Ketosis for Serious Weight Loss and Why
I’ve been doing ketosis for quite a while, and I use it on clients that have tried everything and nothing’s worked, because a lot of people are carb-sensitive. I want to get into the difference paleo and ketosis. There’s some big differences. I also want to get into what do you eat long term. I think the biggest thing that comes up as a problem is that it’s a red flag, are fats eating fats okay to eat, are they dangerous to eat, I want to cover that as well.
I think the worst recommendation that we’ve ever heard is the concept of everything in moderation, because it allows everything in moderation, a balance, which you’ll never get into fat burning if you do that. That is the worst advice to tell someone, to have a balanced diet, because that doesn’t work. Some of the anti-ketosis practitioners out there, almost every single one of them have never practiced before in an actual clinical setting. They might do research on rats, but they don’t actually practice. When you work with actual people, over and over and over, over years and years, you will find that the whole calorie in, calorie out model does not work. Eating less calories than you’re burning does not work, so you have to think outside the box. I am totally convinced that the majority of information being put out by conventional means is the exact opposite of what you want to do. I can prove that, and it just happens over and over and over.
Is Ketosis Safe?
The first question I want to talk about is, is ketosis safe? Is it healthy? I really think it’s one of the healthiest things you can do. There’s some serious research being done, or has been done, on ketosis for all sorts of things. Probably the biggest thing is for brain and neural protection of your brain. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, seizures, things like that. So the brain loves this type of fuel called ketones, which we’ll get into describing what that is.
The state of ketosis is very good for any type of blood sugar issues. Diabetes, heart related issues, neurological, cancer. The reason why it’s good for cancer is because the cancer cell lives on sugar. PET scans basically scan the body for certain parts of your body that are eating up a lot of sugar. A cancer cell loves sugar, and if I had cancer I would completely and utterly eliminate all my sugars and I would have a much better chance of surviving. Respiratory issues, asthma, allergies, acne, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and especially weight loss, those are some of the health benefits. I have even seen research studies; google this if you want to look at a few, especially ones on cardiovascular, that basically state that when you consume dietary saturative fats it does not in any way shape or form increase risk of cardiovascular accidents, or heart attacks.
That’s pretty powerful stuff because that goes exactly against what we’ve been brainwashed to think. It’s very good for cognitive function and brain function. When we’re dealing with excess stubborn fat, we’re dealing with the problem of stuck energy in the fat cell. That is the biggest problem that we have. I want to move beyond the conventional viewpoint that all you have to do is balance your calories and eat less than you’re burning and you’ll lose weight. That’s absolutely not true. Maybe if you’re 18 years old, but when you get 20, 30, 40, you don’t, it doesn’t work anymore. There’s really two fuel sources.
You have the sugar fuel, and we have the fat fuel.
Fat fuel. You really can only tap into that when you’re in ketosis. Ketosis is a condition that the body is burning fat, and it’s actually using ketones as a by-product of fat burning, so ketones are a fuel source that’s very similar function to glucose, but it’s a much cleaner fuel that has three times as much energy as glucose. The problem with running on glucose, or sugar, is that you get high blood sugar and you get low blood sugar. The truth is, the total amount of sugar in your blood is basically two teaspoons.
That’s it. If you ever get your blood tested and they say you have diabetes, or you don’t have diabetes. If you’re higher than 100, it’s hyper-glycemia or diabetes, if it’s lower than 100 it’s hypo-glycemia, so you want to be 100. What that 100 means is two teaspoons of sugar in your blood at any one time. As you do ketosis, the blood sugars will come down a little bit, but it won’t create a hypo-glycemic state. A lot of people oscillate from high sugars to low sugars, all day long.
Here are some of the symptoms of high blood sugar; brain fog, you’re tired, blurred vision, thirsty, possibly cold sweats. Those are some of the symptoms with hyper-glycemia. Basically, you are thirsty, need to urinate often, dry skin, hungry, blurred vision, fatigue, brain fog. That’s with high sugar, called hypo-glycemia.
