Lessons from the Ketoverse

Is the Ketogenic Diet Sustainable?

• Graham • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Is the ketogenic lifestyle truly sustainable, or just another passing dietary trend? This question confronts many who are curious about low-carb eating but hesitant to commit due to perceived challenges. In this candid conversation, Stephen and Graham shatter common misconceptions through their lived experiences.

The financial aspect of keto often raises eyebrows. Many assume ribeye steaks will bankrupt them, but both hosts reveal surprising economic realities. Stephen shares how his previous vegetarian diet actually cost more, with $500 monthly supplement bills and persistent nutrient deficiencies. Graham explains how naturally reduced meal frequency on keto—eating twice daily without snacking—substantially lowers food expenses despite buying higher-quality ingredients. The math simply works differently when your body operates efficiently.

Social pressure presents another significant barrier. Both hosts navigated judgment from friends and family who believed they were endangering their health. Stephen, whose wife remains vegetarian while he follows a carnivore approach, demonstrates how diverse eating patterns can coexist harmoniously. Through improved biomarkers and visible health transformations, they gained the confidence to withstand criticism. Interestingly, many skeptics eventually began adopting similar approaches after witnessing their results.

Perhaps most compelling is their physical transformation. Stephen, approaching 58, recently matched his college bench press numbers. Graham transitioned from struggling with daily dog walks to enjoying multiple 3-kilometer treks daily. Their energy, mobility, and strength flourished on ketogenic patterns—contradicting fears about physical decline without carbohydrates.

For those concerned about the infamous "keto flu," both hosts offer perspective and practical solutions. This temporary discomfort pales in comparison to the chronic digestive issues, energy crashes, and health concerns many experience on standard diets. As Stephen poignantly states, "I don't worry about where public washrooms are anymore." Sometimes sustainability isn't just about maintaining a diet—it's about creating a life worth living.

Curious about transforming your relationship with food? This episode provides honest insights from two individuals who've walked the path and found sustainable health on the other side. Subscribe now and join us on this journey to metabolic freedom.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Join Stephen and Graham as they explore the keto lifestyle with tips, science and stories to boost your health. This podcast isn't medical advice. Consult your healthcare advisor for any health-related issues. Get ready to fuel your primal power.

Graham:

And welcome to another episode of Lessons from the Keto-Verse. I'm with my friend, Stephen. My name is Graham and we are talking about the ketogenic diet and whether it is sustainable. Lots of ways to define sustainable. That can be cost, that can be around nutrient deficiency, that can be around social limitations, variety and monotony, long-term health concerns. Lots of different ways to consider what is sustainable, and that is what we're discussing today. Stephen, welcome to the episode.

Stepen:

Thanks very much, Graham. Happy to be here.

Graham:

All right, so why don't we start off with the initial high cost of the ketogenic diet or carnivore diet? This is something that I hear a lot from people. Either it's too expensive for me or I don't know how you afford it, or how much more is your bill these days, because they think of the ribeye steak or whatever as something that is going to be in addition to what they're buying in their grocery cart every week, and so this just means that their monthly bills are going to go up by hundreds. Stephen, I thought I'd start off with you. I'm certainly happy to give my perspective as well, because you come to this from maybe not a completely unique perspective, but a unique perspective, and that you started off with what some might consider another type of extreme diet. Why don't you take it from there?

Stepen:

Yeah, sure, Thanks, Grant, yeah. So when I was diagnosed with diabetes approximately seven years ago, I immediately embarked on a vegetarian-vegan diet and thinking that perhaps that that would normalize my sugar and improve outcomes. And at that time, because I was focusing primarily on vegetarian slash vegan, trying to address some of the symptoms and issues I was having with my general digestion and general feeling, I did lose some weight going on the vegetarian vegan diet, but the cost to it I would not consider substantially less than it would be on a keto carnivore diet. And let me explain why. My supplementation or consumption of high-end supplements that I was getting from a naturopath would cost me over $500 a month. And ironically, when I came off the diet and switched to keto carnivore gram, it was very interesting because I had a blood test taken and I was found to be very low in B12, magnesium and other elements B1 as well because I hadn't been consuming meat and interestingly, that associated high cost is understandable. I mean, you gave a great example. You know people look at steak and the price of steak. So interestingly, there is an element of that where I could understand where people are coming from, Because in North America presently there is a shortage of beef.

Stepen:

That's a result of environmental issues, which has ultimately led to the classic demand supply problem the supply is lower to the classic demand supply problem. The supply is lower, the herds are smaller because of weather conditions, drought and so forth has drastically reduced the number of cattle that are being herded right now by the typical farms that feed into the supply chain for beef, for instance. So there's certainly a reality to it, but from a supply chain perspective, the same applies. Obviously, if we have drought, that's going to affect the crops that we would consume as a vegan or vegetarian. So I think generally, groceries are more expensive. It's not specific to meat.

