Are you suffering from carb confusion in ketosis? Worried that being keto means you can never touch a carb again? Confused by carb cycling or unsure of where to start? Tune in to hear Ali and Becki interview keto guru Leanne Vogel about her book The Keto Diet and her unique approach to ditching the keto dogma and figuring out what works best for your body!
In this Episode, Ali and Becki pick Leanneâs brain about all things keto, from how she got started with her journey to how she discovered the beauty of carb cycling and so much more! Whether you are a fat-adapted keto-warrior or are just starting to consider keto, this episode is a refreshing reminder that black and white diet rules donât work for everyone. From defining carb ups to discussing her concept of metabolic profiles to nerding out on the hormonal influence of keto and carbs, Leanne shares her wealth of knowledge from her personal experience of coaching thousands through their own keto journeys.
Also In This Episode:
- 3 Key Hormones Impacted by Keto and Carbs
- Insulin
- Cortisol
- Leptin
- Defining Carb Ups
- Is Testing Ketones Necessary?
- How Your Metabolic Profile Determines your Needs
- Troubleshooting Keto and Supporting Your Journey
- Virtual Ketosis Program (use code KETO2018 for $50 off!)
- Leanneâs Rocket Fuel Latte: A (creamy) upgrade to the classic keto butter coffee… without butter! Specifically made to assist women in burning fat all morning long while regulating hormones and abolishing cravings
8 oz. brewed decaf or regular coffee or your favorite tea
1 tablespoon liquid MCT oil or powdered MCT oil or coconut oil
1 tablespoon cacao butter
1 tablespoon hemp hearts or your choice of nut/seed butter
2-4 drops alcohol-free stevia, optional
1 tablespoon grass-fed collagen
Leanneâs Bio
Leanne Vogel is the founder of Healthful Pursuit, best-selling author of over 11 health programs, host of The Keto Diet Podcast, author of the bestselling paperback, The Keto Diet, and the creator of Fat Fueled living – a holistic, paleo- friendly approach to a ketogenic, high-fat diet. She has been in the field of nutrition since receiving her holistic nutrition certification in 2007. Leanne shares free videos, podcasts, recipes and keto-friendly resources on her blog, healthfulpursuit.com.
Where to find more:
IG: instagram.com/healthfulpursuit
Twitter: @be_healthful
Podcast: ketodietpodcast.com
Book: ketodietbook.com
Transcript:
Welcome to the Naturally Nourished podcast, that delivers cutting edge food as medicine solutions for optimum health. Ali Miller is a nutrition expert sought out by the media and Americaâs top medical institutes for her revolutionary functional medicine interventions. From disease treatment to prevention, every episode will empower you with ways to put yourself back in control of your health. Please note, the topics discussed are for educational purposes only. Now welcome integrative dietitians Ali Miller and her co-host Becki Yoo.
B: Welcome to episode 64 of the Naturally Nourished podcast. Today we have an awesome guest, Leanne Vogel of Healthful Pursuit website and author of the Keto Diet.
A: Leanne and I met in KetoCon in Austin on a podcast panel and her philosophies and approach to ketosis are so right on and she provides structures, science, and most importantly flexibility for sustained results. So, I was truly shocked when I was vending after lecturing and I hear someone speaking about how carbs could be positive on stage at Keto Con. I felt super excited that she was stepping out there to do so. As you guys know, I am a big fan of ketosis and using fat as fuel as is Leanne with her authoring the Keto Diet, right? But one of the coolest things about this is that she includes fat fueled profiles, that may encourage carb cycling for better results for those that are having stagnation or negative influences of ketosis, whether they are hormonal, thyroid, adrenal, you name it. Are you confused? Potentially. Hang tight and she will talk about all of these things and so much more today. Leanne Vogel is the founder of Healthful Pursuit, best-selling author of over 11 programs, host of the Keto Diet podcast, author of the bestselling book, The Keto Diet, and the creator of Fat Fueled Leaving, holistic paleo friendly approach to ketogenic, high fat diet. She has been in the field of nutrition since received her holistic nutrition certification in 2007, and Leanne shares free videos, podcasts, recipes, and keto friendly resources on her blog, Healthfulpursuit.com so thank you, Leanne, for being here today.
L: Thanks so much for having me today. Thank you.
A: Yeah we are pumped. Leanne and I, as I said in the intro, met in KetoCon and really hit it off on our podcast panel and I did a guest episode on her Ketodiet Podcast and I was so excited to have her on here, and we have so many questions for you from listeners so weâre pumped to have you on here.
L: Yeah Iâm excited to dive in and Iâm so excited that we met. It was a really busy weekend so it was really nice to meet a grounded soul on the last event. It was just wrapped things up nicely.
A: Good, good all things good in the universe.
L: Yeah.
B: Awesome so, Leanne, we havenât met in person yet but Iâm definitely a podcast listener and I wanted to just jump things off by having you share your personal story with listeners that either donât know you and your work or know you but they donât know your personal journey with keto. So tell us how you started.
