Keto Chat Episode 59 : Low Carb San Diego

Carole Freeman: Welcome to this episode of Keto Chat. I am your host, Carole Freeman, I am a certified nutritionist and creator of the Fast Track to Keto Success program. I’m really excited because I’m here recording this live. Although, you’re not watching it live, but from Low Carb San Diego Conference here, the second annual here in San Diego, and I’m here to do some success story interviews with a couple of the participants or attendees of the conference here. And some people have traveled from very far way, some people are a little bit closer. Tell us who you are, and how long did it take you to get here?

Jaydeep: My name is Jaydeep, and I’ve been following this diet since last two years and I’ve lost around 130 pounds on it, and I live in India, I’m a vegetarian.

Carole Freeman: Okay. Oh my gosh. I have lots of questions for you because there’s a lot of people that are watching this that think they can’t do it because of everything they see online, and so I can’t wait to explore your story a little bit more.

Jaydeep: Absolutely.

Carole Freeman: Please share.

Karen: Hi. I’m Karen Perret, and I’m from Carlsbad, California. Originally I’m from Indiana, Central Indiana but I’ve lived out here for the last 20 years, so that makes me basically a native.

Carole Freeman: Excellent. It took you about 45 minutes to get here, you said.

Karen: 45 minutes.

Carole Freeman: And it took you 24 hours.

Jaydeep: 24 hours.

Carole Freeman: Thank you for coming so far and I’m just really excited for the both of you to share your story. So, Jaydeep would you mind to share

Jaydeep: Definitely.

Carole Freeman: 100 and some pounds is amazing.

Jaydeep: Definitely. It began I think around two years back, when February 2015 I realized my weight was 142 kgs and my waist was 52 inches.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Jaydeep: Pre-diabetes and hypertension.

Carole Freeman: Do you have some pants that you save from them.

Jaydeep: I have photographs and pants, I saved them. Definitely. Absolutely. Can’t remove them. I realized I had a few medical conditions and had to deal with it. I couldn’t stand for more than 10-15 minutes, and everything was going down the hill. That’s when I realized, going to a normal nutritionist or dietician who tells you to eat small meals every two hours was not working, after trying that. And I realized that maybe, some other step needs to be taken.

I got in touch with Dr. Westman and I consider him to be my father figure, and he told me, forget everything you know about nutrition. And everything is alike so if you try this, your life will be much easier. Much easy and you could lose fat really fast. So I especially flew down to his place for a few hours to meet him from India. I had to meet him, and I think around that time I already lost around 25, 30 kgs. After going back there, I was more confident, and extremely sure of what needs to be done, and what things need to be avoided. And with exercise and with a proper vegetarian ketogenic diet, I managed to lose 130 pounds of fat.

Carole Freeman: That’s amazing. Amazing. I can’t imagine how fantastic you must feel, and proud of yourself.

Jaydeep: Absolutely.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. And you’ve got your father here with you as well.

Jaydeep: My father, yeah.

Carole Freeman: I can imagine he’s really proud of you too.

Jaydeep: Absolutely.

Carole Freeman: Tell us about in the very beginning, when you were transitioning, because I’m sure if you’re like everybody else who’s transitioned on this diet, you were hungry all the time and eating … you weren’t eating a lot of meals frequently, right?

Jaydeep: Yeah, I think the fact was I was always hungry.

Carole Freeman: Right.

Jaydeep: And always diet, always hungry. Sleeping way too much. Not realizing what’s going wrong. Obviously, I’ve tried all those so-called diets, so restricted calories and then I used to eventually put down … put on more weight.

Carole Freeman: Right. Right.

Jaydeep: After trying them, losing some fat and putting on again, this wasn’t really working. And it was probably depression coming in and I realized science is the perfect way where in one should focus on. And by doing that, I realized initially I was too scared to leave carbohydrates. We are very used to having grains.

Carole Freeman: Yes.

Jaydeep: Even in India, especially being a vegetarian, if I don’t have grains, then I eat what? We don’t have meat nor do we consume seafood and a lot of things. Eggs at home I do not consume because now I’m a lacto-ovo, otherwise I started off being a vegetarian, a pure vegetarian. Not even eggs.

Carole Freeman: Vegan, is what … I’m from the Seattle area.

Jaydeep: No, Vegan is something that’s not even dairy, but being a vegetarian

Carole Freeman: So you do dairy, but no eggs, no fish or.

Jaydeep: Yeah. I was scared to leave all the grains, but eventually, I do not leave everything in the first day. I gradually left stuff. And the results were showing. Because the results are showing, I had no issues leaving the carbohydrate pick. And eventually, actually even the diet, and along with that, I paired my diet with a lot of resistance training, and weight training really helped me get higher ketone levels or to lose fat faster.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Jaydeep: It really helped. And til death I believe that one should be on a low carbohydrate lifestyle, and weight train if it’s for fat loss. And being a vegetarian, I don’t think it’s difficult, people say you have options, [inaudible 00:05:45] options. But actually, not really, if you can be a little innovative when it comes to cooking, or it can be probably consuming stuff or understanding nutrition. The problem is people don’t know what nutrition is, and people don’t know what are carbohydrates. If you understand carbohydrates, even vegetarians would be very easy, maybe not to go under 10 grams of net carbs, maybe 20, and that’s equally good.

Carole Freeman: So, how did you go from I’m a vegetarian, I can’t eat carbs, what else can I eat? What was the transition like in the beginning? What did you begin to add and what did you begin to cut out?

Jaydeep: I had a lot of issues convincing myself. So I visited Doctor Westman, and he told me that, Jaydeep, I really don’t know what Indians eat. So Doctor Westman told me, but you know what, there’s a card which has been made, and I was very inquisitive and I was asking him a million questions, and he was … he told me, Jaydeep, there is a card that is already there which is already there, which can take you from point A to point B. And you’re the one who wants to understand stuff and you want to make a Ferrari. And he told me, make a Ferrari and tell me how you made it. There is no fixed rule here, and there’s no fixed definitions here. And I’ve read most of the books written, the low carb books written and I realized, after following it, I’m even practicing nutrition in Mumbai.

And I realized that I have close to 510 clients on the Ketogenic lifestyle in India and I realized that things which are written in the books are there to make your life more easy, but that’s not the only way out. I have cashews and I still show ketones are free. The days I’m not resistance training, my diet’s slightly strict. If I am weight training, that I can have fruit and still show Ketone level of five. So I realized that maybe those rules for me and you could be different. If you are insulin resistant, if you’re fasting insulin levels are very high, and maybe you will not be in a position to generate meta hydroxy ketogen.

Carole Freeman: That’s really key because, what a ketogenic diet actually is, it’s not a set diet for everybody

Jaydeep: It’s not.

Carole Freeman: By definition, a ketogenic diet is a way of eating that put you in to ketosis. That’s a great example of how it’s gonna look different for each person.

