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How to Avoid Seasonal Weight Gain on Keto Diet

Have you ever realized that we have 3 back-to-back carby sugar-filled binge-type holidays in the fall, followed by a time of lower temperatures and shorter days? Was it by accident that these all occur at this time of year? Our bodies are designed to overeat and gain weight during the fall in order to survive the winter, a time of year when food has typically been scarce. So does this mean we are doomed to gain weight this time of year and we should just give up and overeat? and do not consider to Avoid seasonal weight gain No!

In this episode, I’ll talk about the cues that signal our body to begin the process. I’ll give some practical (and a few impractical) advice as to what we can do to counteract this innate drive and Avoid seasonal weight gain And share what foods to consume (and what foods to avoid) to offset this.

In other words, check out this episode to learn how to not only survive the holidays and winter without gaining weight, but actually thrive and emerge in the spring a healthier version of yourself!

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Transcript:

(Transcript provided by Descript)

Carole Freeman: hey everyone, we are live.

Are you struggling to stick with keto this time of year?

Have you ever realized that we have three. Back to back, sugary, carby, crappy loaded holidays this time of year.

Is this a coincidence or is there a reason for it?

Guess what? This episode is for you.

Stick around because I’m gonna tell you why my hand looks like that.

And for those of you just listening to the auto, don’t worry, I’ll describe what my hand looks like and why my hand looks like this. And I’m also gonna share with you why our bodies are designed to gain weight this time of year and what we can do about it.

I’m gonna give you, again, three practical things. I’m gonna give you one really impractical thing, but you may want to consider it anyways. And also including what foods to. This time of year and also what foods you want to eat to to make it through this time of year.

So are you ready? Are you ready?

All right. Welcome everyone to episode 56 of Keto Chat Live.

I am your host, Carole Freeman. I have a master’s in nutrition and clinical health psychology, and I also am a board certified keto nutrition specialist. I’m a keto coach and I specialize in women 40 plus that would like to follow keto for long-term, sustainable weight loss and optimal health.

Just so you know too, this show is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. I sure hope you’re entertained when you’re joining the show. Just gimme a comment, tell me where you’re joining from. I’d love to know, get people all across the country and all around the world. It’s very fun to know where you’re joining us from.

So let me know. Yeah, again, this show is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice nor intended to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure any condition if you have questions or concerns. Related to your specific medical condition, please contact your qualified healthcare professional.

So let me know where you’re joining from. I’d love to have you join the show. I can see we’ve got people live, but I can’t see who they are until you actually comment. So I’d love to you to join the show. It’s interactive. One of the reasons I like to do this live rather than just recorded, is I wanna interact with you people.

I love the interaction. So please join the show. All right. Oh, I promise you, I was gonna tell you why my hand looks like this. So for those of you just listening to the audio, my left hand is covered with little various shades of red splotches, swatches. And maybe some of you already are guessing what it is if you are a fan or a frequenter of Ulta or Sephora or some other beauty supply place.

But one of my sisters for my birthday, oh, by the way, yesterday was my birthday. I got a year older. Everyone yesterday was my. And one of my sisters sent me a gift card to Ulta, which is super fun. There is a lip product that I like from Nyx. It’s their xxl. Lingerie lipstick. I don’t have it with me.

I don’t remember the name of it. If you wanna know, gimme a comment and I’ll look it up later and post it in the comments here. But there’s a lip product that I like and I have a couple of shades that I like. And so my sister sent me a gift card for my birthday and I went and swatched a whole bunch of shades if you’ve ever done.

It’s to try ’em. All the testers, I swear they have 20 different. Flavors, not flavors, but just different colors in this product. And so it was fun to swipe ’em all and see if I could find one that I liked. And one of the reasons why I like this product so much is because it is waterproof, it stays on, it doesn’t dry out your lips.

You can put lip gloss over the top of it, but. This sounds like it’s a commercial for this product. It’s not. I’m just, again, having fun with like why my hand looks like this. I literally, I don’t know, it’s been more than 24 hours since I’ve watched all these. Now it does sound like an ad for the product, right?

