7 Years on Keto Success Story

Join me in celebrating 7 years on my keto journey! Hear my story of how it all started, the improvements I’ve experienced over the years, personal struggles, and the things I’ve changed my mind about along the way.

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Carole Freeman: oh, Hey, every one. How are ya? How you doing? Welcome to my seven year keto anniversary show. All the lessons I’ve learned. Things have I’ve changed my mind about a we’re live everyone. Are you curious what happens after seven years following a keto diet? You wonder what? My results, my struggles things I’ve changed my mind about over that time.

This episode is for you. I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Join in, let me know where you’re watching from, where you’re joining from. I am doing a little digital nomad life. So you might notice if you’re a regular viewer of the show, I’m in a different location, doing a little bit of a digital nomad for a few months before I go up to Seattle area, my son lives in.

In August and September, I’m going to be spending some time up there. So I’m doing a little Airbnb jaunt down here in the Phoenix area for a few months before then. I’m getting the light settled and everything in here. It’s a little different. So welcome to the show, everyone. Again, welcome to keto chat.

Live my special seven year anniversary episode. I’m your host Carole Freeman. I have a master’s degree in nutrition, clinical health psychology. I am a certified clinical hypnotherapist. I’m a board certified keto genic nutrition specialist. That is a mouthful.

Now I specialize in helping women 40 plus follow a keto diet for sustainable weight. Let me give you a quick little medical disclaimer here about this show is meant for educational and entertainment purposes. Only. It is not medical advice, nor is it intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition whatsoever.

If you have questions or concerns related to your specific medical conditions, please seek out advice from your personal health healthcare professionals. So welcome. Welcome everyone. How y’all doing? How’s it going today? All right. Personal update. Check in here. I’m heading out tonight to do some comedy in Awahtukee, which is a Southern part of Phoenix, Arizona.

If you didn’t know, you can actually get all of my events and updates of events, comedy, and show events at TheCaroleFreeman.com. Just remember that Carole is that very fancy French spelling that has an E on the end.

If you want to stay updated on all my comedy shows and upcoming keto Chat Lives. That’s where to go. All the events are updated on there. So the Carole freeman.com again, Carole has an E on the end of it. Our podcast really exciting. Our podcast has been charting the nutrition charts all over the world and Canada, Norway recently, currently we’re number 51 in Saudi Arabia. Hello to everyone listening from there and number 148 in South Africa. So thank you for our listeners all around the world.

It’s been really exciting to see this grow. So we’re just heading in, this is our second year of doing this podcast, it’s really exciting to see where people are getting information from. Another update here is that on June 6th, 2022, I’m going to be running by popular demand. I’m going to be running my.

Pathway to end emotional eating program. So this is a program that’s specifically designed to teach you how to cope with your feelings and emotions in healthy ways, instead of turning to food to some, to numb out sooth or avoid your feelings. If you want more information about that, I’ll tell you at the end of the show about how to get more information and.

But popular demand. It’s a diet agnostic. So if you’re just struggling to stick with keto, the, because you turn to food for comfort, stress relief all of that, this program is specifically designed for that. All right, up next, I’m going to give a proper review. So I started this, the last couple of episodes featuring a product that.

Sapiens kitchen. I discovered them a few weeks ago. I, they commented on something in a local Arizona keto Facebook group here, and I didn’t even know they existed. They were I got a chat with the owner of the company, actually, when he came and delivered my food, he told me more of their story.

They were a paleo kitchen, a paleo restaurant, like a higher end paleo restaurant in the Scottsdale Arizona, which is a suburb of Phoenix. They were a very high end paleo restaurant. Then unfortunately, during the pandemic, like a lot of restaurants, they really struggled to stay open. So then that’s when they decided they would try to do some meal delivery service.

They do both paleo and keto friendly meals. About a week and a half ago, I ordered. 10 different meals. I ordered basically every meal that they had available that they said was keto. They had some standalone proteins. I know that most dishes are light on the protein.

