Daisy’s latest extraordinary woman, Bec, talks about how she lives a life with no limits as a Type 1 Diabetic. She has twice swum solo across the 20-kilometre Rottnest Channel, sailed across the Atlantic, and become a SCUBA dive guide to prove it!
Bec is the CEO of the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre in Western Australia, an Australia-first centre for people with type 1 diabetes. Diagnosed with type 1 in 2001, Bec believes that there are no limits on a life with type 1 diabetes, and she has twice swum solo across the 20-kilometre Rottnest Channel, sailed across the Atlantic, and become a SCUBA dive guide to prove it.
She manages her type 1 with multiple daily injections, a low carbohydrate diet, frequent connection with the type 1 tribe and plenty of active living.
Bec holds qualifications in Law and Arts, a Masters in Public Health, and a Diploma of Business (Governance). She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Curtin University, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Community Directors and a Fellow of Leadership WA. She is the only Australian to have been selected as one of the 100 Fellows of the global Facebook Community Leadership Program.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary women, Tracey, Ashlee & Jody, talk about Ashlee’s diagnosis and treatment of Type 1 Diabetes plus how Tracey and Ashlee, who live in Australia, came to work with US-based Dr Jody Stanislaw.
Tracey is a mother of 4. Ashlee was born on New Year’s Eve 2004 and was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on the 25 August 2016. They had a horrible first 18 months with no help or guidance and even got abuse from specialists.
After watching Dr Jody on YouTube and her interview with Mike Mutzel Tracey and Ashlee knew they had to contact this amazing lady and learn from her.
A year later, after working with Dr Jody, they finally got to meet her in Denver at the Low Carb Denver conference.
Dr Jody Stanislaw received her Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine in 2007. She is a Certified Diabetes Educator and a Type 1 Diabetes Specialist. Having lived with Type 1 Diabetes since the age of seven, she has dedicated her career to helping others with Type 1. From her 30 plus years of experience, she teaches life-changing information about how to successfully manage Type 1 that most patients have never learned, and also supports patients with diet, exercise, emotional health, as well as overall well-being.
Patients from over thirty states and ten countries have had transformational experiences with her, via her virtual practice, yet there are millions around the world still struggling. To tackle this gap, she has created the first-ever type 1 diabetes virtual training course, covering what to eat & how to dose, how to get off the blood sugar roller coaster, how to master blood sugar and exercise, and how to stay positive and avoid burnout.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary woman, Jennifer, talks about her experience with weight loss surgery and how keto fits into the picture.
Jennifer was born and raised in Ontario Canada and is married with two kids. She has worked as an RN for the past 20 years.
She started gaining weight at around 9 years old when her parents split up. She started her first diet age 11 and subsequently tried every diet under the sun. When she finished high school she was probably only about 20 lbs overweight but it felt like it might as well have been 100.
Over the next 20 years with working full time, getting married, going to college while still working and having 2 children she continued to gain weight despite diet and exercise. She finally considered weight loss surgery but at that time it was not a common surgery done locally and she would have had to travel out of the country for it to be covered by insurance. It was a few years later that Ontario started a fairly extensive program for bariatric patients and she had the sleeve.
After losing about 70 lbs fairly quickly Jennifer’s weight loss stalled as she struggled with the clinic’s ideal nutrition guidelines which was to eat healthy whole foods in moderation. She got stuck back into that viscous carb addiction cycle and spent several years after surgery regaining and losing the same 20 lbs. At one point she even spoke to her surgeon requesting another weight loss surgery but was denied because her weight was too low.
In February 2018 she stumbled across Jason Fung’s book Complete Guide to Fasting. It was a revelation that being unable to lose weight was not her fault but rather the failure of a system that still clings to beliefs about nutrition that are out of date and just plain wrong. She quickly fell down the rabbit hole devouring books, podcasts and YouTube videos.
She lost 20 lbs very quickly on keto but unfortunately regained when her addictive tendency to smother stress with carbs reasserted itself. As she has continued to learn more about herself it’s become easier to manage and she has now lost 10 lbs of that regain. More importantly she feels great – body, mind and spirit.
Kim Howerton struggled with her relationship with food from the time she was 8. As the years went by and her health problems mounted, she felt at the mercy of her body and out of control with her weight. A dedicated seeker of pleasure, she realised that life in a body that was always in pain was no way to live; that a pleasurable life starts by living in a body that feels good.
Enter Keto – a life that has brought together her love of satisfying, delicious foods in a way that makes her actually feel good. She now shares her love of all things Keto by creating recipes, running a Facebook group and with the upcoming podcast Keto Life Support.
Carrie is an ex-professional pastry chef, turned cookbook author, recipe developer, freelance photographer with a crazy, four country, three continent-spanning resume which includes such things as a chocolate TV show, a chocolate cookbook, and making pastries for the Queen of England. She trained at the National Bakery School in London and has now turned her pastry chef talents to creating scrumptious keto/low carb food to help the world eat smarter, live better, and put the healthy back into healthy.
She has published 5 cookbooks and shares her tales of food, travel, and adventure from her splendid single life in the sane lane, as well as her trials and triumphs with Bi-polar Disorder, Adrenal Fatigue, Lyme disease, a massive E-coli infection, a myriad of food sensitivities, and her journey back to slim and vibrant on her blog CarrieBrown.com.
Carrie also shares her love, skills, passion for delicious healthy food, and humor in a Facebook Group – The Keto Kitchen with Carrie Brown – as well as bouncing around all the usual social media platforms as The Real Carrie Brown.
Carrie’s buddies say of her…
“Carrie can often be found in the kitchen, surrounded by her four-legged friends, concocting, devising, developing, and figuring out how to make the impossible very possible (and affordable). And we love her for it.”
Happy Healthy Keto
You can find out more about Kim and Carrie’s program on their website or take a look at my Starting Keto page.
This transcript is brought to you thanks to the hard work of Cheryl Meyers.
Welcome back to Part 2 of the go-to place for where you need to go to start keto. Welcome back Kim and Carrie to the Keto Women podcast.