And I’ve watched my hands so many times and this doesn’t come off. So I went to dinner last night with some friends for my birthday and one of ’em said oh, it looks like you’re getting those aged liver spots on your hands. Wrong color. and it also, it was like, oh, it looks like you might have that AIDS disease or something.

So no, neither of those are true. I just, this is , this is an amazing product. It’s not a commercial for it, but I will look up the product later and put it in the comments for you on Facebook and YouTube so that you can know what it is because yeah, it’s pretty amazing that it wouldn’t even come off of my.

My hand like that. And this is the new shade I got. Don’t remember the name of it. Oh, I think it’s maxed out is the shade I got. It’s a very neutral mauve color, which I like. And I have no idea which one on my hand then it is. But anyways, that’s just a little fun personal update there. I did go up and visit family over Thanksgiving holiday in the US here.

Did you have a good holiday? Did you have a good Thanksgiving? What did you do? And all right. Speaking of Thanksgiving, that’s one of these three carby sugary holidays that we have this time of the year. Have you ever noticed that? So we’ve got Halloween, which is all about the sugar, and one month later in the US we have Thanksgiving, which I’ll tell you inside besides the Turkey and ham.

It’s carb casserole after carb casserole, followed by carb, dessert, carb, dessert, carb, dessert, right? That’s Thanksgiving tradition in the us and then one month after that, we have the Christmas holiday here in the US and that’s also just another carby holiday and typically between.

Thanksgiving I have a friend actually for Thanksgiving. She said she spent an entire week cooking for Thanksgiving. And that may be typical of your family. And then a lot of people have a lot of Christmas holiday traditions as well, where they bake a lot of stuff. They’ve got the family tradition, the recipe, the thing, they bake stuff with the kids and they decorate ’em.

And why? Have you ever stopped to wonder? Actually this just hit. Earlier this year or this season why are there three carb loaded holidays this time of the year? Have you ever stopped? Think about it. I bet you haven’t cuz I hadn’t. It is because our bodies are designed to overeat and gain as much weight as possible at this time of the year.

So it’s no coincidence that we’ve got these three high carb. Holidays this time of year because we’re wired to seek out as much of that kind of food as possible this time of year and then shove as much of it in our mouth as possible. So no wonder we’ve got these family traditions and holidays and all this where we make all of these foods.

We’re following up on how our bodies are designed. We’re we, are, we created all these holidays We structured them all close together because this is what our bodies wanna do this time of year. So does that mean it’s hopeless? We should just give up. We’re designed this way. We can’t help it.

Just pig out and gain as much weight as possible. No, guess what? Yeah, that’s why I’m here. This does not mean we’re doomed. It does not mean we’re doomed. It just means you need to be more mindful this time of the year and have some strategies in place to avoid this and offset this. So again, like I promised, I’m gonna have three strategies for you to offset this.

And one impractical thing. So three practical strategies, one impractical strategy. So you don’t have to buy bigger pants in January. There’s a reason why everybody in January decides it’s time to start a diet. I know it’s a new year, but it’s also just after these three high carbs stuff, your face as much as possible, holidays gained a lot of weight and we don’t need to survive the scarce season.

So the reason our bodies are designed this way, let me cover that. The reason our bodies are designed this way is because. For most of human existence, food was pretty scarce. And food grows in the summer and in the fall is when all these plants start to deposit their sugars in their roots. It’s when things like apples are ripe is in the fall, right?

Them you get all the squashes and the sugary parts of the plants and things like that are all ripe in the fall And. . That’s when food is most abundant in nature, and that is when we are designed to start to eat as much of that as possible. And then we went through the winter. And winter is typically when food is the most scarce for animals and humans on this planet.

Again, not now, but for the most of 200,000 years that humans have been on this planet, food has been really scarce . And so this is the way we’ve been designed over that 200,000 years is harvest the food in the fall and eat, shove as much in our pie hole as possible so we can gain as much weight and make it if we can live through the winter on the fat that we’ve accumulated on our body.

