulin they have to take, what’s affecting it.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah. And I will say, I think especially… At least for type tw0 diabetics, they still make insulin, so it’s a little different. So once they start really even-ing out their blood sugar throughout the day, that takes away a lot of decision-making, at least in the type two’s case, because you no longer… When you don’t have those spikes, you don’t have those hungry episodes anymore, you don’t have that funny woozy feeling like you’re getting hypoglycemia, and it’s just everything is very easy, and it makes decisions a lot...

Danielle realized she had sugar addiction through an awakening she had several years ago when she went through a detox in the middle of the Columbian jungle. As she withdrew from sugar, she experienced a period of feeling very ill. She continued on without sugar and after a few weeks realized she no longer had cravings like she did before and sugar no longer had the same hold over her. Her path to breaking sugar addiction had begun.

Through this experience, she became passionate about nourishing her body properly as a means to avoid the chronic diseases so prevalent in her family. She spent the next two years figuring out her version of a sugar-free, whole foods diet. She now works as a nutrition coach to help others break their sugar addiction and find greater health.

Her personal motivation never included weight loss but rather finding health and preventing future disease through a better diet.

One of the great tools she discusses is asking yourself “why” at least three more times when you find your surface-level reason for wanting to lose weight or change your diet. This process allows people to get closer to the root of their food addiction. Breaking sugar addiction may require asking these why questions repeatedly over time.

You’ll have to listen to the show to hear more about this process, but it’s a simple and effective too to start identifying bad habits in relation to sugar and food so that you can create new, healthier habits.

Did you enjoy today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today!

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Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

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Website: https://danielledaem.com

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Cheryl McColgan Hey everyone. So I am joined here today by Dani. And she is one of the producers of the keto… Well, the Quit Sugar Summit. We have so many great free education right now, it’s pretty awesome, but maybe you can tell us Dani, how you got involved with the sugar-free life, and how you came to that, and then we’ll go from there.

Danielle Daem Yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is fantastic. I’m so excited to be a part of this in the beginning of this podcast.

Cheryl McColgan Yes. It’s very fun.

Danielle Daem I feel so honored. And I’m grateful that we connected… Yeah, with my work with the Quit Sugar Summit. My journey with sugar… I’ll call it my, journey and relationship with sugar, it’s been underlying my whole life, for all of us. It starts at childhood, it wasn’t for me until about five years ago when I was on trip in South America with my husband that I really realized the addiction that I had to sugar, that it was really… Had it’s talons in me, and this control over me. And I really started just having some real eye-opening moments, and I feel so blessed and grateful that I didn’t go through any crazy health traumas or issues like most people do in order to wake up and realize, Hey, it’s time to change the way I’m eating. For me, it was more of a combination of just this trip and actually went through an accidental sugar detox in the middle of the Colombian jungle of all places.

[laughter]

Cheryl McColgan Wow! 

Danielle Daem Great place to do it but I don’t recommend anybody doing it there…actually, it was a wonderful place to do it. We were just living off the land and not eating any of the junk that we’d eating the whole rest of our trip, and I’d been eating my life. And my body… I went through withdrawals. It was sugar addiction but at the time I had no idea what was going on. I thought I was sick. Why am I tired all the time? Why does my head hurts? Why am I hungry at weird hours? My body was doing all sorts of weird things, and it’s a couple of weeks later that we came back home to… I’m in Canada. And I really noticed that my cravings were gone or that sugar didn’t have this pull on me anymore like it used to. And that was really eye-opening for me, and really what started my whole investigative journey and really my deep passion and learning how to nourish myself and what that meant, because I always thought I was “healthy”. I always thought I was doing the right thing and I’d eat the quinoa salad, covered in sugary salad dressing, with cranberries in it, and all the fruit and sugar stuff too, right? So at that point, I also took a hard look at my family and my genetic future, if that was gonna be something that… If I kept eating the way that I was eating and kept being addicted to sugar like my whole family was, especially on my mom’s side. I was on a quick path to being riddled with all the chronic diseases that are in my genetic history… That are in family’s genetics.

Danielle Daem And I could see my mom and everyone in the family is sick with one of these chronic diseases and passing away from chronic diseases. And I just realized, that’s not the future I want. I wanna be 90 years old and going on multi-day hikes. I am a big, avid hiker and backpacker, and I wanna be traveling the world, and all these things really started clicking for me, and I started realizing that sugar had this pull on me and was really dictating my future and the life that I was gonna have when I was older. So I started just embarking on my own investigative journey, I started studying holistic nutrition and really just for my own knowledge, and then tapping in and realizing I wanted to help other people with this, so I started working as a nutritional coach. This is five years ago now, while still in the trenches in my journey with sugar and through, I kinda say it’s about a two year timeframe, I finally got to a place where I felt like I was in the driver seat again with food and with sugar because I had healed that relationship with it. So this is important to say for everyone listening to… I am not 100% sugar-free. I choose freedom and I enjoy having a glass of wine, I enjoy… Choosing to have a brownie if I want one. And really it’s on my terms, and not everyday and not in everything that I am eating, right? 

Cheryl McColgan Right.

Danielle Daem Kind of that moderation and that freedom that I’ve found for myself with… On my journey and with the inner work and the systems that I’ve seen work for my clients over the last couple of years. So that’s the cliff notes notes version. Obviously, there is a lot more to that story. But I hope it give everybody a little idea of my background.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah, no, I think it’s great to know where you are coming from. My next question would be, when you came back from Columbia and you’d had this revelation and you’d gone through this big detox, was it… Because I think there’s a few things in what you said right there, and then I had this other interview with it… Most of the people I’m talking to have been on this journey for a while. It’s not people that have only been doing it just to lose 10 pounds or maybe for six months even… Everybody that I’m talking to… Myself, I’m going on five years now on low carb and keto, four years fully keto, and then the other person I talked to was like 15 years, and here you are five years in as well. So I think there’s some differences for people just starting versus where we are now. And I think the beauty of where we are now is, we have healed our body to a great degree, we’ve healed our relationship with food to a great degree, and so we do have a little bit more freedom to enjoy some things that people that are battling disease, or just starting, or have severe obesity, may not have that same freedom, yet.

Cheryl McColgan That’s my hope for everybody, is to kind of get to a place of food freedom, whether that means occasionally having some of those things that you mentioned, or food freedom for them means that they are just a total abstainer because they know themselves, and they know if they eat that one cookie, or one brownie as you mentioned, they’re gonna go over the edge. So I think there’s a lot of knowing yourself in all that. There is a question in here. [laughter] So I guess my question is that, when you got back from Columbia, what was the process of breaking sugar addiction like? When you had that realization and you knew that you were gonna commit to your health in this way, and you really looked at your family and saw these problems, how did that first year, go for you? Were you more strict? Did you struggle? Did you go on and off… Just maybe some more color around how that went for you? 

Danielle Daem Yeah, amazing, thank you for asking me to pull that out and it’s funny, ’cause I’m trying to think back. I don’t remember all the details, but I do wanna shadow exactly what you just said, and my belief wholeheartedly is that we all need to figure out what works for us. And really being willing to go down that journey and really tuning into what works for me isn’t gonna work for someone else and finding that uniqueness. So, when I think back to that first year, I’m still grateful my husband was on board as well, he noticed wow, like, I don’t wanna be addicted to sugar anymore. And what’s this gonna do if we take it out of our diet? So we actually at the same time, came home and decided to go vegetarian at that point, so we just went whole food, vegetarian, no to minimal sugar. And it was a roller coaster. This is why I feel like it was a good two years of rollercoastering working on breaking sugar addiction before I felt like I had control, like I was in the driver’s seat again, it’s because I was all alone. All these amazing resources existed back then. But for some reason, I didn’t think to hit Google, right? [laughter]

Danielle Daem I didn’t even think about like, is other people out there struggling with it? We were the only ones in our family which I think is one of the biggest difficulties when it comes to sugar addiction is most people don’t get it, and they think you’re the crazy one in the family. So I’m okay being that crazy one. So that didn’t hold me back. But it was that first year was tough. I remember feeling really lost, not only going through withdrawals, but feeling really lost that my clutch wasn’t there anymore.

Danielle Daem And oftentimes, going back to the clutch, like I said, I was on and off many many times before I finally figured out like I did the deeper work for myself, in terms of getting back in the driver’s seat of sugar, so that first year was a mess. We were, we go a week without sugar, then we have a week with sugar, and then a week without. And I remember, one of the most difficult parts to me was learning how to cook a whole new way. And I think this really resonates with a lot of people, whether you’re going keto, or you’re just wanting to get off sugar or whatever, it’s when we’re so used to our plate our meals being a certain way, we’ve cooked a certain thing our whole lives, or our mom’s always cooked this, it can be a bit of a bumpy journey to learn how to create new meals, or to create flavor with real food if you’ve only ever eaten, fast food your whole life. So, I had to relearn like now that there’s not meat on my plate. This was a big one and sugar and all the bread that I was eating before, right and the white pasta. What else is gonna be on my plate? What other flavors exist? And in the beginning, it was like, well, there’s gonna be nothing for me to eat. But then I just started looking at different places and looking obviously for recipes online, and a whole new world of food opened up to me, a whole new spices, new flavors, new ways of combining and creating meals and I actually enjoyed that process. Finding new food flavors is an important part of breaking sugar addiction.

Danielle Daem Once I got over the hump of being overwhelmed with what I’m I gonna eat now? There’s no bread and meat on my plate. I did both at the same time. So yeah, it was an interesting journey for sure. But, for anyone who’s maybe in that spot, just know that it’s not about being perfect. I think just the more we stay open and loving and kind with ourselves and understanding that we’re, it is a journey, it’s not something you need to be perfect at. I definitely wasn’t and I still am not, I’m still learning things about myself and food and certain things come up. And I’m like, That’s interesting. I didn’t know that was a trigger. Fantastic, good to know. That’s life. We’re not, it’s not about being perfect. And every time I “failed” or slipped up, or had a week with sugar or binged on sugar. I chose to learn from that and understand, oh, it’s because this happened, or oh, okay, sadness is still a trigger for me, like what are some things that I still need to deepen into and can continue working on. So just coming at it from that lens, I think was really supportive for me. And obviously, it was… I’m very lucky. My husband was on board too, which is was helpful. I know, a lot of people don’t have that. But yeah, so the first year was an interesting one, for sure. Thanks for asking me to go back there, I don’t remember it all.