L: Ok so I studied holistic nutrition back in 2007 and at that point, I was a vegan. I was also really, really into running, cycling, swimming, I was a triathlete I did a lot of activities. I was also on hormonal birth control and in school I learned that hormonal birth control isnât so great for you so I decided, you know, based on my health goals and where I wanted to be, I decided to go off hormonal birth control and that kind of started the roll and how I started getting into keto about 6 year later, for about 6 year I didnât have a period. I went off hormonal birth control, my period never came back and all my doctors said âwell do you want kids?â and I said âno neverâ and they said  âwell whatâs the big deal?â and so as a 20 something youâre just like âthis is awesomeâ but when I was training for a race where I needed to actually bulk up a lot of muscle very quickly I was going through the program and my trainer was like âwhatâs going on, why arenât you building muscle, when was your last period?â and Iâm counting on my fingers, Iâm like â6 and a half years?â Sheâs like âthatâs not a good thing.âSo I went to a bunch of specialists, we drove all over western Canada, Iâm Canadian, trying to find a specialist that would help. I ended up finding an endocrinologist that would at least help me this was the first doctor that said that âI will help you,â but his help was putting me on hormone replacement therapy. So I went on the patch, I started taking pills, I was on estrogen patch and progesterone pills. I ended up getting a period for about 2 months. It then went away and I gained about 20 pounds of hormone weight gain in a very short period of time so, here I am, not being able to build muscle, my training is suffering, now Iâm heavier and Iâm not feeling well, and I started having allergic reactions to the prescriptions he was giving me. So then I went to a naturopathic doctor, she recommended a low carb diet I said âare you nuts? Low carb? Iâm an athlete. I canât go low carbâ and it just so happened that one of my girlfriends had just started eating keto, and I saw her picture on Instagram and thought âwhatâs  a keto? Whatâs this hashtag thing?â I clicked on that hashtag and my life will never be the same.
A: Wow.
L: As soon as I saw it I thought âwhat are these people doing to their bodies?  All theyâre eating is, like, cheese and bacon and theyâre saying that this is healthy? I donât understand.â So I did a  bunch of research and decided that this vegan, sheâs going to eat bacon and mayonnaise for 30 days. And that was really my introduction to keto and after those 30 days, I just I couldnât go back and now itâs been 3 Âœ years and Iâm crushing life I got my period back after about a 1 Âœ year of eating keto, Iâm off ADHD meds, my life is just completely different. I  remember how much I struggled when I was in those periods and how far Iâve come itâs just incredible to see the difference thatâs kind of how I ended up here.
A: Awesome I love that. And youâre speaking 3 of us on here that are all recovering vegans.
B: Yep.
A: And you know I think today weâll talk a lot about overriding the signals of your body, you know, where Iâll often say dogma creates disconnect and I think that that can happen in any diet so I think that you know weâll talk about letâs go in your transition of- so how long when you started keto, what were a couple of the greatest wins. So you said you got your cycle back, you had weight loss, and was there any other- oh, and you said some mental clarity?
L: Yeah I was able to go off of my ADHD medications. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 11 and I was on 3 different prescriptions until I turned about 21, and then I whittled it down to 1, and then I was able to, like, there was like a new prescription it was out and it kind of merged all of my 3 together, so I would just take that every day and I was able to go off of that forever.
A: Wow, awesome
L: That was such a big deal. And if anyone has ever taken ADD or ADHD meds, they donât make you right in the head like itâs just itâs really frustrating to take them and being able to live a life without those, and be able to think on my own is just such a freeing feeling.
A: Thatâs amazing. So letâs talk about in your journey from you know keto being this turnkey solution to when your body then started having other symptoms of imbalance and what you did about it then.
L: When I was eating keto you mean?
A: Yeah. Yeah.
L: You bet. So like I said, those first 30 days was like sort of the honeymoon phase of âeverythingâs going great I love my life, Iâm losing weight, life is good.â And then from the end of month 1 to month about 6, I was losing a lot of weight, I had lost all of the weight at about month 2 Âœ. I had gone down the 20 pounds then I decided that, you know, whatâs another 10 pounds letâs just try to get there and then it became this game, myself, of how low I could get my weight and it was really fueled by the conversation I was having with friends and family when everyone was saying âoh my gosh  you look so good, what are you doing?â And I just kept pushing and looking back, I was forcing myself to intermittent fast which Iâm sure weâll talk about.
A: Yeah.
L: I was you know not eating when I should have been eating, I would be hungry, but I thought because I was fasting I should be hungry and I would just push through it. I started craving a lot of carbohydrates, like I would watch people eat and just fantasize about the food and just watch them and become completely obsessed. I counted calories so much that I would start to have panic attacks when I went over my calorie allotment or carbohydrate allotment. I remember actually physically freaking out, I had to run to the bathroom at  restaurant and I thought I had ordered a certain amount of broccoli, and more broccoli came, and I ate that broccoli and then I started panicking because I ate too much broccoli and it put me over my carbs. Just little things like that, more mental stuff and then physical things like I started getting pins and needles in all my extremities to the point where I couldnât practice yoga anymore because my left leg would fall asleep ,like, indefinitely. I was supplementing with electrolyte I was doing everything quote on quote ârightâ but really I was starving myself and using the diet as an excuse. So after those 6 months, I had a lightbulb moment of âwait a minute, wait, I didnât do this to lose weight, I did this to get my period backâ and then after that kind of realization, I kind of shifted things to say âok, Iâm not going to force myself to fast, Iâm going to eat when Iâm hungry so if I wake up at 2am in the morning and Iâm hungry, Iâm going to eat. Iâm going to downstairs and Iâm going to make something and Iâm going to eat.â And then the next piece was having carbs when I felt like carbs, like I had avoided fruit completely. I wasnât even having I would measure out my lemon juice because I didnât want to go over my carbohydrates so then it became ok Iâm going to have the lemon juice, Iâm going to have kale and spinach and these things and not sorry about it and when I feel like a starchy carbohydrate, Iâll have that too and Iâm sure weâll talk about carb ups and how that played a role.  And after I did that for 9 months, I got my period back so there were a couple of struggles and I think the main thing was using the diet as an excuse to starve my body.