I have had clients that report shakiness, sweating, dizziness, anxiety, irritability, psychosis, craving for sugar, vision problems, weak, so it really can affect your cognitive function. Any time that sugar goes high or low, it just messes with your physical and mental capacities. That’s why running on ketosis is very therapeutic for your mood, for your sense of calmness. For your overall stress. Because the brain is very greedy. It basically sucks upthe energy … It’s only two percent of your whole body, but it sucks up 20 percent of the energy. It’s constantly wanting that sugar.
Well, the brain only runs on sugar until you DON’T GIVE IT SUGAR. Then it can switch to ketosis. 🙂 So what happens is that your body will not feed the brain ketones unless there is no sugar in the bloodstream. It does convert. Here’s the thing, You have a storage of sugar. Your sugar’s mainly stored in the liver and the muscles. So let’s talk about the muscles first.
The muscle has stored sugar, but it only is used for the muscles. The muscle will not give up any of its stored sugar to the rest of the body. It will keep it self-contained, so you really can’t use the stored sugar for your muscles at all. It’s there to feed your muscles as its sole purpose; so now we’re left with the liver. The liver is storing about seven tablespoons of sugar, enough to last for about 72 hours. If you ate nothing or no sugar, you would be dead in 72 hours unless there was a backup fuel system. That’s your fat. One thing that’s cool about this eating plan is that it really fixes a lot of symptoms that people have with their cognitive function, with their memory, with their mood, and even with anxiety. These sugars come up and down, up and down, when you’re craving and you’re hungry, a.k.a. “HANGRY”! (and that isn’t fun for anyone) In fact there’s even a stage three, Type III diabetes, that most people aren’t aware of, which affects the brain or memory.
I better define what I mean by diabetes. There are two types. Type I is where you don’t have enough insulin from that pancreas, and so the sugar goes higher and higher, because the purpose of insulin is to control sugar by lowering sugars, storing in the fat. The Type II is that insulin is being produced but it’s not being received into the receptors, into the liver; it’s not being listened to by the receptors. The sugars go high, because the insulin’s there but it’s not available to the cells. They are both a similar problem, but one’s more advanced. Here’s the thing. Unless you don’t have any stored sugar for over 72 hours, unless you have a good amount of fat reserves and you know how to do this, you won’t be able to tap into fat.
The BIGGEST Misunderstood Subject
So here’s the big questions, what is the purpose of fat is? (This is the biggest misunderstood subject.)
It’s a survival gland that protects against the starvation of sugar. Let me say that again, fat’s primary purpose is to protect against the starvation of sugar. It protects you against sugar starvation. What does that mean? That means that fat is a backup organ to sugar. It backs up storage, it’s a backup to sugar, because you wouldn’t last for more than 72 hours, especially your brain! This is why your body gains fat. What does this tell us? How does this relate to what we have to do to get this fat off our bodies? It means that you have to starve your body of sugar. Pretty cool, right?
Some of you are trying to do this, and many of you now WANT to do this because now you understand more clearly. Basically, the most important thing to know is that FAT is a backup organ to sugar. Knowing this data will now tell you what diet (which is just what you eat or don’t eat) would be best implement into your lifestyle. If you look at this, compared to the conventional “reduce your calories and exercise more”, well yes, you’re going to reduce your calories, but according to the governmet, you’re still going to consume 65 percent of your calories in carbohydrates and you will never tap into your fat. Examples? Weight Watchers and Slim Fast. You’re never going to burn fat, because you’re lowering calories. You might lose water weight, but I guarantee you you’re not going to lose much fat.
Here’s the most important thing, we must starve the body of sugar. Some of you may be thinking, “that’s bad news”. Here is the good news; we can replace it with more healthy fats, which is going to be very satisfying to your body. We must bring down the carbohydrates to about five percent of our overall calories, which comes out to about no more than 50 grams of net carbohydrates. So how do you know or choose how much fat/carbs/protein you are going to consume? You basically look on the back of the label and you see the total carbohydrates, then you minus the fiber and any “sugar alcohols”, if there are any, and that will give you the total carbs you actually count.