Jaydeep: People go on Google and they see a lot of stuff, I see these days, peanut butter and yogurt, and 10,000 different recipes, some of them even having sugar inside, being sold under the roof of ketogenic, and I believe Ketogenic diet is a diet where in the body is generating ketones. Actually, it doesn’t make sense to go online and say, yes, I’m following a Ketogenic diet and the person’s eating almond-flak cookies 10 a day and having peanut butter, maybe with a bread, and eventually, the blood is lost here, the person doesn’t realize, maybe he’s gonna put on weight, maybe he’s gonna get something his Omega-6 levels are very high. The consumption in food if your Omega-6 cell, your body is saturated in 6 cell, and that’s not the best thing to do. For information.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Jaydeep: I realized it’s gonna be different, rather than following things blindly by people who’ve been posting recipes, you should try and do a little bit of research, and understand that, yeah, it’s very easy in spite of being a vegetarian. But at the same time, too many things that others are consuming, is something which you rather restrict, especially when it comes, from my story I had to lose 65 kgs and I was sure that eating dark chocolate wasn’t the way. It wasn’t going to do, happen every day. But because people were saying, you know dark chocolates are allowed and this is allowed, I get myself away from these things and it really made a difference. Even two small piece of dark chocolate was making a difference when it comes to my average fat loss.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Jaydeep: So this is what I see it as, this was my understanding to it.

Carole Freeman: Right. Right. That’s really great. I got tons more questions, I wanna bring Karen in through, catch you up with your

Karen: Oh, sorry that’s me.

Carole Freeman: That’s music for a station break.

Karen: There we go.

Carole Freeman: Now a message from our sponsors.

Karen: Hi everyone.

Carole Freeman: Just to bring you up to speed, will share with us how you found the ketogenic diet and what’s been your progress and success so far?

Karen: Well, I started long ago, when I was six years old, I was overweight and I had been yo-yo dieting on and off. It was easy for me to be very active as a child, I would jog, say in high school. And when I was teenager through college, and my weight would go up and down. But once I was 31 or 32, I had thyroid disease, I had Hashimoto’s disease in 1997, so it’s been 20 years this week that I got diagnosed. That was difficult, but I went and lost via a points counting system. Might guess which one that is.

Carole Freeman: Everyone knows what that is, right?

Karen: Yes, I did that. And that worked. I lost 60 pounds and the I had my daughter almost 17 years ago now. But what happened is as I aged, especially as I aged, I noticed that I didn’t always get the hunger and full signals that my points counting program told me I should get, and that was very difficult. I felt like I was a failure, I can see people around me being successful. Yeah, they just counted these points or calories and I cannot really do that. I would try and maybe two to 10 weeks later I would fail, I would start to overeat again. Also, as I aged, going through a few life difficulties and became a single parent, and co-parenting with my daughter’s dad. And during that time I ate to soothe a lot, and I just said, oh I don’t care. I’m just gonna live. I’m just gonna eat whatever I want to. But that turned out not to be such a great idea for me in the long run. And then when I kept trying to count points because really, that was the most popular program out there.

Carole Freeman: There were some big celebrities doing it, so it had to work, right.

Karen: Yes. Yes. I was kind of starting … right before I started to go Keto or low carb, I had bought those little sprinkles to put on my food and at last, but I didn’t use them.

Carole Freeman: Oh my gosh, yeah. I have some family members that were doing that too.

Karen: Yeah. I didn’t use them. So I did use a commercial weight loss program that I wouldn’t use now ’cause I’m dairy free, and it was just very costly and I know other ways to get weight off. I did that program for 40 weeks, I lost 70 pounds and that was five years ago, and to this day, I’m keeping off 71 pounds. So on a five-one person, I think I was diagnosed type-2 morbid obesity from my doctor. I was close to being a diabetic, I was pre-diabetic, but I never got diagnosed. I knew, because I worked in a lab, I knew what all the diagnosis criteria were, and we had a pathologist that would go around each cube, and say if you have pre-diabetes, you have diabetes, don’t forget it. And that really helped me to make a change.

And then my company, the lab testing company requires that I get weighed and measured since 2011, I’ve been base-lined for my weight, my cholesterol, and they’ve changed the metrics. A bunch of us when to them and said, hey, listen it’s important what kind of cholesterol, not just total cholesterol, but they look at HDL. And so, I only had to meet three out of five metrics, I can’t pass certain metrics on total cholesterol, but I can on HDL for sure, and my ratio. That made me happy that we were able to champion the company and get something that was a little bit more meaningful metric, and that was great.

So fast forward, when I went to segue off the commercial program, I wanted to save money, so I said, Oh I’ll just come on the paleo seed, and there was a woman named Barbara Berkeley, M.D., she advocates low carb diet, maybe not Keto, but I took that ball and kind of ran with it. I took her rules from her 12 rules of weight maintenance, and to keep the body that you’ve earned, because weight maintenance for me was, I had to do a lot of work. I worked more in weight maintenance than I did losing weight, because the program was very strict. And I’m also, I have what I call my food template. Where I eat from that and I went more low carb and more low carb and that worked up to a point, that at a certain point, I need to … it didn’t matter how many calories, calories in and out matter for me, but what matters more is that I keep my carbs a little lower, and then also intermittent fast.

About a year ago, I got enrolled in a circadian rhythm for sleeping study, from Doctor Panda from Salk Institute, right here in La Jolla, very, very nearby. And for 14 weeks, I baselined for 2 weeks, and then for 12 weeks I tightened up my feeding window, and so I intermittent fast now with the same foods I was eating, probably more but I eat them more in the morning, and then I start fasting around noon or 1 o’clock, and then I wait until the next morning and eat again. And I just water fast.

Carole Freeman: What did you notice with the intermittent fasting

Karen: Well, I had unintentionally put on about 8 to 10 lbs. I was all subcutaneous fat kind of hanging around right here. And it was more, the blood sugars were pretty good, so that was good. But after being obese for so many years, 40 years from age six to 46, and I had just gone through menopause as well, it was just annoying. I worked really hard, I’m doing all the right things, what’s wrong. Unknowing yet last year, at the time, it did help me sleep, but as I got the intermittent fasting window tighter, I also got more to Ketosis. That way I can have some vegetables. I don’t do pork. I just don’t react well to pork. I don’t do bacon so it’s kinda tough. But I do meat, some seafood, there’s definitely some off template foods that I don’t eat because it will cause me to start binging and I am also a cholesterol hyper responder.

I’m an APOE-33, Dave Fellman’s gonna talk more about this at the conference. It’s hyper responders for APOE-44, but I’m 33 and I switched to a little bit more lower saturated fat, more sardines, more avocados, but I still eat a lot of beef, so.

Carole Freeman: I think he’ll be speaking later, I think it’s today

Karen: I think it’s tonight. Yup. Yup. I hope to learn more about those experiments especially because I still do need to pass my insurance discount, it’s about $40 a month, I’m a single head of household, I really need all that money, so I can go travel and enjoy life after that. I did lose about one or two pounds with intermittent fasting a month, just to give you an idea. It took about eight or nine months to get the weight off. And then to maintain my weight, I eat within my food template, nuts are a big binge trigger, so I don’t eat any nuts at all. I tried eating a few macadamia nuts and I had binge urges for two to three weeks.