Now for animals, this works well because they don’t have McDonald’s and a Wendy’s and a Burger King on every corner and a Starbucks with 14 kinds of sugary things you can add to your drinks. Also shout out, this is just. My girlfriend, so sweetly, I love the color on this. Sent me this for my birthday, as being in a Starbucks.

She sent me this for my birthday. Cute little drink cup that has a straw on it. And what I have in here is water. And I have an element packet. So L M N T, drink LMNT. Also not sponsoring the show, I think they should though. In here with water, which is a electrolyte packet, it’s primarily salt and a tiny bit of stevia.

This is the watermelon flavor one. I don’t know where that, excuse me, picking something on my teeth. And so that’s what’s in here. But so I use my Starbucks cup for good, not for sugary drinks. Thank you Stephanie for the cup. Very sweet. And. All right, so back on track here. Where were we? Okay, so 47 kinds of sugar you can get in your Starbucks drinks.

And you can gain as much weight as possible very easily now. But unfortunately we’re still working with that. Like our body’s biology is wired this time of year to start to gain weight. How does it know? How does it know? Why is it that even though the amount of food that’s available this time of year for us is the same as it is in January and February and April, why is it that, how does our body still know that this is the time of.

There’s a couple of things that are happening out in the environment by weather and also change of the seasons that your body actually can notice. So one is that the temperatures are getting cooler. Your core temperature in your body is feeling that it’s cooling down. That’s one of the signals that your body recognizes.

And also the daylight hours in the day are getting shorter. Those are two primary reasons that your body knows, oh, this is the time where we need to pick out. And so those cue. Correlate with increased appetite more commonly over eating. And oh, it just happens to coincide with these three holidays I just mentioned as well as to why we start to overeat this time of year.

Right? Is this all starting to make sense, becoming very clear? You also might start to feel a little hopeless oh my gosh, are we doomed? Is there anything we can do? I can’t make the sun shine more hours and warmer outside. All right, , those are the two things primarily that are happening that signal to our body that this is fall and it’s time to start to eat as much as possible.

And so are you having trouble this time of year? Are you feeling like you have more cravings? Part of it is these high-carb foods are everywhere you look in the grocery store, but we’ve put them there. We’ve designed them to be there so that we can overeat them. So maybe you do feel like this is harder time of year To my tips.

Three Things You Need To Do Right Now

All right, so the three things you need to do right now if you don’t wanna buy bigger pants of January. If you want to keep strong and steady on your healthy eating plan, one thing is you want to do light therapy. Two, you wanna warm up that core of your body. And three is the foods I’m gonna mention that are gonna help nourish your body and satisfy your nourishment needs without filling up on extra calories and carbohydrates that just make you gain weight.

And then I’m gonna give you bonus number four, which is the one that’s totally impractical, but it’s the finest one, and I really think you should consider it . So number one light therapy. This is what, so I recently moved, a couple years ago, I moved from Seattle, Washington, which is Northern Latitudes have the most trouble with this.

Also, like if you’re on the bottom half of the planet as well, and you’re in the very southern latitudes, not this time of year but six months from now when your seasons are opposite of ours, you have the same challenges. And actually, I would wonder, I’m gonna reach out to. I have some business acquaintances that are in New Zealand and Australia, and I’m gonna ask them if they have springtime, really carby holidays that they struggle with.

So I’m gonna do some intelligent work, some intelligence gathering here for you all. So I. In Seattle, northern latitudes. If you live in the northern latitudes, it is much more challenging because you have more of a stark contrast between the summer and the fall and winter. And so you’re gonna have much cooler temperatures than where I moved two years ago, I moved down to Phoenix, Arizona.

We have much more temperate. I know a lot of people think that it’s like an oven down here and it’s a thousand degrees every day. It’s not true right now, this time of year. December 1st is when I’m recording this. We’re going live. It’s 70 degrees today. It’s very comfortable. I’m in short sleeves, I’m wearing pants, I’m all dressed up.

That’s Arizona. Dress up is wearing pants, and it’s very comfortable. So the farther north you are, the farther south you are, the more you’re gonna struggle with this. And Light therapy is where, and I did this when I was, I lived up in the Seattle area, so light therapy is, you wanna buy a specific type of light box.