[Carrie] Hello.
[Kim] Thank you. I’m happy to be back.
I’m very excited to be back. I’m very excited that there was so much stuff we had to share that we had to come back again
and would you believe I was actually holding back?
How do we deal with those cravings? I suppose particularly, well not particularly, but two different things, in that first week when they’re really strong and at the forefront of your mind and then as you go and they just sort of crop up every now and then and can really take you by surprise when you think you’re doing really well.
Yeah, week one everyone. If you haven’t started keto, you might be pleasantly surprised, but you should be prepared for the fact that you are giving up what is essentially a drug and each it will be hard. That’s not a reason not to do it. Doing hard things is important, but being a little bit for warned can be helpful and having maybe some strategies there can be helpful and I would suggest your first week or even two weeks depending on how it goes for you, do not concern yourself with limiting your food. Only concern yourself with limiting your carbohydrates if that means an enormous bunless burger with some pickles and no bun, no fries, you know, for lunch followed by in the evening and enormous stake with you know, some broccoli and butter on it and enormous quantities of keto friendly foods that first week so that essentially you’re too full to eat any junkie carbs has been a very successful strategy for many people. I find when people initially that first week or two they’re like, but I don’t want to go over my protein macro and I don’t want to eat too much fat because I want to burn the body fat, dahdahdah. Like they’ve heard too many opinions.
Oh and what about calories? Because they could have probably been coming from this place where they had to be concerned about calories. Right? Yeah. The last thing you want to do is to do everything at the same time.
And we can totally worry about those things later. But the first important step is just to get off the carbs, whatever that looks like. Get off the carbs. Being hungry your first week or two is probably one of the worst things you could do. The cravings are going to get you anyway and cravings like mental cravings plus hunger is like Disasterville, so don’t be hungry and then over time we’ll adjust the amount of food you’re eating down to a more, maybe an energetically appropriate level for you, but by then you’re through the hump of getting off the carbs.
My best advice for dealing with cravings is to really do a good job when you’re starting out of clearing out all the carbage from your house. Because if it’s not there when the craving hits, you have no option but to eat something keto because that’s all you have in your house. I find it incredibly difficult–or I did–find it incredibly difficult to get through a craving if there was something in my house that would fuel it, this was years ago. If I’m having a craving and the something carby in the house, I’m eating it. So the best advice I can give you is to, when you start this journey, wherever you are on this journey, get rid, clear all the carbage out of your house so that when the cravings hit, all you have, all the choices you have are quality proteins or fats. That’s it. There’s no carbs to choose from. You’re going to eat what’s there and we’re good with that. We’re good with you eating more. We just want you to stay off the carbs.
I will offer an alternative because, Carrie, your cats don’t set the shopping list in your house, right? But many of us live with non-ketoers. And so that can pose an issue potentially. And this is true of me, my boyfriend–not keto. I know that’s shocking to many, but it is true and I am not the boss of anybody but me. So it’s not my job to make somebody else eat the way that I eat. It’s just my odd job to offer information and they make their own choices.
And cook him delicious food that you hope that he’s going to enjoy.
And he does. He does, he loves it. And he’s also very metabolically healthy. There are a certain percentage of the population that can do so while including carbs. And I try not to hate them. But that being said, my house is full of things that I don’t eat and I choose not to eat. But I do have a few important details on that. You know what your trigger foods are, right? Like for me, I can have a freezer full of ice cream, non-keto ice cream. I won’t touch it. It does not call to me. There are certain brands of cookies they call to me. I cannot have Milanos anywhere in my vicinity. I will want to eat them, but then, like, I don’t know. This other brand of cookies, they don’t really call to me. So I make strategic purchasing choices and or rules about what comes in my house that those foods that we all have that speak to us. You know these foods, right? If you’ve ever been a binge eater, they’re the ones you buy. I don’t bring those foods into my house now we’ve got chips, we’ve got cookies, we’ve got cream. I’m sorry, I’m triggering all sorts of people now.
We’ve got all sorts of those things in my house. I’ve specifically directed the purchases towards the flavors and brands that I’m more like, man, I don’t know that I like oatmeal raisin. You have to know where your boundaries are and then if you’re somebody that lives in a household with non keto eaters, it’s probably doubly as important to have your foods at the ready. You don’t want to get home from a hard day’s work and your husband, partner, children, somebody has been like, well, I made this totally carby food for dinner and you don’t have dinner stuff ready and you have to go to the store and dah, dah, dah, dah, and then you’re like, ah, screw it. I’m hungry and tired and I, I’ll just eat the carby food. If you’re potentially going to be surrounded by choices you don’t want to make, you need alternative options because if Carrie gets home and is like, I’m hungry, but if I open my fridge, all there is is some lamb and I dunno…
Roll mops!
I don’t even, what’s a Roll mop?
Pickled herrings.
Oh yeah, no, I would go hungry. I don’t like herring. But she’s going to be like, well, if I want to be not hungry, I’m going to eat these things, but if you have other foods in your house, you actually have to be twice as strategic and know that when I open my fridge, there is something that I can eat in five minutes if I need to, rather than chowing down on that carby meal somebody else made.
There are these different layers aren’t there? If you live on your own or if you can completely dictate what is in the house, then the easiest thing really is to, to clear it out.
What are you saving it for, there’s no reason to have it.
Exactly. And that’s, that’s what it’s like here. If I had any of those things in the house, I would probably eat them. So not having them is the easiest way. But there are obviously these people, like you say, who have to share a house with carb eaters. So it sounds like you’ve come to a compromise with your partner where there are certain things that won’t come in the house.
Right.
So yeah, you can have ice cream and you can have the cookies, but just don’t have these particular brands and he’s okay with that. But then there are going to be people, and I have heard of these people and to be honest, I think it’s, I do think it’s unfair. I do think there should be some compromises made and when someone says their partner or the rest of their family refuses to make that compromise and will continue having those things that are really, really difficult for them to avoid in a house, I actually do think that’s unreasonable. I think there should be a compromise, a meeting in the middle where they would at least agree for a certain period of time not to have those things that are the extreme trigger foods for that person because they should be concerned enough for their health and well-being to make that compromise.