Cheryl McColgan And did you find? So for me personally, I find that having my why for doing this? I had some previous health problems myself, and then there’s a lot of cancer in my family and some of the same things that you mentioned. For me personally, having my why, a strong why and related to health, not my weight, has really been something that allows me to make better decisions every day about what I’m putting in my mouth, or what I decided to consume, whether it is food or whether it’s content, or whether it’s other things that affect your mindset and the way that you think. I would imagine that applies to breaking sugar addiction as well. So for you and when you’re working with people, do you find that finding a strong why really helps drive your behavior after that? 

Danielle Daem Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you mentioned that. I mean, that was a big piece for me in really tuning in to not only wanting to feel better, ’cause weight loss wasn’t my goal at that point. I’ve always been relatively tall and within 10 or so pounds relatively skinny, and this sort of thing. So, that wasn’t my motivator for breaking sugar addiction. But really understanding and tapping into the deeper version of my why and this is a big thing that I do with clients is oftentimes we’ll connect with a why or motivation on like a surface level. But until we, really tap into the deep, like emotional why, it can become hard to stick with something right? So really getting clear on that is absolutely important and that was a big part of my journey for sure. And continuing to dive deep into what kind of life do I wanna live, and why, like, what is sugar gonna rob me of if I don’t change, and for me it was gonna be cancer, diabetes and obesity and heart disease and Alzheimer’s and all of it. And I wasn’t gonna be able to live the life that I wanted to. So that was no doubt a motivator for me and very helpful on days when it gets tough, right for anyone who’s listening and just getting started.

Cheryl McColgan Yeah, I agree. And I think when you work with...

In this episode, we’ll talk about the temptation to eat in a different way during the holidays. Whether you decide to eat foods you normally do or not during the holiday season, it’s important to go into the holidays with a plan that matches your goals. We’ll address holiday weight gain and some strategies to combat it. Of course, getting sugar and carb cravings under control by changing the way you eat will also make weight maintenance much easier!

Articles mentioned:

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Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

Cheryl McColgan Hey, everyone. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. I am Cheryl, as you know, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, and if you haven’t, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast where we talk about all things health, wellness, low-carb nutrition and things to help you improve your life at least a little bit every single day. And what I wanted to chat with you about today is how not to gain weight during the holidays. [chuckle] So every year, around this time, we start to indulge a little bit more, myself included, and that can be a time with family and friends that’s so wonderful. And so many of us, with what has been going on in the world in the last almost two years now, is a time to really celebrate and enjoy ourselves, and quite often in many cultures, at least in the American culture for sure, that revolves around food and around alcohol and around cookies and indulgences in all sorts of things that you might not eat on a regular basis, especially if you’re trying to live a healthier lifestyle.

So Because as you know, my background and training is in psychology and addiction studies. I wanted to share with you some ideas and some strategies about how to… I’m gonna put this in air quotes, for those of you that aren’t watching the video. So if you’re listening on audio, this is air quotes, “stay on track during the holidays”. I kind of don’t like that phrase because it insinuates that you’re not kind of mindfully making decisions all the time. And that is definitely part of what we’re gonna talk about today. So I think you can approach the holidays in two ways. So number one, if you’re in maintenance mode, you can stay the course and stay at maintenance calories, stay with your same activities during the holidays as much as possible, and maybe plan for over-indulgences, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in a short amount of time here. And the other strategy is, if you are in weight loss mode for the holidays, that’s fine too, but it’s gonna require a little bit more dedication and planning than usual.

So there’s a few ways that we can approach that as well. So first of all, you know how we say, “What’s your goal?” So determine what your goal is during the holidays: Do you want to, number one, maintain your weight or avoid holiday weight gain, do you want, two, continue trying to lose weight, if that’s your goal; or number three, do you not mind if you gain, say five pounds during the holidays, are you fine with that? And if the answer is that you are, that’s a choice too, so you can always make your choices, set your goals, and I highly recommend you do this kind of mental goal setting for this one. This does not require a big…you know how I’d like to have that plan on my page, what is ultimate wellness, and it goes into a goal planning practice that is more about what are your goals for kind of your whole life in a way really.

But you work back from 10 years down to the present day. Well, for this exercise, I just want you to mentally think about that when you reach January 1st, how are you gonna feel if you put on five pounds or 10 pounds, or when you reach January 1st, how are you gonna feel if you continue to lose weight, or January 1st, how are you gonna feel if you maintain your weight? Is that gonna make you happy? Will you be sad that you didn’t need any losing? Think about all that in terms of what are your goals for the holiday season, and that is going to determine how you approach these strategies and how you approach the entire holiday season. And you can really still have a lot of fun and indulge and not gain weight during the holiday season. So let’s talk about that.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

So there’s a lot of events, maybe not as many this year as in years past, there’s different kinds of foods that are going to be available that you might not eat on a regular basis, so again, knowing what your goal is going into this, it’s… Look at the amount of activities that you have, look at the amount of special events, look at the amount of parties, and if it’s a whole lot of them, your strategy really might revolve around taking specific ones, if you know… For example, one of the events might be Thanksgiving in America here, it’s always around the third, fourth week of November, and it’s a place where it’s typically all about the food, and if you’re going to be joining with family, something might be like your grandma makes your favorite pie every year, or something like that, but meanwhile, you’ve been living the keto lifestyle Or you’re trying to lose weight and you’re thinking that pie is not your best idea if you want to avoid holiday weight gain.

Well, if you don’t have diabetes, and particularly if you’ve been keto for longer term, occasionally eating something like that is not going to really have any ill effects or long-lasting… Cause any long-lasting problems, if you’re diabetic, then you might be skipping the pie or making a low-carb pie, or a low sugar pie, but if you’re a normal kind of… I’m again, using air quotes, if you’re a “normal person” and you love pie or you don’t wanna hurt your grandma’s feelings, and you know that that’s something that’s gonna come up, then make a choice. So this is one of my five C’s to creating better habits, right? There’s another video about that on my YouTube channel, if you ever wanna check that out. But you’re gonna make a choice, a conscious choice to, for example, have a piece of your grandmother’s pie and just have one.

Depending on what your goals are, again, if you don’t mind gaining a little weight, maybe over-indulge a little bit more, if you wanna stay on your weight loss plan, then keep it to one piece of pie and make grandma happy, then maybe there’s a holiday party that you’re going to… And you know that there will be a lot of things there that might not be so good, for example, alcoholic mixers that might have a lot of sugar, our choices on food that don’t fit with your goals, so… Sometimes when there’s an event like that, and it’s not really going to, it’s not gonna hurt anybody’s feelings. Nobody is gonna be watching you as closely as if you’re at a table with your family, right, so if you’re in a pool party, it’s not as obvious to people what you are or are not eating, and it’s one of my tips to never really… You don’t have to talk about that, you don’t have to explain your choices to anyone, you don’t need to give any excuses about why you’re not having the pie, or why you’re choosing the crudité platter with the veggies over, say crab puffs or whatever it is. [chuckle]

You don’t need to explain yourself to anybody, the more attention you bring to it, the more distress it’s likely to bring on. So for at parties, one of the tips that you could do is to not go to the party starving, particularly if you know what kind of party it is or what kind of food, or is it gonna be a full dinner, take all of that into account, but because when I go to parties or events quite often, the protein portion is relatively small, and I tend… I will not… And again, there’s nothing bad or wrong with this, it’s all about making choices, I make the choice that I don’t wanna eat the mashed potatoes on a given night, and I don’t like them that much to start with, and I’m not gonna eat them just because they’re there, so if I know that I’m going to an event and the protein portion is likely to be small then that I might eat something before the event also that helps you go in, you’re not starving if you are gonna have alcohol… You have a little something in your stomach.

So there’s multiple reasons why that’s a good idea, it could be something like… soup. There’s lots of studies that have shown that soup really reduces appetite if eaten prior to a meal, same with salads they that just get some volume in your stomach, or just think out of the box snack or a small meal, just can mean literally a smaller meal of anything that you would normally eat. It doesn’t have to be a specific type of food or a specific snack, quote unquote, snack again. With the snacks, a snack doesn’t have to be like a snack food, it can be a piece of chicken breast or it can be a piece of cheese, something like that. So if you’re going to the event and you’ve made your choice that you wanna kinda stay on… Those are some strategies that you could use for that. So again, knowing your goals going into these type of events, again, it depends on who you’re spending time with, are there gonna be any hurt feelings and sometimes, hey, if it’s for your health and you’re diabetic, people need to understand that these choices that you’re making…

I mean, sometimes it’s okay, or maybe even necessary to be a little brutal with them like, yeah, grandma, I could eat that piece of pie, but I’m gonna risk having my foot amputated because I have diabetes, so maybe it doesn’t need to be something that harsh, but you get my point right. That Sometimes people need to be reminded that there is this really good reason for you doing what you’re doing, or if it’s just about losing weight, you might say, “You know Grandma, I really love your pie, but right now I need to be focused on losing weight because I’m really unhealthy, and I am worried that I might put myself at risk for some viruses this winter if I don’t lose some weight.” So There’s a lot of ways that you can say things to people. And again, it depends on who it is what the situation is and if your goals include avoiding holiday weight gain.

So there’s also… I think I mentioned maybe you bring a low-carb pie or something like that to an event, so finding substitutions for your holiday favorites is another great way that you can kind of… I gotta find a better way to stay on… Try to Stay on track. I don’t even like that phrase but to do something in alignment with your goals, whenever I say stay on track, it’s meaning making mindful choices about things that are in alignment with your goals and that’ll help you reach your goals, so finding substitutions for holiday favourites, for example, I’m not a huge pumpkin person myself, but I have a recipe for low-carb pumpkin pie over on the website, it’s it does have a crust.

The crust is tricky to just to be honest with you, I had to do it over about six or seven times when I was photographing it, because almond flour is very difficult to not have brown a lot so that the crust tastes delicious, but getting it to look just right there’s a few little tricks to it, and that is included in that recipe, of course, but that’s an example for you, you might offer to be the one that brings the pie most people if you don’t tell them, won’t even know the difference. They might know the difference about the crust because there is no great substitute for a real flour crust, I hate to say that, but it’s true, but I’ll tell you what is also very delicious is just making the filling without the crust, it’s very much like a custard you know, it’s got eggs in it, it’s got all that. So you can just bake it in a pie plate and have sort of like a crustless quiche pumpkin style, right? 