Take broccoli, for example. Broccoli has about 10 grams of carbohydrate per serving, but it has 7-8 grams of fiber. So if you minus those two, you end up with 2-3 grams of carbohydrates. Not that much. (You’re not going to have any problems with eating broccoli, I’ll tell you that right now) Let’s take an apple. An apple has 25 grams of sugar and it has 2-3 grams of fiber. That means it really has 22 grams of carbohydrate. So really, you could only get away with, maybe two and a half apples a day. A lot of people, because they eat other things, and there’s a little bit of carbohydrate in cheese and nuts and things like that, the apples are going to blow them way out of ketosis. I’m not recommending apples any more, especially if you’re trying to lose weight on a ketosis diet.
If you’re maintaining weight, you can definitely have them. One thing I want to talk about apples, is that it has just a tiny bit of fiber, so that means that 22 grams of the total 25 grams are completely sugar, that is a lot of sugar.
Here’s the thing, we must starve the body of sugar. If we want to stay in ketosis, we need to keep our carbs very low.
The next topic we’re going to talk about is protein. Protein is needed for ligaments, muscles, tendons, enzymes, hormones, bones, cholesterol transportation. The problem with protein is we need some, but we don’t want too much.
The reason for that is that too much can trigger insulin. That’s the problem. Because we don’t shed off that much protein each day. Protein is used mainly for structural type things, to replace the damaged parts. I know when people try to beef up and get bigger at the gym, they eat more protein, but they could strain their livers and their kidneys, so one has to be very careful. We want to adjust the protein to the person. To their size, and to their adrenal health because bad adrenal health could put a person into a counterblock state.
This means it breaks down protein a lot faster, especially in the quadriceps muscles in your legs and your gluteus maximus, which is your butt muscle. Both of those muscles can break down if you have adrenal stress, so you need a little bit more protein, but overall we’re not doing a lot of protein. I would say anywhere between three and six ounces of protein per meal is perfect. When you talk about the Atkins diet, they’re talking about doing a lot more protein. We’re not talking about that, ketosis is not a lot of protein, It’s a moderate amount of protein. We keep our carbs down and our proteins at a constant. So now, what’s the last variable? You got it, Fat. I know we’ve been taught that if you eat fat, you get fat, it’s very bad, blah blah blah blah blah….. It is time to adjust your “truth”, or what you have been taught.
Let me just give you some data on what fat will do when you consume the right amount. The first thing that it won’t do is, it will not raise your insulin, because fat is neutral with insulin. The second thing is, when you start consuming the right type of fats, you’re going to need that to satisfy the brain for the fat-soluble vitamins that most vegetarians, and other people, are deficient in. When you eat your vegetables, even kale, people will say, “I eat spinach and I eat kale and it’s loaded with vitamin A”, that’s true, but it’s a precursor to vitamin A, it’s not the active form. You need animal fats to get the active, available form of the fats out of the vitamins, like vitamin A.
Where do you get vitamin A? In butter. Grass-fed butter. Kerrygold butter is the best. Carrots provide the precursor that convert into the active form, but really, if your system is good, you only convert about five percent of that so you’d have to eat a lot of vegetables to get your fats out of vitamins! People that are eating a lot of vegetables and hardly any fat, they dry out. The skin dries out, hair, nails, etc. We need those fats out of vitamins. One thing to help you when you eat vegetables to get more fats out of vitamins, is to consume fat with your vegetables, like butter.
The goal of ketosis goes beyond just weight loss; here’s what you want to do when you get into ketosis, you want you to not just burn the fat that you’re eating, which you will, but you want to tap into your reserves. The only way you’re going to do it, is if you cut the carbs down. You will have to adjust the amount of fats to your activity level. Certain people burn more calories than others and some people are going to need a little bit more fat. If you’re sedentary and you have a very poor metabolism, you might not be able to have the amount of fats of someone 18.
But you can definitely have some to satisfy your body and run the machine a lot better. That’s another variable that you have to adjust as you go through this process.
Why do we need fat to burn fat? That’s an interesting question. First of all, the body considers fat as the last-stored ditch effort of survival, and so if you cut the fat away your body will start holding on to fat more dearly. When you start putting that fat back, it will feel a lot safer to be able to let some of it go, because again it’s a survival mechanism. If you have no dietary fats, you starve the body of not only the ketones but the structural types of fats that you need to surround all the cells of your body, to surround all the nerve endings, because all your nerves are surrounded with myelin sheath, that’s fat, and your brain is mostly fat, so you actually starve some of the structural fats and you end up having a lot of health problems with the immune system.