A: I love how you say that because I think you know like I open with that phase of that dogma creating disconnect and on any end of the spectrum even on a âperfect dietâ can be disruptive to our body when weâre not listening and it sounds like there are like yells and itâs that dogma of like âbut Iâm doing it Iâm doing keto right and my body just needs to catch up or my body just need to adjust.â I remember when I heard you talk at Keto Con I was like âoh my gosh I had such a breakthroughâ because I always had a 2 phase to ketosis in my clinic, and thereâs always been one thatâs less than 30 grams and then one thatâs 30-75 grams as a phase 2, and Iâve allowed people to cycle them and thatâs where wâell get into this transition. But I felt like I was cheating keto, like I couldnât use the term keto because it wasnât the dogma or the direct so when you talked about carb ups and crab cycling, it was like âthis is validatedâ and I mean as a medical practitioner, I should have known better, but the funny thing is I think we go into this yes or no, on or off human mentality and having that flexibility, I think, is amazing and I love that you do that for your whole community and beyond.
L: Yeah thanks so much . I can totally relate. I know that when I decided to start incorporating carbs into my ketogenic diet, I knew the people would not be ok with this. And itâs unfortunate too because thereâs a lot of big names in the Keto Industry now especially or never low carb or even if you are like a paleo or vegan itâs sort of like itâs this way or nothing, and I think that actually stop a lot of people from experiencing success. So I just kind of stepped out there like Iâve done in the past, like âhey guys wait a minute, so Iâm eating carbs every day but Iâm still registering ketones, whatâs up with that?â
A: Right.
L: To kind of stir the conversation, so I love begin the rebel and I love breaking the rules and I think when youâre talking about dogma creating this disconnect itâs so true and something that I always loved to kind of go through things and see when I can break rules a still adhere to certain things while also doing stuff completely different and thatâs how Iâve structured my ketogenic journey.
A: Thatâs awesome.
B: Awesome. We both think itâs awesome and that can be so freeing to hear and you know so great of our listeners who have participated in our Virtual Keto Krogram and are afraid to put a carrot in their pot-roast. So I think itâs so freeing to break away from some of that dogma. Before we get into talking about carb ups, I want to talk a little bit about three key hormones that I know both you and Ali are all about. So talking about insulin, cortisol, and leptin and how keto influences all of these hormones so Iâll let you guys nerd out on this one if you want to.
L: Amazing. Love nerding out on hormones. Ok so insulin, first off, if people donât know, itâs a hormone thatâs made by the pancreas and it metabolism bit of both fast and carbohydrates. So itâll maintain your blood sugar from getting too high or too low, and on a ketogenic diet, because weâre not eating  a lot of carbohydrates, our insulin is regulated, when insulin is out partying in the bloodstream say, I donât know, have an apple, your insulin is out trying to shuttle stores or rather trying to shuttle glucose into your stores, you cannot burn fat in that moment. So insulin helps us to store fat, but not burn it. Itâs a storage hormone. So insulin resistance is a condition in which cells through the body no longer respond to the normal actions of the hormone, insulin. So this is a condition that I would say, at least 80% of the ketogenic community comes to keto because theyâreâ like âIâm insulin resistant , my blood sugar is probably too highâ thatâs usually what I see is people with highest blood sugar and theyâre coming to keto and theyâre like âhow do I resolve this?â and so thatâs really insulin when insulin is out, partying in your bloodstream you cannot burn fat thatâs the big thing.
A: And itâs not the fun guy at the party itâs the really obnoxious guy at the party. Itâs the guy at the party that you want to go away from at the corner of the room.
L: Yeah. Amazing. Do you have anything to add?
A: Yeah I think thatâs right on. And I think you know connecting with these, I love the way that you explain things itâs great, and connecting with insulin and I guess letâs do leptin before we go to cortisol because I think that itâs just like anything where and youâll connect with leptin and carb cycling and over fasting, right? Where we tend to think in one way shape at least definitely in the American in lower must be better, but just like anything, in leptin resistance we can also lost leptin sensitivity and go too low in our leptin response in the body. So letâs talk about leptin and that response and how keto starts with leptin but what can happen if we do too much fasting or too much restriction.