Graham:

Yeah, I would completely agree with that. I think you know the high cost of a ketogenic or a carnivore diet is something that I probably would have said would have been a concern. I backed into the diet. It wasn't something that I sought initially, it was more an elimination for me, ended up eliminating everything. But you know, know very low carbs and high protein, fat. And you know one of the things that maybe people don't consider, because when I was on that standard American diet, I was eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was also snacking throughout the day. That's something that people don't necessarily remember. So maybe on the way to work they're also grabbing, you know, along with the beverage, they're grabbing something to eat. Well, that's food that you've spent. That could be 10 or 15 bucks right there. You know that after dinner snack, that late night snack. I was terrible with the late night snacks, not that they cost a ton of money, but you're doing it 30 days a month and all that stuff can add up and I, as I, you know, started to learn how to read ingredients on the, on the back of the box, not, not, not on the label, and I started to put that stuff in the middle of the grocery, not on the label, and I started to put that stuff in the middle of the grocery store, back on the shelf the bag of chips, the bread, all of these things that were told are maybe healthy for us or have that heart healthy symbol on them. I put them away and I started to grab more protein, fat, and if it was going to be carbs, it was going to be whole food carbs, whole vegetables, whole fruits, that kind of thing. The amount of the number of meals I needed in the day went from, you know, three meals a day, plus snacks let's call them four or five meals a day down to two at the most. And you know those. Those two were highly saturated, highly nutrient, dense foods, and so I wasn't hungry two hours later. I didn't need the snack. I didn't need those snacks in the house anymore. I didn't need to buy those snacks. And when I go to the grocery store, in the past it would take, you know, six boxes worth of food to bring home, to put in the shelves, and I, you know, it might cost me 350 bucks. Today I'm filling two boxes. That might cost me 300 bucks, but it's lasting me the same amount of time because I'm eating a lot less meals. I'm getting the nutrients that I need, because I did track my nutrients for six months to make sure. So I'm eating a lot less from the amount of time, I'm eating about the same volume, but I'm getting far more nutrients than I have in the past. So even though I would have said, yes, the ketogenic or carnivore diet is going to be more expensive, I have found in the long run that it is not more expensive for me.

Graham:

There's a couple of other things to consider. I think the most important thing is if you live with a spouse, are they along for the ride? Because if you have a spouse who is, let's say, on a completely different way of eating than you are whether it's the standard American diet or whether it's a vegetarian diet obviously you're going to have to spend more money as a family or as a couple to meet your nutrition needs or your food needs. If you're on the same way of thinking and my wife and I are very aligned in that and very supportive of each other we're having the same meals almost every evening. Often we'll have breakfast at different times because we have different schedules, but in the evening we try and eat together and we'll have the same meal. So that also helps cut down on costs.

Graham:

And I think the second thing to consider is something that I find really important is not just sourcing nutrient-dense foods like beef, for example, but coming up with creative ways to cook that food so that you want to eat at home. One of the things that I found when we were on the standard American diet is I was so bored with what I had that we want to go out and eat more often than we do today, so we might eat out a couple of three times, four times, a month. Well, each time we'd go out it'd be 75, 100 bucks. That adds on to the bill. A lot of people don't consider that a grocery bill, but actually, if you're not eating out, that money stays in your wallet, and so you do end up with a lot more money at the end of the month.

Graham:

So if you can come up with ways to make your meals creatively amazing and spend the time to learn how to cook as best as possible to make those meals really, really nutritious, you don't look forward to going to a restaurant because you can cook it better at home. You know where the food has come from. You know how it was cooked, you know what ingredients are going into it, and there's a sense of pride in making something for yourself and knowing that you're not only helping yourself but your family as well. What about things like social limitations, stephen? So I imagine you have some stories of you know telling people that you're on this crazy ketogenic or carnivore diet and there being a bit of a sort of social impact what would you call it sort of this immediate reaction of that must be bad for you, because I've been told my whole life that saturated fat is going to kill you. Is this something that can lead people astray, and how did you overcome it?

Stepen:

Yeah, like there's a couple of things I wanted to touch on. I thought your comments around the fact that we can prepare a meal better from home than we can in a restaurant. I mean, I think you're right. We become kind of food snobs a little bit because I know, like you just described, the steak that I purchase at my local butcher is so much more expensive in a restaurant and because I'm in a small town, I can't meet the quality of what I can produce in my own home to what I would be paying twice or three times as much in a restaurant.