I totally agree with you. You know, you have to find the appropriate level for you. For me, this level works. Keebler does not call my name right, so I’m not worried about that. If you’re triggered by any of those foods right? Some people are just like cookies. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crappy brand. I’m, I’m very, I’m snobby, right? So I’m like, wow, I wouldn’t touch that brand. I think then I have had this discussion. You know, it’s like every relationship is different and this is about what we’re talking about here is a lot about relationship. And so having a conversation with your spouse, partner, children, whoever, roommate, I dunno, that is like, hey, this is too hard for me and I need to talk to you about it, because I’ve had clients who are going to die if they eat these foods.
Maybe not today, but within a year, you know, they are super sick and you know, they’ve had to have that conversation with their family members. Like, I’m trying to save my life here. And the fact that you being able to bring these things into our home makes you feel happier today versus me trying to save my life. Like there’s no equation. This shouldn’t be a hard conversation to have. Right. This shouldn’t be a hard decision. Actually, I should say. It might be a hard conversation to have because we’re, we are crap at communicating, but it shouldn’t be a hard decision for your partner to say, you know what, I shouldn’t bring these things into the house.
Because ultimately they can still eat them. You know, I’ve, I’ve had people say that their partner has a stash that is in their car or somewhere.
They go through the drive thru and feed their addiction somewhere else. Yeah.
It’s gone by the time they walk through the front door.
Right. And so this is, this is something you as an individual need to determine where your boundaries and limits are. Absolutely. And no one is going to die because they didn’t get Doritos.
No, that’s right. They’re really not. And actually what you might end up doing is improving your partner or the rest of your family’s health in the process anyway. So you know, there’s that. So we put these strategies in place to try and avoid giving in to these cravings. But ultimately most of us at some point or other probably will give in and fall off the wagon sometimes softly, sometimes very heavily, sometimes for one meal, sometimes for a few months. So what do we do if and when that happens?
I think a lot of it is based on going back to what are your goals and what’s the reason you’re doing keto. Falling off the wagon for one person versus another person. You know, it can be very different. For me, one of the things that I work very hard to try and denormalize in a way is first thing that will happen when you cheat or fall off the wagon or eat something that you don’t think you should be eating is the world will rush in to say, ‘That’s all right. Everyone does it.’ And though what I actually think, I think that’s a horrible thing. I’m just going to say it because what those people are trying to do is eliminate any discomfort you’re feeling.
What I think they actually mean and what I think would be a good thing is to say, please stop beating yourself up about it. It’s done. It’s done, past. We’re moving on, we’re focusing on the future. The only reason to look behind you is to know what happened, why it happened, and how to avoid it next time. If you’re looking behind you at the wreckage of what just happened for any other reason than that, you’re just beating yourself up. You’re using it to make yourself feel bad. That’s going to make you more likely to fail again. So if something happens where you ate something, you didn’t want to, I mean you did want to, you put it in your mouth. It’s not an accident, it’s an on purpose. It’s an intentional thing. So one, take responsibility. And when you take that responsibility, you can be like, hey, I had a piece of chocolate cake. Why did I have that? Was I sad, was it an emotional thing? Did it look really good?
Had I been restricting myself on food quite a bit and I was starving? What went into the decision? Because I made a decision to eat it because it went in my mouth. What happened along the way? What was the path of that decision? And anytime you start heading into, I’m a bad person, I have no willpower — any of that negative self talk, stop it. Just stop it. It’s not helpful.
I love the way you say that, “Stop it!”
I think I stole that from Bob Newhart. There’s a clip, but evaluate why it happened and know you made a choice somewhere along that route, find that choice point and evaluate. Was it a good or a bad choice in terms of your goals? Did it support? See it’s so easy to go to judging–good, bad, right? Support or not support. Did it support my goals, did it not support my goals? And so looking at things through that lens. But I really do want to say like a little internal discomfort is not always a bad thing. That internal feeling of like, oh, I did something that I didn’t mean to do. I don’t think you want to completely squash that feeling that things went wonky because when you start every time you make a mistake or you do something that didn’t support your goals, if every single time you’re like, that’s okay, everyone does it, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. There can be a way that you won’t grow and it’s all about growth, not about enablement.
I absolutely agree with just with looking at it from a much more analytical perspective. Just take the emotion out of it a bit and just look at it from an analytical perspective and just figure things out. Because then like you were saying, Kim, you can come up with a strategy for when that situation happens again because it will whatever it was. So you know, whatever that choice point as you refer to it was that something that happened, something that triggered you in some way to make that choice. That’s going to happen again. It might be someone you don’t like very much, who said something personal about you. Whatever it is, it’s going to happen again. So if you’ve got a strategy in place, you’re more likely to be able to deal with it.
Again, it’s choices, right? We’re not children who are bad or good children. You know, we’re making choices and those choices are either in support of or not in support of what we want in the world, in our lives, in our health. For me, if my primary desire is weight loss, then I’m going to look at it through the scope of did it support or not support my weight loss efforts as a whole. But for Carrie it might be how do I feel now after I eat this food?
I think it’s an important discussion to have is to really hone down on why you’re doing this. If you really figure out your why, that can be really helpful when you have those moments because you’ve got that in your mind. Right?
And Carrie had a really powerful why. So we should ask her.
I think, everything, and I think deep down we know this, but on a day to day basis, we forget that it’s all about our why and the bigger a why you have the easier it will be to stick to it. For a lot of people, how they look is a very, very, very big why. For me, it was not running the risk of becoming suicidal. That was a huge why for me, I suffered from bipolar disorder for my whole life. Although I wasn’t diagnosed, I was misdiagnosed and treated with the wrong things, which didn’t help but wanting to get out of that nightmare. I don’t use that word lightly. The nightmare of suicidal episodes and being hyper manic and being depressed and feeling no joy was a big enough why for me and is still a big enough why for me to eat things that are going to support a joyful, happy life. You can’t use someone else’s why and you have to be really, really, really clear about why you’re doing it. I think if you’re doing it for someone else, you’re probably going to struggle. If you’re doing it for reasons because you think you should, you’re probably going to struggle, so I would highly recommend that you really think, not just for a minute, but really think about what it is you want to do, what you want to change and why because you will be more or less successful based on your answers to those questions to yourself.