I ordered every single solo protein that they had available as well. I’m still working my way through. I’ll tell you what, like absolutely delicious food, like really high quality. The owner, it turns out one of the owners was the one that delivered the food right to my door. We chatted for quite a while.

He said that everything is organic fresh and I can taste like I have all this culinary training. I used to teach cooking classes. On that basically there was a very high quality. Ingredients, but very high quality crafting of the dishes as well. Most of the dishes were veggies and protein, and then they had some kind of, a little dish of sauce.

Roman that the one of the owners had explained to me that the sauce is part of the keto mix on that. So there’s some, health. It’s in there and they do primarily a paleo keto. So there was no dairy in anything that they gave me, which, good or bad. I love dairy, but that’s their focus that they do.

Again, I’ll say the portions were good. The protein portion. It varied from dish to dish, but it was a pretty good protein portion. I’ll admit I, I should have actually weighed them out so I could have given some macro breakdowns, but the protein I’m guessing for each dish was probably around 40 grams of protein, just for my experience.

The veggie portion is probably more than what would be. So for my clients, I recommend 20 total carbs in the beginning. The veggie portion that they provide. Probably more in alignment with it, like 10 to 14 carbs per dish, or maybe even a little bit more. They had summer squash some of the dishes had some spaghetti squash in there, just a small portion of that and green beans.

Trying to remember some other ones bell peppers. The dishes that they came in. Little individual containers. There was a delicious I think it was probably like a not a flank steak, but a skirt steak some cauliflower and broccoli with that and delicious, savory sauce that went with that.

Some sautéed mushrooms. There was one that was Cod. That was really delicious. It had a lemon caper sauce that came with it. Some other veggies pork, I haven’t eaten that one. There were so many that I up putting something in my freezer. So there’s a big bone in pork chop.

That thing is, looks like it’s about a 10 ounce piece of pork. There was a chicken one that had a little bit of a sauce that had apples in it and I’ll got a stuffed bell pepper that was stuffed brimming filled with. Grass fed organic beef and some other things in there.

It was a giant portion that was definitely two portions worth. Overall really high quality, very delicious reasonably priced. Like each of the meals were 12 to $14 each very affordable very reasonable price for what you’re doing. Again, the veggie portion I’ve ended up for most of the meals, like cutting the veggies in half and I’ve got lots of veggies left over more of more veggie serving than I would want normally for a meal.

But so if you’re in the Phoenix area, check them out, highly recommended. The owner wanted to do some kind of a co-lab. So hopefully in the future, we’ll be able to do some kind of a live interview with him on the show and perhaps some live. In the Phoenix area them doing some kind of a dinner at the restaurant for keto folks.

If you’re in the Phoenix area, lucky for you. Linda the name of the company is sapiens kitchen. So like homo sapiens, sapiens kitchen. You’ll be able to find them if you search on Google. But again, they’re just in the, they’re in the suburb of Phoenix, Arizona there, they don’t ship nationwide.

They actually, hand deliver the food themselves. From what I understand was on Wednesdays to most of the Phoenix area. Their website has information. Y you order directly on the website, anything and fill out your shipping information. Then they deliver every Wednesday is what I understand.

That’s my product review of the week. Sapiens kitchen.

Let’s get to the juicy goodness of me recapping the last seven years on my keto journey. I really. I can’t believe it’s been that long. But just like anything else in your life, like time passes really quickly.

If you’ve been thinking about making a dietary change, but you just keep putting it off seven years can go by in the blink of an eye, keep getting unhealthy. More overweight or you could just work your way through continuing to do it. Okay. Paul’s here. Welcome Paul. He’s saying I’ve been keto for five years, went from a hundred, three kg to 64 kg and have been quite weight stable since resolved high blood pressure and the ulcerative colitis.

Wonderful. That’s excellent. Paul, congrats on your success. You started by saying question, but it looks like it’s a statement. So congrats on your success. Celebrate here. I’ve got a fun little so let’s do this. Let’s round of applause for Paul success on keto there everyone. Yay, Paul.