Carole Freeman: Weeks?

Karen: Weeks. So it’s not a small decision to eat my known triggers. Also, [inaudible 00:17:48] seem to be a very big binge trigger for me, so it’s a little strange, but of course sugar, I can have a little bit of 85% chocolate, but I have to be careful with that, and I don’t make it a rule. I know what I can have and what I can’t have. I went to travel to Hawaii last year for my 50th birthday, I did not eat a bite of pineapple because I know I would feel cruddy, and I did all this work and I wanted to kayak with my daughter, I have pictures on my … I have a non-commercial blog about weight maintenance. I have pictures of paddling that kayak and I’m just so happy I can do ocean kayaking with my daughter and spend my time and money that way rather than with big health care bills.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Well, it’s fantastic. What did you notice different? You talked about before when you tried the points counting system, and how you just felt hungry all the time.

Karen: Yes, that’s a good point. One of the things is, I feel like the foods I eat now for Keto, the meat and the veg, occasionally berries in the summer, if I’m really active, just a very small amount. I noticed that I have way better hungry-full signals. Just night and day difference. That doesn’t mean a hundred percent of the time, it works well, that’s why I do keep track on My Fitness Pal … I’m sorry. I have a fitbit and I connect that up to My Fitness Pal and I take a look at my movement, because if I start to feel like I want to eat everything out there all the time … probably can remember what it was like, then I know something … sometimes stress can trigger it, maybe not enough sleep and stress, I’m going to a financial planner to afford college for my daughter, I had to write down all my finances, I thought I could go eat everything in my little snack cabinet right now. And I think my daughter had some nuts here and this and that, and I’m like, nope, I’m stressed, that’s the wrong signal, it’s my brain.

I noticed that, I noticed hungry-full signals are much better and I really, for weight and maintenance that is very, very helpful. I can … if anyone knows flying, instrument rated flying, you have to rely on your dials rather than looking out if you’re going through a cloud bank or fog or tough weather conditions, so I’d like to think of it as instrument-based Keto weight maintenance.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Well, that’s one of the things that I’ve noticed working with all my clients is, I was trained as a nutritionist that restrictive diets are what cause eating disorders and it just causes people to be more miserable, and so when you went after … sounds like after your divorce, when you went through that, well, just eat all foods. I’m gonna be happy and love myself the way that I am, that’s the way that I was trained. And everybody here can probably attest, all that is is a recipe for weight gain and weight problems.

Karen: Absolutely.

Carole Freeman: What I found is that it’s actually really freeing to not have that constant hunger and you actually get control over your eating. You can notice those subtle signals and make a choice rather than before, being in that fat-storage mode where you’re just compulsively eating and reactively eating because your body is starved for energy. Thank you for sharing. How what a different set is for you and now you actually have the choices instead of compulsion.

I’m gonna go back to you then and talk about what was it like … did you struggle at all with former high carb foods, right? So a lot of people think of like, what about this or that or bread or don’t you miss that, you’re never gonna have, I mean for you was it chapati, rice, was it nan? What was your traditional?

Jaydeep: Chapati and rice.

Carole Freeman: Chapati, right? You’re never gonna have that again.

Jaydeep: You know, I missed being fit. And I missed being fit more than I would miss that bread. A lot of people come and ask me that, how did he do it? Or you have a lot of determination, how you pulled it off, and you struggled a lot and it must be a difficult journey. Sometimes, I say yeah. But actually, that’s not true, it makes me feel, my journey wasn’t difficult. They probably imagine that I was under a lot of stress, and I was doing things which was, things which would have cared. But actually, I was not hungry. I was doing or eating things which I loved, I was getting results, there was to pity here, there was no bad side here.

There was a difficult part, there was no difficult part. So for them, they thought the difficult part was not to have that bowl or rice or probably that slice of bread with jam on it. And it all boils down to how badly you want to be fit. And if a person who has diabetes of a person who’s fat, and I couldn’t tie my own shoe laces, and I wanted to tie them. That was more important for me. A lot of people, for them even in spite of having diabetes and HPO1Cs being seven, if they say or they have this thought process of when should I cheat? I means that for them, getting rid of diabetes wasn’t very important thing. For them, eating that slice of bread was still there. So I personally feel it all boils down to how badly you want it.

Once you know that, the parts already made. For me, I kept education on, I studied nutrition, so I was knowing that if I studied nutrition, it will be very easy for me by not getting in the false knowledge which has been there. And I realize studying nutrition for myself, eventually, I get a chance to help 500 more people.

Carole Freeman: Yeah

Jaydeep: To lose weight.

Karen: That’s exciting.

Jaydeep: Yeah, it’s a great journey. And I don’t miss my food, I’m enjoying it in spite of being a vegetarian there are a lot of options, and it’s not that difficult at all. It’s a lifestyle change.

Carole Freeman: How different was it getting on the airplane to come here for this event versus when you first went to see Doctor Westman?

Jaydeep: You got the right question, yeah. Yes, I had to tell the airline guys to make to give me a lacto-o dish, something with eggs. Although I didn’t get it, I was carrying nuts. But these nuts are not the best thing for me. It’s because I always start off thinking I’ll have 10, and it ends up being 100. Would I still feel I would rather do that than to have that bun and bread which have been sold on the flight.

Carole Freeman: How about fitting on the seat in the airplane? What was the whole experience of flying the plane like?

Jaydeep: So you know, when I was 140 kgs, my waist was 52 inches, I oversleep. I think very few people can relate to me being to fat, where it you can’t even sleep straight, you’re sleep apnea always there, you wake up tired, you need to sleep again. I think small, small things like sitting in a seat where you do not need extension belts, where you can tie your own shoes, and when you can wake up fresh, and where you can fit in jeans which probably … like your friends do, the same size. And you do not need to go and get them stitched. I think all these things, small, small things, they really matter. Now that I look back, okay, I feel yes, that’s a beautiful journey of having been in a position to go to a shopping mall and buying your own clothes. And then testing your blood and seeing HPO1C of five, I think that’s a wonderful experience.

I was very anti social, I remember when I was at my peak, I was not attending social events. Was not willing to go out meet people, social functions, traveling was always difficult. Watching a movie in a cinema was always difficult. But I think I’m enjoying doing things which I couldn’t do. I enjoy shopping and I enjoy traveling now. And I enjoy watching myself on interviews.

Carole Freeman: Soon. Do you, now, a lot of people that have lost a lot of weight like you have, they report that their mind still plays tricks on them and sometimes they wake up and feel like, did they really lose the weight? Am I back at that weight? And do you ever have to check that or?

