Join us for an enlightening dialogue with Jackie Fletcher, whose life-long exploration of various diets led her to become the inspirational figure she is today. Jackie's journey wasn't about following the latest trend, but rather finding what worked best for her body, which ended up resolving as a ketogenic diet!
But that's not all. Jackie's journey also took her into the cold waters of England, where she discovered the mental health benefits of open water swimming. Though not a magical weight loss solution, Jackie found solace and enjoyment in the chill waters, and she is excited to share this experience with you. From her initial struggle with cold water swimming to the transformative benefits it has brought to her life, Jackie's story is one of courage and resilience.
As we navigate the world of diets and health, we also explore the carnivore diet, a dietary approach that Jackie still used to this day. She shares her unexpected experience of satiety, the impact it had on her relationship with food, and how it played a part in her overall health journey.
Jackie's story is a compelling tale of perseverance and exploration, demonstrating that the key to health is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a personalized approach that works for you. Join us for this empowering episode, packed with insights and experiences that are sure to inspire.
Find Jackie at-
TW- @fabulouslyketo
FB- @FabulouslyKeto
IG- @fabulouslyketo1
https://fabulouslyketo.com/
Special love to-
Our Episodes with Dr. Angela Stanton, all about migraines!
Find Boundless Body at-
Join us for an enlightening dialogue with Jackie Fletcher, whose life-long exploration of various diets led her to become the inspirational figure she is today. Jackie's journey wasn't about following the latest trend, but rather finding what worked best for her body, which ended up resolving as a ketogenic diet!
But that's not all. Jackie's journey also took her into the cold waters of England, where she discovered the mental health benefits of open water swimming. Though not a magical weight loss solution, Jackie found solace and enjoyment in the chill waters, and she is excited to share this experience with you. From her initial struggle with cold water swimming to the transformative benefits it has brought to her life, Jackie's story is one of courage and resilience.
As we navigate the world of diets and health, we also explore the carnivore diet, a dietary approach that Jackie still used to this day. She shares her unexpected experience of satiety, the impact it had on her relationship with food, and how it played a part in her overall health journey.
Jackie's story is a compelling tale of perseverance and exploration, demonstrating that the key to health is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a personalized approach that works for you. Join us for this empowering episode, packed with insights and experiences that are sure to inspire.
Find Jackie at-
TW- @fabulouslyketo
FB- @FabulouslyKeto
IG- @fabulouslyketo1
https://fabulouslyketo.com/
Special love to-
Our Episodes with Dr. Angela Stanton, all about migraines!
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Balanced Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you now. Jackie Fletcher is a qualified network nutrition advisor, primal health coach and health and well-being coach. Specializing in metabolic health, she is currently training to qualify as a personal trainer and sports nutritionist. Starting her low-carb journey in May of 2017, she moved to a ketogenic way of eating in July I'm sorry January of 2018 and eventually discovered a mostly carnivore diet.
Speaker 1:Jackie is committed not only to improving her own health and well-being, but to pay it forward to the wider community through her volunteering, health coaching and podcast. She is an ambassador for the Public Health Collaboration, which is a registered charity that is focused on improving public health. As a health coach, she encourages, motivates and educates clients with a personalized approach to eating real food and living a positive lifestyle. This message was central to the mission when she founded Fabulous Liketo and the Fabulous Liketo podcast, which I was fortunate to be recently hosted on. Jackie lives in the United Kingdom with her husband and twin boys. She has a black belt in Taekwondo and trains regularly, and most weeks she can be found open water swimming, even in the winter. Wow, jackie Fletcher, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's fabulous to be here. Thank you, Casey.
Speaker 1:You are such an honor to host. You're very welcome. Okay, so one. I've always cycled. I've been into cycling for a very long time, and so one year I decided that I wanted to do a triathlon and as part of that, obviously I needed to run, which I already knew how to do, and I needed to swim, which I can swim up and down a pool, but nothing of any particular length. And I trained several triathletes in the past.
Speaker 1:I've always warned them open water swimming is totally different. When you're in a pool and you know it's four feet deep and you see this nice little blue line and you know you're going in a straight direction. That's one thing, and it was hard enough to train that way. But open water swimming is a totally different thing. When all you can look down and see is this murky mess. You have no idea what direction you're doing. Anyway, this triathlon it's sprint distance, very short, short swim. It's actually at the lake that I know very well, just like a mile away from my house, and 800 meters. I want to say it was the most miserable experience I've ever had in my entire life. My heart rate when I got out of the water was 190. At one point. I was hugging onto a bridge to kind of like catch my breath and hold on. It is legit, really, really, really hard. So I have a lot of respect for anybody who can do open water swimming.
Speaker 2:Well, actually I've now come to prefer it to using a swimming pool. In fact, I have a swimming pool in my backyard and it's all covered in, so it can be used any time of year. And I don't use it and I go every week. I haven't been for a while because I've been on holiday and various commitments, but I go every week and swim, whether it's in the summer or whether it's in the winter.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is absolutely amazing. Now the water in England is very cold, is that right?
Speaker 2:It varies. So in the summer it'll be something like 23,. 24 degrees say 20 to 24 degrees. Now we need to translate that into yeah, what would that be Like?
Speaker 1:75, 80 degrees maybe?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know, I don't know and I can't ask Siri, can I? Anyway, it's like that. Then, come middle of October, it will drop down to about 16, 15, 16, and then it will get colder. So the coldest with swimming is zero degrees, and so that's what? About 37?
Speaker 1:maybe that's 32, 32 degrees Fahrenheit 32,.
Speaker 2:okay, yeah, so 32. That's the coldest we've done. We were breaking the ice. We had to break the ice. In fact I've got a photo of me trying to get onto the ice, but I didn't quite make it. And I have to say this is all just in a swimming costume, no wetsuit or anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I do have my gloves and my little booties because I can't, my hands and my feet get really cold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough to get them warmed up and recovered after you've been in water that that's cold. Now we know a lot of people are doing biohacks to get to cold water, and I certainly will jump into a creek or a lake if I'm nearby and something's cold enough to jump in. But we know that exposing yourself to those kinds of temperatures is really, really valuable. What have you noticed in your own life that that kind of swimming has benefited?