Paul’s asking a medical question here. He’s asking you, you had lots of kidney stones in the past two years. Any ideas or thoughts of related to keto? I can’t give any personal medical advice like that. I’d recommend checking out Don’t have a keto friendly doctor yourself. I can recommend that you talk to this person here.

atgohealth.com is the virtual functional medicine doctor that I refer a lot of my clients to. At that website, that URL, if you go there, you can get a free 15 minute consult with Dr. Ruiz. He’s amazing. That’s what I would recommend for you there, Paul. That figured out what’s going on for you.

Yeah, so I’m glad you’re here. Congrats on all your success. Tell tell Dr. Ruiz that I sent you. He gives all my referrals a very special rate too. Check him out. He’s fantastic. All I’m going to talk about my journey. Now, my, my assistant gave me an idea.

She’s what about having some of your successful clients on your show for your seven year anniversary? First I was like, oh, that’s brilliant. I was like, no, this shows about me. This shows about me. We talked a lot about my client success on a lot of my shows, but. My journey and not to be selfish or anything like that, but people want an update and seven years is a long time to do anything.

Let’s talk about my journey and pre keto. My anniversary date is May 18th, 2015. Previous to that in 2007, through 2011, I went to Bastyr university. I was getting, working towards my dream degrees and I got a undergrad in nutrition. Then I moved on to a double master’s program.

I got a master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology simultaneously. I’ll tell you what, if you haven’t been to grad school, try doing two of them at the same time. That was a stressor come into my life. But I have always been passionate about helping, especially women feel physically and mentally good as healthy as possible, but not only feeling healthy, but just mentally, really healthy as well too.

The degree that Bastyr offers, as far as I know, they still offer it. When I saw that nutrition and psychology together, dream degree, I was like, this is what I want. I want to know. The psychological support to give people, to help them be able to make these dietary changes. But I want to learn how does diet influence our mental health and wellbeing.

To me, it was my dream degree and I worked my behind off in getting it some Facebook user happy anniversary. Thank you so much. Facebook group, it won’t show your name unless you actually give it permission. So you can either there should be a link there that lets you give permission to share.

Your name and image, or you can actually just type it in as a comment and let me know that’s you and I can then I’ll know who’s watching from Facebook and okay. Stay, there are world renowned school. It’s where most naturopathic doctors are trained in in the world and a really high quality education.

Science-based whole food nutrition. We learned, don’t fear fat, and however, The approach that we were taught to helping people make dietary change. Weight loss was really, you shouldn’t try to help people lose weight. That, we learned something called the health and every size model that the research shows that when people try to lose weight, typically they just gain it back and they gain even more back.

Therefore it’s just better to help people accept their body the way that it is and follows things like intuitive, eating and mindful. While I think these have a lot of value. What I’ve found in my approach is that it’s not a fruitless endeavor to try to help people lose weight. It just takes sustained effort and a comprehensive approach.

First for reasons, I’ll talk about here in a minute but that, using mindful eating and intuitive eating in the context of. A whole foods, diet that in the words of Dr. Ken Berry would say the proper human diet, you can intuitively eat and mindfully eat, but you can’t do that with things like cake and cookies and fast food.

That’s I was using everything. I was taught at school about mindful eating and not trying to worry about my weight or anything like that and intuitive eating. Every evening I would ask myself what are you craving? What do you need right now? Nine times out of 10, the answer was cake like chocolate cake or cookies or something like that.

I’ll tell you what I gained weight. I by the time I graduated in the years after that, following that advice, I developed metabolic syndrome. If you’re not familiar with metabolic syndrome, it’s a there are five different signs that you have this. If you have three of the five, any three of the five.

Then you have what’s considered metabolic syndrome. This is a an issue where basically means you’re pre-diabetic, but it means that your body’s in a place where you’re headed towards pretty much every chronic disease that’s out there. If you don’t do something to turn it around. This approach, it doesn’t work without some other parameters of changing what your what you do eat and what you don’t eat.