Stepen:

So I would say one of the social factors is the fact that it takes a little bit more for me to be encouraged to go out and eat out for dinner with friends, and usually it has to be some sort of special occasion or a restaurant that specifically caters to one of my favorites, which would be a roast beef meal, and, unlike yourself and your wife, my wife is a vegetarian, has remained such for more than 40 years, and so we respect each other's choices. But as a general rule, we do not go out that much, but when we do, she eats what she wants to eat and I eat what I want to eat and we don't typically get too much pushback. Occasionally, someone will note that I'm the one with the meat on the plate and she does not, and they'll query that a bit and ask you know how we've managed to align as a couple, having very different meal choices, as well as whether it's ethically driven or if there's a specific reason health-wise as to why it's being done. And that usually, graham, leads me into discussing my diabetes and discussing how I've reversed it and had great health outcomes by finding a balance between a keto carnivore diet. And I think it's important to point out too that in these social settings, you're likely not going to get me to eat something that I don't want to eat because, as I said in our previous podcast, no one else can take on the flu that, I feel, is the consequence of eating food that is clearly not good for me, especially ultra processed foods, elevate sugar, so I'm I'm a bit difficult to shift, but after they get over the initial shock of you know, here's here's a couple of these, completely different for different reasons, and uh and has a very good health. Why is it that you continue down this path?

Stepen:

And it comes back to what we discussed before. I have a CGM. I monitor my sugar constantly and in fact the last couple of days have had a rush of cortisol just due to work stress, just like you. And one of the ways I learned to arrest that was actually following the guidelines from David Asbury, who talks about biohacks. And I had a strict carnivore diet last night of steak Graham and if my glucose meter was at ECG I'd be pronounced dead right. It was completely flat all night, hovering in the high fives and I'm perfectly fine with that. And I did not have a big morning rise and I wasn't drawn to need to have breakfast straight away in the morning. And when I did have a breakfast and break my fast, I had a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs. And I haven't eaten since 10.30 this morning and we're about six, seven hours later and I'm not even remotely hungry.

Graham:

And you didn't have to snack between those two times, which means you didn't consume any food that you'd had to buy at the grocery store.

Stepen:

No, and in fact I didn't eat until I came back from the gym. I also went to the gym, fasted again, following the guidelines of David Asbury and others. So it's worth noting that. You know it's almost a medicine for me, at least in what I've served with my sugar, and I avoid ultra-processed and high-carb foods anyway. But there's still instances where, you know, through illness or through stress or other factors, your cortisol rise and your body when it's under stress will release cortisol which will cause your sugar to rise.

Stepen:

So it takes a little bit more to either apply some intermittent fasting or maybe extend it an hour or two until your sugar stabilizes and then consume a very satiating meal of meat, high quality meat and Graham, I was going to ask you about that what are your thoughts on people's comments about meat and defining meat in terms of the quality that you're consuming? Yeah, do you mean specifically the source of the meat or the fact that we all quote unquote have believed that meat is bad for us in general. Unless it's a high-end restaurant, it's still an industrial farm with lower-cost meat than what you and I can purchase retail. They're getting it wholesale. But yeah, I would say please comment on both of those. I think it's important that we discuss that.

Graham:

Yeah, I think that is a really critical point. What I'd like to sort of platform that or at least apply some basic learnings to that which is in getting to this, getting to the point where you've got to a ketogenic or a carnivore diet, you've decided this is what you want to do and you know there are going to be stages of getting there. There's sort of going to be this preliminary, you know idea that maybe I need a change. There's going to be this next phase, which is more of a you know, I'm starting to recognize that I do need to change. That can either be an external force, like a doctor in my case, saying your blood work is going the wrong direction and if you keep going down this road, you're going to be on medication and that means you're going to be on this medication for the rest of your life or it could be internal, something that you know. You look at yourself and say that I just can't live this way anymore. It may be overweight, it may be irritable bowel syndrome, maybe arthritis, it may be a number of things that you don't even know are related to food and you start to do the research and you realize maybe it is related, and so I think one of the things that helped me in being confident about my decision because I was, you know, I didn't know anybody else that was doing this you and I were doing this at the same time, we weren't staying in contact on a daily basis and so I didn't have the support that I probably I could have used from you, just because we were doing our own separate things. Every time we speak we pick up like no time has been lost, but we just hadn't spoken a while and so, feeling like a bit of a pioneer, and a scared pioneer, but still going to push through, I ended up getting my own blood work and I've talked about this before and over the time that I made the changes that I made and, like I said, I backed into this sort of ketogenic diet where I ended up going back to that doctor 14 months later dropped 50 pounds, felt great, felt actually 30 years younger, could fit in clothes that I could wear 30 years before. Arthritis was gone, my torn rotator cuff was significantly improved, no irritable bowel syndrome Basically every health concern I had was gone and I was pretty confident my blood work was going to be good.