Speaker 2:To be honest, I have done it because of the biohacking, but I haven't really noticed any particular difference, nothing I can really put my finger on to say. You know, I haven't lost weight, which I was hoping. I was hoping to change some of that white fat to brown fat and then burn it off. You feel better. You definitely feel better when you do it. So I will go and near enough. Every time I say I don't want to get in, I don't want to get in, and every time I get out I'm just so glad I did get in. So I actually prefer the colder it is, the more I enjoy it.
Speaker 1:So you are doing it for pure enjoyment.
Speaker 2:Well, and for the benefits, even though I don't know what they are for me if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, I love that. I love that a lot, and you hear that it's really great for mental health. You mentioned something very interesting, which is the difference between white fat and brown fat, and so, for the listener, not all types of fat in your body are the same, and weak is carry a type of fat, especially around our necks and our upper shoulders, called brown fat. That is actually what they call decoupled. It's not coupled to mitochondria producing energy, but the fat cells actually create heat as energy, and so it's the babies have a lot of brown fat and that's why they don't shiver. We carry that heat as well, and so the thought is exposing ourselves to cold weather, cold temperatures activates more of that brown fat and can maybe burn more calories and create more heat for us. It's interesting that you haven't noticed a difference in weight loss, though.
Speaker 2:No, I've come to the conclusion that maybe I eat too much. I'm sort of burning up the calories that I'm eating rather than burning up the stores on my body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go. That can definitely happen for some people. Well, that's great. We're going to talk a lot about your diet. Thank you very much for telling us all about open water, swimming and cold temperatures, but let's talk you and your story. You have an interesting story into health. How did you get down a path where you eventually needed to find something as seemingly kind of insane as like a low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet?
Speaker 2:Actually no is the answer to that one, because I know a lot of people find low carbon keto because they have a health condition that they're looking to heal. But my journey is slightly different and maybe not that interesting, interestingly enough. So for me, I've always been overweight, from when I was young, very young. So by the time I hit teens I was already dieting and watching what I was eating. I did weight watchers, I did atkins, I did all sorts of diets through my teens and at 17, I was diagnosed with a benign we didn't know it was benign at the time, but a tumor on my ovary which when they operated it was the size of a UK soccer ball, which they removed along with one and a half ovaries and my appendix. And from there, what I've come to learn since going low carb and understanding metabolism and stuff is that the hormones must have been so messed up that from there my weight just ballooned and by the time I was 19, I weighed 90 kilos, which is probably around 200 pounds, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no-transcript. And I just struggled with weight all my life. But at some point and I dieted through my 20s and tried different diets and at some point in my 30s I just thought I've had enough, our diets don't work, I don't want to do it. But then my weight just slowly crept up over the years. It was creeping up and up and in the last year before I went low carb, it really went massively in overdrive and I put on a lot of weight. Now, some of that I put down to stress at work. I was doing a lot of night shifts. I sometimes doing 24 hours being awake and things like that. So I think that was a contributing factor.
Speaker 2:But at the time I came to low carb, I had come to the point where I just thought I can't diet. I would have loved to lose weight, I'd love to be slimmer, and I just thought I can't do it, I'm not motivated, I can't stick to a diet. I've never done a diet for more than three weeks at a time. I'm just, I'm useless, I'm rubbish. And so I was in a very low place. But that had been going on for a long time because and every night I'd go to bed and because you know what works eat less and move more. We're all told that eat less and move more. And I really believed that. And so every night I'd go to bed and I'd say tomorrow's going to be different, tomorrow I'm going to eat less and I'm going to move more. And then I'd wake up the next day and I wouldn't eat less and I couldn't move more. So it was just, I was just getting on a spiral of going down and feeling really bad, feeling bad about myself, with lack of motivation, and that permeated out into my whole life. You know everything. I didn't do anything, I didn't believe I could do anything. And so there I was in this place, very low, not even thinking about dieting, because dieting doesn't work.
Speaker 2:I'd been telling myself that for years and I listened to a book and in it she mentioned Gary Taub's why we Get Fat, and I had no intention of going on diet, but I thought I'll listen to it and see. And that changed everything. And I, just from that day of listening to that book, I cut out pasta, I cut out potatoes, I cut out bread, and along with the bread because I cut out wheat along with that went cookies and cakes and all things like that, all the sweet stuff. I still kept in chocolate and I had a lot of.
Speaker 2:I was eating a lot of vegetables. Some of them were mostly peas and corn, which anybody that's really low carb will know that they're not low carb. But that's what I did and that's what worked initially. And then I found keto, went more keto and that's when things I was already losing weight, but it just carried on losing weight from that point and I just got more and more into keto. I started to feel fabulous, I started to want to move, I started to want to exercise and things just kept getting better and better from there.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. The book that you mentioned that referenced Gary Taub's. I believe it was a Gretchen Rubin, that's her name. The author, Do you, does she do low carb Like? Why did she mention that in the book?
Speaker 2:She was doing it at that point when she wrote the book. So what she said was she was doing it and she felt great and she'd lost weight and her father had followed suit and she and he had come off lots of medication and improved his blood pressure and all things like that.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I'm familiar with her, yeah, and her work. I just I was not aware that she had any awareness of the low carbohydrate space, so I found that to be very, very interesting. I want to go back to some of the diets that you tried before. In hindsight, I think you'll be able to evaluate whether you did Adkins quote unquote, like the correct way. Did you notice a difference between the Adkins diet that you did versus some of the other diets? Like Weight Watchers?