Let’s see if I can do the five things that mean you have metabolic syndrome. So one is a waist measurement above 35 inches for women above 40 inches for men high blood pressure, high fasting, blood glucose, high triglycerides. What’s the other one low HDL cholesterol that what’s considered your good cholesterol.

Those are the signs. I had probably almost all of those. Okay, how did I find keto though? I didn’t learn. I learned about this much in, in, in my degrees, but it was taught to us about here’s a therapy that’s for epilepsy and that’s about all it was at that time. So again, remember, this was 2007 through 2011.

This was not when keto was very popular, we were not being taught it as a weight loss protocol. In March of 2014, That was a turning point in my life that led to me discovering the power of keto. I was in a horrible car accident. I was rear-ended by a distracted driver. She was going approximately 35 miles an hour, and didn’t even tap on her brakes distracted for some reason, we know it was probably Instagram or Facebook.

There was no way to know. She told the cops that she was reaching for her smoothie, but the length of time that she accelerated into me. Before the crash it was 10 seconds. That’s a really long time to reach for a smoothie, especially when cars, these days have about 10 cup holders within reach. So maybe she was making a smoothie while she was driving.

I don’t know. But anyways, I sustained a traumatic brain injury crush injuries to my legs, and I was a bad sheep. I spent about the next three months in bed, unable to walk. Progressively. I was able to get back out of bed after about three months, but my health declined over the next year and a half.

Just things got worse and worse. Continued to gain a lot of weight and the list of health problems. would take two pages. I finally figured out that I’d had an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury and imaging census has proved this. I developed what’s called post-traumatic hypopituitarism, which basically the little pituitary gland in my brain wreck havoc and was making everything in my body, misfire and miss work.

Went to countless doctors appointments. I did so much research on my own, trying to figure out how to solve this. I finally out of sheer desperation. I’m like, I know that if I can feed my body correctly, I believe that it can heal. What can I feed my body to help it heal? What does it missing right now?

I stumbled upon, I actually, I remembered. We learned about keto diet as a treatment for epilepsy in grad school. I reasoned that epilepsy is something that’s not going right in the brain. Perhaps keto might help my brain cause it’s not working right now. I started researching Googling.

At that time, Dr. Peter Attia was doing his keto experiments and he is a science nerd. His blog is at that time, I think it’s different now, but at that time it was so specific detailed. Research-based, I felt really confident that this could be a healthy and safe thing for me to take on.

Whereas what everyone else at that time thought was that it was dangerous. Not only from a standpoint of trying to get into ketosis. But just the, a diet mentality that I’ve been taught was such a bad thing. Like you don’t restrict foods that causes eating disorders, you’re going to do more harm than you do.

So I secretly started my experiment and I was so desperate to not be bedridden and disabled anymore. I’ll tell you what, when I was four, when I first started keto, I was getting my food for my son and I at the food bank because I couldn’t work. My son was working two jobs to pay our rent. I was in a bad place and I was seriously desperate.

When people say they can’t afford to do keto that’s not true. You can do it with food that is gifted to you if you do it correctly. That’s. How we started it, things change really quickly very quickly. I chronicled the whole thing in a monthly blog series and all links to that.

That’s my old blog. I did a monthly update of how things were going and how all the improvements in my body. I’m linking in the comments here. What’s. Okay. So I put her on YouTube and in Facebook, I’ll put it in the show notes as well. If you were listening to this podcast later on and not watching live I’ll put a link to my blog in the, my old blog, in the show notes as well.

So this is. When I’ve linked is a month one, this is my I started this experiment in secret and here’s all the change and it’s pretty dramatic actually, as you go through. So I’ve got one blog post for each month of the first year that I was on keto and I cataloged how things were changing, what all I was improving and what I was up to at that time.