So there are things for these substitutes that you can bring, same thing with dressing, turkey dressing, it’s typically made, out of bread, you could make it out of a keto-friendly bread, if you eat those or you could make something different that has those same seasonings and flavours in it, for example, just take out the bread and take any recipe, for example, in the South, the one that we used to make a lot, which was my favorite, was oyster dressing, so you could take the recipe for an oyster dressing and instead of putting bread in there just use cauliflower instead, and you’re still gonna end up with a great side dish that gives you that same flavor profile, but that doesn’t have all the carbs in it, and of course, I’m focusing on carbs, not everybody here who is listening to this, or at least I hope there’s a few people out here listening to this that are just interested in it for knowledge, and that aren’t yet living the keto low-carb lifestyle or they haven’t discovered why it might be healthier for them yet.

And of course, that’s one of the reasons that I’m doing this podcast is that so that I can share that information with a wider audience, not just preaching to the choir, not just talking to people that are already involved in this community and this way of eating, but really sharing the benefits as to why it’s healthier for you and better, and I guess just not to go too far off topic here with what I’m trying to help you with with strategies for the holidays, but one of the reasons that it is better, I think if you look at the standard American diet, any… No matter what style of eating people choose, whether it’s vegetarian or just whole foods, or paleo or keto or low-carb.

Almost anybody thought leaders in those spaces would agree that everyone, almost everyone, except for people following these special whole foods diets eats way, way, way too much sugar and way too much processed food, and that’s one thing, whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, everybody can pretty much agree on that point, so whatever diet you’re doing now, if you’re still relying on a lot of pre-packaged foods or foods that have you know any food where you read the ingredient list and it’s got 20 or 30 things, that’s not really anything that is helping you feel healthier and more vibrant. So enough said about that. For now, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to address that in the future, but let’s move on to the next point, so for keeping in alignment with your goals for the holidays and avoid holiday weight gain, I would say the next thing is to stay...

In this episode, I am talking with the Founder of Dry Farm Wines, Todd White. We discuss meditation, nutrition, fasting, biohacking and ketogenic diets, and of course natural wines. Learn more about a sustainable low carb lifestyle that includes mindful living while still enjoying sugar free wine.

Todd shares with us his journey from Atkins to the sustainable and moderate keto lifestyle he is currently living. He also shares his vast knowledge on the different versions of keto and his go to biohacking tools, such as cold plunges and saunas.

Mediation and fasting are two big players in his life and have been for over twenty years.

We also learn more about Dry Farm Wines. You can read our review of Dry Farm wines here along with videos showing you can drink their sugar free wine and stay in ketosis! They are the  only natural wine company serving the European standards of purity within the states with tested alcohol percentages under 12.5 percent.

All this and more in this conversation with Todd, lots of great information you can use in this one!

Did you enjoy today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today! If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions here, you’ll have a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card that we’re giving away on November 17, 2021

Watch the interview with Todd White on YouTube.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

CONNECT WITH TODD

Website: https://dryfarmwines.com

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Cheryl McColgan: Hi everyone. Today, I’m sitting here with Todd White, and I am so excited to speak to him because I have heard him interviewed multiple times in the past, and I have absolutely adored his product for years. You guys know, you’ve heard me talk about Dry Farm Wines 1000 times. I’ve done the experiment with drinking it and staying in ketosis, which is on my YouTube channel, so now I get to chat with the man that made this all happen. So welcome, Todd.

Todd White: Thanks, it’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to having a talk today about everything, low carb, keto, fasting, and sugar free wine.

Cheryl McColgan: Yeah, I’m super excited. We were chatting a little bit before we actually started recording and I was excited to learn that you are as big a proponent of fasting as I am. But for now, why don’t you maybe introduce yourself a little bit, tell people a little bit about your health background, how you came to this lifestyle and wanting to really lower your chemical load in your body, which is part of the way that Dry Farm Wines came to be. So if you can just talk a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now.

Todd White: Yeah, so my journey started more than 20 years ago. Before biohacking was a term, I was a biohacker, as you were one who was experimenting with dieting. So biohacking is a confusing term, some people don’t know what it means. I define it as the art and science of how we structure our behavior to have a positive impact or outcome on our neurological and biological outcome. Now the most common biohack is probably dieting, but biohacks could be meditation or fitness is a biohack, any influence we have on our physiological state and when we’re living a life of intention around this. And then biohacking can get crazier with brain treatments and so on and so forth, but at the most basic terms, it would just be a diet. So I’ve been a biohacker for more than 25… I’ve been experimenting with diet since I was in my 30s, and I’m now 60. And so for the last 30 or so years, I’ve been experimenting with dieting, and I started with the Atkins program, which was originally the OG keto diet, or what I would call modified keto, it’s not a therapeutic ketogenic diet.

And so I started experimenting with that as a way really to maintain the weight control that I wanted. And I knew I was sensitive to carbohydrate, as approximately 85% of people are. And so I knew that I was sensitive to it. And so for me, it was… I have to admit it was a bit about vanity, and…

Cheryl McColgan: Right there with you.

Todd White: Yeah, so I just wanted to look great and date beautiful people and this was sort of was my gem. I love Robert Iger. In his book last year, he’s the chairman, or was the CEO of Disney, he talked about his commitment to exercise at 4:00 in the morning, and he was saying, “People ask me why I get up at 4:00 in morning to exercise and… ” which I don’t do that. But he said, “It’s for two reasons, it’s for sanity and vanity.” So I can’t imagine a life from a sanity point of view personally, and I know you can appreciate this, ’cause I see you work out regularly, but I don’t work out for weight control because that’s relatively ineffective. I work out for mental stability because working out really gives us peace of mind and helps us with our mental health. So for both sanity, but there’s also the vanity element, of course, and particularly as you get older.

So I began experimenting… Dry Farm Wines came to be because I began experimenting. I’d done Atkins, and back in the day, this is before ketogenic diet was… ketogenic diet really didn’t come on to the radar for bio-hackers until about five or six years ago. It didn’t go mainstream until about two and a half or three years ago or two years ago, even when it went mainstream and really got attention of the public, but bio-hackers said, dedicated ones had started experimenting five or six years ago.

And as I said, I had experimented, even using the urine strips that Atkins recommended to judge whether you’re in ketosis. But the basis of his diet, while it was focused on being in the state of ketosis, it wasn’t a ketotic diet per se. It was more of a lifestyle diet, more of a belief around cardiovascular health and so on and so forth. It wasn’t until really Dr. Dominic D’Agostino and Dr. Tom Seyfried, out of the Boston College around cancer… And Dominic was working for the Department of Defense, and that ketogenic research really started to surface six or seven years ago in a very meaningful way, and Dr. Ken Ford at IHMC. And so there was… And so I started experimenting with a therapeutic ketogenic diet about five or six years ago. I was therapeutically ketogenic for about two years. The problem is it’s not really sustainable.

Cheryl McColgan: And that’s just maybe for people that… I think probably most of the people listening to this have a familiarity with what is sort of a day-to-day, just general health ketogenic diet as opposed to a therapeutic. But could you maybe make your distinction for that, just so people have that background? 

Todd White: Sure. So a modified ketogenic diet, which is really the Atkins diet and the diet that I follow today. I rarely have long periods of what I’d call therapeutic ketosis, but therapeutic ketosis is a very high-fat diet, where 70% to 90% of your calories are coming from fat, very low carb and very moderate protein. Now this is super easier to maintain if you’re doing intermittent fasting as I do, and we’re eating once per day. But the problem is, it’s not a very interesting diet. And so over time, it becomes quite boring, and we’re creatures of entertainment and pleasure. At our heart, most of us are somewhat hedonistic. We love the pleasure of food and the pleasure of living, and the pleasure of being in great shape and the pleasure of health. I mean, health…

Cheryl McColgan: And why not? [chuckle]

Todd White: For fast, mindful hedonist, right? And so I say a mindful hedonist, because we have to keep those pleasures in check and we have to keep those pleasures aligned. And the greatest pleasure of all is health, the greatest pleasure of all is our vitality. And you know the proverb of a person who is healthy has a thousand wishes, but the person who’s unhealthy only has one wish, right? And so if you’re hedonistic in behavior as I am, then… I mean, I’m in the wine business, as an example, and I love to drink wine, but all these pleasures have to be aligned with our health and have to be aligned with our vitality, which is why we sell these specific type of wine that, as you know, not only taste better, but they’re much better for you. Sugar free wine is the best.

Cheryl McColgan: I think that’s such an amazing way that you framed that and I just wanna kind of highlight that for people is… Because whenever I work with people, I always say, “Finding your why.” And for me, health and fasting, how I got into fasting is when I learned about the Nobel Prize for autophagy. and I have a lot of cancer in my family. I had personally had three surgeries for tumors that, thankfully, were not cancerous. But once I learned about that, that became my passion for keeping myself healthy and being able to help others. And so I feel like if when people find their why like that, like what you did with starting your company and how you’ve done all these things over the years, it becomes making those day-to-day decisions about limiting the hedonism part a little easier when you’ve strongly identified the why.

Todd White: Hedonism gets kind of a bad rep. I don’t think there’s anything wrong. In fact, I celebrate the enjoyment and pleasure. It’s just that the pleasures need to be aligned with a healthspan, an outcome of, I’m gonna take semi-retirement at 90. My current life plan is live to 100, and so I’m entering my sixth decade now, and so really what happens over the next 10 years will determine the outcome of the next 30, as the last 20 or 30 has had a tremendous impact on being 60, and so… But back to your question, a therapeutic ketogenic diet, which was historically used originally… Well, it was used actually with… Even the Romans were using fasting and deprivation, which took people into a ketotic state to… They knew that it was effective in dealing with people with seizures, and people that they thought were crazy, but it turns out they were just having seizures, and when they contain them and didn’t feed them, even the Romans knew that fasting had a very substantial impact on seizures. And then in the 1920s, the therapeutic ketogenic diet was used to treat children with epilepsy, who were not responding… Pre-drugs and then not responding to drugs.

Todd White: But again, having a therapeutic diet for anyone, in particular a child, is very difficult, but it’s a very high level of fat, very low carb and less than 20 grams of carbs a day, which is very low carb, and then a moderate protein. And so a modified ketogenic diet… And that will keep your… That will keep your beta-hydroxybutyrate in a blood-tested range of 1.5 millimetres to 3.5 millimetres on this kind of diet, right? You stay in pretty high ketotic state.