You do need to build a really detailed picture. Too many times people just say, I want to lose weight. That’s my why is to lose weight because whatever, it’s a mythical thing. Everything’s going to be better when I lose weight, but there will be a detailed why you’ve just got to find it. That’s exactly like what you’re saying Carrie, is to really sit down and think about it, make some notes, brainstorm it and think, well actually why I really want to lose weight is so that I can keep up with my kids running around the park. Something like that, something a really detailed picture that probably has some kind of emotional attachment to it and then that will really lock in to remind you when you’re faced with that food craving that’s in front of you.
Right. I think one of the things that is important when you look at your why is that it stands up to some scrutiny. So if you told me your why was to lose 50 pounds, I would say, well what would that do for you? Right? What would that give you? What would that mean to you? And then looking at those things, you’ll go deeper, right? Maybe it’s, you know, if I lose 50 pounds, I can fit on an airplane seat and I’ve always wanted to travel and I’ve never been to… you know, when you, you start to paint this bigger picture and you get to something actually deeply meaningful. A number on a scale doesn’t do anything. It’s a marker but it doesn’t impact your life in and of itself. So you need to go a layer deeper. If you’re why is simply to lose weight or, and this is what exactly what Daisy said, or you know, to weigh this much or to fit in this size. Well what does that mean? What does that mean to you? Go a layer deeper.
Yes, absolutely. I really agree with that. The more detailed a picture you can have, the more it means to you, the more likely it is to shout a lot louder than the tub of Häagen-Dazs or whatever it might be for you. That’s what it used to be for me.
And write it down and post it–get pictures that represent it and post it on the fridge door and write it so that it’s on the edge of your computer. So you’re reminded on a daily basis of why you’re doing what you do. And then in those moments of weakness or emotion or whatever it is, your why is right there in front of you. You don’t have to struggle or dig around like why am I doing this? Like you never have to have that conversation because it’s right in front of you all the time.
And I know another thing that’s been very, very important to me and I think it’s going to be important to everybody. It’s something that you mentioned right in the beginning, Kim, with your new podcast and finding this life support is finding your tribe. Finding a support system. That’s made a huge difference to me. I can’t tap into one locally. Really. I’m out in the middle of nowhere in rural France. My support system has been online and that has made a massive difference to me. And you know I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of you now. That’s been huge and I think it has to be one of the biggest things that you should put on your to do list when you start this. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I also think this ties into something that will happen, though, is finding the right support network rather than finding all the support networks! [laughter] Because there are a lot of keto groups on Facebook and there are a lot of keto podcasts and there are a lot, there are a lot of sources and I think it’s good to sample and try, but you know what your people feel like. Find those people, find the people that make sense to you. Don’t let yourself fall into too many crowds because I think it tends to confuse more than support, but I do think it’s important to find, you know, one, two or maybe even three depending how much you can multitask groups or support networks that really feel like home to you.
I think it’s important that you don’t stay in groups that just don’t make you feel good. I mean in any way. If they’re emotionally draining or they’re hard work or you can’t ask a question without being yelled at or made to feel dumb or you know, whatever, just don’t, there’s plenty of great groups out there. You don’t have to be in groups that are not there to really support you on your journey. There’s a lot of groups out there that will support you as long as you’re following their journey. But that’s not what you need. You need to find a group of people who will support you in your journey, even though that might not look exactly like their journey.
Absolutely. You won’t be able to Google keto or go into certain groups without being offered quick fixes by certain products, exogenous ketones. I certainly know what I think about those kinds of products. What do you think?
Um, I think it’s so hard to be nice when you disagree. So I think it goes back to your why and your goals. Okay. So anytime you’re being offered a quick fix or a product that makes a promise, you kind of have to look at what is it promising? Well, first can I believe what it’s promising? And the answer is actually, usually, probably not, but specifically about exogenous ketones. When you are seeking a ketogenic diet, you’re seeking it for some reason. For many of us, I would say it’s probably improved metabolic health, right? Weight loss included in that, but not the only thing in it. But it may be that you have some dementia issues in your family you’re trying to avoid. It might be that you have a traumatic brain injury. It might be that you have cancer. It might be that you have depression issues, right?
So why you’re ketoing is a very important detail to know how you’re going to evaluate products that make promises specifically with exogenous ketones. You have to look at what they do. So exogenous ketones, for the most part, they’re supplementing beta-hydroxybutyrate, though there are some esters that have some other forms. If you’re going to supplement beta-hydroxybutyrate, you have to look at what does supplementing beta-hydroxybutyrate do, right? What is the effect? Well it puts more of that ketone in your system. What’s the benefit of having the ketone in your system? Does that support your goal? If your goal is fat loss, I will tell you right now 100% it is counter-productive to your goal. Why is that? You’re like, wait, but I was promised you know all of these things. Yes, that is the marketing. Adding ketones to your body does not cause fat loss.
Making ketones from your body fat causes the fat to be used. That’s what you want. It’s the effect of producing ketones that supports weight loss. Now in and of itself doesn’t cause it, but it is a supportive in the process of it having net fat loss. Whereas if you’re simply adding those ketones to your body, you’ve now skipped this step that causes the fat loss, so that’s not good because ketones have oxidative priority. They are burned first before you burn body fat, before you burn, maybe the minor carbs you’ve eaten. Therefore you are adding into your system the very thing you are trying to get out of your system.
Exactly. You’re adding an energy source that you’re going to use before using the energy that you really want to use, which is the fat on your body.
