The Keto Diet: How to Raise Energy Levels and Eliminate Sugar Spikes

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the J&Kay podcast. I'm Kay. And this is J.

Hi, And this is April 8th and that means that it is the beginning of our second week of recording daily.

That's right. We have started to do a theme for each day of the week. And today is Friday. So today is Fundies Friday where we focus on eat move, sleep, and other health issues.

As I mentioned yesterday on the podcast, we are now trying to follow a little bit more of a template with our videos, rather than just talking about anything and everything. It's still going to be quite freeform cause that's fun. But we also have made some outlines so you guys know what to expect, what we're really talking about. And, I think that should really help make things a little more cohesive.

Yeah. As we're following along our template, you'll be able to see it on your screen as well.

I learned this from Graham Cochrane, as I mentioned yesterday. What we want to do is figure out what pain does our audience want solved. So the pain that we can help you with right now is lack of energy, and energy spikes and crashes. And we can help you with that because Kay well, both of us, but Kay especially has really experienced that in her past and overcome it. So, we have some good stuff that we can share about that topic.

Yep. That's right. The biggest way I resolved my energy crashes has been through diet, specifically through the Keto Diet. So we're going to be talking a little bit about that today.

We even left the keywords in here for you so you can see what kind of things we're going to hit on during this video, during this podcast.

And just a little side note, we are using a program called Roam Research for this recording. And we'll probably have more videos on that in the future. Is that right?

Roam Research is one of my favorite things in the whole world. It's an amazing program. And we've used other programs like it. Kay still uses Dynalist because it's almost exactly the same. That's more for a Tech Tuesday.

Yeah, we'll get to that on Tuesday.

So we have both struggled with energy and all sorts of energy issues in the past. I was just talking with one of my guitar students today, about how in college I used to drink energy drinks all the time. Red bulls, and Monster energy drinks, five-hour energies. And that was an awful way to live. Now I stay away from that kind of stuff and we try to live with a clean-eating sort of diet. We've done Whole 30 before and also Paleo, which is very similar to Whole 30. And now we're kind of on a clean keto perspective, because we didn't understand the balance of macros. But I think that's the biggest difference.

Yeah. So, how did we first come across the Keto Diet?

Let's see. Was it Dr. Berg? Dr. Berg was pretty early on.

Oh, we first were exposed to it from Brian Johnson, who we've been talking about the last few videos, podcasts. But I think we didn't really get sold on the idea, he wasn't as clear about the Keto Diet as Dr. Berg. And we started getting exposed to his YouTube videos on the topic. And right after we had a miscarriage between our two kids, and right after the miscarriage we said, we're going to go all in with this keto diet thing and see how it affects our health. And it really did make a difference.

Right. Definitely.

One aspect of energy that we're talking about is brain fog. So it's not just your physical energy. It's also, sometimes you just feel like you're trying to think of something and you just can't come up with it and you just feel this hazy brain, like you just can't think.

Yeah. So that's an aspect of the energy issues that we're talking about today.

As we started looking into Dr. Berg, I realized that I had been eating high carb foods. I started eliminating some of the non-whole foods, like, and some of the grains, pastas, breads, rice, even things like that, when we went into the Paleo Diet. Which we'd been on, I think four or five years before we changed to a Keto Diet. But then I realized, even like eating a lot of the fruits and things that I've been eating, dates and different things like that, were still very high carb and that I wasn't getting the benefits of a low carb clean eating lifestyle at the time, and that's why the paleo diet wasn't quite enough for me. It helped, but it wasn't all the way there.

Once I realized that carbs were causing a lot of my energy issues, I was able to eliminate them and that helped me a lot.

So, what we ended up learning is that carbs are not essential in the body. You do not need carbs. There's something called gluconeogenesis, which means that your body makes the sugars that it needs, the glucose that it needs, out of the fat from your body, it turns fat into fuel. And Thomas DeLauer, somebody that we watch on YouTube all the time, he talks about this a lot. He talks about all of that science-y keto stuff. So there's tons of evidence out there that it's very healthy to eat a Keto Diet.

Now, one thing that we've learned later after we learned some Transurfing kind of things is about Pendulums. And Keto is definitely a Pendulum. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but Keto versus Low Calorie. So Low Carb versus Low Calorie. That's very Pendulum. And there can be great power in that if you really believe in one, but it's not like you need to hate the other, or anything like that, you don't need to be against other people. It's just that if you do grab on to one of these, it can be very powerful for you to achieve your weight loss goals or your health goals, but you don't need to be anti the other ones so much. You don't need to start having bad feelings towards the opposite perspective.