L: Yeah which is something I experiencde and weâll chat about in a second. Ok so, leptin is also called the obesity hormone starvation hormone, fat hormone, thereâs a bunch of you know other names for leptin, but I like to think of it as your satiation hormone on the opposite side of ghrelin. And how I remember ghrelin is just like the goblin thatâs just like âMmm mmm food foodâ and leptin is like âno girl, we got fuel, weâre goodâ and on the flip side, leptin will tell us when to eat, or tell us that, you know, we have the fuel in our bodies, we donât need to worry about anything, Iâm not hungry. So caloric deprivation continues to lower our leptin levels and slows down our metabolism. So when I was eating keto for a really long time forcing myself to fast, I think a lot of the reason why I started wanting to binge on food is because that leptin level was really imbalanced for me. And what we’ll talk about in a little bit, when you eat carbohydrates on a ketogenic diet, so youâre fat fueled, your body is using ketones as energy, when you have carbs, your leptin is actually reset and a lot of the times, when people have been eating keto for a while they start waking up every morning pretty hungry and thatâs a huge sign to me it’s like âgirl you need to carb up you need to do a carb up, itâll reset your leptin so the next day you wonât have to be hungry in the morningâ so thatâs a really good indication that something must be off, if youâre on a ketogenic diet and you wake up always hungry. Do you have any thoughts too, Ali?
A: Yeah so it think thatâs great and I love that because I thought the same thing I always thought gremlin, ghrelin – totally. And I used to think also back earlier when I was learning about pathophysiology that the more leptin, the better on the other end of the spectrum but that typically indicates leptin resistance and so leptin has this sweet spot where when Iâm looking at a blood monitor and seeing leptin values in the bloodstream too high, thatâs an indicator often of leptin resistance and thatâs where fasting and keto can really help in a sensitivity of leptin use. But then like you said, thereâs that sweet spot where over restriction over time, itâs a survival mechanism with adequate leptin and ghrelin communication and leptin starts to reduce and thatâs when yes the carb cycling helps with that reset and refuel the tank, if you will.
L: Totally a champ- youâre so smart.
A: Oh whatever. And then Iâll cruise on cortisol because I know we want more from you, Leanne, about your story but cortisol can kind of play an influence both of these as far as insulin, you know, you connected it also earlier with glucose and its ability to bring sugar into the cells. And when we have that resistance, that can drive more fat storage but generally speaking more insulin means more fat storage. And insulin tells the body that thereâs fuel available that you donât need to go into your fat stores we fuel, we need to keep packing up more. Pack up more. And so it is, it is a body fat builder but cortisol, you know, even those who have insulin resistance and theyâre even doing keto, and theyâre not getting good clinical outcomes, you know, beyond looking at macros and beyond getting tighter, tighter, tighter, I think a beautiful thing about your approach with these metabolic profiles is that it allows not only individualized structure, but it also takes out the stress factor because we know that cortisol as a primary stress hormone when you get so rigid and youâre white knuckling your diet, you know like your broccoli scenario, I mean thatâs really at a point where I donât believe anyone can get beneficial outcomes because thereâs definitively in an imbalance of their HPA axis. So the adrenals are off, the corticosteroids are on high and thereâs so many different metabolic breaks, that youâre not going to get that symptom of expression regardless of how perfect that macro distribution is.
L: Yes and when youâre ketogenic and youâve been eating keto for a while and you have a stressful period, itâs so interesting to watch your ketones just go away.
A: Yep.
L: And that is cortisol doing what itâs naturally supposed to do, but we were renovating our house a couple of years ago and it was super stressful because we were way over budget, the guy just didnât show up, just took all of our money it was totally stressful, and I was great one day, eating all the same things and the next day I just could not get my ketones up no matter how hard I tried and that was the stress of the whole situation so itâs really good to stay mindful when you are eating keto if you are going through a stressful period whether it be your kids moving off to college or starting a new job you may find that your ketones are affected by that.
A: For sure.
B: Of every stress on the body like an infection or an injury or something like that.
A: Absolutely.
B: Something like that would be a times when cortisol is elevated and we canât get into keto
So letâs define now Leanne weâve talk about it a couple of times, what is a carb up exactly and how do you go about incorporating that?
L: Yeah so a carb up is a form of cyclical ketosis and thereâs a lot of different ways to practice a cyclic ketogenic diet. Some of them that I donât practice because I tried and absolutely failed is you eat keto for a while , maybe 2 week, 3 week, 4 weeks and then you have an all-out carb day where you just eat the carbs morning, lunch, evening, whenever. That never worked for me I felt like it was an all-out binge fest, I never felt good after. Thereâs other approach is where you have carbs before workouts, or you have carbs after workouts, thereâs one where  you limit your protein intake to under 15 g of protein and you just eat all of the carbs all day. My approach that Iâve found worked best for my body and when I was working through carb up process with a lot of the people in our HealthfulPursuits, the one that worked best for us, was you eat keto all day and you have some carbs at dinner times. So whether that be a sweet potato, maybe you really like plantains, maybe you like apples on your salad maybe you want to grill up some peaches and put them on pork chops. So really what youâre doing in this practice is you eat keto breakfast, lunch, and then you add some carbs in your dinner but you take out some of the fats so if you had a dinner of pork chops with greens and maybe you wrap the pork chop in bacon, perhaps with your carb up meal you take out that bacon and you maybe put in those grilled peaches. So you kind of think of it as a teeter totter of taking out the fat and putting in the carbs. And depending on where your health status is, I find that you know, for myself, who was overcoming amenorrhea, the lack of period, when I started doing carb up I was doing them every single night. And my carb ups were quite small, Iâd have half an apple on a salad or a bowl of strawberries after dinner, or maybe a sweet potato with some cinnamon and a chicken breast and that would be my dinner. And when I got my period back, I found it didnât need the carb up as much so I think it was maybe every 2 days a week I was doing a carb up which was maybe a little bit larger because I wasnât eating as many carbs, and now, I mean, I think the last carb up I did was 2 Âœ weeks ago. And it becomes a lot easier for me to go longer periods of time without carbs whereas 2 years ago I couldnât do that because I was too hormonally damaged.