I’ve been doing the fats forever, and I consume a tremendous amount of fats. This has played a big role in defying the symptoms of aging as well. If you do a low-carb, low-fat and high-protein diet, you will then spike that insulin because high protein stimulates insulin. It stresses the kidneys and liver, a person will start feeling more bloated, they’ll get back pain, that’s the stress on the kidney. If you do a low-carb, low-fat, low protein, there’s not enough fats to stimulate the ketosis and so your body because of the low protein, low fat, will have a tendency to go after structural proteins of your body, so it starts to break down more protein. Really, the ideal, when you look at it from all different sides, the ideal situation is to have about five percent of the total calories being carbohydrate, 20 to 25 percent being protein, and the rest being fat.
Then you just have to adjust the quantities. Really, eating fat keeps the body out of stress. In fact, think about what sugar metabolism is. Eating sugar puts your body in the state of fight or flight mode all the time, because it’s a sudden burst of quick energy that keeps dropping blood sugars up and down, up and down. That’s stress. It’s going to activate cortisol, that’s that stress hormone.
The types of fats that are low stress to the liver and don’t stress the gall bladder are the medium chain fats, medium chain triglycerides. What does that mean? That means that those fats that you would consume, like grass-fed butter, that’s a medium chain triglyceride. Coconut butter is a, called MCT, medium chain triglyceride. Olive oil is good, grass-fed cheese, pasture raised eggs. Grass-fed beef, pasture raised chickens, those are the ones that you’re going to have to eat. Believe it or not, grass-fed beef has a really good type of fat. It’s called a mono-unsaturated fat, that bypasses your liver and it’s used just for energy.
You want to have the fattier beef. You don’t want to have the organic chicken with the skin off. You want that skin. It’s exactly opposite of what we’ve been taught. Ketones provide three times as much energy, so you’ll find that your brain just has more energy. You actually need a little bit less sleep if you do this and it’s very stable on your blood sugar so you don’t get so moody.
Many people have anxiety, in reality, it just could be their blood sugar. Especially if they’re waking up in the middle of the night having anxiety.
Ketones are only made, and I’m not talking about diabetes, but ketones, called nutritional ketosis, only occurs when the body is starving of carbohydrates. That’s what you have to do. There’s some other benefits too that I want to talk about with your gut. Many people get swelling in their gut when they have just a little bit of fruit and beans and some other grains, it just tears them up.
When they start consuming more fat, their entire digestive system does wonderful things. I’ll never forget, I was living on grains, trying to be a vegetarian when I was 22, mostly to be rebellious because my Dad is a cattle rancher – lol, and then one day I went to a Chiropractor that started to teach me more about fat, protein, grains, gmo’s and SUGAR. I used to be the epitome of the junk-food junkie and workout 2-3 hours per day! I would eat huge muffins, cereal, cookies and basically CRAVE and live on sugar. As a result, my immune system was stressed, I had horrible gas and tummy issues, and I could sleep 16 hours per day – I just felt horrible most of the time. But coming back to my point, when I changed my eating because of getting educated, not only did all of these symptoms go away, I learned that my gut could do very well on fats. In fact, the microbes in your gut primarily live on something called butyric acid, and yes, that does come from the breakdown of eating vegetables, but it also comes from butter.
That’s the main source to feed your microbes. The other smaller source that feeds your microbes would be acetic acid, and that is in apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is a really good thing. A teaspoon in some water and as you drink that with your lemon, forget the cranberry, but just drink that through the day, that will really help you in shrinking your stomach.
Now I want to talk about beef. Let’s say a hamburger without the bun. How much carbohydrate is in the hamburger? Zero. How much fat ? 24 percent of that hamburger is fat. Guess how much protein? 30 percent. So we got, it’s almost half fat and half protein. When I say you need 60 percent of your diet from fat, I’m talking about a lot of the protein sources that you’re eating have a tremendous amount of fat already.
We’re not talking about thinking that piece of meat, for example, is pure protein and you have to eat all this lard. I’m not talking about that. A lot of the proteins that you already eat are loaded with a certain percentage of fat. There’s a study that you can google; it’s called “The long term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients”.