But Kay, let's talk a little bit more about your story with the Keto Diet. Yeah, when I first I met J, we were both pretty much eating just the standard American diet. And, I think I probably was pre-diabetic, I think for my body, eating the amount of carbs that I was eating was not good for me.

Often, I remember distinctly, being on the couch and feeling like I just can't get up. Like, I have to go get a glass of water and I think a lot of people feel that way and think it's normal. I thought it was normal. I'm not like that anymore. I haven't been like that for years.

And the fact that that's not my normalcy anymore really shows me that making the change to not eat so many carbs is right for my body. It really did make a difference, where I am enjoying my life much more now than I was before, feeling so tired. There were other things, other influences. All of our fundings were out of whack, eat, move, and sleep, were definitely all crazy.

But I think that eliminating the high carb, mostly carb meals that I would eat - a big, big plate of pasta, with maybe some cheese and like some tomatoes and not really nutrient dense foods and high carb foods, would make me feel really energy drained. And then there was also that, I think I must have a fast metabolism. I do tend to need to keep eating, like fasting doesn't really work very well for my body. And I don't really gain weight very much it doesn't stay on my body. So I guess that makes sense with having a fast metabolism. But I really, I couldn't go like a couple hours without feeling low blood sugar. And just like, if I don't eat something, I don't have any energy to move forward to do anything. I couldn't think. I would be really cranky. And I'm not like that anymore. It's like, maybe if I go five or six hours without eating that I feel that way. I really don't have highs and lows. My energy throughout the day is extremely consistent. I'm very shocked with the difference in my life.

So, yeah, as you can see in the outline, I would almost black out if I tried fasting. A lot of people who choose the Keto Diet also enjoy intermittent fasting because it does help clear that brain fog even more.

Intermittent fasting is having fasting windows, like only having like, eight hours of the day, or maybe even six, where you're eating. So maybe between like 12:00 and 8:00 or 11:00 and 7:00. Or something like that. Fasting doesn't work great for me, but I know it does work well for other people. But yeah, I'm feeling a lot better now on the diet that I have found. And that's another thing we're going to talk about at the end, you have to choose what's right for you. Now, if people hadn't been telling me about the Keto Diet, I would never have known. I might've just been trying to take different vitamins or supplements, or getting more sleep and not realized that my excessive amount of carbs was the issue. And by excessive amount, the Ketogenic Diet recommends somewhere between 25 to 50 grams of net carbs in a day in general. Being pregnant and breastfeeding recently, I can go up to like 70 or 90 carbs and still be feeling fine - net carbs, which is total carbs minus fiber or sugar alcohols or things that don't act like carbs in the body, don't spike your blood sugar.

One of the most important values to us nutritionally is to keep our blood sugar balanced by having low carb foods and meals.

So for big idea number two, the keto diet helps balance macros in a beneficial way.

One false belief that I fell into when I first started the Keto Diet was that calories didn't matter. I believed that I could lose weight without having to count calories. And that is more true than trying to be on a low calorie diet and not counting calories. But no, you can definitely afford a lot more calories on a low carb diet than a low calorie diet, but you cannot have unlimited calories and still lose weight.

In the past, even when I was on a low carb diet, when I used an app like Carb Manager or any of the other ones, and I just did what it said and I logged all my food, scanned all my food, stuff like that, I would lose weight and also feel great, have more energy and have all the benefits of being on the Keto Diet.

That really is all that it takes. You install one of those apps and you eat foods that are approved and suggested on there. And you scan everything in and it just works. But when I would try to just eat those foods without scanning it in, it wouldn't warn me when I'm over a certain macro.

You still need to keep your carbs, proteins, fats, and calories all at the right levels.

It's just that they're at different amounts between calories and carbs. So for awhile, I just tried to keep my calories down. And that works to an extent, but, I don't feel as good on a low calorie diet as I do on a low carb diet, because I feel much more satisfied on a low carb diet.

On a low-calorie diet, I feel like, I'm still a little bit hungry or stuff like that.

So once I realized, by just suddenly having the ears to hear, that Dr. Berg and Thomas DeLauer and many others all say you do need to count calories, it's just that you can afford a lot more calories, I started to realize, hey, let me give this another shot using Carb Manager, because it's just an awesome app. It's way better than the others, in my opinion.

And I will try to stick to what it says, and I will keep my calories under control.

And suddenly, I lost five pounds. I don't have a lot of weight to lose. It's just that I don't want to be on an upwards trend. I'd rather be on a downwards or a sideways trend.