There are a couple of problems with it, from my perspective. One is the diet is not very interesting over time. It’s fun in short bouts, but it’s not terribly interesting over time. It’s socially very restrictive, and then I don’t like being in this cognitive state of very high ketone production for very long, and I’m in it right now, because my ketones are raging at the moment. I could feel them. They tingle at the top of your head. I can feel them in my brain, because as I mentioned to you before we started recording, I’m day three of a five-day water fast, so my ketones are very high, given that I was already ketotic before I went to the extended fast, and so I don’t…

When I get in this high ketotic state of, you know, I had to check my BHB, but I’m gonna guess right now it’s probably 1.8 or 2.0 or something like that, just based on the way I feel. I don’t like extending this for long periods of time because it makes me so focused and so myopic. The cognitive performance is so high that you become rather intense and you become intense to the people around you, and you become hyper-focused. And for me, that’s… While the performance, I appreciate, I’m not sure the people around me appreciate it. And it’s just I like to live on kind a peaceful, gentle sort of roll. And being that deep into ketosis is not exactly gentle. It’s just more go, go, go, which can be useful during certain times or certain objectives.

So modified ketogenic diet, which is what I’m on today, is moderate fat, calories somewhere around 40%, of calories from fat, 30% to 40%, more generous carbohydrate, so maybe less than 50 grams, and then still moderate, but more generous protein than what would be afforded on a therapeutic diet. And that diet keeps me in nutritional ketosis, which nutritional ketosis, by most people, is defined as 0.5 millimoles of beta-hydroxybutyrate on a blood test, and between 0.5 and 0.9, generally. And most people consider nutritional ketosis 0.5 or higher. Modified doesn’t take me up to the 1.2-1.5 range, it just does not stay right in that, just below 1 millimole. And so for me, this is kind of a perfect peaceful place, and it allows me… Along with fasting allows me to maintain the lean body mass that I want.

Cheryl McColgan: And just curious, since you brought up the more moderated fat in the modified ketogenic diet, one of the things that I’ve been reading a lot about lately and just learning more about is the ability for just protein intake itself to help maintain lean muscle mass, and I’m… Hopefully, I’m gonna make it to 60 one day, too, but right now, I just turned 48, and after you… In your 30s, all you do is lose muscle mass. So I’m just wondering if, since you switched to this more modified ketogenic one, you said before you were on the therapeutic, so you’re maybe eating more protein now. Have you noticed any effect with body composition or any changes other than not being as in higher ketosis level?  Even while drinking sugar free wine?

Todd White: For me, not really, I haven’t noticed any. There’s a… Dr. Ryan Lowery has done with their institute in Florida, I can’t remember the strength training institute there, also keto. They’ve done a tremendous amount of published scientific papers on the loss of lean body mass or the addition of lean body mass based on the ketogenic diet. So there’s no evidence to support, from them anyway, that there’s a loss or gain of lean body mass at a certain point, at a certain point, even with calorie reduction. And one of the common questions I get is because I only eat once a day, and then people are like, “Oh, you’re crazy, man. How do you get enough calories?” I was like, “Actually, I don’t think about calories. In fact, if anything, I’d like to eat fewer calories.” So we know for sure that one of the only known methods or scientifically demonstrated methods to extend life span is calorie reduction. Now, there’s a whole set of problems associated with that as well. In fact, last night, I had a steam room at my house, and I had to get out of it about 8 o’clock last night because I was cold.

And so, which is a common side effect of extended fasting, and that Dr. Roy Walford, who’s now deceased, but was a very famous advocate and scientist for calorie reduction… And there was this calorie reduction society, which he led,...

I am talking all things keto with Jen Fisch, creative director, blogger, mom, and author. You may know Jen from the online space as Keto in The City, where she shares easy and low carb recipes on Instagram, her blog, as well as in her books.

Tune in to hear about Jen’s health journey and how her keto lifestyle began. Jen was diagnosed with two different autoimmune diseases that were fighting her body from the inside out. She then began searching for an anti-inflammatory diet. What started off with Atkins and low sugar and ended up being keto. Once she started eating better quality foods, she realized her sleep improved. It’s really trial and error with keto, and not all “keto snacks” are good snacks which we talk a lot about today.

Finding what ingredients and whole foods work best for your own body is what’s important. From sugars to bone broth and packaged keto foods, Jen shares her history with what worked for her body and what didn’t. Again, everyone is so different!

We also talk about transition foods, hidden ingredients, and preferred sweeteners, as well as plants. All of these topics and more in this episode.

Did you enjoy today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today! If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions here, you’ll have a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card that we’re giving away November 17, 2021.

Watch the interview with Jen Fisch on YouTube

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

CONNECT WITH JEN

Website: https://ketointhecity.com

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Cheryl McColgan: Welcome, everyone. I’m here with Jen of Keto in The City. Thanks for joining us today, Jen.

Jen Fisch: Yeah, super excited, great to talk to you.

Cheryl McColgan: Me too. So part of the show, and since you’re one of the very first interviews on the Heal Nourish Grow podcast, one of my goals is to really just share with people practical tips and knowledge, and you’ve been now living the keto lifestyle for quite a while and have experimented with many styles of eating over the years, similar to me. So if you could just maybe tell everybody first, how you got into keto, and a little bit about your history and background with that.

Jen Fisch: Yeah, sure. So yeah, it has been a long story of trying to figure out what works. But basically, over 20 years ago, I came down with two autoimmune disorders within six months of each other. So psoriasis first and then psoriatic arthritis six months later. And so I struggled with that for many years. Eventually, I went to a doctor who was an MD, but who was actually an acupuncture doctor, and he was the first one that recommended I cut sugar out of my diet. Before that, I had never even thought about the connection between the food that I was eating and how I was feeling, and none of my other doctors had ever mentioned it. So that is what turned the light on for me. That was about 15 years ago and I started on Atkins from there because that was popular at the time.

I remember going straight from that appointment to a bookstore, just sat on the ground of the bookstore, looking through this Atkins book, and I was looking at the list of foods that I could eat, and I was like, “Okay, I think I can do this.” And so I tried that, it actually helped a lot. And so that was the beginning, and then from there, I just kept exploring good options, and then finally landed on keto five years ago. I had never heard the word “keto” before, but I was just doing research and came across a couple of things and really discovered that the added healthy fat element along with the low carb was the perfect… At least for me, the perfect combination of a way of eating that I could sustain.

Cheryl McColgan: So since you mentioned that after your doctor… First of all, kudos to your doctor at that point in time for actually saying something could be related to nutrition, right? 

Jen Fisch: I know. He’s still the only doctor I’ve gone to that has really believed in it.

Cheryl McColgan: Yeah, well, thank goodness for him ’cause he got you on to the right path. But what I wanted to hear maybe a little bit more about, is you mentioned that you started off with Atkins ’cause that was what was popular 15 years ago, or what could be found. And then you said you found keto later, and that the healthy fats helped progress. So maybe if you could say some of the changes or things that you noticed in your beginning, which… Anybody who’s done this for a while, you know your keto that you did in the very beginning looks pretty different after you go down the road. So maybe you could just add a little more depth to that and maybe what you noticed differently, especially in relation to your autoimmune diseases when you made the switch to keto and maybe a little bit higher fat.

Jen Fisch: Yeah, the biggest difference is when I was doing more Atkins low-carb is, I was always hungry. I could eat three pieces of chicken or salmon or something and still be hungry. And so I remember, that was what was hard about sustaining it for me is I didn’t like that feeling. And that’s why eventually, during that time, I had left the low-carb for a while and was trying to figure out something else. And so the keto, in the beginning, there wasn’t any packaged foods really that were keto when I first started, that was five years ago. People didn’t even… Most people hadn’t even heard of the word “keto” then, it’s crazy how much it’s grown since then. And so I was really focused on eating real foods, which I think was great, I think that’s obviously the optimal way.

I was using a lot more… I was probably using a lot more dairy products in the beginning of my keto than I am now, but that helped me be able to enjoy it. So the heavy creams or the cream cheeses or the… I put MCT oil on everything when I first started. Now, I don’t do that more. But those were some of the things in the beginning at least that I was like, “Oh, I can see how this makes you feel more full.” Or anytime I wanted something, I would just eat an avocado, like keeping it pretty simple. But it definitely has transitioned over the years to understanding like, “Oh, maybe I don’t need that much fat, like I don’t have to drink butter coffee every single day.” But I was super excited about butter coffee in the beginning and all of that. So it’s definitely changed, but that was how I kicked it off and realized like, “Whoa, I just ate a fairly small meal but packed with healthy fats and now I feel satisfied.” So I don’t have to eat three pieces of chicken, I could just eat one now or whatever.

Cheryl McColgan: Right. And because your autoimmune is psoriatic arthritis, and then the psoriasis, which is, my understanding of this, mainly a skin condition, do you feel like… To me, it almost seems like there’s a logical connection between more healthy fats and it being better for your skin and stuff. So can you talk about how you first noticed the changes in both of those conditions as you started to eat that way? 

Jen Fisch: Yeah, I think… So both of them… Yeah, they both attack your body from the inside, but one represents it more on your skin; and one represents it by deteriorating joints. And so for me, it was all about trying to find an anti-inflammatory way of eating. And so along with cutting out sugar, there were some other things along the way that I discovered that were also… Eating real food is a lot less inflammatory than eating a bunch of packaged foods. So that was important, eating a high quality of food. So trying to buy organic things or grass-fed things or whatever, even though they’re more expensive, it was important to me because I was trying to kill inflammation. And if I was eating keto but still eating lower quality food, then I would still be adding inflammation into my body. So I focused on that a lot. Pretty instantly, I would say within week or two, in terms of if you have visible psoriasis, which I did at the time, they noticeably get lighter in color, less angry-looking, things like that. So there were some fairly immediate reactions that my body took at least when I switched over to this.

And then it’s not like I’m cured, I still take medication. My way of eating is a part of my healthy lifestyle. I always wanna make sure, ’cause a lot of people write to me thinking that if this has cured my condition, which it hasn’t, it’s just one of the controllables, that I can’t really control if my body is going to respond to a medication or not, but I can control what I eat to help my name process along.

Cheryl McColgan: Right. And since you mentioned “healthy lifestyle,” if you have been to Heal Nourish Grow or other people that have been around my site, it’s not only focused on keto nutrition, which it is because I think that’s a big part of feeling well, and to steal a phrase from Dr. Ken Berry, “the proper human diet,” because it’s just what we’ve been evolved to eat. So I think part of… Especially when you have a disease process, what you put in your body as far as nutrition is just one thing, and that’s where the heal and the nourish and the grow part all comes together. So did you find that, for example, did you start implementing anything else around sleep or stress management, or what were some of the other healthy lifestyle type things that you mentioned that you used to help with your autoimmune disorders? 