There’s a bunch of different brands. You could just Google this, look it up on Amazon, but you wanna find one that has 10,000 lux and L U X is the brightness of the bulbs that are in there. It needs to be 10,000 lux or higher. That is the research proven brightness of light that you need in order to get this effect and the research therapy.

Shows that you wanna do this for 20 minutes first thing in the morning. However, when I was there, what I found worked best for me was to actually just have it shining in my eyes all day long at my desk. And If you have a job where you can actually, if you’re at a desk and you can have it on your desk shining into your face, that’s great.

Otherwise, if you’re something where you can’t have it shining on you, you’ll want to use it first thing in the morning, maybe in your bathroom or as you’re en enjoying your coffee in the morning, something like that. The key is that it needs to be shining straight into your eyes. It can’t be shining off to the side, it can’t be behind you.

It needs to get in your eyes. And so that’s how the. Whatever sensors in her body get stimulated that it’s bright and it’s sunny and it’s not fallen winter and it’s not time to eat as much as possible. Okay? So the number one tip is to get a light therapy, a therapy light box. And again, you want for look for 10,000 lux.

There’s countless brands that you can get that, that serve this. So again, the key is that 10,000 lux. That’s the brightness of the bulb or the bulbs in there. And again, you can do, research shows doing it 20 minutes in the morning. Prevents seasonal effective disorder, which is the depression that goes along with this.

But I found for me, for best mood, and again, experiment for yourself and see what works best for you is I had it shining in my face all day long during the fall and winter, and. The number two tip is gonna be about warming up your core. So remember I said that the outside temperatures or the other thing that’s triggering your body right now to crave and consume and eat as much as possible.

So warming up your core of your body with things like a sauna. And this is gonna be more than just taking like a hot bath. This is gonna be traditional sauna, like a steam sauna, but also infrared saunas are really good, shown to. Heat up the core of the body and you can, these are things you can buy in your house.

You can go places that have them. So I know a lot of the tanning beds in the north actually have these. You can go in and sit in them, so monthly membership and you can go use the infrared sauna a box thing that they have, and they’re very comfortable. It doesn’t get, doesn’t feel as hot on the external skin as a traditional heat or wet sauna.

And it is penetrating your skin and it’s heating up on the inside. It’s not heating as much on the outside. So if you find that a traditional sauna is just too much, you can’t take it, then the infrared sauna may be your friend. Infrared sauna is also. Been shown or it’s theorized to speed up metabolism as well.

This may be part of what’s going on, right? So our metabolism is speedier In the summer when things are warmer and perhaps infrared heating up the core of your body is also. Part of what is simulating that summertime and it’s not time to pick out and eat too much. So my number three tip is then gonna be about the types of foods you want to eat and the types of foods you want to avoid. So in general, I’m gonna recommend to most of my clients that they avoid these foods all year long.

Sticking with your low carb diet, avoiding, sugary things, pasta, bread, grains. All of those things. Tortillas, corn, that kind of stuff. Avoiding all of that stuff year round, and especially this time of year, because again, if you consume those things, your body right now is wired in primed to eat as much of those as possible.

So you’re gonna crave them, you’re gonna be obsessed with them. You’re gonna not be able to limit the amount. You’re going to overeat them, and your waistline’s going to expand and you’re gonna feel pretty uncomfortable. The other thing to go I didn’t mention this yet, but these three high carb, sugary holidays that we have back to back this time of.

Do you also notice that how rampant flu and cold and viruses are this time of year when you consume high sugar, high refined carbohydrates, it suppresses your immune function. And it’s probably no wonder then that we’ve got these three high carb, sugary holidays followed by flu season. Maybe it’s just sugar poisoning season.

I don’t know. Alright. What are the foods? Okay, so I mentioned what to avoid. You wanna avoid actually the things you’re gonna, you would crave. Now the clients I’m working with, we teach them tricks and tools to avoid cravings and so they shouldn’t be having these cravings, but these are gonna be the foods you often crave this time of year if you’re not doing the other two things I mentioned, which is heating up your core of your body and using the light therapy.