So just following the simple rules of doing what Carb Manager says it makes it so much easier.

Also I started working out. And I just do some basic lifting and crunches, and that actually makes a big difference as well.

As of today, today's day 60 of my lifting goals being met every single day. So that's really nice. It's awesome. To be able to stick to a very simple plan, just like following Carb Manager and trying to do some basic little working out, and trying to get the streaks as long as you can.

All right. So big idea. Number three. Avoid pendulums in this area and every area. Yeah, a little ironic pun, eat the meat, spit out the bones. The idea of, if it's beneficial to you, then take it. And if it's not, just leave it. And since we're talking about food, ha. So, a pendulum in case you haven't heard our other video or podcast on pendulums.

A pendulum is something where there is one side or the other, us versus them. And there's a negative energy, usually, that's involved when we talk about it in that sense. A pendulum can also just be something that gives you momentum. But, in this sense, when it's an us versus them, the pendulum, or the concept of the pendulum, feeds off of having an opposite, having a polarity. It's the idea that, the Ketogenic Diet gains more of a following by bashing the Vegan Diet or something like that. And that's just not appropriate or something that we stand for in our life philosophy.

So we want to avoid the negativity of feeling like it's an us versus them thing. I personally enjoy having a Low Carb Diet that helps give me energy. And if that works for you, Then that's awesome. And if you try it and it doesn't work. For you then that's fine. I hope you find something that does work for you.

So we want to avoid, perpetuating the idea of a pendulum in this area where anybody, who's not on the Ketogenic Diet is doing something wrong. It doesn't mean you're doing. Doing something wrong, but perhaps thinking in new ways can help you to discover what works best for you. That leads us into Permission Slips.

Basically everything is a Permission Slip. We could always be awesome if we wanted to, but usually we need some kind of Permission Slip that allows us to get there.

Whatever you need to feel good, go for that. If, eating the Ketogenic Diet is a Permission Slip for you to allow yourself to feel like a healthy person, then do it. There are few people who can eat the Doritos and Twinkies diet and still feel like they're living with integrity and doing the right thing for their body and for themselves. They tend to not feel like they're really a healthy person.

So whatever permission slip you need to feel like you're rocking it and your body is feeling awesome and you're doing what you know, you should be doing. Then follow that. Do what feels right for you, try it out.

And also a little side note, be aware of. Of the Keto Flu. So, if you are going to transition from a high carb diet to a low carb diet. Your body may do a little bit of detoxing. Starting out as the. Hardest part of the diet, usually in the first couple of weeks. You might kind of have flu like symptoms where you actually get a little bit more groggy a little bit more brain fog. Even a little bit muscle achy. Stuff like that.

I would recommend watching people like Dr. Berg and Thomas DeLauer to find out specifically what the Keto Diet entails, if you're interested in following this. And also what the Keto Flu is and how to avoid it.

Because it's not something you have to go through. But some people try the Keto Diet and think, oh, this is not for me. Also some people eat way, high fat diets. And then are like, oh my stomach. High-fat can be really hard on your stomach. Also, when we did the paleo diet high vegetables, when you're not used to it can be really hard on your stomach, high fiber amounts.

So don't necessarily write out. And give up on a diet, just because it's hard in the beginning because there may be some kind of transition, just go into it with as much knowledge as you can find. For what to be aware of as you're starting and what's normal, what's not stuff like that and how you can avoid a rocky beginning.

So for me, I didn't have really any negative effects. A little bit of brain fog. And then it cleared up and I felt like better than before I even started. But I didn't really have a lot of difficulty, it really worked well for my body.

It may or may not long-term work for you. And also the transition may be difficult. So just something to be aware of.

Okay. So just as a quick summary, if you're having energy issues, Issues try balancing out your macros. Higher fat, medium protein, low carb. That's what Brian Johnson recommends as well. And that's what we found to work for us. The Keto Diet is a great way to do this. Figure out if that works for you, if you need to adapt the general Ketogenic Diet. Then that might be an option for you too. There's lots of information online, but. But mostly avoid pendulums, avoid any negativity or us versus them. And use positive permission slips in your life to feel good, to feel like you're rocking it.

Don't get into a very legalistic way of approaching a diet and, and berate yourself and criticize yourself every time you fail. It's more about giving yourself the Permission Slip to feel like a healthy person, to feel awesome, to feel like you're doing the right thing for your health and your energy.

All right. So blessings guys, and we'll see you in the next video tomorrow. Bye.