Jen Fisch: Yeah, well, one of my favorite benefits of keto was the better-quality sleep. That was another thing that I feel like most people notice really early on into their keto. If they’re new to keto, they start it, within a couple of weeks, I feel like, you do notice the better-quality sleep. I used to be really restless at night and just couldn’t fall asleep for like an hour or two hours or whatever, just like my body trying to come down, I guess, from the day. And once I started keto, I don’t have that problem at all, not anymore. When it’s time to go to bed, I go to bed and I fall asleep, which has been great, and that’s really helpful. I usually stay up late working. I’m a creative director at an ad agency, I’m a single mom, I have all the keto stuff going on, so I have a lot going on. So that really helps me a lot to be able to recover at night.

Stress management, I’m pretty good, I’m not really a person who gets super stressed, so that’s probably good. The one piece I could definitely be better at, especially in 2020, now 2021, is the exercise piece of it. Now that I work from home, I feel like I just sit in front of the computer all day, so I need to be better about that part. But yeah, overall, I just think looking at it as a complete lifestyle and how it can help in all of those ways is the best way to look at it. And to look at it as a long-term lifestyle versus a short-term “try to lose weight really quick” or whatever that might be.

Cheryl McColgan: No, I love that ’cause that’s what I try to help people with all the time. I think a big part of making a lifestyle change like this is mindset, right? So if you look at it as you just wanna lose 20 pounds so you can go on vacation or something, that’s gonna make it a lot harder to sustain long-term. Whereas if you really look at it… And you have probably more reason than a lot of people to do it because of your previous health issues, and I have previous health issues as well, which is part of the reason I’m very committed to it. It almost makes it, I think, almost easier when you have that mindset about it, as opposed to a weight-loss mindset about it. Would you have anything else to add to that? 

Jen Fisch: Yeah, no, I agree. Whenever people ask me, “How come you have been on keto for five years or whatever?” I’m like, “Well, I have my why.” My why is I wanna feel good, and I know I feel better when I eat this way. So it makes it… I mean, I’m not gonna say it just makes it easy all the time, but it makes it a lot easier ’cause it’s attached to me knowing that I can function better as a mom, I can function better as a person, I will physically feel better, mentally feel better. So yeah, that’s just a much, at least for me, a more powerful connection to just keep going.

Cheryl McColgan: Yeah, completely agree. And since you mentioned your daughter, I think it is your daughter, right? 

Jen Fisch: Mm-hmm.

Cheryl McColgan: I remember… Like I said, I’ve listened to previous interviews. One of the things that I think people find challenging about keto or some… One of the things that I’ve heard people say to me is like, “Oh, I can’t do keto because my kids will never eat that way,” or, “I don’t wanna make three or four meals.” And I know that in one of the interviews I heard with you before, you talked about your daughter and your approach with your way of eating with her. Can you share a little bit more about that? And I’m sure it’s probably evolved now, ’cause I think she’s pretty much a full-on teenager now at this point, right? 

Jen Fisch: Yeah, she’s 16 now. But yeah, when I started this whole journey, she was like 11 or 10 or whatever, and I just made her… That was my goal with keto cooking. That was the fun, creative challenge for me. It was like, “Okay, I wanna start eating this way, but I’m not gonna make her separate meals.” I’m gonna make meals that she would enjoy and I would enjoy and that fit this lifestyle. And when we go out to eat or she goes to a friend’s house or whatever, she can eat whatever she wants, but I wanna cook low-carb keto meals at home. And so she’s been my taste-tester for all of my recipes, and so I always decide that if she likes it, then anybody can like it. And I get so many messages from people saying, “My non-keto husband, this is his favorite meal,” or whatever it might be, and those are always my favorite comments because you don’t have to think about keto food as a different way of eating.

Everybody eats steak and vegetables, or fish and vegetables, or whatever it might be. It doesn’t need to be super complicated. Now they have cauliflower rice everywhere, so it’s really easy to make those swap-outs. I mean if you absolutely wanna make one additional side for your family, but you don’t have to make a whole different meal, which is something that I’ve always loved. And for me, I just keep my home keto and then outside in the world, if she wants to pick something else, she can. But it hasn’t been a problem, and the food is delicious. I mean most kids love keto food, especially those stuff that has cheese on it or whatever it might be, you get to eat great stuff, so I don’t think that should be a big issue, and I don’t think people should feel like they have to cook whole, separate meals for their family.

Cheryl McColgan: Yeah, I totally agree. I always just… I’ll just be honest, I always think that’s a cop out. You really just don’t wanna give up your bread and pasta is what it is, or they don’t think they can because they just haven’t experienced it yet, right? But I think it goes back to what you’re saying, once you experience how amazing you can feel without that stuff, it makes it… And again, if you have your why, whatever that is, and again with mindset, with people, I wish they’d say, “So I can run around with my grandkids in several years.” Make it something that’s more tangible instead of just trying to look good in a swimsuit or something. And then I think it makes all of those decisions a little bit easier. Not super easy, like you said, but at least it’s on the right track.

Jen Fisch: Yeah, agree, agree.

Cheryl McColgan: And so you mentioned your recipes, and so just in case, I don’t know who wouldn’t have heard of you by now, but just in case they didn’t, tell us about your cookbooks, because I think at last count you had at least five. I don’t know if there’s more on the horizon or what you have up your sleeve, but maybe you could chat a little bit about that and how… I’m assuming since you’re a creative person...

In this episode, I am talking with Jimmy Moore, author, podcaster, and speaker. You may be familiar with Jimmy from The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show or one of his many books. Jimmy shares his personal weight loss and health journey with us, which is so inspiring! He lost almost 200 pounds by starting with Atkins, later going keto and to his latest way of eating which is more of a keto/carnivore approach.

You will learn a lot as we go over topics of fasting and how it is so important when trying to reduce inflammation in the body. We also talk about biohacking therapies like ice baths, red light therapy and the importance of looking inward to heal the body from past traumas. Rest is also so important. Jimmy took himself on a sabbatical and talks about why it happened and the benefits he received from it.

Mental health, physical health, cholesterol, and the keto culture are key topics also discussed today. Jimmy shared his whole wellness program, eating regimens and why we need to give ourselves grace.

So many important topics were discussed and I cannot wait for you to hear!

Did you enjoy today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today! If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions here, you’ll have a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card that we’re giving away November 17, 2021.

Watch the interview on YouTube

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

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Website: https://livinlavidalowcarb.com

Cheryl McColgan: I obviously introduced you to everybody prior to putting our interview on, but I’d like to hear from you in your own words, you have such a very interesting history about how you got into keto and some of your family health history. Could you share with people a little bit about that and kind of how you got to where you are now?

Jimmy Moore:  Oh yeah.  I was eating a low-fat diet before finding low carbs. And I think that we all do that. We all kind of default, when you need to get healthy, when you need to lose weight, what you did, you cut back, right? We all heard that message our whole lives. And if that works for you, you’re doing that and over and over and over again. I think what draws people back to it is the reinforcement, when you do that and then you do lose some weight. You feel somewhat better.

I would argue because you get rid of the junk in you feel a little better. For me, I had tried all those things and I had been successful up down, up, down, up, down, up down with low-fat diets. And in fact, in 1999, you mentioned family health problems. My brother had a series of heart attacks and one week, so four years older than me, my brother, Kevin. In 1999, he had a heart attack, he was in the hospital for some routine checkup and had a  heart attack while it was in the hospital. Thank God, because it probably would have died had he not been there. Then later, he’d have another heart attack, on and on and on.

He died at the age of 41, but when he had the heart attacks and again, that was a wake-up call for me and I lost a bunch of weight. And at the end of about nine months, I’d lost triple digits of weight, but I was miserable, hungry. I was irritable. I was an angry man and never put two and two together.

I finally learned the importance of healthy fat your brain is 60 percent made of fat. Yes, you’re fat head. When you don’t eat fat that has a real effect on your brain. So at the end of that bid, because I was so frustrated, well, this is the way I have to eat forever through that.

I’d rather be happy than verbal. And then, and so that kinda got me a full height hall. Ill. I got an eye for fitness and, uh, three, uh, and it was the acting side. I read that book, this guy, he whacked the visual. What? Eat down the car. What do you mean eat more fat than spending 80 cents at all? Based on what we know, but I gave it a go.

And so January 1st I got the Atkins book. So after three or four weeks of this, I thought all right, I feel pretty good, this is kind of cool and I did end up losing three prescription meds. Cholesterol, blood pressure readings problems. So I started getting on course, you should write a blog and this was 2005. And so I started a blog in 2005 called  Livin la Vida Low Carb and it’s now my trademark kind of name. Everybody knows that’s me. Then a year later started the show. It’s the longest-running health podcast. 

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Cheryl McColgan: That’s actually how I came to know you because when I started going lower carb in 2015 and keto in 2016. And of course, your work is what I ran across immediately. Similar to you, I think we’re kind of a similar age range, I grew up in the whole era of low-fat.

Cheryl McColgan: To your point about your brain feeling so much better, I struggled with anxiety and depression most of my adult life. After going low carb higher fat, I’ve been feeling so much better, so that’s just an kind of an aside for people to know. Basically, so you really dove in and started the longest-running health podcast and that’s how I came across you with the other way that I really came across you was I’ve always had slightly high cholesterol. And when I say slightly high, I’m talking 220 which I now know that is not even a concern Right now it is higher now that I’ve been on low carb, but the first book I read of yours and it might’ve been, might’ve actually been your first book. Yes, exactly. It was Cholesterol Clarity.

And so I just want to tell everybody, if you haven’t read this book, or if you are worried about your cholesterol, you need to read this book. It just puts everything in a whole new perspective, really. So did your cholesterol go up? Is that one of the reasons you wrote that?

Jimmy Moore: Well, let me say it. So at the end, I lost 108 pounds. My doctors, I think I’m rockstar, he was very impressed by the way.  He asked, “are you okay?” I said I did the Atkins diet. I kinda knew what was coming next and I predicted it.

It’s “oh, the Atkins diet, let’s check your cholesterol.”  The medical system is so broken, so numbers-based, but you’re looking at a patient, right? He could have easily looked at it as it’s obvious you’re far healthier than you were, but no, it was no, that’s not good enough. Have to check the cholesterol, so he runs cholesterol and it comes back 260 total cholesterol. I said, yeah, but what about the triglycerides? They were 43. Whoa. That’s amazing. Then what about HDL cholesterol? It was 70 or 80, really good and kind of what you should be looking at. Not total cholesterol. So he’s well, yeah, those are really good, but overall they’re up.