Jaydeep: I have a lot of clients who dream about food, and then they wake up thinking that they ate it and that troubles them a lot. And actually, I used to, for a moment a person I don’t think it’s difficult for some people to believe as you know, why would a person dream about eating a pizza and wake up? But actually, it used to happen to me. The times that I used to wake up with sweat on my face thinking that I ate something and was convinced that I have eaten it. So, yeah, I think that’s not the right thing, and not that I realize that to be afraid of food, there are people, I have clients who fight, who fought with their family even if the food was made in same vessel which was used cook for the other family members which had carbohydrates. And they used to fight, and they used to say, oh you know maybe it has some sugar inside. And you don’t need to be that anal about things. You can be flexible.

Now actually in fact, I tell my clients these days, especially the vegetarian ones, that til the time you’re 80 plus and your goals have been achieved, try to be focused. When you’re starting on this new lifestyle, don’t try to make travel plans. Because they don’t have correct information, they may end up cheating. Initially for the first two to three weeks, the person should educate on how, what to eat and how to eat. Person that even after achieving 70 to 80 percent of the goals, even if the person feels like cheating, but if he is confident that I can get back, then it’s okay to cheat.

Because we are all human beings. One side of the story is that no, this is a lifestyle, you should not cheat, but we all have birthdays and we all have those events where we want to have that sugar, maybe you want to drink that wine. And occasionally, I don’t see there’s any rule … you cannot break this rule, I personally do and I’m fine. I will never say that no, this is my life so I’ll be on it forever but for most of the times I will follow this lifestyle. But maybe having a achieved 80% of my goal, I wouldn’t mind occasionally having a cup of rice. Occasionally. There’s no rule here that once a week, cheating allowed, but whenever I want.

Carole Freeman: But I think what you pointed out was that that’s not happening in the beginning. You have to stay really consistent.

Jaydeep: See if it starts happening the first one week, then you can’t get results.

Carole Freeman: I’m gonna ask you each the question that I hate the most, only because I know that maybe not you guys are wondering, but I know people watching are wondering is, what do you eat? What is a typical day? I hate this question, but people are gonna … especially for a vegetarian, I gotta pick on him a little bit, people want to know. What’s a typical … what do you eat if you can’t eat bacon and steak and burgers, what’s left?

Jaydeep: This is a very difficult question for me, in fact. But although I known to having group of 20 vegetables I have, a meal list personally, my favorites, where it revolves around vegetables. Along with that, cottage cheese is almost same as meat when it comes to carbohydrates, we call it Panir.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Jaydeep: Yeah. And it’s not as heavy as cheese. So probably you may not want to have 200 grams of cheese a day, but cottage cheese is something which it has 200 grams of cotta cheese consumption can easily happen, and you won’t feel that heavy after eating it. And it’s already a part of the Indian eating habit to consume cottage cheese basically. Not only is it very low in carbohydrates, it’s very good as a protein source, because we’re not getting meats, but by availability of protein is as good as the nan which part which is cottage cheese. And a part from that, so that is on two meals of cottage cheese, how would you … a normal non vegetarian would consume probably two to three meals of meats with vegetables, now I just replaced those meats with cottage cheese.

Carole Freeman: Okay.

Jaydeep: And the extra two meals, if at all I am hungry, it will be two meals with eggs, or one meal of egg, and one dry snacking meal, could be flax seed, crackers, could be spinach crackers, olives, avocado, cheese, half a scoop or maybe a scoop or zero carbohydrate whey protein, if I am weight training. Yes, zero carbohydrate whey proteins also tend to influence my Ketone levels, but now I do not check my Ketone levels that often. Because I don’t see any reason to check because I’m … even if I check them always, around 1, 1.5, and I’m happy with it. And then at days that I really want to decrease more fat, or become more leaner, then I try to get back to around threes, 2.5 or threes. That’s it.

Almond milk is something which I love, I relish. The unsweetened, un-sugared, almond milk cold coffee is something which I like having. I do not a lot of cream. The full-fat cream, because I realized that too much of fat consumption also tricks my fat loss and gets my Ketone levels back to zero ish. At the same time, to say 50 grams of cream, it may sound nice, but 50 grams of cream is just two tablespoons. It doesn’t help me. 50 grams of tablespoon is like, it doesn’t help me.

Carole Freeman: Two tablespoons is not enough [crosstalk 00:32:39]

Jaydeep: It’s ‘not enough for me. Yeah. So then a lot of people who feel that this much cream will be enough, or this many almonds will be enough, these are all actually said trigger foods for me. I cannot stick to five almonds or 10 almonds. I cannot stick to two tablespoons of cream-based deserts, I need to have more. So I’d rather not have it.

Carole Freeman: Yeah, paying attention to what foods make you hungrier and cause you, for you two weeks of misery, it’s easier to just avoid those, than to play that Russian roulette with those. How about for you, you’ve already explained how you eat a small window in the morning, what’s typically on the table for you?

Karen: Usually, most mornings I get up in the morning, I’ll make three eggs, I did switch out, I used to use coconut oil and I’m switching to a little bit more olive oil, and I know I shouldn’t heat that, so I use a very small amount over really light heat. I also saute up some kale with a tiny- I’ll drizzle on a tiny little bit of olive oil near the end, and just take a little salt in both, and stir those up. They all get done about the same time, if I’m hungry, I may add an ounce or two of protein to it from my freezer, I can just heat that up in the morning. Or I can just take a couple of bites of an avocado, here in Southern California, avocados are inexpensive, and they are almost year-round here. And I buy the little holy guacamoles too, so if I’m just … the avocados, you go to the store and they’re rock-hard, and you really can’t peel them or eat them, so I’ll have those sitting around in the fridge or the freezer, so I can have some avocado or guacamole when I want.

And then I might take a spoonful of the fermented vegetables, I really like the farmhouse culture, jalapeno, a little spicy. I’ll have a spoonful of that in the morning, go to work, take a nice walk, use that for my lunch walk with a co-worker, and then I’ll have my big- bigger meal of the day, I might have a grass-fed burger from Trader Joe’s or I might have a couple of chicken drumsticks with a little bit of romaine lettuce, and one vegetable maybe added in, maybe not, just depends. And depending on the chicken, on how dry it is, if it’s chicken breasts, like off a rotisserie chicken and there’s not much skin there, I’ll add a little olive oil. I keep olive oil, balsamic, garlic salt, and onion salt in the cabinet at work, and everyone shares and they really love that, or so I’ve been told as the levels keep going down. But I’m happy to share my loot with everyone.

I’ll have little 85% chocolate, some coffee, I have coffee in the morning also. And then right around noon, I go ahead and I have my last meal of the day. It might be a home made soup, with some tumeric in there, some broth from Cosco, and then if, either beef or chicken, or I’ll have some sardines. I’ll have half a can, tin of sardines, and that’s a nice cheat protein. I like my sardines room temp, so if I have the other half, I have to remember to get them out, and let them warm up a little bit. So I do do those. I might have vegetable there, I can do some root vegetables in small amounts, like onions and carrots and I test that with my blood glucose meter to make sure I’m not spiking, and like Franziska Spritzler will say later on during her talk, when you spike, if you stay spiked and stay up, like if I have potatoes in a stew, eating out, even I pick out the potatoes, if I come home and test my blood sugar, when I used to eat at night, I looked diabetic all night long.