Speaker 2:So, interestingly enough, when I did at Kings, I was probably only about 13 years old, oh wow. And I went to stay with my aunt and she lived about a couple of hundred miles away, so four or five hour journey and she said we're going to do Atkins and all we can eat is meat, oranges and grapefruits. So I don't know, and this is back in the 70s, so 76, something like that. So I don't know if it was really Atkins, but in my mind I remember her saying it was Atkins. Whether it was or not, I don't know, but it was basically meat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. So I've talked about this before. The Atkins diet kind of came it, comes and goes in different ways, but there were two really major ones that I've observed one that happened in the 70s where he was kind of just starting to talk about that kind of thing and it seemed to kind of fizzle out and came back in the 90s like late 90s. But it seems to me that the difference was in the 70s we were on the very leading edge of demonizing fat, whereas by the time we got to the 90s all the nutritional recommendations had come out for United States. United Kingdom people were much more fat phobic and so it seemed like the version later in the 90s was much more like rearing chicken breast type meat versus maybe in the 70s it was still eating some saturated fat, some red meat, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't do it for very long. I was only while I was staying with my aunt and I couldn't keep it up. It was really hard Okay gotcha. Which I understand, because in the last few years I've tried carnivore a couple of times and we spoke about this when you were on my podcast and I've tried carnivore a couple of times and I really didn't get on with it because I was missing some of the vegetables and other non-animal foods. So, yeah, I'm not surprised that at 13 I couldn't get on with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so. You've been dieting your whole life. You get this book by Gary Taubes. It's amazing how many of us can cite our history kind of getting into the low carbohydrate space and give tons of thanks to Gary Taubes. I was able to do that in person. I got to meet him for the first time, which is absolutely wonderful. He's so healthy, just tall dude and just so in such great shape. But anyway, how long into that book did it take you to realize you literally had been following the wrong paradigm for a very, very long time? Did it take a lot of time to convince you that it wasn't calories and calories out and you actually could eat more indulging foods like proteins and fats and be healthy?
Speaker 2:No, it didn't take very long at all. Actually, I have been for quite a long time on the opposite to what people are told to do. So in terms of medication and things like that, I would always go the homeopathic route or try alternative therapies. So I was already in that mindset of what we're told is not always the best for me, I shall say. And so when he started to talk about, it just sort of made sense and that each part that you get through the book it just goes oh yes, I get this. Oh yes, very easily did I understand that this was a good way of eating?
Speaker 2:Now, I've never been one for cutting out fat, but the fatty parts of the lamb or the chicken skins I always eat the thighs, not the breasts.
Speaker 2:So I've always done that. The only difference was, previously I was telling myself I was not very healthy and I wasn't doing the right thing and I'm gonna have trouble with my heart and all the things that we're told because I couldn't follow the low fat way of eating and the lean protein way of eating and avoiding red meat, which is my favorite. So it just sort of validated where I was really. Now the only thing was, after about a month I was feeling that maybe this high fat wasn't very good for me and luckily I was on holiday with a friend of mine who's a nurse practitioner and a nurse lecturer. She was a nurse lecturer at university and she was doing low carb, so I managed to talk to her about all this fat and she said, no, it's fine. And so from that point I just felt okay with the fat and I just carried on. I think if she just said, ooh, maybe not, I might have thrown it in, but I'm glad I didn't.
Speaker 1:What a shame that would have been. That's crazy. So you initially started a diet with the objective of losing weight? Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes. Okay so that was my sole thought about it, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so tell us what the results were for the weight loss. Was it steady, was it consistent? Were there up and downs? And then, what other things did you eventually notice that also improved that maybe you weren't doing the diet for or weren't expecting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so initially I was thinking if I could lose a stone which is 14 pounds, about seven kilos, something like that. If I could lose a stone, I'd be happy, because I'd been at 15 and a half stone, which is around 225, 27 pounds, for a long time and I'd sort of plateaued there and it was only laterally, had it gone up to 231 pounds, which is 16 and a half stone, and I was thinking, if I can get back to the 15 and a half, that would be a good place to be, because I was really struggling to move around, I was struggling to walk up the stairs, I was struggling to get down. If I had to kneel down and get up again, I couldn't get up without hauling myself on a piece of furniture. So I just thought maybe it would be better if I could just reduce that stone and okay, and so that was my goal really. And, like I said earlier, I wasn't strictly low carb, I was just lower carb. But the weight did start to drop slowly and by the time it came. I can't remember the exact things, but what I did was I weighed myself every day and I put the weight in my phone app and I just, whenever the weight went up a little bit.
Speaker 2:I'd go to the trend for the year and I'd see it coming down, and that managed to make me keep going, so I didn't worry. I never got to the point where I was. Some people are really phobic around the scales and them going up. Well, that wasn't like that for me. I just say look at the trend, look at the trend, it's down, it's down, it's down. And then I went past my 15 and a half stone, my 228 pounds or whatever that is, and I just kept going and kept going and it's just carried on like that. And so with the keto it probably went a little bit quicker and it probably took maybe 18 months or two years to get down to where I am now. And I've been where I am now. I would say good three. So maybe it was about two to three years to get down. And then I've been here for the last three years and I've still got more weight to lose. I could do with losing another 30 pounds, but it's not coming off and I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. That is such good advice. I have a scale. I use a scale with my clients. I don't think it's a bad tool, but people do get way too focused on myopic on that number and they forget the progress that they made and we've had a guest on that referred to. Kind of like the stock market is like you're doing a yo-yo but you're walking up the stairs and so, yes, there's going to be changes up and down and up and down daily, but remember, you're always going in the right direction. So I think that's so important to do what you said. That's such a good tip for the listener and you are also going to go down in history as our first guest ever tell us what the actual weight in pounds a stone was. I've been so curious about that for so long. It speaks probably more to the deficit of me being the podcast host and not asking that question, but of over 500 guests, you're the first person to tell us exactly how much a stone weighs, so I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're welcome. So the other thing I was going to add in there, that my scales broke recently and I'm dithering as to whether to replace them or not. So just throwing out there that I haven't yet bought another set of scales. I don't know whether I will or not, so there we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so telling. In this world I see this all the time, especially in the Carnivore space, where people do it for some certain reason but, like, within a few weeks they're feeling so good that they don't care that they started it for weight loss, they don't care if they have a little bit of extra weight to lose, they just feel amazing. They're going to keep going just because of that. And it's interesting that you say that about a scale. I'll often tell my clients the same thing about supplements in particular. Like whatever supplements you have, fine, like, continue taking them, but maybe when you're done taking them, just don't immediately buy the next one. Just see how you feel. Like, if you feel like there's a huge difference, then go back on that supplement. If you really don't, then maybe you don't really need it. So I think that's a really good way to think about the scale. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean in now. I was just listening to our episode number two recently and it's called what is Keto and Louis said we come for the weight loss and we stay for the health benefits, and I think that's absolutely true. So when I said anyway, you asked me what are the benefits? I'd noticed along the way so I used to suffer with really bad migraines almost every other day. So there's some medication called Sumitra Pan and you're supposed to take, I think, maybe half a dozen a month or something like that, and I was taking double that dose. So I was going through a packet a month. I couldn't get by without them and I felt like I needed them all the time. When I had my boys it did calm down a bit but I still used to get migraines.