Graham:

But obviously you don't know until, you know, got the blood work back and that ended up building the confidence that I needed to stand up to anybody who was questioning my diet. Because, at the end of the day, I was getting a lot of peer pressure, a lot of family pressure, that this was the wrong thing to do. And I think you start to realize who your friends are in these situations, because I had friends that were, you know, I'm lucky to have a big group of very close friends that I've known for a long time and I invest in those relationships because they are critically important. And you know, some were I would say a small percentage were very supportive and very interested. A percentage were concerned and this is a weird way of eating and I've never heard of this before, but they certainly weren't judgmental about it. And then, I would say, more family members were judgmental, thinking that I'm going to kill myself because obviously, you know saturated fat and meat are the root of all evil and they're going to kill everybody. But they had done absolutely no investigation into the source of, you know, metabolic disease and whether meat actually is bad for you. And so, having that confidence and having that knowledge and knowing where the information about saturated fat came from, and the fact that it was not based on any scientific methodology that is worth consideration allows you to then stand up and say no, I actually feel that I'm, you know, doing the right thing. It's working for me.

Graham:

Everything has been reversed and you start to see a change, and this is what I found. So, when it comes to these social limitations, you start to see a change in your friends over a couple of years, those friends at the beginning who were saying that's interesting, let me hear more about it. All of a sudden, you know, the next time you talk to them, they say, yeah, I've actually made a couple of changes. The next time you talk to them, I've made a few more changes. The next time you talk to them, they say, well, I'm down 22 pounds. This is fantastic, I've never felt better.

Graham:

And and you know the friends that were a little bit concerned, thinking this is a weird way of eating, they take a little longer. But all of a sudden they're coming back saying, yeah, I've actually cut this out, cut that out, and never felt better. And so there's a bit of a, I guess, an absolution, saying you know what, maybe your way of eating wasn't the weird way all along and it just took some people some time to give it some consideration and the fact is they didn't have any judgment all the way through. The people that showed major judgment still haven't done anything about it and are getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And there's not much you can do. You can't save everybody, but if you walk the walk and talk the talk and you can actually demonstrate results, you know over time you're going to see people actually turn themselves around using you as some of the inspiration, as some of the inspiration.

Stepen:

I'm not sure if that answered your initial question, stephen, but I wanted to just sort of set that stage for some of the social limitations that I've experienced. Yeah, I think those limitations are valid and I think people generally share their views or their viewpoint. Because, fundamentally and I don't want to get deep into the psychology of it but a belief is not a truth. A belief is a conceived idea that's formulated over time and reinforced by judgment. So a belief system that says and you touched on it saturated fats are bad and meat is bad, or consuming a carnivore keto diet let's call it that is bad. What's interesting, my cholesterol was higher as a vegetarian than it was as a carnivore keto, essentially being on a carnivore keto diet. That would surprise a lot of people.

Stepen:

Yeah, and it's when you, when you start looking, peeling back the onion, asking well, how can that possibly be well when you're consuming inflammatory foods? A lot of the the grains, for instance, that are are um, are gmo, and you have dysbiotic bacterias result in your system. So you're not metabolizing or leveraging the hormone insulin in your body effectively. There's all these critical knockdown effects and it's kind of like it's like a simple analogy. You can say, okay, well, what is it that you eat then? Well, I would put it back onto you and say are you paying attention to what you're eating? Because you think you're consuming a good blend of a meal, because it's got meat in it, it's got protein, it's got some vegetables, it's got some whole grains, but that's a description for an entire plate of nachos graham that are 2,500 calories. So whether the beef on it was grass-fed and free range is likely not going to have much of an effect. If everything else around it is highly ultra-processed and included in that meal, you'll be drawn to the lowest common denominator. I find it interesting that people will fixate on one specific area on their plate. In reality, they're consuming possibly one item on that plate that could be described as reasonably healthy and everything else is ultra processed.

Stepen:

So they come to the wrong conclusion and say well, when I was eating meat, when I was consuming meat, I was on a Lipitor or some other cholesterol drugs. My cholesterol was high from the meat. Well, was on a Lipitor or some other cholesterol drug because my cholesterol was high from the meat? Well, really, are you sure it was from the meat? It's possible if you were consuming very low quality meat and you were consuming fast food, but it wouldn't be. There's not too many people that are walking into the fast food restaurants and asking for just the meat. So there's no way really to assess, considering that you're adding a bun and we know that starches turn almost immediately for sugar into sugar. I've seen it in my own CGM blood results on the very, very rare occasions where I probably should have just fasted but I ended up consuming something that I probably shouldn't have. And then next thing, you know my numbers are in the 15s and the ketchup that the ketchup that's I don't know what 40 percent sugar.