And I know it’s not gonna be good for my eyes, my liver, my kidneys, my whole body, it’s just not going to … it’s just not the right food for me. Although I know a lot of people can. I did spend a lot of time poking my finger for glucose, I don’t monitor my Ketones blood, I think about it all the time, but I’m a medical technologist by trade, and I so I know want to test way too much, and the strips are really expensive, so I’m gonna hold tight here, I know some inexpensive ways for testing are coming out, and Ketonics

Carole Freeman: We’ve got one here. [crosstalk 00:36:51] Ketomojo that’s here.

Karen: All people can do those things as time goes on, so I can get more affordable testing. I do, once I get my food template I’ll straighten around, I’m eating sort of the same foods in the same season. I usually, typically won’t test my glucose even ’cause I know how I’m gonna react. Although I do, if I make a change to my food template when I went from weight loss to weight maintenance earlier this year because I lost about eight pounds after I did the IF 17-7 is what I usually do, 17 starting from 6AM til 1PM, so I did some testing around there to make sure I wasn’t gonna make things worse with my blood glucose, and everything held steady, but what I do do is if I added in pumpkin seeds, and more avocado, a little bit more olive oil for my extra calories to maintain. Because I was losing and I needed to stop losing ’cause I’m at certain BMI, certain weight, and I’m short, so I need to just stop.

If I need to, if I feel like the scale is going up again, which sometimes it does, I’ll back off the pumpkin seeds a little bit. And I always measure it out, just like I am in the lab, in grams, and I go okay, this is my little container for the day I never eat straight out of the bag because I will not stop. It will not happen. But I can … I may or may not on some of the salads or for that last meal I might have some pumpkin seeds. After that, I’ll have water. I don’t have coffee because on the original study, it was [inaudible 00:38:32] approved study, it was just water only. I got used to that. I know Doctor Panda from, in La Jolla, he says that drinking decaf or coffee, or anything other than, say, sparkling water or water, that can change your hunger hormones or your hormone signaling. I decided I would go ahead and just stick with water.

I make a few exceptions, I donated blood last week, I needed to eat in the evening. I felt like I needed to eat. If I have a 12-hour day at work and I’m on my feet and I’m running around, running around, running around, specially in the heat, I come home and I can feel it. I’m almost shaking, or there’s just, something is off. I don’t know if any of you have ever fasted, but you kinda get that signal that you need to do something right now or I’m gonna be passed out. I’ve not ever passed out, but I will have something in the evening, not eating protein seems to help me eat my protein. Specially my carbs. I can eat a little bit more carbs if I have them really early on. This morning I had a small handful of blueberries, but I did weigh them out with my little scale, how many ounces or grams. And I’m a data driven person, so that’s just me, I lean into that. I know not everybody is but I really use it to my advantage.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Thank you for sharing all the details and we actually have a live studio audience here, so I wanna open it up to any questions that people have for …yes?

Speaker 4: Can either of you talk to the issue when you lost a lot amount of weight, how you dealt with loose skin and realigning your body [inaudible 00:40:11]

Carole Freeman: Let me, I’ll re-state the question ’cause it’s probably not coming out on video. Great question. As you lost a tremendous amount of weight, how did you deal with extra loose skin?

Jaydeep: Yeah. I do have a lot of loose skin and I do need to get operated. The surgery would be an abdominal blasting. Now, it’s your genetics. Some people, very rarely do not require this surgery.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s why.

Jaydeep: Some people do but you know, there are people believe wrongly. People say that if you would’ve lost weight slowly and gradually, you wouldn’t have needed that surgery. And that’s a lie. Because if you have stretched your skin, beyond, like mine was beyond 50 inches, for so many years and if you are deflating this balloon again, it cannot be back to the original size of the ballon. The same way your skin’s never gonna be back so firm. There’s an exception, you know. It’s pregnancy. Wherein, in spite of getting back, but it’s only there for a few months, the largest circumference, the max circumference is only there for a few months. Like, that would be two to three months.

Carole Freeman: Well, depends on the mother.

Jaydeep: Yeah. Having kept a waist of 52 inches for so many years, and I don’t think that anyone, normally me, anyone if you get back to a waist of 32 inches, where did the 20 inches go? It can’t come back, it has to be loose and, yeah I do need some correction with my stomach, but that doesn’t mean that … I still have some body fat to lose, but the moment I lose that, very [inaudible 00:42:06] show that six-pack, so-called six-pack that people dream of, can be beautifully seen. It’s just the skin that needs to be come out, removed basically, the muscles will all be there, and the skin is gonna be showing that if you don’t have any extra fat on it.

Carole Freeman: Don’t some people get that question of, they imply that somehow, losing the weight and having the extra skin isn’t worth it, and that they should just stay the way you are. That perturbs them.

Jaydeep: I had two, three people ask me before, before joining or starting the diet, and they had 70 odd kgs to lose, maybe more than me, and the moment I told them, yes you’ll have loose skin, and they smiled is because they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to lose weight because they thought, oh, loose skin is … if I’m gonna get loose skin, and I might as well not do it. Then the question is, they were more concerned about loose skin, they’re not concerned about the HPO1Cs and not concerned about their triglycerides. Anyways, that’s something which a person that’s trying to make their life easy by giving such excuses.

Carole Freeman: How about you for loose skin?

Karen: For me, yes, I lost about 70 lbs in about 40 weeks. I referred to it as a birth and reverse. As in that first year, year and half, I found maintenance to be pretty easy from a nutritional standpoint. But I did have a lot more loose skin. Now, as I got lower carb to maintain my weight, I do feel like, especially right here, in the center, my loose skin got a little better. I do feel like that maybe, being low carb or keto may have helped that. Now, on my arms, like you said, you can see muscles but underneath there’s a lot of loose skin and I’m left-handed, but I play sports with my right hand, so I lift, and when I was at the gym, I was wearing a sleeveless shirt at the gym over the weekend, and when I was lifting, I could see my muscles.

But I also have, for whatever reason, about double the loose skin underneath here. So about half of my arm, and half of my legs are loose skin. And when I sit down, I’m kinda the same spread out as I was when I was 70 pounds overweight. That was a little disappointing. I didn’t look like Cindy Crawford like from the 80s, I didn’t look skinny but if I look at my pictures and I compare my before and after pictures, I mean, it’s just way different, it’s a way different thing. Also, great thing most people in most places is I can get compression clothing for the gym, for clothing I wear everyday to work, and that really for me keeps it in check. I am a medical technologist and so I do worry about infections. I have had some skin infections, and I know that was because I was morbidly obese, it may qualified me for surgery, but it’s still would be highly risky and a lot of money, I want to save my money to go vacation with my daughter.

I can see her after she goes to college and things like that, and get her to college, so I just … eating low carb and keto does seem to really impact my skin. The first couple of years, before I was really transferring over to super low carb, is I had a lot more skin infections and those have kind of gone away. Now, whether or not that helped with the skin being up, but definitely in my abdominal area, my belly button, my c-section scar, I’m gonna get some skin infections in there. I just keep, I jump on it if I see it happening I use some over-the-counter medications, so far, knock on wood, I haven’t had to use any other more, stronger medication.