Speaker 2:But I've noticed that the more I've stayed keto I'm mostly keto, Sometimes it's low carb, Sometimes it's carnivore, but mostly keto the more I've stayed with it, the less headaches I've had. And quite often if I wake up with a headache, if I take some salt, drink plenty of water, it just goes away. So I still do get headaches. But I cannot remember the last time I had a migraine pill that I had to take it, Because if it's just my head hurting, I will push through the pain. If I feel very nauseous, I might consider taking the medication. But I've maybe had three pills in the last year, something like that. So we've gone from 12 a month down to three. So that's one thing. My gums have improved. I used to have really swollen gums, Used to get told off by the dentist all the time. That's improved. Movement, you know, moving around is so much easier. As I said, before I couldn't get down on my knees and pull myself up, Whereas now I can put my hands on my head, sit down on the floor and stand up again with my hands on my head. Other health things I also had phases of having gallbladder attacks and they've nearly. I rarely get any gallbladder issues nowadays.
Speaker 2:Just trying to think what other health things my mood improved. I used to be screaming at my kids all the time Do this, do that. That very quickly changed and I just teared out. And if they were killing each other, you carry on, I'm not getting involved, Go ahead, Do what you want. And so my mood, how I felt about things around me. I just really teared out. Yeah, that's probably the main things. I'll probably think of something else after, but yeah, these are very common.
Speaker 1:You hear this all the time with people who try this way of eating. We did a few episodes with Dr Angela Stanton, who's doing a lot of the research on low carbohydrate and migraines, and I'll link this in the show notes so people can go and listen to those episodes that they like. And yeah, this isn't new research either. Like we've known this for quite a while that low carbohydrate diets can really help with that kind of thing and those migraines can be absolutely debilitating. But she talks about the same thing. You make sure you're good on your salt electrolyte balance is critical Make sure you're hydrated and really avoiding carbohydrates and you can pretty much reverse a lot of migraine symptoms as long as you're eating the proper diet and you it seems like you agree with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yes. Yeah, I've had Angela on as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's best, she's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was fabulous.
Speaker 1:That's great. I'm guilty of this often where I kind of throw terms like low carbohydrate and ketogenic into kind of the same thing and I use them interchangeably, but there is a difference. So, for the listener, can you describe some of the steps that you had taken to go first low carb and then keto, eventually playing around with the carnivore diet? Can you explain to the listener what that is, how you define those things and also what that looked like for you? What were you practically doing at each kind of one of those stages?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm going back 60 years now to my low carb way because, as I said, I cut out the pasta, the wheat, the potatoes, bread, cakes, cookies, all things like that. But I was still eating a lot. So what I did was I replaced the potatoes with another vegetable. So instead of having some meat, some potatoes and one vegetable, I had the meat and two lots of vegetables, but they were mostly corn and peas. Quite often was corn and peas and lots of them. Really, my plate was really piled high and if I had a salad it was a massive salad. So it's quite often a salad for lunch and then meat and two veg for supper.
Speaker 2:I don't think I had breakfast. I think I probably didn't have. I know I wasn't having breakfast because when I went to keto so that was mostly what I was having I was still having some chocolate after my supper at night, and that's not the low carb chocolate, just the normal we call it. We have cabris, so cabris dairy milk or cabris fruit and nut. So I was just having the regular. But I can moderate chocolate so I could have just one strip of the bar and that would be fine Then if I wanted something in the later on in the evening I would have some cheese, maybe something like that. And as I found out more about keto, then I started to. I've tried having breakfast, have eggs, bacon and avocado and some sour cream, and I did that for a very short period of time because I felt really ill. It's like, oh, this is too much food, I can't. I can't do that. So again, I dropped the breakfast.
Speaker 2:I was trying to think lunch was often a salad, very often a salad and supper. Then I started to cut down on the amount of food I was eating. So the peas and the corn disappeared. They were replaced by things like broccoli, maybe sometimes French beans, cauliflower trying to think what other vegetables we have quite regularly asparagus, mushrooms. So I started to do carb veg and less of it, and sometimes I would measure.
Speaker 2:Really, for keto you're looking to have 20 grams of carbs and I'm not very good at measuring, as you heard earlier. I'm not good at the dieting stuff and all the things that you need to do to measure, but I would occasionally measure just to get a grip on how much broccoli is about 70 grams and how much cauliflower is about 70 grams, things like that. That's what I did occasionally, just to be able to eye it, rather than and it was a lot less than I had been eating. So the difference between low carbon, keto is the amount of carbs, but it's also keto is the metabolic state that you're in in a state of ketosis. So I was always in a very low state of ketosis, like 0.3 to 0.5, unless I did any long fasts. It was yeah around about that mark. You know, maybe if it had been a bit stricter I might have got higher ketones, I might have had a lower blood sugar.