After. Four or five months, I started speaking and I spoke in an epilepsy conference. I spoke at a Toastmasters conference. I started speaking in the keto world.

In short, the in summary and the first six months of doing this, I lost 60 pounds and 10 inches off my waist. The health improvements. I no longer had high blood pressure. I no longer had metabolic syndrome. I no longer was pre-diabetic. Inflammation was sky high. When I started, that was down in the normal range.

I dropped my heart rate by 20 points. I know that switching over from being a carb burner to a fat burner, you get a dramatic reduction in your heart rate, which is an indicator of a metabolic health as well, but just cardiovascular health too. I had dramatic improvements in my skin.

Anti-aging effects. A lot of people accused me of having Botox. I still have not had Botox. I was pain-free. So I had developed what’s called chronic regional pain syndrome and my legs from the car accident. That was something when I started keto that I had any idea that would improve.

It was something that I had two aunts that had developed in their life. It’s a chronic pain syndrome that gets worse. It’s spreads and it’s disabling. It ends up causing your legs where wherever the injury is, you can get it any limb in your body, but it just starts to disable it, that it starts to just curl in the muscles, curl up.

It’s bad news stuff. That went into remission very quickly. Which is unheard of, but doing this for seven years. Now, I have story after story of clients with some kind of a chronic pain issue that goes away, people that had previous car accidents that were far more severe than what I had been through that 10 years, they were taking pain killers and icing their leg still.

That was no longer an issue. Ladies that were scheduled for knee replacement surgery that canceled their surgery because their knees felt so great. Those are just a couple of examples of chronic pain that people have that has gone away or gone into remission with keto. What else?

Mental clarity incontinence. So this was another interesting one. I only knew this was a common thing that happened for people on keto because of all the women I’ve worked with. I noticed it was something for me that went away. We’re told as women that after we have a child that having urinary incontinence is just part of life mama.

So just get used to it. But I started noticing in my group coaching with my clients, that was something that people started to report after a few months is that they no longer have. Stress incontinence. So if you cough and a little pee comes out, or if you sneeze or something like that’s stress incontinence.

That actually went away for people. I still haven’t seen this report is in the literature anywhere, but I have seen it so many times with my clients that it’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be a part of mama’s life. Tons of energy, physical stamina, waking up in the morning with the same amount of energy that I go to bed with.

Helping thousands of women and a few men along the way on this journey have been, really the results that I’ve I’ve experienced over these seven years. I’m gonna share with you , where am I currently on my seven year keto? What are some struggles that I faced on this journey?

What’s changed about my approach from the very beginning versus what I teach my clients now. Where am I? I’ve maintained not having metabolic syndrome and not having diabetes. My family history, we’ve got diabetes on one side and the other side we’ve got well and actually even more things.

Diabetes gastrointestinal issues or diverticulitis runs in my family. On the other side, we’ve got heart attacks, stroke, both sides. We’ve got dementia. The people in my family that have those things, it started in their forties and I’m 51 now. I don’t have any of those things. Pre keto years before.

So in my, probably my late twenties, I had really severe digestive issues that that was long before keto, but that was something that I was, they were contemplating surgery to remove that for me. So this runs in my family as well. So for my not perfect that I’ve been doing on keto. I’ve been able to avoid all of these issues that run in my family, that I was having pre keto as well.

Full confession time I’m up 20 pounds over my lowest weight that I achieved on keto. But that’s just living proof that you don’t have to be perfect at this. You just have to not give up. So even though I’m not perfect I don’t it hasn’t been seven years of me eating everything perfectly keto during that time that doing what I have done has been far more successful than anything I’ve ever tried.

I’ve never been able to maintain any dietary change for seven years. I’ve never been able to avoid. The medical history, fate of what my genetics lead me to with any other dietary change even not being perfect. All right. I’m living proof that don’t give up. You don’t have to be perfect.