In Cholesterol Clarity I explain why doctors are so incredibly clueless about cholesterol. Then it’s that rule came out now brand new recommendation came out that they can put you on statins. But they really should be looking at ratios and other things. And looking at a calcium can so they can look at the actual health of your arteries.

Cheryl McCcolgan: Interesting. I didn’t know that part of it, but I did actually have that scan eventually after reading your book so I could put that to rest. It was not zero but it was very low, because I think I was a runner for almost 20 years  and my doctor actually told me that there’s a study that was done on endurance athletes and they tend to have more calcification because of oxidative stress. 

Jimmy Moore: Yes exactly. It’s the oxidative stress. When you overtrain, that’s almost eating all carbs, inflammation rises, but it doesn’t mean don’t train guys. Don’t hear that as the message to not exercise, no, don’t do that. But when you exercise, who is smartly, do short bursts of energy, but don’t overdo it and get a lot of runners are friends of mine, always talk about their inflammation marker being high. And I’m like dude, back off of the exercise little bit.

Cheryl McColgan: I found I did actually have to give that up. Over 10 years ago now because of my knees. So I’m hoping between my lifestyle now, where I do a much more reasonable amount of appropriate exercise and eating low carb, that that number either will stabilize or go down. It’s only  12 anyway. It wasn’t very high.

Jimmy Moore: Oh, it’s well, so I was worried about that too but at 12 I wouldn’t worry.

Cheryl Mccolgan: Yeah. I’m not super worried about it, but my doctor did still want to put me on Statens after 

Jimmy Moore: How old are you?

Cheryl McColgan: I’m not going to be 48 here in a month or two.

Jimmy Moore: Okay. Well that’s good. Actually, for a lot of women and guys of course, heart disease is kind of  the big concern that people have. We all worry about cholesterol, but we’re not looking at what’s really causing problems. It’s not bad cholesterol it’s inflammation. So it was the inflammation, but an anti-inflammatory diet,  then you add in a little biohacks, red light therapy and fasting. Everything you can do to bring that inflammation then you can’t have disease.

Cheryl McColganYeah. That’s, that’s what I’m hoping for. That’s my belief. So that’s the program I’m on now. And actually I’m glad that you brought up the biohacking stuff. Cause another one of your shows that again, how prolific you are with the podcasts, I’ve enjoyed all of them. But one of my favorites was the Biohacking MD with John Lemanski. I dig all that stuff.

That’s how I kind of got into this stuff, the science-based stuff. You mentioned red light therapy, you mentioned ice baths, things that support a healthy lifestyle, but you also ended up taking a sabbatical for yourself. And I know that you have talked about that a little bit, but if you’re willing to share about that period, I know that one of the main reasons you did it was to take care of your health because you are such a busy man and so prolific.

Could you talk a little bit about what you did during that time and any changes that you noticed in some of the things that you worked?

Jimmy Moore: Thank you for this, nobody ever asks about this. It’s important. In fact, it’s probably what you’re asking me that as, as of today, I said, I’m off. I’m just sort of step away for a bit. My podcast is so visible. But yeah, in 2019, I decided I in little time off. So a lot of time off, I just thought I had been going for it.

Great. Wow. And because I’m one of those personalities that was…I am very prolific and I’m about my work kind of guy. I had me as a little bit, the way you groove yourself in this book. You work, work hard and you can give it your all, but that’s my work.

So it caught up to me. I was feeling the physical effects from it. So September 1st, 2019. I went into a sabatical. I got away totally, I ditched my phone and every social media app. And the podcasts. I thought I was crazy. Yeah. I was just there for a little bit, but after a while, I don’t need all of that to validate my work. But what happened with it? So everything always outward, outward, outward, outward, pouring out. All the things I do…when all that was stripped away… so  I started doing some work on myself with my childhood trauma.

I was physically and emotionally abused as a teenager for about three and a half years.

I never dealt with that. I never came to arms with what that meant. I had a breakup in my marriage that time as well. It just really kind of brought up all the things that I needed to deal with, but I was bringing it back to my work. And before I left, I was still doing six podcasts and I did not, I was not working smart. Then when I went away and it was all stripped away… then I’m, oh wow. And how many of us do that? We miss what we need to be working on. And so in that six months from September until February last year I did the work. I looked inwardly. I re-evaluated, where did I mess up in life? What can I do to be a better man? All the things Then I come back March the first and two weeks later COVID happened. So it was not fun, but I learned so much. And  I still even now and learning to take that time. It’s… we talked about health from  a diet perspective or health from fitness, but we very rarely talk about mental health.

We talk about mindset, Oh, you get your head right. So you eat right and say dedicated and have the willpower and all that kind of…that’s cool and nothing wrong with that. But I think what makes in kind of the health and wellness community is mental health is just as important as physical health. And yet mental health is tough. Oh, you see, you go to see a shrink and everything will be okay. And it’s not always that easy. 

Cheryl McColgan: No, it’s absolutely not. I do actually come from a mental health background. My degree is in psychology and my minor is in addiction studies. And I did some graduate training in psychology as well.

So that is actually something that I really am personally interested in, focused on. And when I put out my content, I do try it. That’s why it’s called heal, nourish grow, because it’s really about a holistic approach. To health, not just what you put in your mouth, because we are finding so many things, like sleep and stress, and a lot of the things that you were dealing with before you went on hiatus were really affecting your health, even though you were doing arguably everything really perfect with your diet and with the with the other  therapies that you were doing.

Jimmy Moore: Yeah. I put it on Facebook, it’s not that low carb was the answer. It’s not and people do that. They say well, if you eat keto, why are you still fat? What are you still dealing with? This is the limit that people put on it that’s it’s just one thing and I don’t think health is about any one thing at all. There are some core things you can do across the board that would make you trend towards health, right? But if you never dealt with what you had in childhood or some other incident in your life that was just so life changing and you never came to terms with it.

Cheryl McColgan: Yep. I a hundred percent agree with you, and I’m so glad that you did take that time and that you, it sounds you’re about to step away again for a little bit. So during that time, are you kind of doing hiatus or do you have any special projects that you’re working on or what’s, what’s kind of next on your horizon?

Jimmy Moore: It’s certainly promising because for the six months or you write a book then it’s a month off. That’s not  it for me, I cover up pain and I’m going to, I’m going to admit this on your show. I still use my work to cover a pain. I’ve been going through a very difficult personal thing on top of the virus on top of all the other craziness in the world that everybody’s had to deal with. I’ve had this personal little albatross around my neck for the past year and a half that has just not gone away yet.

Until that’s lifted, I’m not going to feel fully able to kind of move on with my life, so to speak. So I have this idea of  covering up that pain by pouring myself into my work. Well, now I’m at the point where today I announced that I’m going to step away for a week or two or whatever, just to kind of take that big breath and go, all right. It’s going to be okay, I think. If we talk kindly to ourselves and try to show ourselves the grace, we want other people to show us, then we need to do that. I think we’re sometimes are our own worst critics and enemies, and we need to be our number one champion. 

Cheryl McColgan: Couldn’t agree with you more. And I am so happy for you that you were working on all that. And I’m sorry to hear about...

In this episode, I am sharing the incredible conversation about clean keto that I had with The Salmon Queen, otherwise known as Gigi Ashworth.

Gigi does not hold back with us. From professional snowboarding to getting her master’s degree in nutrition to her abundant social media platforms and YouTube channel, Gigi’s message remains the same. Helping people while entertaining them at the same time is what she truly loves to do. From her early years of disordered eating, autoimmune diseases, surgeries and learning about the ketogenic diet we get a true behind-the-scenes look at who and what Gigi is all about.

Tune in today to learn about “The Gigi Approach” and how The Salmon Queen got her name and book. Learn more about stress, digestion, fitness, her go-to workouts, the difference between dirty keto, lazy keto and clean keto, and why we need to be eating more quality ingredients from the store. All this, and so much more on today’s show!

Did you love today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today! If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions here, you’ll have a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card that we’re giving away on November 17, 2021.

Watch the interview on YouTube

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

CONNECT WITH GIGI

Website: https://gigieatscelebrities.com

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Cheryl McColgan:  Welcome. So Gigi, I’ve read your bio obviously, but can you just share with people in your own words, how you came to this way of eating and some of a little bit of your past? I think you have some really interesting, things that you have done leading up to some health issues that you had, where you had to change the way that you ate.

Gigi Ashworth: Uh, do you have like 15 hours? I don’t think people wanna listen that long, but anyway. So when I was around 14 years old, I actually was at a boarding school for snowboarding. I used to competitively snowboard back in the day. Whoa. And now I’m like, oh, don’t get me here in the mountains beause it’s too cold! Anyways, so when I was doing that, I was exerting a lot of energy, and I started to really focus on how I was feeling and I wasn’t feeling good. It’s really funny how when you start to do a lot of physical activity, you take note of how your body feels, even at the young age of 14. I thought, there’s something off, there’s something not right here.

I did physical activity before I was on the track team and all that kind of stuff. But I guess I just didn’t really care, pay attention or I was like to you into wanting be popular. So when I was in boarding school, I was complaining to my mom about it, who actually has been doing the keto diet for the last 30 years or so. Yeah. She’s been doing it for a long time as a doctor and she always wanted to be a nutritionist, but her father was like, no, you’re gonna be an OBGYN. So that’s what she wound up doing. Anyways, I was complaining to my mom and she sent me book that didn’t have a book jacket or anything on it. And she was like, hey, just read this book. And she took notes of things that I should really focus on in the margins of the book.

And what I found, what I realized now, is it was a book about the ketogenic diet. It basically said to ditch the sugar, to not even eat many nuts, even though the keto diet’s like, hey, you can eat nuts, but even eating nuts can affect your energy levels and that sort of thing. If you eat too many and if you’re on a weight loss journey and you’re doing the ketogenic diet, eating too many nuts, ain’t gonna help. So anyway, I took a lot of notes from that book and I took it to heart and I started to feel better. That’s what led me to a high protein, high-fat diet.

So eventually I moved back home and then I also was diagnosed with a lot of food allergies and intolerances during that time period, as well as celiac disease and ulcerative colitis and IBS and blah, blah, blah. I found out because during the same time of not feeling well, my mom and I thought it would be a good idea to get some tests and stuff like that. So I started eliminating foods that aggravate things for celiac disease sufferers and that really helped me. When I was sort of eliminating food groups and all that kind of stuff, I did go to some extremes. I was anorexic for a little while. So that screwed me up a little bit. 