Speaker 2:But I'm not very good at restricting my food and I want to be happy. You know. I think this is the important thing is I could probably have lost another 20 or 30 pounds in weight if I was really restrictive, but I don't want to be restrictive. I think it works for me. Now, you know, I've had blood tests done, my blood markers. I haven't done it in a while, recently, but they're fairly good condition. I'm happy with where they are.
Speaker 2:So I'm not always as restrictive as maybe some other people might want to be to lose that extra 20 or 30 pounds, and so that's for me, and for me I always say that's what keeps me going, because if, at Christmas, I can come off for a week or 10 days and have whatever I like, then that suits me. If I want to go on holiday, I can have whatever I like. That suits me. And so you know. You have to find out what you're happy with and what keeps you motivated and what keeps you going, and what works for one person might not work for someone else.
Speaker 2:And I think the other thing you have to think about, which Gretchen Rubin talks about, is abstainers versus moderators, and you have to know where you personally sit on that scale and I'm definitely a moderator. Now, the benefit of a moderator is you can have some of those things. The downside of being a moderator is you can have some of those things, so you do, whereas if you're an abstainer, you know the downside is you can, you can't have some of those things, and the upside is you can't have some of those things, so you don't have them. So, but you have to know yourself and even though I'm a moderator, there are some things I have to be really careful with because I can moderate them, but I know that they pull me, so I just have to be careful around those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is such great advice. I think both groups are somewhat like jealous of each other as well, like I'm hearing you say you can moderate and I'm like, oh, I'm so jealous you can do that For me. Even you know quote unquote healthier options like fruit. It's just a gateway for me. Like that makes me crave other foods that definitely are not fruit, and so for me it's easier to just avoid the whole thing. So, yeah, that's really good advice, and whatever somebody is willing to do long term for their health and for weight maintenance, like you have, is so much better to find that than it is to do something temporarily that you hate, that you know you're going to give up at some point.
Speaker 1:One of the things that Gary Taubes talks about in a lot of his books actually is the fact that this way of eating is the holy grail, in that you're not hungry and you can eat really what feels like as much as you like, you can eat to satiety and you stay full for longer. And it makes the point in one of his books maybe it's a case for keto. I've heard this cited several times. If I asked you what would be the best thing to do, if I told you I'm making this giant feast. I'm going to feed you all the food that you want. It's amazing food. Come really hungry. What would you do to come hungry? Most people would not eat that day, or maybe the day before, and they might try to burn off a few more calories because we know that's what makes people hungry, which is why diets fail. The calories and calories out never seems to work for people. Were you surprised at how satiated you were when you started this way of eating?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I think more than how satiated I was was more about how I didn't constantly feel like I'd eaten too much. You know, when you go to bed and you think, oh, I've eaten too much, I don't feel good, I've eaten too much. So that went away because I wasn't eating too much. And even though I was eating a lot, it was obviously not too much. It didn't fall in my stomach. But the other thing was I didn't have breakfast when I was high carb. But if it got to lunchtime I would start panicking it's lunchtime, I've got to eat. Lunchtime, I've got to eat. And if it went to maybe two or three o'clock in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten, I'd start to get headache. I wouldn't feel very good. I really had to and a migraine might start at that point. So I had to.
Speaker 2:I was always worried about food and when I was going to eat. And if I went somewhere where it looked like there wouldn't be enough food, I would have this internal panic again of, oh my God, there's not enough food, I'm going to be hungry. What shall I do? I won't be, I'm going to be hungry, and all this stuff going on, this mental chatter around food. So what I noticed quite quickly was one I could go longer times without eating and not feel bad, and also I was less panicky around food and they're not being enough, and nowadays it it doesn't bother me. You know, you think, oh okay, even if I don't eat, it doesn't bother me.
Speaker 2:As we talk now, I just had my supper a little while ago because for me, I'm five hours ahead of you or six hours ahead of you and I've just finished a 70 and a half hour fast, so, and I was hungry. I was hungry at that point and I did eat quite a lot, but it probably. It was probably a day's worth of food, normally, maybe. That's all. I just, instead of having my bolognese and I had some low carb pasta that someone gave me and I wanted to try. I then followed it with some cheese, which I probably wouldn't normally do. So not a lot of food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. So I was just trying to get my journey into carnivore. What was that like? To learn that, first of all, maybe the vegetables might not be that helpful for you. But second, also learn maybe they could be causing a little bit of harm.
Speaker 2:Yes, so my my journey into carnivore. So I tried it a couple of times in the past. I spoke to you about this and I, two weeks in, I was miserable. I hated it. I wanted the main things. I was craving was. You know, anyone would think I was craving donuts and things like that, but I wasn't. I was craving olives and cucumber and maybe a little bit of vegetables. That's the sort of you know some salad. At that time Maybe I would have been craving, so it wasn't anything major, but I just felt that I couldn't give up the vegetables.
Speaker 2:But over the last 18 months probably, I've been cutting down and cutting down on the vegetables and what I'd noticed was, when I was podcasting with people, the carnivores just were glowing. They just had a different look about them and I just thought I've got to try this again seriously. So what I did was I organized in my Facebook group. I organized the challenge. Who wants to do a carnivore challenge? We're going to start on the 22nd of May 2023. And we're going to do it for 30 days. So we had I had people in my Facebook group. I also had a paid for group as well, and we had a WhatsApp group and we had Zoom meetings and I invited carnivores to come on and talk to them and we asked questions and they told us their story and how they came to carnivore. And when we got to the end of the 30 days there was there was more people than this in the group but there was eight people on the last call that could make it and I just said who plans on staying carnivore? And every single hand went up and they're going to carry on and so I have been mostly carnivore since then.