You’re going to be so much better off than you were had you given up and just gone back to your old eating habits why have I had struggles? Why can’t I be perfect? Why, if I’ve got this figured out, why is it. So easy just to be perfect and never gained weight. The truth is I’ve covered this in past episodes and I’ve got some more episodes planned about this as well, but our bodies, they really want to regain the weight.

We’re designed to overeat and gain as much weight as possible. This is just from most of human existence, living in an environment where food was scarce. Those of us that survived were the ones that our body was really good at seeking out food, eating as much as possible, and then gaining that as weight.

We’re designed that way. We have to be diligent against that. lot of people, the criticism of keto, what’s not sustainable, but guess what? The only thing that’s sustainable in our current food environment is continuing to gain weight. Overeating and developing chronic disease. That’s sustainable.

It takes hard work and diligence to maintain something that’s different than what most of the food on our environment is, but it’s worth it. If you want to be physically fit you, that takes a concerted effort to do it most days of the week, going to the gym or walking or riding a bike or whatever it is you’re into, you have to do that most days overnight.

Nobody tells somebody that like, who just gets a gym membership that’s not sustainable. You shouldn’t even try. That’s just ridiculous that we’re told, trying to maintain healthy eating habits, even not being perfect, that it’s not sustainable. With the right support, the right approach, it can be, and you can avoid the faith that you would have otherwise.

Cause I’ll tell you what if I just been eating the way that I had been pre keto, intuitive eating and just eating, whatever I wanted, hoping I would maintain moderation. Tell you what right now I’d probably be about twice the weight that I am right now, in all honesty. I, and I would be on several medications for diseases and I would.

Be a very typical 51 year old where I would have aches and pains and taking a lot of painkillers and things like that. I’m in a far better place than I would be had I not been on this journey. We live in an obesogenic environment. I think I mentioned that we live in a world where food is abundant.

It’s everywhere. You don’t even have to leave your chair to order food to your house and eat it. Overeat it. You can drive through in a car and get mountains of food. It’s how people show love and how people caretake and having a dessert three times a day is the norm. Whereas it used to be the desserts were for special occasions, right?

The food manufacturers, what they conspire against us. They want us to overeat because we’ve reached a point where most people have enough calories in a day. To keep maintaining increasing profits and selling more food, what do they got to do? They got to design these foods to be craveable and to make us over eat them, have no satiety and to buy them repeatedly.

All that works against us and I’m not perfect. Or immune to that. Carbs are very comforting. They’re easy to use to cope with stress and emotions and just like my clients, we’re all a work in progress. So this is part of why we call it the keto journey. It’s not some people say keto lifestyle.

The keto journey is more about like when you started it to where you are now and you still got the journey. That goes on the rest of our lives. This isn’t something we just do for awhile and then we quit and everything’s fine. Perfect. It’s a journey still on the journey.

I’m not getting off this journey. That’s my, my struggles have been what everybody struggles are when they live this as a lifestyle. So part of why I want to share that is that I want you to alternate. You don’t have to be perfect if you’ve struggled, you’re not alone.

That’s why I provide long-term support for my clients because you know what if people weren’t watching what I was doing, if I didn’t have my team of coaches that we meet every week if I didn’t have my clients looking to me as an example and role model of how to maintain this sustainably, I would probably have not been able to.

Avoid regaining all the weight myself. My support system is putting this podcast out for you all and having this, the clients that I connect with daily, and we all support each other. That’s one of the most important parts of making it sustainable is having other people around you that you’re connected with, that are successful in maintaining your keto journey.

What’s changed about my approach since seven years ago. One of the biggest changes is more protein, very protein centric now. In the beginning a lot of us thought that if you ate too much protein, it kicked you out of ketosis. It raised your blood sugar and it was anti ketogenic.

One of the things we’ve had to recognize is that a medical therapeutic keto diet, for example, for little kids where we want them. Or somebody who has brain cancer, something like that. They’re doing keto for medical reasons, not for weight loss. That’s a very different diet than a weight loss or a sustainable weight.