I think what it comes down to and how I’ve kept this lifestyle sustainable for me is I have found alternatives. I wouldn’t consider myself keto because I incorporate sweet potatoes and I’ll do certain things that aren’t necessarily “keto-approved,” but they’re paleo or whatever. So I call my diet if you will, like the Gigi approach, because I truly believe that everyone needs to educate themselves on multiple different types of eating regimes and then be their own guinea pig to determine what works for them and what doesn’t.

I know a girl, she’s one of my best friends and she was vegan for the longest time. And then she was diagnosed with sjogren’s disease, which is another autoimmune disease. And basically, it was telling her she couldn’t eat vegan anymore. One day I’m like, girl, you just have to eat chicken and you have to eat other animal proteins and you have to see how that makes you feel. I understand that you may love the environment and animals and all that kind of stuff, but for your health, you may need to do this. She did. And now she does eats animal proteins because she can’t eat the vegan lifestyle anymore because it’s too grain-heavy and stuff like that. Grains just don’t work for her.

That being said, I have my master’s in nutrition, thanks to the fact that I’ve been so passionate and interested in how food affects the body. So when people come to me asking for advice, or they want me to coach them through nutrition, I always tell them that they need to write down their food. We look at what they’re eating and then we can determine the best approach to healthy swaps or what works for them and what doesn’t, because I’m not necessarily gonna tell them, “hey, you gotta cut out that” right?

If that right is what’s giving them energy, I’m gonna simply tell ’em. Obviously, I’m gonna tell them sugar is just not okay for everybody. That’s just a universally agreed and processed things are not great either.  If you’re not eating so many packaged foods and you’re eating a lot of things from the edges of the grocery store I think that is beneficial to one’s health. How I’ve made this sustain for me is I’m I have a very, very strong willpower. I don’t ever want sweets. I don’t care. I have salt tooths. I could literally eat the exact same thing every single day of my life. And I do. I mean, a lot of people like variety, so I’m just kind of weird in that respect.

I literally could subsist on salmon, sweet potatoes and spinach every single day of my life. It works for me and it’s safe and I know I can digest easily and it won’t necessarily cause any sort of issues. However, the food industry here in the United States is really messed up and. Sometimes I will eat sweet potatoes and spinach and feel totally fine. And then a couple days later I’ll eat the exact same thing. I’ll feel terrible which to me is weird. Anyways, in my opinion, what that means is there’s something funky going on with whatever chemicals they’re putting on the spinach I’m eating or the sweet potato or whatever. So that creeps me out a little, but overall I make it work for me and I try to help others give them advice as too, when they want it. Right? Never be forced to do anything they don’t wanna do, but if they want advice, I mean I’ll give it.

Cheryl McColgan: You’re very good about that and you’re very generous about your time with all that stuff. There are so many things that you said there that we align so well which is probably one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed following your account for so long. Last night I was doing a live cook-along and, and we were talking about a cheesesteak in a bowl that I did.  So it had some onions and peppers and I said, some people will try to tell you, oh, that’s too many onions and peppers, like for being strict keto or whatever. Meanwhile, nobody ever got fat from eating vegetables. Right?

Gigi Ashworth: Thank you! Yeah. I feel like, I mean, I’ve been doing this diet for a good 17 years and I don’t count macros or anything like that. Plus I think numbers drive me crazy. It just reminds me of when I was anorexic, I always weigh myself and I’m like, you are not defined by numbers. So for me, I don’t really count macros. If I’m gonna have peppers and onions, I’m gonna have peppers and onions. Like I, I got Mexican food the other day and yeah, it was filled with peppers and onions and girl wolfed those down. Yeah. 

Cheryl McColgan: I can just about guarantee you since you’ve been doing this lifestyle for so long and you’re extremely active…and we can talk a little bit about some of your workout stuff too… but I would almost guarantee you were a hundred percent still in ketosis after that meal. I mean, people have this weird idea of what they think the keto diet is or that it’s super restrictive.

And in some ways it is if you’re truly trying to be in ketosis. For example, like for your autoimmune disorders or people that are treating other things like depression or anxiety, maybe you need to be a little more on the strict side to get those more therapeutic levels. But for most people, and especially for people that are trying to manage diabetes, or they just wanna lose some weight or whatever, if they wanna make this sustainable, weighing some peppers and onions every time you eat is just absolutely ridiculous. So I’m glad that you brought that point up because you have been doing it for quite a long time. I’m going on five years now. I mean, there’s plenty of things that I would probably never eat again, but there’s also some things that are like, hey, if I just have a random craving and I don’t have any digestive issues like you do, thankfully, I’ll have whatever it is I’m I’m gonna have. That’s what makes it easy to do long term.

Gigi Ashworth: Yes. That’s the attitude and approach I take too. I think, hey, there’s some brussels sprouts over there. I’m going to eat those. They may be a little higher in carbs. They’re brussel sprouts and they’re delicious. So that’s gonna happen. It’s not something I’m necessarily gonna eat every single day. Cause well, if you know brussels sprouts and my digestion that’s not always a good idea! I do love my husband a little bit, but, as you said, if you’re craving it and you want it and, it’s still categorized as “healthy” then why not? 

Cheryl McColgan: Agree. So to back to your workout stuff. You are pretty intense with your workouts. And I think one time you told me, like, I’m just gonna pretend I’m in a figure competition even though I’m, I’m not. S how did you get, I mean, obviously you’ve been very active with sports and stuff through your whole life and working out now is just sort of an extension of that. Or do you have some goals around improving something? For example, you mentioned that you might have had osteopenia or osteoporosis before through eating tons of salmon bones and through doing this weight-bearing activity, have you seen any improvements in that situation? Is that maybe one of the reasons you do that? I don’t know your answers here yet. I’m just the one asking the questions.

Gigi Ashworth: You’re, you’re sort of dead on that. It’s just more of an extension to my active lifestyle. I was raised in a family who’s very active. They’re all very active. Every single morning they all either go hiking or do something in a gym for two hours every day. And that’s what I do as well. I’m the type of person that likes to work out indoors. I don’t know. I like to have a time limit on things and I like to see visuals. I’ve always hated going hiking with my parents because they just like to keep on walking. And I’m like, when are we stopping? Like, oh, at that like tree over there. Yeah. Which one anyways? Uh, they love hiking. They go every day, my sister works out every day, my brother too. So it’s, it’s really just, it’s how I was raised.

Activity is extremely important. And on top of that, I physically feel so much better when I’m working out.  It’s like my morning cup of excuse me, 10 cups of coffee because it gives me lots of energy and it makes me feel better and lighter on my feet and focused and calm. Like I praise myself for being very relaxed and cool, calm and collected and not really stressing out or sweating the small stuff. I truly believe it’s because I work out every single day. Now, obviously, I don’t necessarily recommend people work out two hours a day every day like I do. I’m just crazy, but that’s what works for me. And again, as I said, be your own guinea pig. If a 10-minute walk outside is what makes you feel light on your feet and ready to go, then that’s amazing.

But if you need that two hours of extreme, strenuous exercise where you’re sweating bullets, like I usually do every morning, then yeah, go for it. As long as it doesn’t impact your health negatively, I say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with working out as long as you want. I am a very active person. I wear this ring actually it’s called an oura ring and it counts my steps. It actually tracks sleep and my readiness and all this kind of stuff. So it actually makes it a little more fun because I’m always kinda like trying to beat myself from the day before. I don’t know, people care about step count, whatever, but usually, they’re recommending around 10 to 12,000 steps a day. On average people get maybe like three to five which is kind of sad, but, at the same time, everyone has an office job. So they’re just kind of sitting at their desk all day, which by the way, when I’m working on my computer I stand, because it helps your back or at least mine. I get around 18 to 20,000 steps a day because I just can’t stop moving.

Cheryl McColgan: I’m actually kinda surprised that you don’t have a treadmill desk.

Gigi Ashworth: Oh, I wanted one. I do have a desk downstairs in the exercise room, but my treadmill is not underneath it. 

Cheryl McColgan: Something I did wanna go back to that you kind of glossed over a little bit and you don’t have to go into super detail…but, as far as your Crohn’s and colitis, all the autoimmune stuff, you did end up having to have surgery at one point. So does that continue to impact your health now? Or is, are things more stabilized? I know you had to go to that one extreme because you weren’t feeling well.

Gigi Ashworth: I had the surgery when I was 21. So this was after I was diagnosed with colitis and IBS and all sort and all that kinda stuff. I was feeling pretty good. I even remember I was in college and I was walking home from my advisor meeting or whatever, and I was like, sweet. I have like two more classes to take before I graduate. I called my mom and I was super pumped. And then I remember that night I had lamb and eggplant and like, I can’t look at lamb or eggplant ever again, because that was my last meal before this situation occurred. And you don’t know is when your large intestine has an obstruction, it twists into a knot and it cannot untie.

So they have to go in and do surgery. I mean, they actually did give the suggestion of, hey we can untwist it, but we can’t guarantee that this won’t happen to you again in a week. And I’m like, ah, we’re not gonna come back here in a week. No. So they can take out the large intestine. That’s what they did. Initially, there were a lot of complications and problems for me. Like I had to adjust...

I am so excited to share this episode with you. Today I am chatting with Dr. Stephanie Estima. After meeting her at the Keto Diet Summit where we were both speakers, I knew I had to have her come on and talk to us. Dr. Stephanie Estima is a mother, best-selling author, podcast host and coach. Tune in as we go over several topics such as brain and cardiovascular health, fitness, hormones, life span versus your healthspan and keto and menopause

We also get into keto cycling, therapeutic interventions, as well as mindset. 

Dr. Stephanie also shares her knowledge on pre-Mmenopausal needs, considerations for keto and menopause, the benefits of lifting weights, and how to find the right sustainability when it comes to your own diet. This is a jam-packed show, and we’re excited to hear your thoughts.

Did you love today’s show? Let me know by leaving me a review for the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening from today! If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions here, you’ll have a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card that we’re giving away November 17, 2021.

Watch the interview with Dr. Stephanie Estima on YouTube.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Website: https://healnourishgrow.com

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Website: https://hellobetty.club

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Cheryl McColgan: Hi Everyone, welcome.  Today, I’m here with Dr. Stephanie Estima. First of all, she has a new book out, which is amazing. And second of all, she’s really focused on making sure that your hormones stay in balance while you’re on keto, which can be a particular problem for us, ladies. So welcome, Dr. Stephanie Estima. Could you just tell us some of your background, how you found the low carb diet, how you got into it and your interest in this subject? 