This study will show you that it’s safe to use for longer periods.
Some people are going to have to adapt to ketosis, and that adaptation takes anywhere between three days to two weeks. Your body has to adapt to it, it has to make new enzymes, it has to produce more bile, and if you have any liver or gall bladder issues you may need to add bile in there.
Remember, you are going to adjust the fats for your tolerance, for your digestion and for your weight loss. If you are not active, obviously you’re not going to have as many fats as I do. But if you’re exercising, you can get away with more fats. Now that your body is getting more in ketosis, you’re not going to crave anything anymore, you’re not going to be as hungry, so you’re not going to have the appetite you had before, but if you do, please refer to the recommended supplements at NancyAnderberg.com “Partners Tab”.
F & Q:
What about Milk?
Milk is high in protein, but it has lactose. You might want to look on the label and see how many net carbohydrates, you want to end up with no more than 50 net carbohydrates per day.
What are the optimum numbers for ketosis?
You can get a keto strip and urinate to see if you’re in strong ketosis or not, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t get into ketosis right away. It might take two weeks, or four weeks. ( see supplement support to speed up the process) Some people get constipation. They might need a little bit of bile support that lubricates the colon and add a little more sea salt to add more fluid and water so you don’t dry out. That should handle those symptoms. If you don’t have a gall bladder, you definitely need some support in that area, because where’s the bile coming from? Strictly down your liver. You’re going to have to take bile as extract with each meal because you don’t have enough, and you won’t be able to pull in the fats out of vitamins that you need, you’ll end up with dry skin.
Can you drink alcohol?
Alcohol is out. You can’t do alcohol, I’m sorry, because it’s going to bump you out of ketosis for probably a good week. If you’re willing to do that, you can do it.
Can you use kefir?
There is a type of kefir that you can use that is non-lactate, so that’s no sugar.
Should you use turkey bacon?
I don’t recommend it because it’s too lean. You actually need a good source of bacon that has no nitrates and hormone free. That’s what I’m going to recommend. Unless you want the turkey bacon just for your protein.
Can you skip a meal if you’re not hungry?
Absolutely. See, this is the thing. You’re going to find that your appetite’s going to go down, you’re not going to be as hungry, then don’t eat. You don’t need to. It’s not going to actually help you, and you’ll do fine, because you’re actually eating denser calorie foods and you’re going to have enough nutrients; you can tap into more fat if you do that.
What about avocados?
Wonderful. Wonderful fat, I love it.
What about xylitol?
Xylitol is a great birchbark type of sweetener, it’s way better than the other ones. Some of the vegetarian chocolate chips use maltitol. Don’t buy them with maltitol.
I like the stevia and monkfruit as well.
Maltitol, I don’t recommend it, and I don’t recommend honey, either.
What about almond butter?
Almond butter is good, unsweetened peanut butter is good too unless you have allergies.
Will you ever be able to eat fruit again?
Yeah, you will. Once you lose the weight, then you can stick in the fruits more as a maintenance because you’re going to be able to get away with more carbohydrate the more you do this. You’re basically fixing your pancreas, you’re fixing your liver too when you do this because you’re taking all the stress off the pancreas that’s been working so hard. It starts to come back and recover.
Kombucha tea?
You want to get the one with two grams of sugar and make sure that you don’t have any more than that. Some of them have a lot more sugar. You just have to look at labels. Cruciferous vegetables, if you can’t do those, that’s fine.
You need exercise, but you need to keep the insulin low so you don’t get that conversion to the fatty tissue. I have many people who lost tremendous amount of weight doing eating this way, but they were very stubborn when it came to exercise. This is why I have developed the Fit4RAW Four Minute workout and coaching program. You can learn more and join the live coaching program at www.NancyAnderberg.com
In closing, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on a ketosis diet, you’re not eating as much food. I’m in my 50’s, and my health and skin keep getting better and better. I recommend you spend the money your are saving on certain supplements that will help maintain a “LONG life YOUNG”. Also, plug in to my support platforms by subscribing at www.NancyAnderberg.com and joining the FB page at www.Facebook.com/NancyAnderbergCoach
Blessings of Health and Prospertiy to you and your family,
Nanc