And so avoid process refined sugar carbohydrate. Those things just aren’t doing any good for anybody’s health. You wanna focus on, Protein rich foods, that should be the basis of each meal. And I’m gonna lean in. So I actually a fun fact, I used to teach at a school in Portland, Oregon. That was a really cool certification they offered.

That was in Western Nutrition and also Eastern Nutrition. So they brought in Chinese principles. to their nutrition. I taught the western side of the classes and then the other, one of the other instructors taught the eastern side. And I learned so much really cool stuff about how Eastern Nutrition looks at Chinese nutrition, looks at things that nourish your body.

And so this is actually pulling from that. So you wanna go for slow? Foods this time of year. Slow cook, slow cooked. So heat, you want those warm foods. That’s why we crave things like stews and soups and we want roasted veggies this time of year. Slow cooker or pressure cooker for your meats. So they’re soft and tender and they’re well cooked.

That’s gonna be ideal, especially leaning into the red meats as well, because those are gonna be the most nutrient dense. Your what are they called? Peter Ballerstedt.. Said, what are they called? The Ruminati. So you want like lamb and beef and buffalo. What else is in that category? Are goats ruminants?

I think goats are ruminants. Anyway, so ruminants. red meat, slow cooked or pressure cooked, instant pot, those types of meats are gonna help you get the maximum nutrition out of those. Meats right now. And when you slow cook, you instant pot cook those meats, it actually helps break down the tissues so much that it’s much easier to get the minerals out of there.

So there’s the western side of why this works. The eastern side is you want those heat cooks. So as you’re thinking about heating up the core of your body, you want to think about the foods are also gonna be heating up. The core of your body as well. So again, this is why we crave more warm foods, the time of year, and you want to do cooked veggies as well There’s a reason why salads don’t sound as good in the fall and winter as well.

Cooking Your Vegetables

Cooking your vegetables and also cooking them to death. Do you remember a time when we told people like, oh no, you wanna have raw everything. That’s the healthiest way to eat vegetables. It turns out that’s not true. Actually, the more cooked vegetables are, the more. Easily we can assimilate the minerals that are in there.

And so this is the theme of the winter. The fall and winter is maximizing nutrients and maximizing minerals that you can get from those foods. And so cooked veggies, think about roasting, tossing in some kind of oil or fat, and then roasting them, the oven even boiling them and pureeing them into soup.

Think of like mushroom soup or cauliflower or broccoli soups. Cooking them, maybe roasting them first and then peering them into a soup. Those are gonna be ways you’re gonna be able to get maximum nutrients, and that’s also gonna be that Chinese medicine approach to warming the core of your body. These are considered warming foods.

Again, I’m not gonna go totally into the depths of it, but that is the basis of how they look at cooling or warming. I forgot the other terms for foods. So that’s the secret to. The foods you want to eat this time of year want to be ones again, low carb. This is a keto show after all.

So boil ’em first. Then they cook ’em in a pan with some fat, and they cook ’em for a long time. And then you finish it with a little bit of vinegar, which also helps break ’em down and helps our body start the digestion process. So cooked greens this time of year too. And also, the other thing that’s gonna be warming to your core is gonna be spicy things.

So spicy food, add some spicy spices in there. There’s a reason. Chi tea this time of year. Sounds good. Even the pumpkin spice craze. There’s some warming spices in there. And also think about spicy things, so chili peppers, chili powder, and cayenne, whatever else. What else is spicy? Maybe a little bit of sriracha sauce, hot sauce.

Frank’s hot sauce. Have you ever made homemade buffalo sauce before? 50% Frank’s red hot, 50% butter. So easy ma. Just warm it up in a pan or the microwave. And you’ve got frank’s, you’ve got buffalo sauce. Put it on chicken, put it on anything. It’s really delicious. But also, that’s another way of heating up your core this time of year, is those spicy foods.

All right. You got some ideas of what you might make for dinner tonight or this week, or this next week. Lots and lots of new possibilities here. If you feel like you’re getting bored with food, here’s a bonus tip for you. If you’re getting bored with food, think about all the different types of proteins you like.