Eating plan. That’s very different. One of the things that we found is that having protein as your first priority and more protein. In the beginning, I recommended that women have between, around 60 grams of protein a day and 60 to 80. Men a little bit more than that. But what I found is that most women actually do much better, closer to double that around a hundred, 120 grams, or maybe even more a protein a day.

That’s a big difference from when I first started out. what I found with a more protein. Things that were common side effects of keto are no longer an issue. I’ll notice when my clients, their protein intake is really low, their cravings are much higher.

Protein foods are actually rich in vitamins and minerals. You’re going to get more, a nutrient dense diet when you’re getting more protein than you are fat and. The hair loss issues that some women have a protein centric. So very protein forward, focusing on protein as the highest priority each day they don’t lose their hair.

I’ve had some ladies recently year over year getting DEXA scans. They’re not one of them works out a lot five days a week or more. Then the other one doesn’t work out at all and they both not only maintain their lean mass but they increased it. That is because of the protein centric focus.

Most women under eat protein, they eat very little protein, eat lots of carbs. They nibble and snack all day long and a lot of carby stuff and they under eat protein. Protein is a nutrient. We need the amino acids from proteins, and then the minerals that are attached to those amino acids all are necessary to have a optimally healthy body.

Is there some of the summary of why we much higher protein intake is the focus now, as opposed to when I started out one of the other changes to what’s different in seven years of me doing this is that there’s less focus on. In the beginning I was teaching it, you needed a ratio, one-to-one protein to fat and more, more fat was better.

Now it’s in the very beginning, people getting used to having a higher fat intake cause that’s where some of the satiety comes from. This definitely is not a low fat diet and it’s it’s an adequate fat diet. People are getting the nutrients that they’ve been missing for a long time.

Soluble vitamins. While we’re not, force-feeding fat, we’re not doing Bulletproof coffee. We’re not putting tons of butter and coconut oil in our coffee and on everything else like that. We’re in the beginning, I had, more of an emphasis on, oh, let’s get some MCT oil, let’s get some coconut oil.

Let’s try to increase your fat intake. Much less of a focus on that now. I teach people differently about how to moderate fat, how much fat to add to their diet. , I’ve let go of having a ratio of protein to fat. Some people out there one-to-one or two to one fat to protein I don’t do any of that.

Another big difference now is that I’m working with a functional medicine doctor. I’m doing regular lab reviews with my clients or metabolic health panel. We get that at the beginning of their journey, and then we check it at several points during there. There’s some stuff that have come up in the labs, just general health labs that.

That, not my area of expertise. I’ve got a functional medicine doctor that I refer people to when they need a little more help with that. Some of the things are that are turns out, were things that came up in my client’s labs for years that their regular doctor just never noticed or didn’t follow up on.

We’ve had some really dramatic things we found that were otherwise just getting swept under the rug or ignored that lifesaving things for people actually that have changed for them. That’s I’m really grateful to be able to work with the functional medicine doctor that I have and have that as part of our team so that people can get, the goal is optimal health not just not dead care.

Another thing that’s changed as well over my seven-year journey is that I have multiple different programs. I’ve I fine tuned my approach with all the experience that I’ve had personally, and everyone that I’ve worked with over that time. I’ve got several different programs that are all designed to help women, a few men, but mostly women just be able to sustain this as a lifestyle that’s healthy and optimizing.

Their body, their mind, their spirits. I’ve got a starter program that all my clients go through initially. Then we’ve got an annual membership that people can join after that, to stay connected and keep learning and being supported on their journey. The other change too, that I should have put earlier than mentioning that was just just.

Intermittent fasting. Skipping meals for women or promoting fasting and women probably isn’t the best thing for their hormones. So this is something more newer in the, in this year that I’ve been learning about and exploring. I did an interview with Dr. Ruiz, one of my past podcast episodes.

Dr. Ruiz specializes in thyroid. On our interview, we talked about how women’s hormones are much more sensitive to, in frequencies of feeding and. Women’s hormones. Ideally what it’s designed for is reproduction and when nutrients or food is scarce in an environment, that’s not the ideal time to reproduce.