Dr. Stephanie Estima: So I have been, you know, for most of my career, very interested in brain health and brain metabolism, and the ketogenic diet was something that I came across maybe for, well maybe five or six years ago now in terms of some of the benefits that it can have for cognition, for mood, for sleep. I started implementing it in my practice.

That was when I still when I had a brick-and-mortar practice and it had a profound result in my patients. So it’s something that I’ve always been very, very cognizant towards is this idea of how can we change some of the things in our life, whether that’s nutrition or movement or supplementation or stress reduction as a way to level our brain health in some way. The ketogenic diet, I’m sure we’ll talk about it today and I’m sure you’ve talked about this on the podcast before.

It’s one of those protocols that is very, very efficient for reducing inflammation in the brain, for helping with clarity of thought, helping with sleep and all the things that are important when we’re thinking about long-term brain aging and brain health. 

Cheryl McColgan: I’m so glad that you brought up that subject because it’s also part of my background. I have graduate training and clinical neuropsychology was my focus. So part of the reason I also came to this space, into this way of eating is because of brain function. Once I read the research and became aware of this, it was kind of like, once you see it, you can’t unsee it…right? Like you’re saying, you put your patients on that. Probably they came to it for weight loss. A lot of people come to keto for that reason, but then people realize it has other amazing benefits. Could you talk a little bit about your clinical practice and some of the effects that you saw in your patients once they started living this kind of lifestyle? 

Dr. Stephanie Estima: So I would say you’re very right that most people would come for weight loss, but they would stay for all the other benefits. Like no one ever comes is like, “You know what? I would love to improve my mood.” They want that but they don’t necessarily think that the ketogenic diet is going to be the way that that’s going to happen. So weight loss is one of the more profound, particularly early results that we see when you are starting to restrict your carbohydrate because, you know, you start using up your glycogen stores and as you start to use that, you’re also getting rid of some of the water that you have. So for every molecule of of glycogen that you store carbohydrate, you’re also pairing it with three to four molecules of water. So we often see a rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks doing keto. So that also makes people feel great because now they feel less bloated and they’re more motivated to sort of stay the course.

Some of the things I already mentioned: clarity, sleep. A lot of people say I sleep a lot better now. They feel like they have a sustained amount of energy so that they don’t have those highs and lows during the day where they eat then they have this carb crash and they start to have this carb coma rather than a 45 minutes later are going back for a bagel or a muffin or whatever it is. Particularly, I would see this in my female patients as well.

Two to four in the afternoon is the time window when we started seeing like an aggregation of more calories and we have our lunch at 12:00 or 1:00 o’clock. But if the macronutrients are not structured to give you sustainable, long-burning energy, a couple of hours later, you’re already hungry. So we would see people starting to get like their little snacks and a little picky type of foods eating around that time. So women who are going on keto or at least the conditioning program that I was structuring for them would say, I don’t think I can have my lunch and then I don’t really want to eat again until I get home for dinner time. So that was also a really huge benefit as well.

I think body composition changes. We would see the waist to hip ratio improve. So people are slimming down their waist relative to their hips, which is an indicator for longevity. We want to make sure that, if you were to say right now, if you were to take a measuring tape and measure your navel at the level of your navel and then again, measure at the widest part of your hips and you divide those numbers into each other, you want that number to be at least point eight like no higher than point eight and lower if possible. So we would start to see improvement there. And of course, with that indicating the visceral fat, if your waist is smaller than your hips, you are starting to create that more hourglass. figure, which we don’t even have to talk about the esthetics. This is the ideal shape for a woman when we’re thinking about longevity because if she’s accumulating a lot of weight through her waist relative to her hips, we know that that’s likely an accumulation of visceral fat and it’s going to be harder for her organs to actually do the things that they’re supposed to do. And of course, it looks good, right? We get all this talk about vanity, but in terms of some of the metabolic parameters about ways to hip ratio, it was a really great improvement in that as well. 

Cheryl McColgan: Yeah, I’m really glad that you mentioned the visceral fat thing because it also you can probably speak to this more clearly, but you mentioned,  it doesn’t allow your organs to work as well, that sort of thing. And it’s also linked to all of these sort of diseases of aging like heart disease and probably everything…diabetes etc. I think that when your waist-hip ratio gets out of balance, you’re more at risk for basically every kind of particularly metabolically related disease. Any further thoughts on heart disease being associated with visceral fat?

Dr. Stephanie Estima: When we think about cardiovascular health, both across the board, men and women, it is the number one killer, right? We often are as women. I think we’re very scared of the C-word. We’re very scared of cancer, particularly breast cancer. I think there’s a lot of focus put on that. And I must say, I’m not saying that not important for us. It is. There’s also some schools of thought that are actually proposing now that cancer does have some of its roots in metabolic dysregulation, but cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer for women. And my focus is really on female physiology.

I don’t know if I mentioned that in the beginning, but you know, I have a really big interest in some of these proxies, like the ketogenic diet, like fasting, supplementation and working out as it applies to women. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer and we want to be, especially when we’re thinking about how can we live a longer life, we also want to be paying attention to. So that would be called lifespan, like the span of years that you live. But we also want to be thinking about health span. So all of those years, how many of those are spent healthy? So when we think about ways that we can augment that ways that, we can make that to extend that healthspan, one of the ways one of the easier ways to do that is through manipulation in our diet. I love the ketogenic diet for women, trying to get a woman into pure ketosis for a short period of time. So I love therapeutic intervention of the ketogenic diet. 

Then I actually sort of differ from a lot of people in the general community in that I don’t think that women should be in ketosis forever. I do think that over the long term, when we are thinking about honoring our female physiology, honoring our hormones, honoring the different hormonal values that we will go through not only as a reproductive woman, but as a woman who has the emotional cycle. When we are menopausal as well there is a certain cadence that we adhere to. So I love the idea of ketosis cycling and I talk about that in my book The Betty Body.

If you’re watching, this is my beautiful book baby and we spend a lot of time in the book talking about this sort of phase one, which is that therapeutic intervention of ketosis and then moving into keto cycling for women. So a week on, a week off, a week on, a week off. And then there’s other things that we talk about, like protein cycling and carbohydrate cycling in order to support our hormones, to support our cardiovascular health, as we’ve been talking about and to support overall health, which is kind of like it’s not there’s no point in living in a long time if you’re diseased and dying.

We want to be living a long life that’s healthy and robust. I’m already training, I sort of say this jokingly, but I’m training to be the best, the favorite grandmother like I want to be. I want to be the grandma that can get down on the floor, play with my grandkids, pick them up, be able to get up off the floor, unassisted. If I’m traveling, I want to be able to carry my own luggage. I want to be able to put it into the overhead bin. I want to be able to do push-ups. I’ll say if you’ll allow me to get on my soapbox, a push-up is a push-up on your toes, not on your knees. So, you know, we call them ladies pushups and I get a little like nervous tic when I hear that because there’s no such thing as the lady’s push-up! Push-ups on your toes is the equivalent of squats your booty. We want to be thinking about the ability to push our own body weight and to be able to pull our own body weight is able to do pus-ups. These are things that I think about when I’m thinking about how I’m going to be the favorite grandma and in 20 or 30 years from now. 

Cheryl McColgan: I love it! So how I came in contact with Dr. Stephanie is that we spoke at the Keto Diet Summit and I knew right from the beginning…by hearing,you talk and seeing you, that my philosophy is just it’s so in line with what you were saying. I was just literally talking on live on Instagram before we got on here and I was kind of talking about getting ready to record with Dr. Stephanie.

This weekend we were we were snowboarding in Utah where they got like about four feet of snow in, I don’t know, a few hours or so. This is a little extreme, I realize, but I do have a point here and it’s coming. So I’ll be forty-eight here in about a month. And I think about this a lot, too. I want to be able to be healthy enough and strong enough to do the activities that I love. And also we have two boys. I’m hoping we’ll have some grandbabies at some point and all of that.

I think if people can wrap their mind around making that their purpose rather than always making it about weight loss, that is what makes this lifestyle so sustainable to me because I know that every day that I make choices, it’s because I want to be able to go get on my snowboard in four feet of powder and like, survive that. I just think as a mindset thing for weight loss, if people can start to think about those longer-term goals, their core values, that really helps them stay on the diet or stay on all the things that we need to do, as you mentioned, like doing our pushups, doing our workouts and that sort of thing. 

Dr. Stephanie Estima: Yeah. And I love what you’re saying because I think that when we only think about it in the context of weight loss, we tend to think a short term lends to that. So we tend to say, well, in two months, I want to be five pounds or 10 pounds lighter, whatever it is or for the high school reunion and that’s happening in four months. I want to be able to get into such and such dress, which is fine. Those are great goals to have. But you also want to layer that on with a long-term view because what is the point? I also want to honor my inner self here, like there’s no point in doing all this work is just going to come back again. Right? So if you are thinking about fat loss, if this is something that is important to you, it would behoove you to think about the short-term goal, but also to be thinking about how can I sustain this over a year, two years, ten years, two decades? Because that is actually the hardest part.

We’ve all seen the biggest loser and weight loss shows where they can an extraordinary amount of weight in a short amount of time. But of course, we also know that the success of those people on Biggest Loser…90 percent of the participants gain the weight back because they haven’t actually learned how to have these lifestyle modifications, how to be able to bring in some of these small little habits into the everyday.

They go back to their life, they go back to the same stress, the same coping mechanisms. And then, we see the weight gain come back again and sometimes many times more so. So they may have started off at an obese weight. They lose the weight on the show, they go back and then they’re heavier than they ever were. So I’m really interested in how we can take small little habits that are not hard to implement every single day and be able to consistently apply them and to have that commitment to that consistency over the long period of time over that long velvety. And that’s how we really get some of those great results that we’re talking about.

Cheryl McColgan: For example the brain stuff…the longer you do keto, the better it gets. I have noticed in my husband the same. He keeps saying he really thinks, and he’s 54, that his brain function feels just so much more clear and easier to remember things since going low carb. Everything that we have to worry about as normal aging brains, not just later on with neurodegenerative disease, where they’re kind of calling it a type three diabetes now, but also just normal brain function that kind of starts to decline as we get older, unfortunately. So that’s probably a pretty good lead-in to your book about how people