A: Sure.
L: So really gives you the variety and really itâs- it was nice for me in that moment of getting that permission slip of like âwait  a minute, I can eat keto I can still feel great my mind can be on point and I can also have carbsâ you know, with friends or when youâre in social situations or when youâre at home and you just feel like an apple Iâll never forget on the book tour back in April, one of the ladies sitting on the floor because we didnât have enough space for everybody she said âI just want a granny smith apple and Iâm like âok just go have that apple, itâs not going to kill you.â So thatâs kind of what carb ups are and how.
A: Awesome and so for listeners to think about when to- how about pitfalls of carb ups like when do you hold off or reduce a carb up or when what do you do to recalibrate when a carb up goes wrong?
L: Yeah so a lot people think that carb ups are wrong when you overdo the carbs and then you need to take exogenous ketones or workout really well or fast longer. Donât worry about it donât sweat it. I like to think of the ketogenic eating with carb ups very similarly to Snakes and  Ladders if youâre familiar with that game. Thereâs going to be a lot of ladders that youâre going to go up and then maybe a couple of snakes where you go down like maybe you had a really epic carb up, you overdid it, itâs very rare that you find that one snake – do you remember that one snake at the end and makes you all the way back to the beginning? That snake does not exist in the keto snakes and ladders game so itâs very rare that youâll get all the way to the beginning unless you go a week eating carbs breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but if you accidentally just ate too many carbs donât worry about it. When you wake up in the morning like we said the carb ups they are going to sees your leptin so you may find that you are not hungry in the morning which, total win, so just go until youâre hungry and then have a regular meal and get back to it. There are some people that perhaps shouldnât practice carb ups and that will include perhaps people that have insulin resistance, like we chatted about, or maybe diabetes, maybe theyâre really, really metabolically imbalanced and incorporating carbs at this point will just throw them off. But where I find carb ups can be really helpful is if people have a blistered relationship with food and saying that youâll just never eat a carb again just triggers  a lot of things, it can be really helpful in that area. But if you overdo the carbs, just life goes on and wake up the next day and go about your day, itâll be fine.
A: Yeah I love the real life perspective. We usually have people just go two weeks deeper back into keto and try a different technique like maybe if they did fruit, maybe they try a starchy vegetable, or they try a different form if theyâre eating out with friends. Maybe they tried it home or vice versa maybe they try it out just so that you kind of think back through your behavior chain of what went wrong and itâs not about wrong like, slap on a wrist because your meter read something wrong, itâs about wrong because you felt crummy after the carb up not about, again, kind of this report card perspective.
L: Yeah itâs so great that you had mentioned fruit versus starch because some people, even depending on where youâre at in your cycle I find, sometimes I do better with fruit for carb ups than I do with starches with carb ups and it depends on peopleâs hormones of whatâs going on, but, yeah, it doesnât mean- maybe you even did grains when you should have stayed away from grains. So maybe try a carb up where you do grain free or a carb up where you donât include dairy, and just play around with all the different variations.
A: And so you mentioned in the beginning that you are able to â and like you said, itâs fluctuating, so maybe one week you do a carb up once a  week maybe for 3 weeks you only do 1 carb up over that 3 week period of time, but you mentioned that you tend to see yourself in ketosis in the morning, are you still ongoing monitoring and how regular are you with that and what do you recommend to people in the community?
L: Ok loaded question.
A: Sorry.
L: No thatâs fine, so I donât currently test my ketones. I stopped doing it maybe a year ago right around the time I was finishing writing my book because it was stressing me out to monitor ketones just everything. So I donât monitor them anymore. I will maybe once a month just for fun with my husband who also eats keto and we, like, have this little game of whose numbers can be higher and he always win because heâs just a guy and itâs easier to do everything. But if I were to test every day, I would probably do a breath monitor but I guess Iâll just kind of go through testing really quickly. If youâre first starting off on keto I really, really, really advise you not to test your ketones and the reason for that it- it is quite distracting for people and I just find that those first 30 days, youâre learning a lot, youâre probably making a couple mistakes because youâre just not sure that a carb is, or what a fat is or how to do certain things or perhaps you way overdid protein or didnât eat enough so I would just take the measuring out of the  equation but what I found really helpful when I was first getting started is once I got acclimatized to what keto was and how my body kind of fit into it, I liked testing my blood I found it to be the most accurate, but now people are saying that a highly attune body to keto shouldnât dump the ketones in the blood either so itâs like, I donât even know, if you feel great, then just keep doing that thing.