Right now, I understand why people are confused because they’re made a lot of promises by some of these, what I would call predatory companies and you can’t listen to that. There’s actually a very funny Q&A online where a keto expert is at one of the conventions of one of these companies that sells exogenous ketone products. And this woman gets up in the audience and says, you know, I don’t even understand it. My client said that she started on a ketogenic diet, was losing weight, everything was going amazing, and then she started taking our product and she started gaining weight. And the expert very honestly said, yes, that’s what’s going to happen. And everyone was shocked because that wasn’t the marketing materials they were given. That being said, if you’re ketoing for something like traumatic brain injury, you’re trying to use it as an adjunct therapy for cancer, there’s some dementia issues. There is some evidence that potentially supplemental ketones can be of benefit. And so in those cases I would say there might be a reason to experiment with them, but if your goal is fat loss, stay far, far away.
What was your point you made earlier about the ketones in your system? If you need to bump your ketones up to a certain level for some kind of therapeutic reason and you can’t do that through food alone, then that’s pretty well the only way you’re going to be able to do it. But if you’re doing it from a fat loss point of view, and that’s the bit about the marketing that I can’t stand is one is a weight loss and also it’s a way to rectify a cheat.
Oh right. “Get back in ketosis in under an hour.” Yeah, high ketones and high glucose are not something that should happen. You do not want that. And so there are potentially very negative repercussions that we don’t even know about from making that happen in a body. And I think it should be avoided.
I think we’ve made it pretty clear what we think on that. But it’s something to talk about because it’s something that will come up. It’s something that will be offered as a seemingly magical fix. And I think any of us who have been in a position of particularly wanting to lose a lot of weight, if someone says there’s a magic pill that’s going to do it really quickly, we’re probably at least going to want to give it a go.
Oh, I get it. I want the magic pill. Sadly, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.
The magic pill is to stop eating carbohydrate.
Yeah, it’s true.
I want a more magic pill.
There is no more magic pill!
I want to be like Sabrina on, what is that? I just wiggle my nose. And you know, it instantly changes.
The number one driver of ketosis is absence of carbohydrates. That’s the number one driver. So if you’re doing anything else to drive ketosis, that’s not that, then you’re missing the main route to get you there.
There are no shortcuts.
And you’re going to be poorer financially and you’re not going to get what you want if you try and do these other quick fixes. So trust us when we tell you don’t, just don’t, just focus on the things that actually work.
We talk about levels of ketones and a lot of people find it useful, but it’s certainly not necessary, but it can be useful of testing those ketones. What do you suggest on that score for someone who’s starting out?
Well, I think Carrie mentioned earlier that she used the pee strips, which can be useful initially. I tend not to recommend them long-term, not because they’re not that expensive. So it’s not that big a cost investment, but over time they don’t work very well because what the pee strips test is Acetoacetate. And Acetoacetate is downregulated by the body. You still have it, but what is spilled in your urine is the access and your body gets very good at, well, some people’s bodies, get very good at downregulating the amount they’re producing slash using, so there’s not as much excess. So they’re now peeing on a strip that’s not changing color or not getting dark purple anymore. It’s not actually an indication that you’re no longer in ketosis, but that’s what people assume. And so the reason that I don’t recommend them is they cause people heart attack. I mean, not literally. They caused people a lot of agitation and anxiety where they probably don’t need to have that anxiety. There’s three basic methods of testing. There’s pee strips, there’s breath acetone meters and there are beta-hydroxybutyrate blood tests. Those are the three methods of testing. Of those, as I said, the pee ones for some people are never accurate. For other people, they become less accurate over time and for still more, they stay accurate. The problem is, I don’t know which one of those categories you fall into.
They’re quite good to start with, you know, fairly cheap. Quick seeing a color.
Yeah. Except I did not test positive on a pee strip one time. So for me, they were not a good indicator. But then when I went to blood testing, I did find that that was helpful for me. But for a lot of people, the pee strips are very helpful initially. So it’s more that I want people to go into it knowing that the pee strip is not god, it’s not going to necessarily tell you everything accurately. Take it with a grain of salt.
And for the other two. Both are going to be a fairly large expense.
Right. So, so the beta-hydroxybutyrate blood tests, in the United States, there are currently, I think now there are four, but there are two that were primarily used for diabetic testing that are very expensive. You can get them without a prescription, but they might be a little harder to get your hands on. All the meters that test ketones in the United States also test glucose. They’re called dual meters. But you’re looking at things like, my favorite is the Keto Mojo and that one, I like it because I liked the company. I like what they stand for. They’re specifically geared towards the keto market. They test both glucose and ketones through specific strips and that will give you your level of Bhb, beta-hydroxybutyrate and glucose. And I liked that one because it tends to stay a little bit more stable.
And it’s kind of the gold standard test, so when you read keto studies, if you read keto studies, that’s the marker they’re usually measuring. It’s probably about a hundred bucks a upfront costs to get started. And then ongoing would just depend on how often you’re testing. And then the third option are the breath testers. Those test the level of acetone you’re putting out through your breath. There are a few good meters. They’re expensive. There are a few cheap meters, they’re not very good. So I don’t know that those are worth the costs. They’re kind of along the lines of the pee strips. They may work, they may not work, they’re not well calibrated. I don’t know what this means. And they might cause more confusion than they’re worth.
Yeah, I certainly thing that blood testing is probably the easiest. And like you say, you can test the glucose at the same time and that can be just as useful, but neither, neither, neither nor all three, are necessary. They’re just useful if you find that kind of data useful, they can be very useful for tracking what impacts certain foods have. But you can just use your noggin, can’t you? You can track yourself by how you feel and how you’re doing and you can, you can just use that as your gauge.
Again, we come back to goals, right? Is your goal to have high levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate? Well, maybe if you’re looking to treat a disease, it is. It’s one of your goals, but if your goal is to lose weight, are you? That is your best check versus what is my Bhb level, right? One of those is goal oriented and the other one maybe not. So it’s not a necessary thing for most people’s general goals, but you know, it’s situation specific.
Carrie, I don’t think you haven’t bothered testing after the pee strips have you? You don’t test your, your blood or your breath.