Speaker 2:As I said, I had some low carb pasta tonight and I had some tomatoes and mushrooms in the Bolognese but which I wouldn't normally have, but then I figured, you know, after three days of not eating, that's not going to do too much damage. Other times I've come off, as on holiday I've been a little bit more lax, had some fruit and some other bits and pieces and then, but mostly still carnivore. And the one thing I haven't had even though when I've not been totally carnivore so like on holiday, I still didn't have any vegetables I had some watermelon. I did have some potatoes in the form of if the, if the French fries were made by with potato in the restaurant, I might have a few of those. I had a couple of paellas and things like that, but I didn't have the vegetables with my, with my food, so that was quite interesting. Yeah, so since I've come back from holiday, which is only about 10 days ago, I've just been carnivore.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, no, that is also very consistent and something that I think surprises a lot of people. I see people do carnivore and, yeah, time to time you want to do some fruit honey. Those all seem to still taste really good. I even think like starches, or even like somebody having you know bread or a piece of pizza every now and again. I don't think it affects a ton of people a lot, but it was surprising to me initially to hear like the feeling that you needed vegetables or even wanted vegetables. It drops off a cliff. It's pretty quick that you realize like I don't like these at all. The only thing I liked them for was when they were loaded up with butter and cream and salt, and then they were great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that that's why eventually, over time, worked out. But the only reason I like the vegetables was to have lots of butter on it. So now I just have lots of butter on my steak or just eat spoonfuls of butter. Perfect, if that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Yeah, that's amazing. You mentioned the glowing skin and I can certainly attest to that. I spent some time this last month with Dr Chafee, dr Anthony Chafee and Olivia Quadra, who's up there with you at the Public Health Collaboration, and both of them are just glowing all the time. And, yeah, you can tell by the way they eat how much it affects their skin clarity and how well they do. And I do want to just mention also it's not really a surprise to me that all eight of those people that made it through that long in that group were wanting to continue.
Speaker 1:Dr Sean Baker does this and maybe he did this up when he was up with you guys for the conference. This year. We'll ask everybody in the audience to raise their hand. If they're now eating more meat than they used, to keep it raised up. If you eat less vegetables than you used, to keep it up. If you're feeling better now than you ever have in a very, very long time or ever, and then keep it up if you plan on continuing to do this. And it's always really fun to hurry and run up to the very front and look back and see all the hands, because pretty much everybody's hand is up. Everybody's just feeling good. Why would they want to stop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I do have a confession to make. So here, going back to the glowing I went to, I'm in my 60th year now and so all my friends we're still friends from school. So we're all going to be 60 in this next school year, starting now in September. So last weekend we had two celebrations and I did have a little bit of birthday cake at one celebration and I did have a bit of dessert on the other one, but it stayed carnival the whole rest of the day. But one of the people on Saturday afternoon said you just look glowing, you look so healthy. And I just thought, yes, I've done it, this has got the carnival glow, I've got the carnival glow Beautiful.
Speaker 1:I love it. She probably thought it was the cake. Maybe the suntan from holiday helps that definitely helps for sure, which is another thing that approves. On carnivore, I used to burn all the time and I never get a sunburn anymore. You just tan up really easy and that's also very consistent with the way people eat on carnivore and how they live.
Speaker 2:I was sunbathing. I would say that I was in the sun. I was in Spain. The south Spain is quite hot. I don't know what it is in in America, maybe 80 degrees, something like that. For two weeks I was out all day under an umbrella for most of the day, but sometimes out in the sun. I did not use suntan cream at all. I sometimes. My previous holiday was in Turkey and it was extremely hot. It was in the hundreds. I did use a bit of coconut oil on my skin, but this holiday I didn't use anything. For the last hour of the day, half five to half six, I would just be out in the sun. People have said to me you're the brownest I've ever seen you. I don't know if it's because I've had two week holidays in the sun quite close together, or if it's just the fact that I'm not burning and I'm spending more time in the sun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either way, I think the diet is a huge interaction that sounds like very wise interactions with the sun, which I love. One thing that is kind of interesting coconut oil does have some protective factors against the sun, but at least here in America you can't technically say that it's got an SPF. It does and it's, I think, somewhere around like an eight, but you can't officially say that unless your product has chemicals in it. It's the only way you can claim it has SPF. So it's absolutely ridiculous that people don't know that they can just use coconut oil and they can be smart. Like you said, if it's midday sun in a place where you're not used to in the summertime, use shade, use anything, sleep whatever you can to not slather on chemicals onto your skin, and then, when the sun is lower on the horizon, now you can be out there and it'll be fine and you can develop a really nice base tan. Love talking about ways that we can be really safe in the sun, and I think a diet is a huge part of that in the carnivore diet really, really helps with that.
Speaker 1:I do want to ask about the experience with the cake then. Did it taste good? Was it good for you, or did it throw you way off? Did you sleep terribly Like? Did it affect you much?
Speaker 2:Did it taste good? It was okay. The cake, the desserts were a bit better the next day. Very sweet, very sweet. Did I want to go back for more? I think my head was telling me, yes, I wanted to go back for more, but I didn't. And could I? Could I've left it sooner and just put it down and not eat it all? Probably Did I eat it all. Yes, I did, did I? I?
Speaker 2:My sleep has been a bit all over the place over the last few weeks, so really hard to say if it was affected or not. I've just been. I don't know what's going on with my sleep, but yeah, I think it was partly holiday going to bed a lot later, getting up a lot later, reading a lot, so wanting to read my book, so doing that in the middle of the night and all things. I just think I messed up my sleep and it's taken me a while to get back into the swing of sleep again. That said, my sleep has always been bad and that's another thing that's improved with this way of eating.
Speaker 2:So I used to wake up every hour and a half. From when I was I can think back to my early 20s I used to wake up every hour and a half, get up, go to the loo, come back to bed, go back to sleep, but every hour and a half I'd wake up, and now it's quite often an hour and a half, but sometimes I can go three hours. I've even done four, or once maybe five hours, which is just amazing for me. So that's and that since I've been carnivore, that has definitely improved, but not always and it's not consistent. So yeah, my sleep hasn't been very good.