But, you know, if I had a family that was eating keto, I think something like the level machine might be fun to have in house. Itâs something we had in our house for a while and my husband and I really enjoyed using it. But, on the flip side it can be really costly like any of these solutions are quite pricey. You can test your urine but that wonât tell you much and will probably just make you discouraged so when I was first starting out with carb ups I tested my ketones directly after the carb up in the mornings so I would wait about 12 hours before I tested and my ketones would go down, for sure, but by that same night-, so say I ate a carb up on Monday at 6pm, by Tuesday at 6pm my numbers were the same, before I started the carb up to that day so, that was really cool see that my ketones just jumped back up in a 24 hour period.
A: Thatâs awesome and I think so too, itâs like I often get that feedback where when I hear people arenât making ketones, yes, I like to look at their CRP for inflammation, yes, I like them to work with adaptogens for stress and itâs a piece of information but if theyâre not getting ketones and itâs like âwell what else is going on?â âOh Iâm just not getting ketones in my meterâ but itâs like âwell but oh whatâs going on again?â Itâs like âwhat are we stamping such value on?â I think that can get really overdone and that creates a lot of judgement and shame and a disconnect with the body again.
B: Awesome I love that and I love just how all of this comes back to listening to your body and not following one dogma or the other or being so stringent about testing daily. And really what I love about your work Leanne is that it really takes carbs off of this pedestal that some of us may have put them on and just kind of puts them out there. So letâs talk about some of the metabolic profiles, I know thereâs a few of them so if you want to just go through, kind of, how you created these and what your thought process was in terms of coming up with different metabolic profiles.
L: Yeah so in my book, The Keto Diet, as well as in Fat Fueled, which is my online program for taking people through healing their body with keto, I introduced everyone to 5 different fat fuel profiles and who would do best with what type of profile. So the first one is Classic Keto and this is a low carbohydrate, moderate protein, high fat approach so this is like the keto that we all know and love, you just eat keto forever and ever and ever. So this is really good for people who are maybe sedentary or their doctor has told them they need to do a ketogenic diet, or people that have insulin issues, aerobic athletes do really well with this approach so basically youâre eating anywhere between 75-85% fat, and the rest in carbohydrate usually about 5% protein anywhere from 15-20%. And then you have Pumped Keto and this is a new profile, that I put together probably about a year ago. Itâs not one that I really dabbled in, because I donât do well with this but a lot of people tell me that they do well with this so Iâll explain it. Pumped Keto is where you are lowering your fat to about 60% and youâre increasing your protein to about 35%. Â So you can see in Classic Keto you were eating a lot more fat and in pumped Keto weâre actually eating quite a bit of protein, and this is great for individuals who have blood sugar regularities, might not do well on Classic Keto like they just feel off and theyâve been eating it for quite some time but eating actual carbohydrates, like having a sweet potato, is just not something they can maybe mentally do right now, or physically do. By increasing the protein youâre actually encouraging a little bit of gluconeogenesis so your bodyâs actually creating glucose by having that protein but like indirectly so itâs not like youâre eating a sweet potato but you still might have a little bit more glucose which may make you feel just a little bit better. In both of these profiles, you wouldnât have carb ups so you just eat your 60% fat, 35% protein, or youâre like 80% fat profiles. But then in the last 3 profiles, thereâs Full Keto, Adaptive Fat Burner, and Daily Fat Burner. So Full Keto is you eat low carb high fat until you become adapted, so that can range anywhere between 2-6 weeks depending on the individual and then once youâre fat adapted, you start eating those carb ups usually about once a week-ish. Once or twice a week, this can be great for people that donât have health imbalances, who are sedentary, who are social and are invited to lunches with their boss and thereâs carbs on the menu and theyâre like âshootâ so that gives you more variety. Adaptive fat Burner is where, again, you are eating a low carb high fat for 2-6 weeks to get adapted and then youâre incorporating carb ups two to three times a week. And then with Daily Fat Burner, right from the get go as soon as you start Keto you are having carb ups every evening and I created this specifically because there are a lot of people that donât actually make it to the Fat Adaption stage either because theyâve been eating a sad diet for the last 30 years, and the whole concept of lowering carbs forever and ever is just too much for them. People that have adrenal dysfunction to the point that when they get to about day 5 of eating Keto the symptoms are so intense that they actually canât become fat adapted itâs just too much for their bodies. Another one is people with a lot of Candida usually canât go through the fat adaption phase because they just have too many flare-ups. So that just kind of gives people more variety and Iâve tested these profiles with, oh gosh, 7000 people when we were doing the Fat Fueled Program and it was really great to get peoplesâ feedback on âchange this, do this, this is what happened to me, this is how much carbs I ateâ so it became a lot easier to pull it all together.
A: I love it, I think itâs so great. And how often, Leanne, do you say that people have to commit to a particular profile?