Stepen:

Yes, yes, exactly. I mean, that's a great example. So it doesn't matter, like if you're going to put, you know, if you're going to put a plate together and you've got to call it an expensive, high quality, british grade steak, and then you're, you're throwing, you know, your, your I'm not going to use the name here, but say your local typical French fries that are found in the frozen section. Those fries are full of all kinds of inflammatory seed oils and you know, again, as a former vegetarian, you can say well, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just potatoes. Well, it's not the potatoes that's the problem, it's what's done to them when you're consuming them.

Stepen:

That then creates a problem and causes inflammation. So you could literally walk out of a restaurant having eaten steak and say, see, I've just had an IBS reaction. I'm very much in touch with that. It's got to be that steak or it's got to be that chicken. Well, no, it's probably because your food is coming from a restaurant that's predominantly putting ultra-processed items on top of it, including increasing the amount of sodium, and you've probably consumed bread which has elevated your sugar and you may have had a reaction as a consequence to how high your sugar was. And if you're chasing it down with beer and I'm not here to preach against drinking alcohol, but certainly it's going to put a load on your system, so you're going to pile.

Stepen:

Let's use a nachos example and a beer again, you're going to put all those calories in there all at once and add alcohol. And if you do the research and I know you know this, graham, you do the research the liver becomes very occupied with the consumption of alcohol and singularity when it's in the system, which means it can't focus on anything else. It can't work on anything else because it treats the alcohol like a neurotoxin and so, consequently, you're not efficiently processing that food, which means it's going to sit in your system longer, which means if there's bad stuff that's in it now, you've reintroduced more toxins that may be harmful to your entire system.

Graham:

Yeah, I think, and just to touch on your previous point about the quality of meat. So when people think about what we talked about at the beginning, is it sustainable from a cost perspective? People think, well, I can't eat a ribeye every single meal, so you know I don't have $25 a meal to spend, and it is my opinion that you know the cheapest ground beef and the cheapest eggs are better from a nutrition and health point of view, better for you than almost anything in the middle of the grocery store, and so you don't have to spend a ton of money to realize the quality improvements from a ketogenic diet. From a ketogenic diet, if the best you can afford are all beef, hot dogs and whatever eggs you can get your hands on and whatever ground beef you can get your hands on.

Graham:

If that's where you need to start, that's where you should start. It goes back to better than um, and you know, is beef from a regenerative farm uh, where the animals are well uh taken care of Um. They get to uh roam the fields uh when the weather's appropriate and they get to eat what they want and, you know, live generally happy lives uh on a farm. That's uh regenerating the soil. Yes, that is the ultimate way to go about it, and I believe that you know finding a farmer whether it's someone a farmer that has to, you know, deliver the stuff to you through the mail, or whether it's a farmer that you can go and visit some. In some cases, that's impossible. You know, it's all about striving for the best you can do at the time that you can do it, and so I believe, at the end of the day, getting the best source of beef is critical, but it is not a game changer when it comes to trying out this way of eating. I think it's something that um, people can strive to, but they don't necessarily need to start there.

Graham:

I wanted to get into something that um, I get a lot of reaction about steven and I wondered if you do, um, when you know people are interested in this idea of the ketogenic diet or the carnivore diet, something that I get not pushback or maybe it's a pushback inquiry about is the keto flu, this scary, dangerous thing that's going to happen to you when you go from the standard American diet to you know closer to or to a ketogenic or carnivore diet. Talk to me about your experience, because you've gone the full gamut from vegan vegetarian all the way to keto carnivore. Tell me about your experience with the keto flu. How did you deal with it? How bad was it and what did it look like on the other side?

Stepen:

Yeah, I would say the first time I ever experienced it call it the keto flu as a consequence of fasting actually came as a result of the need for a colonoscopy, and that was an interesting period. When I turned 50, I found out it was a diabetic full diabetic and then I was scheduled for a number of tests, including a colonoscopy, and I had to fast for basically 24 hours. I thought I was going to die. I had an incredible headache, I felt like I had the flu and I was just in absolutely terrible shape.

Stepen:

In fact, the colonoscopy was a breeze, but the preparation, as many people say, that you go through, I mean I really struggled because my diabetes was a reflection of my addiction to sugar-laden foods and so, coming off of that, my body was in massive alarm and I had sort of forgotten about that feeling. Thankfully, we don't have to have them, but once every five years at our present age and, I would highlight, I've since had one, since being on the carnivore diet, and I had a clean bill of health the first time. There was a couple of worrisome things that they wanted corrected, which included increasing fiber, so I incorporated diet into my keto diet, so I already saw the benefit which is arguably difficult to misrepresent, given that I had made a massive change in diet.