I went through a little phase where I got to Keto Mojo because I was curious and I just wanted you to see. And so I went through a little phase where I tested and then after about a month I think, oh, I think I packed up my house and moved across the country. And the Keto Mojo is still in a box somewhere. And so it just, but it was never really a big thing for me. Once I got the hang of how I felt on keto, then I just go by that. And again, I’m not, if I feel great, then it’s all good. I know when I’m going sideways and I can course correct without having to measure it, without having to see a number. But I understand that not everybody’s like that. And of course people that are doing it for different reasons, will have a different motivation or maybe they’re just trackers and they love to see numbers and see trends and it makes them happy. And that’s awesome. Just because that’s not me, that doesn’t mean that I think nobody else should do it. Whatever works for people is what I want them to do. As I say, I was curious. I tracked it with the Keto Mojo for a month, but I know from how I feel, how it’s going, I don’t feel the need to track. I guess I’m just giving permission for all the people who are going like, oh my goodness, I have to track? No you don’t.
No, you really don’t.
I’m giving you permission not to, but if things aren’t going your way, you might want to track for a little while so that you can uncover why it’s not going your way, you know, so it’s not like an all or nothing proposition. You don’t have to decide I’m tracking or I’m not tracking and then stick with it. You can track, you can not track, you can go back to tracking. You can track different things. You can, you know, whatever works best for you to get you to your goal is what we want you to do.
Well hopefully, we’ve covered just about everything we can think of to get you started the best way possible. However, sometimes people feel they need a bit more help, they need a program and some coaching that’s going to help them through those first couple of months. Or perhaps they need a reset and just feel they need advice. And I happened to know that you two have the perfect program, so perhaps you could just tell us a bit about that. If people feel they just need a bit more help.
Well, first, I think I should point out that a program is not a necessity. It’s not something that you need. It’s perfectly possible for you to reach all your keto goals on your own doing the things or doing some of the things that we’ve described in this podcast. But we have found that a lot of people do do better when they have a structure or they have a framework or they have something to hang their hat on. Particularly something that involves a community. So programs are not necessary, but if you do better in that environment or you want some help, maybe because you’re the only one that’s keto in your household or you just want some community, you want someone to share your successes and your not-so-successes with… Keto does take a bit of time to work out, you know, switching like what am I going to eat? A program such as ours just gives you the framework to just get started straight away without you having to spend days or weeks or months trolling the Internet to try and figure out how to do it, if that makes sense.
I think for me, you can absolutely do keto by doing your own research, your own food plans. You know, you can do all that work. The only reason in my opinion to pay for a program is because you’re like, look, my time is valuable and I would like you to do it for me, please. Right? We can’t do the work in terms of your life for you, but giving you the real deal, tried and true, what actually matters, what actually works, streamlining your experience. So you don’t have to do like kind of what I had to do when I went keto, which is spend several months doing it wrong so that I could figure out what was right, what was wrong, what does that mean, why is this happening? People who’ve been there before you and can guide you through some of those choices so that your experience will be more successful, more streamlined, lot less effort, and a lot less confusion then if you go it alone.
And so for me, that’s kind of the main reason I suggest a well-structured program to start with is because it takes a lot of the guesswork and the anxiety out of starting. Or maybe you’ve fallen into kind of a place that doesn’t feel as structured anymore and you used to have a lot of momentum and it feels kind of gone and you need that again. I feel like that’s when a program can be very helpful.
Yes, because you’ve got a mixture of those people in your group, haven’t you? You’ve got people who are starting from scratch, but you’ve also got people who just need that bit of a reset and reinvigoration.
Recommitment, yeah.
And from a recipe perspective, because of course all I do is think about food all day–from a recipe perspective, the Internet is a nightmare. There’s so many terrible recipes.
People would be like, just go to Pinterest and you’re like, Pinterest is a mine field.
There are several problems. One is that a lot of people are trying to get hits on their blog so they call something keto and it actually isn’t. When you’re new is very easy to get sucked into that. Oh, you know, typing keto and you know, whatever it is you’re looking for and coming up with all of these hits and you’re just assuming because you know you trust people that nobody would put a recipe up there if it wasn’t actually keto. But you’ll find, and unfortunately as Kim said, a lot of trial and error and wasted money and wasted ingredients and wasted time–you’re going to find out that a lot of the recipes on the Internet are either not keto, don’t actually work and/or taste nasty. One of the main benefits from my perspective of getting a program like the one that we offer is that you know ahead of time that all the recipes are going to be keto. They really are. All the recipes are going to work, all the recipes are going to taste fabulous and all the recipes, because this is something that I always focus on, all the recipes are going to be capable of being made successfully by even someone that’s really never spent time in the kitchen. Cause there’s a whole generation of people who have never had to learn to cook because there’s been enough packaged and pre-prepared meals available that they’d never had to do that. So one of the goals for this program was that anybody with any skill level would be able to come in the kitchen and make truly fabulous, truly keto recipes, meals for themselves that would be better than anything they’ve eaten before.
And we’ve got those recipes structured into various different combinations of meal plans. There’s a whole book that’s got the recipes and the meal plans, but also all the science involved and various bits and bobs. What else can we expect in this plan?
When you sign up for the program and the program starts, you’ve got a really comprehensive guide. It goes through pretty much everything that’s going to come up along your journey, including the science of it, the why, the how. A lot of the things we talked about on today’s call. We go into great detail on plus more things and then we go into giving you meal plans. How do you follow them? What are these ingredients about these recipes like Carrie was mentioning, we also have more interactive elements. We have videos for specific topics that you want to delve a little deeper on. We’ve also got, like Carrie said, the group. We have this very, very, very active Facebook group that comes with a program so that you can go deeper, get your questions answered, get that support, have people celebrate with you. Somebody the other day posted that they went down a shoe size, you know, these really, you know, amazing, funny, non-scale victories, scale victories, all sorts of victories. And then on the flip side, the places where people are struggling and getting that community support in those spots.