L: Oh thatâs a good questions. Ok so Classic Keto youâre kind of waiting for the Fat Adaption phase to take place so I would say about give it like 4 weeks. Pumped Keto I would say you should know in about 2 weeksâ time if itâs working well for you. Once youâre adapted, once youâre fat adapted you can really move between any of the profiles. And you know maybe thereâs one week where you have one carb ups a night, like you were saying, Ali, and then the next week you have 3 carb ups a night so youâre really going from Keto to Adapted Fat back to Full Keto but I would say, definitely give it like 4 week on Classic Keto before you change in 2 week on Pumped Keto, before you adjust would kind of be my destination.
A: Cool ok also you had within your profiles, different ranges of carb cycling I think it was as grams/kg or grams of carb/bodyweight pounds, and so is this always recommended in the evening because I think the highest one was like 1 g of carbs / pound of body weight I thought it said â is that right?
L: Yeah you got it, thatâs the Full Keto profile and the reason why thatâs so high so like if you weigh 150 pounds youâre going to have 150 grams of carbs in your carb up meal so thatâs just at dinner, not spread throughout the day, just at dinner. And the reason thatâs so high is because youâre only having 1 carb up for an entire week, whereas say the Daily Fat Burner, because youâre eating carbs every single night, youâre going to do around ÂŒ g of carbs for every 1 pound that you weight because youâre not going to be, rather youâre going to be resting carbs in every dinner meal.  So just gives you more variety throughout the week.
A: Ok ok got it. So it would â it still would not be distributed even if itâs that higher amount, it would just be pretty carb heavy meal, if weâre talking about-
L: Exactly.
A: Ok.
L: Really big sweet potato, like pound that thing, maybe an apple. Itâs quite- itâs quite amazing when you start eating carb-ups say, every night, how little carbs you need to start feeling better like Iâm talking like half an apple itâs really not a lot, but when you go a long people of time, like 7 days without it and you have these carbs and you replenish your system, itâs actually quite easy to eat those 150 grams of carbs.
A: Sure and this is such a time where itâd be really important too, to journal not only your food and not for neurosis but to journal how you feel in your body during these times, you know, to really determine what works right beyond just looking at that weight on the scale which we know can be reflection of 2 weeks before with whooshing and different various metabolic changes, itâs about did you feel heavy? Was that comfortable? Did it create or evoke emotional relationships and such  and I think thatâs important too.
L: Yes thank you for mentioned that. Every number that I say out loud is really just like âmehâ maybe start with it and if you feel better doing something else, do that. Who am I to say what to do with your body?
A: Love it.
B: I love that and I love that you said that, Ali, because thatâs, you know, with my clients thatâs one of the first things that I ask them when they start Keto or when theyâre a few weeks into it I always ask how they feel before I ask if theyâre testing, or I put them on the BIA machine to get a body composition scan, itâs really about how they feel in their body.
A: Absolutely.
B: So letâs talk a little bit about people who have trouble getting into Keto in the first place, when you would keep trying and kind of what are your clinical pearls are, Leanne, that youâve seen form, you know, over 7000 people trying this?
L: Yeah.
B: This program. And when do you kind of give keto a rest and know that itâs not for you?
L: Totally. I think the biggest thing that Iâve seen people use thatâs been very helpful is getting an organic acid test so if youâve gone like 3 months, youâre eating Keto if nothing is working, you feel like hot garbage, an organic acid test can help determine how you metabolize ketones and whether or not you do. And this can change Iâve seen people that donât metabolize them well, like remove oxalates and then 3 months later they get the test again and theyâre totally fine, so itâs just a really great test I feel like to kind of get  a feel for how your body metabolizes ketones. There are people on this planet that the Keto diet doesnât work for, you know my â I have friends that thrives on so many carbs and I just â I canât even comprehend, they make the biggest fruit bowls and they feel so good and their health is great. Iâm like âgood on youâ so if that type of person goes to Ketogenic Diet they may not have success so I think itâs also being honest with your heritage and your genes even, and to kind of look at how thatâs going but I think a lot of the time, the people that are having the most issue with Keto say, you know, they do the organic acid test and everything says that theyâre fine and they could eat this way, theyâre usually, you know, the women are eating very similar to what the husband is eating and theyâre usually eating way too much fat.
A: Yeah.
L: Theyâre usually fasting too much, theyâre usually eating just too much food or not enough food or theyâre just trying to mirror their husband or their partner and theyâre not being successful with that so itâs nice to kind of align yourself with maybe women-based community to kind of see how theyâre doing things. If youâve hit a weight plateau thatâs probably the #1 thing that I deal with are weight plateaus on Keto, usually has to do with the types of food that people are eating and not their macros. Thatâs a huge mistake I see over and over and over again of people that say âwell Iâve been at the same weight for the last 4 weeks, I donât understand whatâs happening, so Iâm just going to lower my carbs and increase my fat macrosâ and Iâm like âStop, what are you eating on a daily basis?â and theyâre like âconventionally raised meats, lots of like bacon stuff and mayo made of canola oil and all these other thingsâ and you know, after we adjust those things they end up losing the weight so itâs also looking at the types of food and the equality of the food and also being patient. If you have a lot of metabolic damage, it’s going to take time and by focusing on the food quality, it can be helpful but Iâll be the first to say that there are people where this eating style doesnât work for just like vegan didnât work for any of us.