Think about all the different ways you can cook it, the different cuts of them. And then add one, one spice to it and one vegetable. You literally could not eat the same meal the rest of your life and have a different meal every single day. Every meal and not run out of combinations that are low carb. So there’s no reason to be bored with your food.

All right, so I promised you three practical things you could do right now to offset our body’s tendency to want to re, to gain a lot of weight this time of year. And I promised you one. One, impractical one. So here’s the impractical one. Guess what? Move . Move your entire household and your body to a warmer location.

Go closer to the equator. People that live close to the equator don’t have this tendency to gain weight in the fall. In the winter, the foods are different there. They don’t have a lot of these root vegetables and other things. Seasonal foods that are very high in starchy, sugary carbs. They maybe have a lot more fruit there, but they also don’t have this tendency to overeat at this time of the year.

the length of the day is the same all year long, and the temperatures are pretty moderate all year long. They don’t have big changes. So move. That’s one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, from Seattle is the climate. And so if, like I said, I promised one impractical, one totally impractical, right?

But this is also why a lot of people take a vacation this time of year to a sunny location. They and I think I see this a lot January, February, March, probably are more common that people go to those sunny locations closer to the equator because they can only take so much of this, eat as much as possible and hibernate and not move.

All right, so what do you think of that? Next episode, I’ve got a special bonus episode this week. Typically we’re live on Thursdays, 4:00 PM Pacific. That’s sixth Central, seven Eastern. If you’re listening to the recording, they live on Forever out there on the podcast world, wherever you listen to podcasts.

But this week I’ve got two episodes for you. I’m doing a bonus episode on Friday. We’ll be doing it live at, oh, what time is it? It is at 11:00 AM Pacific. That is one central. Two Eastern, and this is going to be about anxiety, food, and your weight with my good friend Katie McKenna, who is a certified nutritionist and a licensed mental health counselor in Washington State.

And we’re gonna be talking about what is anxiety? What are some ways that we can manage anxiety, reduce it, reframe it. What does it do? Why is it, why do we have anxiety? We’re gonna talk about how anxiety affects the foods that we. And vice versa. We’re gonna talk about how what you eat affects your level of anxiety that you experience.

So don’t miss that episode. And if you’re listening later on the recordings look for that releasing soon. So today’s episode, we talked about the seasonality of weight gain. Why is it that we crave and overeat? Why we put three high carb, overeat, holidays in a row, in, in the us. wire bodies are designed this way to try to help us survive the winter when food was scarce.

But guess what? We got too much food. And I gave you three practical things to do. One totally impractical thing to do. But you know what? So many people from Seattle have been moving to Phoenix over . I’m not suggesting everyone moved to Phoenix, but also a lot of people moved to Arizona and Texas over. Oh, in Florida too.

So there’s a lot of people that took the opportunity to be able to move. So that’s my impractical one. And so if you like what you heard today and you’d like to get more personalized support for your keto journey, if you’re looking for a keto coach near you, I invite you to check out my website, keto Carole.com.

Let me put that up on the screen here for you. Check it out. If you haven’t been my website yet, I’ve got my personal story on there before and after photos. People love those. I’ve got a lot of stories of my clients’ success stories and so much more. So if you wanna check out my story, it’s remarkable.

Cuz after three, three degrees, five years in school, a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. Oh, and that just keeps going up. I still didn’t figure this out until a really bad car accident. Okay? So go check out my website, KetoCarole.com. Read my story. If I work very closely with my clients and I only open up 10 client spots per month, that’s how exclusive the work is that I’m doing with my clients.

So I work with people by application. I wanna make sure that it’s the right fit, that I can help you, and that I’m the right person for you. So again, if you’re ready to stop messing around, If you’re ready for the next chapter of your life where you are the best version of yourself, I invite you to apply to work with me.

Visit my website, KetoCarole.com. Carole has an E on the end. It’s a very fancy French spelling and see if we’re a match. And remember, if you enjoyed the show, help us grow and we’ll help you shrink. So that’s all for today. Thanks. I’ll see you next time. Bye now.

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