Graham:

And this is something that people have a huge concern about, right Is this is going to cause major colon problems, colon cancer. This is what's going to destroy my life, and you found the exact opposite.

Stepen:

Yeah, I had polyps at first you know not to get off track and then all of a sudden I didn't have any and you know, and I'd I'd recommend that people do their research with respect to that. But that's a really, really good point. So, because you know now, my body was processing what it was consuming saturated fats much like we did when we were children. None of the because actually I should probably point out, as we're talking about that, please take a look at the foods you're consuming and note that anything that says light, light fat, look at the sugar content in those compared to the ones that have just regular fat in them, and you'll note that the way that have just regular fat in them, and you'll note that the way that they make a light version of yogurt is by adding more sugar to it. Cottage cheese the same thing. Ask yourself the question why do we need sugar in our cottage cheese? And clearly the answer is we don't. And if you look at the amount of sugar that is in some yogurts, it's more than you'll find in a can of coke. So it's startling how much we're adulterated with sugars and that's part of the problem.

Stepen:

So where that flu tends to go away is as you begin to move your diet away from high starch, high carb, you will naturally find that the the flu will go from a day or two of not feeling very well and, in my particular case and, by the way, even though my wife is a vegetarian vegan, she practices the flu will go from a day or two of not feeling very well and, in my particular case, and by the way, even though my wife is a vegetarian vegan, she practices intermittent fasting as well, and we'll call it the 11 am queasies. So there'll be about a five or 10 minute period literally not more than 10 minutes where we'll still sometimes feel a little bit nauseous. But I have to compare that, graham, to how I felt with IBS, fully consuming a standard American diet, being sick all the time. Sometimes my body would automatically process the food I just consumed, sometimes within minutes after consuming it, so I was getting a full IBS reaction. How could that possibly be healthy?

Stepen:

So this keto flu, or however many people describe it, is very, very short in duration and as you continue to practice it. We're not talking about prolonged fasts here. We're talking about 24 hours or less. We're just talking about intermittent fasting, not a prolonged fast, prolonged fast, is a different discussion and requires different protocols like sodium and potassium and other supplementation. But just for skipping a meal, going to one meal a day or two meals a day, as you and I have done, I candidly can't recall the last time that it lasted more than five minutes.

Graham:

Yeah, I think you just made a profound point there about comparing something like the keto flu to having irritable bowel syndrome. You know having to be on some kind of GLP-1,. You know eating suppressant or digestive suppressant. You know being potentially overweight and all of the potential health issues around that the serious potential health issues around diabetes and worrying about something like the keto flu. Maybe you don't have your priorities straight at that point and maybe you don't understand how to compare the two. I liken this a lot because I get this question all the time about the keto flu and this is potentially what's stopping somebody from giving this a try, and I think one of the challenges is we don't know what feeling good feels like until we feel good again.

Stepen:

And I think that's very good. My friend.

Graham:

Yeah, I think we remember sorry, I think we know we didn't have a care in the world when we were in our early 20s and we could down a box of Kraft dinner and maybe another one and go out and run a marathon or whatever. We could just do whatever we wanted. I think a lot of people who decide to get into the ketogenic world are well into their 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s, 70s, and so it has been so long since we've actually felt good that we worry about things like the keto flu versus how we're actually feeling today. No-transcript. And so you, you do see an initial weight loss which has more to do with water than it does, um, you know, fat, and so with that dumping of um, of, of, uh, of of liquid, uh, or losing a lot of water in the body, it's also going to flush a lot of nutrients out of the body as well. So one of the things that I always recommend is up your electrolytes. Electrolytes are something that probably not a lot of people even consider on the standard American diet. Electrolytes are absolutely critical for our body to run optimally, and so there are electrolytes out there. I recommend looking at the unflavored ones. They don't have. For the most part. They don't have maltodextrin. The flavored ones do have maltodextrin. That is something that you'll want to check and see if that's for you. Obviously, the flavored ones taste better, but they may also trigger your interest in other sweet things that contain sugar. So the unflavored electrolytes are going to give you exactly what you need. You can dump those unflavored electrolytes into any drink you want. I have them first thing in the morning and then I go for a long walk, and the keto flu for me was probably a couple of days. And then, getting to the other side, I realized at that point what good feels like, and I realized, you know, a couple of months ago I didn't realize how bad I actually felt because I didn't have much to compare it to. I had the day before to compare it to and that I had the day before that to compare it to. And every day, as you're getting sicker and sicker and sicker, by a small percentage point, you lose perspective as to how sick you get when you hit rock bottom. And, like I said, rock bottom's different for everybody, different for everybody, and so my suggestion is don't worry about the keto flu. There are ways to try and reduce the impact of that keto flu. But if you're really interested in experiencing what good feels like, you're going to have to get through something like that, and when you come out the other side, I'm confident that you're going to have to get through something like that and when you come out the other side, I'm confident that you're going to feel that that was well well worth it.