Speaker 1:It's another thing that people report when they start kind of eating in this way, and I was confused when I was getting complaints in the beginning. I didn't understand what was going on. But people would say, like I'm waking up so early and I can't go back to sleep. This sucks, this is terrible. But then you keep pressing and you ask them a few more questions like, well, are you tired, do you need a nap? During the day, and they always go well, no, I actually feel really good, I haven't taken a nap and I can't remember how long and it's like okay, well, this is your body requiring less sleep than it used to. It's literally getting more efficient and getting it done at a sooner time. So use extra time to go do something, go on a walk. You know it might be dark outside, but you know you can go on a walk and get some work done, like, like you can read, like whatever. You have literally more time in the day available to you and better energy during the rest of the day to not really need to take naps and things like that. So that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:I do want to shift gears a little bit and talk about something that is a passion of yours, which is, you know, being active. You black belt in Taekwondo. That's very impressive, all the open water swimming that you're doing. You're also training to become a personal trainer. What is that like?
Speaker 2:That is interesting. I'm a bit slow because, because I work, I have I run my coaching business, I run the podcast. The time left at the end of the day for studying is not is not consistent, but I'm really. I'm really enjoying what I'm doing. I'm currently learning all the muscles in the body and, yeah, looking forward to moving ahead with it, because I've been a bit slow over the last couple of months but need to get back onto the, get back into it and get back and qualified really. So that's really good. I'm doing the method. So probably I've ordered the book that you mentioned, doug MacGuff, which reminds me it hasn't arrived and it should have done. So we're using the Ben Botiteo method, which is smart training, which is the very slow movement. So you're looking to do one set, one rep, in 30 to 90 seconds, and when I'm doing it myself, I'm aiming for a minute. So I do 50 seconds of very slow movement and then 10 seconds just holding that weight, and that's the method that I'm training in as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. So this will confirm to all of my clients who think that a personal training certification is only teaching trainers how to count to 12 accurately, because none of them believe that I know how to do that there is a lot to learn in personal training, which is really cool, and the methods that you found, I believe in my experience have been the most beneficial for people to get the most done in the least amount of time, so very, very effective. So it's cool that you're kind of going down that path. I bet Dr Ben was another one I got to meet in person last month and he was actually walking around with his own copy of Body by Science which was heavily marked up, and you know he claims that he originally came out with a lot of that stuff himself, and he's probably right, so that's a good way to train.
Speaker 1:Anything else that has surprised you about training to be a personal trainer.
Speaker 2:The fact that I'm doing it, the fact that me who used to sit, when people were saying, oh, I went to the gym at five o'clock this morning, who I went for a five kilometer run, was go. Why on earth would anyone want to go to the gym and why would anyone want to exercise? I just didn't get it. You know what's the point. You know you can sit on the couch. It's so much more comfortable. So just the fact that I'm doing it has been a big surprise. The fact that I actually do exercise has been a big surprise to me as well. So, yeah, it's all been very interesting. So, yes, I need to get on and move a bit further ahead in the course to probably answer that better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotcha. Well, I just. I think it's so interesting that we spend all of our lives trying to force it. Right. It's the eat less, move more. So we're trying to force these workouts that we don't like. We end up crashing on metabolism and up sitting on the couch anyway, like you said, because it's more comfortable and we didn't really, you know, achieve our goal anyway. But it's so different when it's spontaneous. Nobody had to ask you to go to the gym and move and add more of that in your life. It's like you feel good you're going to want to do that on your own. So I always think it's better to start with diet with people versus trying to force workout programs. If you can do both, great, but I would start with the nutrition, because later on that person is going to want to move more, and it sounds like that's been pretty much your experience as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I was at my heaviest, if there was something upstairs that I needed, if I could avoid getting it, I would avoid it. If I could send one of my kids to go and get it for me, that's what I did. Now I might come down the stairs and think, oh, I've left my whatever it is upstairs, I just turn around and go straight back up. Even if someone's up there, I would just go up myself and get it, because I can. It's like this is so good, I can go up the stairs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That's such a great answer. Well, you have a wonderful podcast that I mentioned in the introduction. I've been fortunate enough to be featured on recently and I really appreciate the chat that we had there. Tell us why you decided to start a podcast and what was your main motivation. I told you before we started recording. We released our first episodes within like two or three days of each other very, very close back in 2020. So tell us about your wonderful show and why you started it and what you were hoping to get out of it.
Speaker 2:So, because I felt that I felt fabulous and I had achieved much more than I could have imagined, because I said originally I wanted to lose about 14 pounds. I've now lost about 56 pounds. I just felt fabulous, so fabulously. Keto was already in my head and I was listening to all these podcasts and thinking how cool would it be to interview and speak to all these people and find out so much more. That that's what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it and that was a big stumbling block for me. So it was back in 2019, the beginning of 2019, I was already thinking about doing a podcast. But who am I to do a podcast? I can't do a podcast. Who am I?
Speaker 2:And then there was this podcast I would listen to and I would think maybe she might get offended that if I started another podcast. So a friend of mine, so Louise, who was my podcast host, that eventually said she won't mind, they were friends already. You just and I said I just messaged her and said how would you feel about it? And she said go for it. And so that started the cogs turning. I started to find out how to do it and all things like that, so I probably recorded my first episodes at the end of 2019. Then, in April 2020, I said to Louise do you want to come on the podcast with me and be a cohost, thinking she'd say no because she was a busy lady. And she said yes, and so I had to wait for her to finish her marking, to finish her end of school term, and so we started in October and yeah, and then now she's left, but because of work she's full time job now, two jobs she has. So, yeah, it's just me on my own now.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Yeah, I was going to ask about her specifically because I did go back and listen to some of your very first episodes. You guys had great chemistry back and forth. It was really fun to listen to and you guys had really good discussions. It is tough. Podcasting is tough. It requires a lot of time and energy. You know, to find people, to get them scheduled to do the actual interview is really a very small percentage of what goes on behind the scenes when you're creating all the notes and the introductions and all that stuff. So it's a lot of work, but it is very rewarding and something that, for both of us, has been something worth continuing on with. I understand that if I ask you some of your favorite episodes, it's almost like asking what are your favorite kids, so I'm not going to ask that question, but I'll just ask you welcome.