While that’s not everybody’s goal, that’s what being mindful of that as. Circumstances is going to help us be optimally healthy. He’s the one that’s kind kinda talking to me about the intermittent fasting, so skipping breakfast, or promoting fasting and women is going to likely cause wreck more havoc in the body, maybe affect thyroid function, just overall hormone production and function in the woman’s body, more so than it would have been.

That’s another thing that. Not encouraging women to go down to one meal a day, maybe for some of them not even doing two meals a day and not encouraging. I used to do a lot of fasting challenges and things like that. I no longer do that with my female clients to. But let go of egg fasting.

That used to be something that I would teach people is how to accelerate fat loss by doing egg fasting, which is a very high fat version of keto, eggs and butter, basically. I no longer include that in, in my teachings. Where am I going next?

This is how I see myself continuing to eat the rest of my life. This isn’t something where, you need to always be 20 grams of carbs or less. I work with my clients on looking at those metabolic health labs. When you’ve gotten to the point of metabolic health, then that may be a time when.

You can have more carbs. It shows that your body can tolerate a higher carbon take. Not everybody needs to be keto level carbs, indefinitely. That’s a very individualized personalized thing. One of the things that I work with my clients on is, so not only looking at the labs, when are you metabolically healthy?

When could your body tolerate a higher carb intake? But we’re looking at that psychology side of things. We, what foods trigger you to overeat? What foods trigger you to be food obsessed again? Cause my clients really enjoy. Not having any cravings, not being food obsessed and being able to eat mindfully and intuitively.

There’s certain foods, certain types of carbs or certain amounts of carbs, or both that turn all that back on. So we’re looking at quality of relationship with the food you’re eating. What turns the craving back on what triggers, overeating and binges. Avoiding that. Again, this journey model of let’s figure out what is sustainable for you.

Long-term. That’s really, the focus is how do we actually make this sustainable, despite whatever, when tells us about it being not sustainable. So that’s, where I see my future doing, continuing these live shows and producing the podcast, continuing to prioritize. Protein real whole foods in my life and low carb keto, occasionally, and putting out my practitioner training program.

I did a few years. I ran a alpha version of a practitioner training where I taught other healthcare providers, how to build out a program in their clinic or their practice and how to basically promote and market that. My plans in the next year or two, is to launch that on a larger scale.

I see myself perhaps doing some teaching at local schools, colleges, and. Going more between Phoenix area and Seattle area and more of this, a snowbird life perhaps, and continuing to spread the word and working with with clients and improving their health, teaching them how to do keto in a way that is psychologically sustainable, as well as physiological sustainable for them.

That is a summary of my seven year journey and where we’re going next. Next week’s show is going to be about the secrets to ending emotional eating. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, I’m relaunching my pathway to end emotional eating program, which is focused on how do we learn to identify our feelings?

How do we have them and cope with them in healthy ways, instead of using food to numb sooth, or avoid things so that you can stay on your keto journey more easily. We’ve got an info session coming up about that. If you’re interested, if you’re struggling to stay on keto because of emotional or stress eating I encourage you to send an email to support.

KetoCarole.com. We’ve got this email here, support@KetoCarole.com. Just say, I want info about ending emotional eating.

Again next week’s show is going to be on that topic. We’ll be having an info session coming up soon as well. All right. All right.

This show has been about my seven year journey on keto, happy anniversary, seven years, everyone.

Please support the show. Give us a review on your podcast platform. If you’re apple iTunes out there, give me a review. I would love to have my first review out there.

Remember, if you help us grow the show, we’ll help you shrink!.

Thank you everyone for being here today, that’s all had planned for this topic we’ll see you all next time. Thanks for being here. We’ll see you soon.

Bye now.

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Links to my 12 monthly blog post updates the first year of my keto diet:
https://hypnoticnutrition.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/my-ketogenic-diet-experiment/