But I will say, and I have gotten used to one arm looking different that the other, and just like Padma on Top Chef, she talked about her scar, she had a scar from when she was little from a car accident, and she doesn’t hide it. And so I kinda take it, and when I see it when I walk by the bathroom, I look in the mirror and I can see there’s, I’ll show you guy, I don’t care. I know it’s gonna be on YouTube, I don’t care. You know, half of my arm here, and then when I- down here, now weight training can help some of that, and this arm doesn’t really have it really, so much. I mean, loose yes, but wrinkly, no.

But you know what, I used to work in the Joslin Diabetes Clinic at the Midwest, and we serve them, and i would go see people with amputations, and just really tough lives. Mentally, I can deal with this, I can go talk to a counselor about it. The one place I really notice it is when I swim. When I went snorkeling, I went kayaking and paddled out there on my own, and then hopped in and did the snorkeling, and in the water I can really feel my loose skin, but it’s just a- I’m not snorkeling and kayaking all the time, but when I swim in the water, and it’s like, oh this is just a memory of how I was the last 40 years, but now I can go do these things. And I have full mobility, so I’m very lucky. I think as long as I keep my skin infections under control, then I’m fine.

Carole Freeman: Well, it sounds like you at it as a badge of honor. This is a measure of success.

Karen: I earned it. And I see people, ’cause I work where it’s hot, it can be 100 degrees or more at my job, and I have to wear, sometimes, fancy clothes, but I’ll take off my jacket and if my sleeve is shorter, yep everything is all hanging out. And I see people looking over here, and I’m just like, yeah. Sometimes they’ll ask me about it or recognize that I’m a big loser or they’ll see, maybe catch a glimpse of a side where they can see some extra skin, or something. They’ll just notice something and they’ll ask me if I’ve had weight loss surgery. And so we’ll talk about fast versus slow weight loss, but I don’t think that that’s true. I think it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you lose it, you have it and you deal with it. And some younger friends do get surgery afterwards if they’ve lost so much because it’s really gonna impact their life and they can’t really hide it well in clothes. And it’s usually not one surgery, it’s usually two, three or four.

Carole Freeman: Other questions? Yes.

Speaker 5: How did you change years of habit to constantly be eating, snacking, things like that. Obviously both of you shared the same thing of having a lot of excess weight and stuff like that. So that was kind of inspiration when you looked in the mirror. But what type if inspiration would you give somebody, like myself, that has no weight problem, but deals with essentially heart problems, and diabetes, and is 50 years old, loves to snack. What inspiration can you give to stop that snacking during the day that get you on the right track?

Carole Freeman: Great question, so I’ll just say it again so we can hear it here. If you don’t have a lot of weight to lose, but you have some other health things that are really important for you to be able to change, your dietary habits, follow ketogenic diet, how do you break the habit of constantly snacking all the time?

Jaydeep: I personally feel there are two problems here. One problem can be external, that a person’s fat, that’s an external problem, can be seen. When a person, externally is perfect, but internally maybe pre-diabetic or pre-diabetes or maybe triglycerides are very high, that’s an internal problem. I think the group of people who have external problems and internal problems, they have one thing in common that they have a problem. And if the external problem is enough to keep a person motivated, you should find your reason, I think your reason would be to see your HPO1C perfect, or to see your triglycerides, or to see if you can go out and walk or run or weight train. And if you can see an increased performance in the first one week, if you see that your body’s behaving differently in the first one week, then I think you will not need any motivation. Because people usually do not have this first one week.

The moment you try for the first one week, and people are afraid is because they feel that oh, their goals are too big and they are to start somewhere and it’s gonna be months or years of practicing and that’s not true, it just takes a week to really, really know how different your body will feel. One week of eating … at the same time, even if you’re eating crap, I personally feel it’s not your fault. It’s so many years of eating crap that your hunger hormones are misfiring, they’re not behaving correctly, and that’s fine. You need to accept it. Even after starting, if you end up cheating on the second day, you do not need to abuse yourself. You do not need to say that it’s not meant for me. You do not need to say that now I’m a loser. Try again.

People see the good side of my story, they don’t see the negative side that yeah, I have failed too during my attempts of losing fat. There were times that I’m emotionally stressed and eating the wrong stuff. And maybe I’ve eaten 10 scoops or ice creams and not one. That’s something which I don’t say. But yeah, it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to cheat, and it’s okay for all humans, it’s okay to be hungry and eat crap. But as long as you realize that you have a problem, your second statement should be, I will solve it.

Karen: And I come from the quality assurance side of the laboratory medicine field, and so I kind of stole from the corrective and preventive action template and I told myself I would kinda get to the root of what is this feeling. Oh, I’m angry, I’m really angry, or I’m really stressed out about the finances. There’s the feeling, I’m gonna feel it, but I’m gonna do something differently. I know my brain is telling me go eat, go eat, go eat, but what I really need to do is go sleep. And I can sit and read people magazine and not a lab journal, I can read something junkie. Or sometimes I’ll just take time out, I’ll pour myself some sparkling water at night ’cause I don’t eat at night, that also helps me from habit behavior, ’cause I was always eating to soothe, especially at night, and so I drink sparking water that’s okay.

I have some natural calm in it, and I play a game called pocket frog, which they are telling me is almost out of date, but it’s like angry birds. They have to update this and they’re not going to, but it’s like angry birds, so I’m doing something with my hands, and I also meditate, I got the Head Space app, and that helps to take myself out. And when I close my eyes, I can see colors, I don’t know if anyone else meditates, I see stuff. And it’s so interesting I want to do it, because sometimes I’ll see colors and patterns, sometimes photos, you never know what you’re gonna get, you just let it flow. But by the time I’m done doing that, then that urge, that binge urge has kind of passed as long as I haven’t eaten off my food template.

‘Cause if I had, I mean, just forget it, I stay out of the kitchen. I have a blog friend that comes along all the time, she has a private blog, but she says, oh your neuro pathways are there, it’s that brain chemistry and you’re gonna have to keep in a habit, and a routine’s really helped me. Of course if something changes and I travel, I’m gonna be out of my routine I might eat later in the day, but I tell myself I’m only gonna eat what I brought. I’m not gonna eat the junk they’re passing out on the plane. Even if I’m really hungry, I can wait. I often travel with an avocado in my bag and whip it out and eat it.

Carole Freeman: Doesn’t smell as bad as a can of sardines.

Karen: That’s right. I’ve been told, no sardines on the plane. I said, what about oysters? I have a van pool everyday, I go hey guys, what do you think about oysters on a plane? No dice. No, no, no. Sardines you know no, but oysters no. But I do try to have replacement behaviors and then little rewards like I can read the people magazine if I want to relax, might play with my cats, if it’s daylight I might go outside, I might call a friend or I might read other blogs or Twitter or what have you. And then I’ll- I’m a big reader, that’ll take my attention away, and I redirect my own behavior. Sometimes I just have to remove myself from the person or situation permanently or semi-permanently where I know I can feel I’m getting upset and I just need to go take a break.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. You got more tips?