Graham:

Stephen, I wanted to talk to you about variety and monotony. So I hear this a lot. I can't eat steak every day. That's gross. I need my variety, I need my ice cream, I need this and that. How have you overcome this challenge of the ketogenic diet, really reducing the amount of food that you can eat in the store? I know I probably eat 100 things two years ago. I probably eat 25 things today. I probably eat 25 things today, so it's a huge reduction in what I'm actually consuming. Some people feel that that is a hill they can't overcome. What say you?

Stepen:

Yeah, that's a really great point, and I guess my first comment would be define food, because a lot of times when people are talking about variety, what they're really saying and you touched on ice cream and other immune system and metabolic reactions so when you start cutting those things out, and if your baseline to your earlier point is, I want to be healthy, I want to have full flexibility, notwithstanding, maybe the first couple of weeks you might have the keto flu. I want to be able to go to events and not worry about having to figure out where a public washroom is, because I know I'm going to be eating food and I'm not sure I can get home. There are going to be a ton of people out there that resonate with what I'm saying. I could tell you where every washroom was within a radius of friends and family, on the way to friends and family, and I could tell you how many times I abstained before I knew anything about intermittent fasting from eating, because I simply did not want to risk having a situation where I could not get to a washroom, public or otherwise. So that's just the hardcore reality that food has caused. So when you go to a keto diet and I'm happy to say I have not had to do that for a very long time. And one of the interesting things is and I know you're feeling a little unwell right now if there was any kind of stomach bug that was going around, I got it so clearly I was immunocompromised.

Stepen:

Again, for those who are type two diabetics, your doctors will tell you that we're sort of immune compromised. It's not an immune disease Type one is, but not type two. It's a lifestyle disease. So when your lifestyle is killing you literally and shortening your life literally, what is it that's actually doing it? And that is the food. So I've come full circle back to saying that if you cut out the junk and you eat a healthy diet and now you can enjoy yourself in social settings and not worry about all the things I just listed, isn't that a better quality of life?

Stepen:

Because, graham, I had a point where I could not and this was around the COVID period, where people weren't traveling anyway I could not go out, and the only time I did go out was late at night when the grocery store in our small town was open, because I didn't want to run into other people for health reasons, because I was concerned I was going to catch everything and I didn't want to be around a ton of people and I certainly didn't want to be out and needing access to a washroom where I might not find one that was available, especially during COVID. So that's a hard reality of what my life was like. So back to your comment about not enough variety. Again, I'll give you a perfect example.

Stepen:

You can go and get an Instapot and find 2 million recipes online and there's probably, I would estimate, 300,000 of them have meat in them. So it's a question of imagination and if you use your imagination and look at different ways, then you're going to find alternatives. And I think to your earlier point you already touched on that is the way that you dealt with that in the past was to go to a restaurant with your wife three, four times a month. You can save the cost of that and possible risk to your system and having setbacks by eating eating from home. I'm not saying don't ever go to a restaurant it was that one on sunday but what I am saying is it's find the ones that suit you. That, uh, provides you access to some variety for what it is you eat, whether you're a keto carnivore or, like me, a hybrid where I do both.

Graham:

Yeah, I think you bring up a really, really important point is there's no easy fix when it comes to our health, and one of the things that I've found is you know, people used to say, hey, you're good at putting a meal together, and what I tell them is I'm actually pretty good at just reading instructions and hitting the button on the oven because the food came in a box or whatever. It came in a can and I can warm it up. I was really good at warming stuff up. That was about the extent of my cooking expertise. I have become a much better cook because I forced myself to learn how to do it and it actually turned out to be really mindful, turned out to be fun, turned out to be something that I enjoy with my wife. Sometimes I'll cook for her, sometimes she'll cook for me, sometimes we'll cook together. We just, you know, when I know she needs a break, she's had a long day, or vice versa, or we just want to hang out together and have a chat and and make something together. We just make it fun and, yes, it helps that we're eating the same thing, but that doesn't in your case. You. You've shown that that isn't a requirement either, and I think there are no easy fixes when it comes to this. And so if today you are, the food that you're eating comes from a box and it has the, you know, beautiful looking label on the front that makes you feel good about what you're eating looking label on the front that makes you feel good about what you're eating. But if you, you know, learn how to read the ingredients and you look on the back and you realize, oh my God, I can't believe I've been eating this for this long. And you put that back on the shelf. You're going to have to pick something up and maybe cook it from scratch, and that is going to take longer. But you know that's an investment in your health, and I think that's an investment in your health, that's an investment in your family. And you know the variety of food, or this fear of monotony I think a lot of it comes from, maybe, a place of laziness, and I don't mean that in a bad way, because I've gone through it as well. I don't mean that in a judgmental way.