A: Right, totally true. I was just going to say I think thatâs the freedom too in your 5 metabolic profiles, is, like you said, some people are going to enter into one of the Fat Burner Profiles without having done the first 4, 6, 8 weeks of tight keto and thatâs ok too some people will just do a lower glycemic approach and thatâs their way of being fat adapted.
L: Yes. Totally and thatâs awesome I think the main thing weâre all going after is just feel great and you know, look great feel great, have a, you know, excited mind and be able to think for ourselves and whoâs to say that increasing your carbs by like 30 g a day is going to make you a bad human? If you feel better at that amount, then live your truth, like as long as you feel good, thatâs what we all want to do thatâs  what we all want to do so if you feel good, keep doing that thing thatâs making you feel good.
A: For sure. So talking about types and quality of food, I had a rocket fuel latte this morning in your honor and I would like if for just a moment you can tell us, thereâs about 2-3 recipes in the Keto Diet book and why you love them or why we should eat them
L: Oh gosh see I get asked this question so many times and every time I answer it itâs different.
A: Thatâs good, thatâs good!
L: Ok great so right now, the 3 recipes that Iâm making the most and are in love with all over again, Bacon Fudge which is basically you take bacon greased which I seem to have a plethora of all the times and you basically mix- Iâve been adding cocoa butter so the fat from chocolate, cocoa powder, Iâm really digging monk fruit right now so Iâve been adding that in there and you just put it into molds, I put them into muffin tins because I live full time in my RV and I have a muffin tin that is it, so I pour that into the muffin tin and they make this delicious fudge, fattiness, itâs so good and the second one is ranch dressing. Itâs a mayo-based dressing you can also make it with coconut milk, and I just put it on all the things. And then the third one is these pork chops, theyâre like Herb Pork Chop, Herb crusted Pork Chops in the book and theyâre basically pork chops that I cover in crushed up pork rinds and itâs crispy, itâs fatty, itâs good. Those are the 3.
A: I dog-eared that last night when I was getting ready to interview I was like âthis oneâs going to happen this weekâ I grocery shopped and itâs happening.
L: Nice.
A: Awesome awesome.
B: Oh my gosh so many yummy recipes and this book is just so dense with information I mean the first half of it is all about the mechanisms of keto, and the actual foods and explaining good, better, best of fats so I love that too that itâs not just a recipe book thereâs a lot more density to it.
L: Yeah, thank you.
B: Um so just to wrap up this is all making me hungry and itâs just about dinner time here, we  ask all of our guests, Leanne, for a 24 hour recall so tell us what you had to eat yesterday from rise to rest.
L: Oh. What day is it today?
A: I know itâs Monday, This is the last question.
L: Oh my gosh what did we eat? Oh yeah so we got a big shipment of Butcherbox, I donât know if you guys are familiar with Butcher Box-
A: Yeah absolutely.
L: Awesome so we have a ton of ground beef to get through, so yesterday I picked up some spaghetti squash and I cooked it in Instant Pot and then I mashed it up with a ton of that, you know that butter flavored coconut oil, I love that butter flavored coconut oil with that spaghetti squash to I mix that up with ground beef and I had that with lunch. What did I have for breakfast? Oh I did my Rocket Fuel Latte but because I donât have a blender right now, Iâve been making it with exogenous ketones, MCT oil powder, a little bit of monk fruit, and coffee. Is there anything else? Yeah so thatâs what I had for breakfast and then for lunch I had the spaghetti squash and oh â last nightâs dinner was kind of ridiculous. Pickles with kimchi and what did I have on the sides? â and cucumbers.
A: Nice â I like it.
L: So that was the story of my life yesterday it was kind of a weird day but yeah thatâs what I had.
A: That sounds like a reverse of our days Becki we can it an Adult Lunchable so thatâs how your dinner sounded like an Adult Lunchable just a little piecey, crunchy,-
L: Yeah yeah I call them Snack Plates and you just put a bunch of things on a plate and thatâs what you do.
A: Awesome.
L: Oh I had a coconut packet with that too and coconut and kimchi does not mix, but-
A: Oh my gosh, amazing good. Well thank you so much for being on we will be sure to add your link to the book and Healthful Pursuit and all of the things in our show notes. It was such a pleasure talking to you and I hope that all of you listeners can definitely pull from this that there is not a one-stop shop, there are beyond 5 different metabolic profiles that you can use to use fat as fuel as that the biggest things itâs being connected with your body and listening to what feels right and thatâs the diet that you need for your body and itâs going to shift and fluctuate and being kind to yourself is really a big piece of the puzzle too.
L: Yes, I agree thanks so much for having me you too.
A: Awesome, itâs our pleasure.
B: Thanks Leanne.
Thank you for listening to the Naturally Nourished podcast. Visit our blog at AliMillerRD.Com for recipes, wellness tips, and food as medicine meal plans. Connect with Ali and Becki at alimillerrd on Instagram, twitter, and Facebook. Until next time, stay nourished and be well.
What is a Level Machine?
It is a ketone breath meter.