Jaydeep: I personally feel she said something very nice. That people will end up eating when they’re stressed or they don’t sleep enough, so if you don’t sleep enough and feel stressed, I have seen this behavior, at least with my clients to me, they usually end up eating sugars. And once they start, they will continue this habit, they will not come back on track. At the same time, a person would … your question was how do you stay committed on the diet? And I personally feel that if, I realized with me, if I don’t workout, if I do not work out, I can not stay on this diet. I think it’s co-related. If i stop my workouts, that could be thrice a week of weight training, if I stopped that, very soon I start eating wrongly. I personally feel that some sort of physical activity or exercise or connecting yourself with nature, maybe just a walk would help you even track your diet. That’s something which works for me. And if I don’t eat correctly, then I do not go to the gym also, it’s all interconnected.

Karen: Yes, this is true. There’s a pattern.

Carole Freeman: I’m gonna add some tips for you as well. I’m trained as a psychologist as well as nutrition, and it can be really empowering to understand where habits come from. Cravings and appetite come from several things, one is gonna be hormonal, lack of energy in our body. But there’s also the part of the brain that creates habits, and that’s dopamine driven. A lot of people think dopamine as this reward chemical, but it’s actually just a learning chemical on the brain. The whole reason that we get a dopamine hit for anything that we do in life, is that our brain wants to train us to do things that keep us alive. And frankly, we’re all … Robb Wolf is gonna be here later this weekend, and we’re wired to eat. We really are. That’s the way our brain is designed is to eat as much as possible to move as little as possible and the dopamine hits we get in life are all along those lines.

The way that our brain learns things is that whenever we do it, it can be things about all kinds of things that are for our survival, but we’ll talk about food specifically, is that anytime you eat, and this could be anything in any specific situation, your brain remembers the context that you got food. And it’s talked about as well, it’s because your brain is trying to remember where in the wild that food was located. Let’s say that every morning you get up, and you always put creamer in your coffee, the sugar creamer, you get a dopamine hit in your brain, and your brain goes, that was good, you should do that again. Every time you get up in the morning, you start craving that creamer in your coffee. And it’s shown that dopamine starts to release as soon as you get back in that same environment before you even get to consume that creamer.

One of the things you can do then, the more times you’ve done that, the more years you’ve done that exact habit, the stronger that conditioning is in your brain and the more the cravings will be. And it doesn’t have anything to do with actual hunger or physiological need for food and calories, it has to do with your brain’s like, we’ve done these so many times, you should keep doing this so you stay alive and survive. You can use that to your advantage. The way that you can is you’ve got to notice the pattern. What is it that you do the same every time and if you can do something different right before that pattern happens, that is where you have the control. Once you get in that environment, it’s often really, really challenging to get over it.

For example, I’ll just keep going with the example if you get up in the morning and you go make your coffee, and then you put creamer in the coffee- I don’t know if you do or not, but everybody can relate to that example. What you can do instead, to break that habit loop in your brain is that instead of going to make coffee first thing in the morning is that perhaps you go out and walk out and check the mail, and then you do something different in your routine. Maybe you don’t make coffee, you go and buy it somewhere instead or something like that, you gotta break that habit before the first step of that habit happens. And then, that’s when you’ll have, oh I don’t even want to coffee and the cream anymore.

Finding ways and identifying those patterns, and a lot of things in life we’ve got a routine, we do the same thing. And it might be just walking to your kitchen and you see the food out on the counter or you always go to the cupboard and you grab these nuts or whatever it is. It’s breaking that pattern and sometimes it’s a bunch of those throughout day that you’ve gotta change. Changing your routine can be a really powerful way of overcoming that and changing those habits.

What other questions? Yeah.

Speaker 6: When they did that, what about the patterns of family and friends that present challenges to your sticking to the program?

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Excellent question. How do you deal with friends and family that want you to go back to your high carb lifestyle?

Jaydeep: I think I’m that challenge a bigger challenge than eating the way I eat is because when you have friends telling you that you’re fat and it’s not gonna change, and it’s gonna take years, you might as well eat. Or someone’s birthday and the friends show me the love by eating this cake, or one beer is fine, for me, it’s my birthday. I think these things are … the statement after that statement, please have this cake, you’ve been on this lifestyle, and just lost five kgs, you rather enjoy your life. Such statements are more difficult than to not have your carbohydrate food. It’s during such statements where persons forcing or pressurizing, or the fourth person’s not acknowledging or not respecting or as a matter of fact, going against saying you’re not losing enough. You lost and I don’t think you’ll reach there, I think that kind of makes sure, at least I used to fall off my routine or my regime of eating the way I eat right now. That was more difficult than the diet. The diet was not difficult, it was these things which were more difficult.

Karen: I think some of the same things and you learn, especially if you’re doing it for health, and I’m doing it for an actual discount on my health insurance and people say it’s my birthday or I bought this at the special bakery, a special donut, and it’s only once a year that we do this, you can indulge once a year, but I know if it’s something with frosting or really anything, I can’t do gluten, I’m just gluten intolerant not Celiac, but it’s going to make me really sick and give me possibly binge urges for a couple of weeks. That takes up a lot of brain space and other things I could be doing, so I just very nicely say it looks great, it smells wonderful, I have to eat the food that I brought and I always make a policy to eat the food that I bring to work.

For family and friends, almost all of them work with me, and especially at Thanksgiving, say we’re having a pot roast, there’s gonna be potatoes, pick ’em out. Okay, that’s fine, that’ll work for me on that day, if I have high glucose that night, it’s no big deal. Other things, I kinda train people, and the ones who didn’t react well, some of them I’m not close friends with anymore, but most, 99% of the people stop food pushing. People will leave treats on my desk at work at the cube farm, and other people come along and remove them because they know I don’t even want to see it on there or I’ll throw it away, and they want to take it for themselves.

My cube mates know to go ahead and remove or tell the person dropping off, they don’t do that, she doesn’t eat that. I kinda train them. Some reacted well, I just decided it wasn’t me, it was how them reacting to the food. Sometimes food is love especially someone told me in a business meeting their grandmother was gonna cry and be very much harmed if I didn’t have the baklava that they were passing out, and it was in front of outside people, what do I do? Every single person is eating it but me, and I said, oh the doctor says I can’t have this, I can’t have it and I just don’t want to get sick today, I want to continue on the meeting.

That worked, and then I haven’t been asked like that ever again. That was probably my toughest situation. But people have gotten used to me, and then they start to ask me, oh you’re eating a Nom Nom Paleo, it’s Nom Nom Paleo’s Mexican beef on a little bit of a salad base yesterday morning, but it was at 9 am. Oh you’re eating a salad at 9 am, yes I am. But I’m hungry because my hormones, it’s a hormonal thing, and I don’t eat after about 12 or one, I’m really hungry right now, so I’m chowing down. Socially it can be a little bit difficult to work with it. Almost everyone will work with you and if they don’t, if they keep pressing and pressing and pressing, sometimes a tray is waved underneath my face, you can’t have this, and then they’ll go to the other person, and it’s like woah. It’s okay, I don’t want that because I just don’t want to have two weeks of misery. And that’s okay. And I don’t need to always explain that to people, but I haven’t given in yet.