The group that Kim’s talking about is a private group that only has the people that are part of the program, it only has the program enrollees on it. And the power of that is that everybody’s on the same page. Everybody’s cooking the same recipes, everybody’s following the same meal plans. It’s an eight week program. So everybody’s going along on this road together and it just makes it, the camaraderie that has been built up. And the support that is generated in that group is just, it’s really magical. It’s actually become my favorite place to go now because it is so–even when people are sharing where they’re struggling, it gives Kim and I the opportunity to one on one, you know, help them in a way that not only helps them but helps anyone else who might be struggling who’s seeing the same problems. So we have the opportunity to go in and help people in the moment when they need us, but also we get to see their successes. We get to cheer along with them and we get to high five them and it’s just–it has, it’s become my favorite place on Facebook
And we also do some coaching calls along the way where we will get on a live video where we talk with people and can work through where they’re at, what’s going on and give them a little bit more personal attention.
And people love those. They’re really useful to watch everyone else’s questions and answers, aren’t they?
Yeah, I mean there is a reason that group programs are so great is because you don’t just get to learn the questions that were in your head. You get to learn the questions you might have later because somebody else asked them and now you’re way ahead of the game.
That’s actually the good bit of Weight Watchers, I think. I was having this conversation with somebody the other day and they were saying the one good thing they got from going to Weight Watchers support groups was the support group. That was the element that worked well for them. And it is very important, isn’t it?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the support group is key. It’s a wonderful community and I see a lot of people just really being able to be themselves and share themselves and know that there’s no stupid questions and nobody’s going to yell at them and they’re going to get all their questions answered. So I think the program is really, it’s for lots of people, but it gives a brilliant framework for someone just starting out, okay, here’s how you do it. Without spending months researching like Kim had to or trialing and erroring on recipes, spending a lot of money and time making things that don’t work and don’t taste delicious. But it’s also for people who have maybe got a bit off track or maybe they’ve had a hard moment in life and they need to get refocused. People who are experiencing a stall. So we have people from all of those categories. We have people who just want to get re-immersed in keto. We have people who are brand new. We have people who have stalled, we have people who have just got bored with what they were eating day in, day out, and they’ve come to get a refresh.
We also have people who have reached their goal and are saying, I don’t know how to live this life. Now my goal has shifted. How do I reconfigure my thoughts about all of this and how do I live this just as a lifestyle?
Hmm. Good point.
And as I said, anybody can do keto without any of this, but a lot of people find that they are happier and a lot more successful when they’re part of a program that involves all these elements that we’ve put together.
And we’ve got a new intake coming up, I believe at the beginning of May, but you can sign up from beginning of April.
Yeah, absolutely. We will be accepting enrollees starting in April. And so that program will begin in May. And if you’re listening to this a year later, it might not be the same month, but it will be ongoing so you can check out when the next group starts.
You can and you can find out all about it at start.ketowomanpodcast.com and we really hope to see some of you there. It really is a great program that I’m obviously getting behind and I’m sure some of you will too, so perhaps we could wrap up in the usual fashion with a top tip. Who wants to go first?
I talked so much. Carrie, do you want to go first?
I have lots of top tips, but if I was only given the opportunity to give you one tip, it would probably be you do you. Don’t get bogged down in listening to all the voices and all the things and choosing someone else’s path that you hope is going to work for you. In the groups, I see one of the big things that derails people is the confusion that’s caused when people are looking at other people’s progress and trying to make that work for their body. And then someone else will come along and say the exact opposite and then say, well, that worked for me. And then you’re sitting there going, okay, so now I don’t know what to do. My best top tip would be find what works for you. If what you’re doing is working and getting you towards your goals, keep doing that. And then when your body heals and that starts to change, reevaluate, but always do what’s working for you rather than follow someone else’s thoughts about what should work for you.
Kim?
I think probably what I want people to know is that when you start keto, I think a lot of us don’t put enough stock in the fact that we have potentially been using carbohydrates to manage our mood for several decades. And you start keto and you’ve taken away your drug of choice and you may not even have associated yourself as an addict up until this point and then suddenly that crutch that you were using, the thing that you use to pick up your afternoon, the thing you use when you were having a hard day, that thing you use to celebrate with friends, carbs were like your number one tool. And now you’ve taken that away. And so I just want people to know that it’s okay and pretty normal to feel a little bit emotionally adrift to maybe deal with some unusually strong emotions that you aren’t used to dealing with because you’re not self-medicated in the same way that you were. I don’t want you to think something’s wrong if that happens. It’s simply your body going through this change where now you’ve taken away this thing, this crutch that you used to lean on and it’s maybe time to find some healthier, more actually supportive ways of managing your moods. And so it will get better. There is support if you’re having a hard time in this arena. And I just want everyone to know that it’s not unexpected.
It’s true. I certainly used to self-medicate with carbs. I used to literally numb everything and then go to sleep with the carb crash. So it was just an alternating …
Knock yourself out!
Exactly! That’s exactly what I did to deal with my mood. But of course one of the things that keto is done is improved that mood. So I don’t actually need that self-medication as much anymore. So things change, don’t they? I did have a top tip written down. Mine is almost the same as Carrie’s, but it’s something just like Carrie that I feel very strongly about and mine was focus on you, your goals, your life, and what you can make work for you. It doesn’t matter what other people think you should be doing. You are the most qualified person to become your own expert. Because it’s such a bugbear of mine. People who think they’re more of an expert on you than you are–because they’re not all are they.
In my little world, there’s nothing trumps how I feel. Although I must say that since I’ve been keto, I am much better at feeling how I really feel. I’m very, very–because my body is so clean now–I’m very sensitive to how I feel and it doesn’t matter what anyone else tells me, like carnivores. I’ve tried carnivore. It works brilliantly for a lot of people. I don’t feel as well as on carnivore and it doesn’t matter how many carnivores tell me that if I would just eat carnivore, I’ll feel better. I’ve done that experiment and I don’t, and so there’s nothing trumps how you feel. If you’re doing something that even somebody you really trust says is good for you and you don’t feel better, don’t feel obligated to keep doing that.
I think it’s really empowering. One of the things I really like about keto is that it empowers you to get really in tune with your body and confident in knowing what works for you.