Speaker 1:I can't answer that question myself, so very, very difficult. What are some moments that you reflect on, could be something more recent, could be something that was really big for you in the beginning? What are some moments through podcasting that maybe just the first ones that kind of come to mind that ended up being really special experiences for you?
Speaker 2:I think recently was a scary one, which was when I was talking about outcybers and being told that if you have your ovaries removed that can be a factor in getting outcybers and that more women in the UK and Australia the leading cause of death for women is outcymers. And I was pretty choked up about that because I sort of held it together but I was crying but you can't hear it in my voice because it was like, oh my God, that was me having my ovaries removed really early on. So that was one that stood out particularly.
Speaker 1:I just listened to that. That was interesting to listen to. There was a little hitch in your voice but you're right, you couldn't really tell. But you admitted, like what I'm like tearing up hearing this powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that really, that one really really got me. I think, yeah, what else? Casey, that's not a very fair question, it's a tough one.
Speaker 1:I told you it's tough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Other ones are Angela Stanton. I'm now doubting if I had migraines and they act like migraines. But maybe they're not actually migraines because the way she was describing it is there's a trigger, that's environmental or lack of energy and things like that. So maybe I don't have migraines, but they sure are very similar. If I get a headache, I know it will be three days to the day, almost that I'm going to have a headache and feel nauseous and sick. So if it's not a migraine, I'm not sure what it is.
Speaker 2:I love. One of the things I love is Dr David Unwin, and he wanted to be a vet and he wasn't clever enough to be a vet so he became a doctor. And one of the things he said is when I look at all the animals, all the human animals and that was really interesting to say that we as humans are animals and we should be acting like animals and not like we do quite often. So we should maybe revert more to being more animal like. So that was quite interesting.
Speaker 2:What else? I just think almost every episode I take something away and I've made such fabulous friends through interviewing people Some of them are quite close friends that we will message your phone, or that has been really good for me, I think. And when Tia said to interview you and I looked at your website and you looked so physically fit and you were going to be so amazing and I just felt very inferior. But when we got on the call it was like I'd known, you were my life. We just got on and spoke and that was lovely because I was rather worried about interviewing you.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, it's amazing what Photoshop can do. If you just get the right Photoshop, you can make yourself look however you like. Just kidding. Yeah, I think I agree with you on all those points.
Speaker 1:I think it's ironic that, dr Unwin, if you would have become a vet, one of the first questions he would have asked every person coming into his office is what are you feeding your dog or cat if they're sick? And instead he goes to Dr Rout and doesn't ask anybody what they're eating when they get sick. Obviously he realizes that, and him and his wife, jen, were guests on our show as well and they're just such lovely people doing amazing work and really giving hope for a lot of people out there. And I agree, I think, jackie, like to have now two conversations with you. We become fast friends and it's a wonderful community.
Speaker 1:I love the conferences where we all get to meet up and see each other. But, yeah, I feel instantly like during these conversations I'm connecting on a really deep level with some of these wonderful people that you and I both get to host. And now you've been on my show and I've been in your show and it's just been such a lovely time. Where would you like people to go to find you and connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2:So the Fabulously Keto nearly everywhere so I really just broadcast on Twitter is Fabulously Keto. Facebook Fabulously Keto page and a Fabulously Keto group. Anyone's welcome to join the group. People from all over the world. It's a fairly small group. Instagram Fabulously Keto one. Somebody had nicked that name or stolen that name. Should I say rather nicked. You use the word nicked in America.
Speaker 1:We don't, but we don't. We don't use Nick. But I am now hugely into Formula One and all the commentators and podcasts and everything about formula one, all from the United Kingdom. I love all the little nuances and new words that I've I've been learning and ways of saying things Great.
Speaker 2:I have to. I have to be aware of nicked might not mean anything for some people stolen. Somebody had taken that name. My website is really rubbish at the moment Fabulously Keto dot com. The podcast anywhere you get your podcast from is Fabulously Keto, and you can also access the podcast from my website as well. I think that's about it. Linkedin Jackie Fletcher. Jackie Fletcher 100 probably.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, we'll be sure to link all of that. You made an announcement, I believe, on your podcast that Stitcher is going away, which I didn't know about, so we should probably tell all of our listeners, both to your show and to my show. If you're listening to podcasts on Stitcher, you may need to find a different platform. I was not aware of that. Well, jackie, thank you so very much for taking the time to be on our show today and thank you for sharing this message all around. You're doing great work and we just really really appreciate you, so thank you so very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you again.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure to chat to you and this has been another episode of Balanced Body Radio, as always. Thank you so very much for listening to Balanced Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really do mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and to watch it grow. Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020 and we started the podcast in October of 2020. So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me. This year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests, but also to meet many of you, our listeners and supporters. We really just can't thank you enough. As always, feel free to book a complimentary 30 minute session on our website, which is mybalanusbodycom. On our homepage, there is a book now button where you can find a time to speak with us about health, fitness, nutrition, whatever you like.
Speaker 1:We've loved chatting with people all over the world and many of you out there to bounce ideas off each other or to try to come up with plans to achieve specific goals, or even if it's just to reach out to introduce yourselves. We would just love to meet you and connect with you there. Also, be sure to check out our YouTube channel if you would like to watch these full interviews and also the shorter interviews on more specific topics that are taken from these full interviews. We've gotten really good feedback over there. It's also a really fun way to interact with people who comment. We read and reply to every single YouTube comment we get, so head on over there.
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