Carole Freeman: Sometimes they want you to come over to their side because it’s easier than them looking at their own habits and realizing that maybe they need to change as well.

Jaydeep: Most of the times.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. Most of the time.

Karen: There’s a lot of psychology involved.

Jaydeep: It’s because they can’t do it, they want you to, probably maybe subconsciously, they may want you to also not do it.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. And sometimes just a simple, no, thank you.

Jaydeep: I come up with reasons. I’m fasting. I have some fatty liver issues. I just make up stories.

Karen: Nobody has once argued with a doctor says so with me. They have never once said that. Because I work in the medical field, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I was telling you to go against medical orders. That’s right. Did my doctor tell me to lose weight? Yes, she did. Did she tell me to manage my glucose? Yes, she did. I don’t need to explain the details.

Carole Freeman: Great question. What else? What other questions? Yes?

Speaker 7: With humans being, not all, but a lot of us are, we almost reward ourselves by food, oh you did a really good job at work so you go out and have an ice cream and all that. Two-fold question then, what did you find as you started this journey to be, did you find it setting more daily goals or weekly or monthly goals? And then when you met that goal, how did you reward yourself? ‘Cause obviously, you can’t really reward yourself by food I’ll say, but what did you reward yourself with that kept you motivated?

Carole Freeman: Yeah, so the question is about as humans, we’re accustomed to rewarding ourselves and other people with food. It’s in the way that we talk about it actually, as a treat, this is my reward, and how did you go about setting goals and when you accomplished things or maybe even just the desire to have some kind of a reward to treat, how did you navigate that?

Jaydeep: That’s true, now personalities of an extreme nature. For me, rewards would never be a scoop of ice cream, or would never be one piece of chocolate, I want to eat more. So I never gave up on these sweet cravings, for me, my rewards were always sweet. Any dessert, anything sweet was something which I always want to eat. I used to choose, instead of normal ice cream, I used to make my own ice cream. And instead of having milk-based ice cream with sugar, I used to make cream whey ice creams myself and may be add a scoop of zero carb wheys, probably a whole bar of Lindt chocolate inside because I’m gonna have that much ice cream, right? Yes, it used to be damaging but that was still fine. If I wouldn’t eat that, but then maybe I would have gone eat something worse. In the same quantity.

First of all me, a lot of people say that I’m satisfied with a scoop of ice cream and two pieces of chocolate and they don’t need to worry about, they can also have same options like Lindt chocolate is a good option, dark chocolate on this diet to make sure that your cravings are met. Or maybe making your own scoop of ice cream just takes 10 minutes I guess, and storing it in your freezer really helps. Probably having some other desserts which in India we make it, and it’s very easy to make them. I think rewarding myself was … it never happened that I did not reward myself. I already knew if I was craving something, I knew what I had to eat. I was not starving, I was not pitying myself at all. One day I’ll eat a normal ice cream, but I never got that is because whatever I made was full of fat, and I think fat makes a person feel nice. It was always tasty. It was not something which was not tasty. I ate it out of choice, not out of compulsion.

Karen: I rewarded myself a lot with junk food. So as you lose or get to a certain blood level, or whatever it is, bring your own lunch, for whatever your goal is, might be many different things, I promised myself I would never, ever reward with food. What that did was it helped me reward myself with other things. As I was going through my loss program, each 10 pounds or each month, or depending on what the cut off was, I’d pick a cut off, and then reward myself with some new cast iron skillet pan. It’s something related to food, but was something I was gonna use time and time again. It might have been a trip to the second hand clothing store, to re-stock my clothes, I love to do photography and traveling, so it might be a camera lens, yeah, which builds on the exercise outside.

I try to make it to where I was building on my new habits of moving more. One of my blog friends also said, hey be careful about sedentary hobbies. If you have sitting hobbies for your stitching, and I know outdoors, you can’t go outdoors depending on where you live all the time, I’m lucky I live right here in San Diego County where we can go outdoors almost every day. But she said be sure your hobbies are more movement-based. I might get a new pair of hiking boots, I might go hit the clearance rack at REI for a special water bottle or what have you, or just to look and to plan what my next reward was going to be. I do try to reward myself once a year or every other year. I’ve told everybody on my Facebook this morning, some people here are on Facebook with me personally, and I told them, I said I’m treating myself for my five and a half years, I was previously 40 years overweight or binge eating, and I said I’m treating myself this year, I’m going to Low Carb USA.

I saved up my money and I bought my tickets last year for this year knowing that I would- guessing, knowing ’cause I was going to do it no matter what.

Carole Freeman: Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story. I know you’re gonna inspire a lot of people. Sounds like you’ve helped at least 500 people yourself, and I’m sure you’ve inspired a lot of people as well. If people … We’re gonna put your contact info below, in the show notes, but just quick how do people get in contact with you if they want to follow you.

Jaydeep: It’s Jaydeep Bhuta, you can go on my Facebook page or my Instagram page and I will be providing you with my e-mail address, so you can put down on the page.

Carole Freeman: Perfect, we’ll link that below. And how about for you, do you have a public way that you want to connect with people?

Karen: I do, I have a non-commercial blog, weight maintenance blog, gardengirlkp@blogspot. My Instagram especially for this conference is karenspit@karenspaleolife. If you want to see some of my California and travel photos, it’s gardengirl_kp. Everything’s all linked up off my website on the gardengirlkp blog spot.

Carole Freeman: Excellent. And I’ve got just one closing question for both of you, meteor’s coming to earth, it’s our last day on the planet, what’s your last meal gonna be?

Jaydeep: I think it’s gonna be ice cream.

Carole Freeman: Okay. I hear a theme here.

Karen: You know, I think I’d stick with the keto meals just in case the meteor missed, but if I saw it coming in the sky, I would have a steak and kale, and some blueberries, and if there were a box of Cap’n Crunch on the side, I would probably put it on.

Jaydeep: I can totally imagine, she’d be outside and shopping looking over here, she let go of this [crosstalk 01:13:19]

Karen: Maybe I’d have caramel or something, maybe I’d have a hit of sugar right before the big one. But you know, if I have some 85% chocolate there, I toured the Theo Chocolate Factory recently in Seattle, and can even have the 70%, a small amount, if that 70% chocolate was sitting there, I’d grab that.

Carole Freeman: Well, it’s great. Thank you for watching. Oh, one more thing?

Jaydeep: No, thank you.

Karen: Thank you for letting us share

Carole Freeman: Oh, you’re welcome, this has been great. If you guys like this video, give us a thumbs up, everyone thumbs up, and subscribe if you want to see more, and stay tuned. We’re gonna have some more for you too. Thanks for watching.