Yeah. Once you’ve cleared away the health hijackers that give you bad intel. You know, then you can start to really listen to what your body’s telling you.
Yep, absolutely. Well, thank you so much. It’s been a great pleasure. As always.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary women, Kim and Carrie, chat about how to get started with Keto and share some great tips to help you navigate what can sometimes be rather choppy waters!
Kim
Kim Howerton struggled with her relationship with food from the time she was 8. As the years went by and her health problems mounted, she felt at the mercy of her body and out of control with her weight. A dedicated seeker of pleasure, she realised that life in a body that was always in pain was no way to live; that a pleasurable life starts by living in a body that feels good.
Enter Keto – a life that has brought together her love of satisfying, delicious foods in a way that makes her actually feel good. She now shares her love of all things Keto by creating recipes, running a Facebook group and with the upcoming podcast Keto Life Support.
Carrie is an ex-professional pastry chef, turned cookbook author, recipe developer, freelance photographer with a crazy, four country, three continent-spanning resume which includes such things as a chocolate TV show, a chocolate cookbook, and making pastries for the Queen of England. She trained at the National Bakery School in London and has now turned her pastry chef talents to creating scrumptious keto/low carb food to help the world eat smarter, live better, and put the healthy back into healthy.
She has published 5 cookbooks and shares her tales of food, travel, and adventure from her splendid single life in the sane lane, as well as her trials and triumphs with Bi-polar Disorder, Adrenal Fatigue, Lyme disease, a massive E-coli infection, a myriad of food sensitivities, and her journey back to slim and vibrant on her blog CarrieBrown.com.
Carrie also shares her love, skills, passion for delicious healthy food, and humor in a Facebook Group – The Keto Kitchen with Carrie Brown – as well as bouncing around all the usual social media platforms as The Real Carrie Brown.
Carrie’s buddies say of her…
“Carrie can often be found in the kitchen, surrounded by her four-legged friends, concocting, devising, developing, and figuring out how to make the impossible very possible (and affordable). And we love her for it.”
Lab Tests
CMP (complete metabolic panel)
CBC (complete blood panel)
Standard Lipid Panel
HbA1C
C-peptide
Fasting insulin
Basic Thyroid (if no symptoms)
Full Thyroid (if have symptoms)
Ulta Lab has a lot of great test packages. Another direct to consumer is Direct Labs.
Happy Healthy Keto
You can find out more about Kim and Carrie’s program on their website or take a look at my Starting Keto page.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary woman, Belinda, chats about the study she did with the TypeOneGrit Facebook group: Management of Type 1 Diabetes With a Very Low–Carbohydrate Diet.
Dr. Lennerz completed medical school at Friedrich Alexander University in Germany in 2005. She did her pediatric residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital from 2006-2009, followed by a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at Boston Children’s Hospital from 2009-2011 and 2014-2015. Dr. Lennerz spent 3 years from 2011-2014 at Ulm University to obtain credentialing in pediatrics and pediatric endocrinology in Germany and acquire focused training in obesity. She joined the endocrine division at Boston Children’s Hospital after finishing her fellowship in 2015.
Dr. Lennerz’ research focus is on understanding cerebral mechanisms that regulate food intake and energy homeostasis in obesity and type one diabetes. Past and recent projects focus on how these brain circuits can be modified by metabolic signaling in relation to food intake.
Links
Management of Type 1 Diabetes With a Very Low–Carbohydrate Diet Belinda S. Lennerz, Anna Barton, Richard K. Bernstein, R. David Dikeman, Carrie Diulus, Sarah Hallberg, Erinn T. Rhodes, Cara B. Ebbeling, Eric C. Westman, William S. Yancy Jr, David S. Ludwig.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary woman, Mikhaila, talks about how she solved multiple health issues by eating only ruminant animals, salt and drinking only water.
Mikhaila was really sick from the age of 2 and was prone to getting infections, colds, etc. She was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis when she was 7 and ended up with multiple joints replaced at age 17. She took antidepressants for severe depression/anxiety and suffered from “idiopathic hypersomnia”. She had itchy skin starting at age 14 that she just ignored but these developed into cystic acne, by 19.
Then Mikhaila started experimenting with diet and now she is in remission from everything. She no longer takes any medications or vitamins. The hardest thing to get rid of was the depression, but that’s gone too! Now she only eats beef, salt, and drinks water. She has been eating like this since December 2017 and says she will never go back because she feels amazing.
Daisy’s latest extraordinary man, Peter, dispels some of the myths that seem so dominant at the moment about eating meat and arms us with the facts we need to stand up for ourselves in a debate!
Peter uses his expertise in Agronomy to offer an interesting counter argument to the claim that ruminant agriculture is destroying the environment.
Peter earned his undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Georgia, and his doctorate from the University of Kentucky. He has an extensive background in forage production, utilization and forage-based livestock production systems and was the forage extension specialist at Oregon State University from 1986 to 1992.
Peter’s personal experience has led him to re-examine human diet and health. What he has learned doesn’t agree with the advice given for the past few decades. This new understanding, combined with his forage background, has given him an increased passion for the key to true social, economic and ecological sustainability – ruminant animal production systems – the source of butter, red meat, and cheese!
He is affectionately known as The Sodfather – leader of the Ruminati and the Ruminant Revolution.
Daisy Brackenhall, Carrie Brown, Peter Ballerstedt and Joan Walker. Photo taken on Social Saturday at Ketofest 2018.
We Need a Ruminant Revolution!
Presentation at the American Forage and Grassland Council Annual Conference, January 8, 2019.
Ruminant Reality: Diet, Human Health and the Environment
Daisy’s latest extraordinary man, Shawn, talks about how following a carnivore lifestyle has greatly improved his health and fitness.
ShawnBaker, MD is a doctor, an athlete, a father and a proponent of the carnivorous lifestyle. He cohosts the Human Performance Outliers podcast with Mike T Nelson and has a huge long list of notable achievements which you can check out at shawn-baker.com.