Graham:

I remember, you know, looking at the ingredients of a spaghetti that we were making because my family was, you know, a couple of months behind me, and so they'd make something and I'd read the ingredients and I didn't want that and I'd make my own thing. They've come a long way since, and so that isn't something that we have to deal with as much. And one day I decided you know what? I'm going to make a spaghetti for you guys, because what they were eating was North American pasta that has glyphosates in it. I couldn't recognize three quarters of the ingredients in the pasta sauce that came in a jar. We were using the green Parmesan cheese that you buy in the middle of the grocery store. I don't think I could find anything that actually reminded me that it was cheese in the ingredient list, but of course it, you know, said it was cheese on the front, so it must be cheese. And so one day I decided you know what I'm going to try this? I'm going to go and I'm going to buy some pasta that was made in Italy. They don't have glyphosates there. The pasta was $1 more for a package.

Graham:

I ended up buying some pasta sauce In my case it was rails, but there's a few choices out there because I could understand every single ingredient in that pasta sauce. I then bought some, uh, fatty ground beef, uh, and that I it was from a farmer. I knew exactly where it came from. I could see the cows. They were free range, regenerative farm. They were treated well. Uh, the the farmer was a fantastic individual, had a fantastic family and I was very happy that my money was going to him.

Graham:

And then I, I got some bone broth. Uh, because broth? Because my kids are, you know, in varying stages of eating nutrition. But you know they are more towards the standard American diet and I know that was affecting them, and so I put this together. I also ended up buying some European Parmesan cheese, because they don't pasteurize the cheese there and that can help with, you know, promoting the right kind of gut biomes. And so I put all of this together. You know, freshly ground Parmesan on top the bone broth was hidden. They didn't even know it was in there. And they all, at the end of the meal, said that is the best spaghetti I've ever had in my life.

Graham:

And yeah, it took more effort, not a lot of effort. I was still opening a package of pasta and boiling it. I was still opening a jar of pasta sauce. So not a lot of effort of pasta sauce. So not a lot of effort, but I was just finding better sources of that food. Was it more expensive? Sure, it was a couple of bucks more expensive per person in the family, but we've never gone back since, and now we have a staple in the family.

Graham:

Yes, pasta is not carnivore, it's, you know. You could argue it's not even keto, but I wasn't going to get my family all the way to that side, and nor am I going to pull them that way. I'm just going to show them what good looks like, and if they want to come along, they can, and they decided that was the best pasta they've ever had. And now they want me to make it when friends come over, at family events, that kind of thing, and so you can actually have fun with this, and I think variety or lack of monotony is something that you just have to work hard for, but at the end of the day, it is achievable. Go ahead, stephen.

Stepen:

Yeah, I was just going to say. I mean, you raised a few good points. I would say that there's also a benefit to preparing your own food that way. I was the kind of guy I grew up in a traditional family where, you know, mom prepared all our meals and that was part of her love language, it's part of how she communicated. So I've always had a soft spot for, you know, my partner preparing meals and doing that sort of thing. But what I discovered in the course of my wife continuing down the path of vegetarian, I started to.

Stepen:

We initially, we actually initially tried a number of these organizations that will basically provide a meal in a box and it's all fresh, and I won't name any of the names of them, but I think most people know what I'm talking about and they were pretty good for a while because there was lots of variety and so forth. But then we started to notice that a number of the meals didn't actually appeal to us. So now you've got this outlay, this cost, and you're still putting it together. Sure, it's not the same as going to your local farmer, as you said, or going to to your your local grocer and and picking out the items and showing a little bit of creativity and, as you said, you can have somewhat fun with it, even if you're doing it by yourself. There's there's an interesting perspective that we touched on in a previous podcast about emoto. That's e-m-o-t-o, and he was the pioneer behind understanding how not going to woo, but how people's emotions could be imprinted on water, and they were able to show that by flash freezing the water. And you may say well, you know, what does that have to do with what we're talking about? The vast majority, whether it's meat or vegetables that you're consuming, has water in it.

Stepen:

So I think one of the important things that we've missed over the years or the decades certainly from the way I was brought up as a young child, still with my grandparents coming from the old country is that when they prepared their own bread and what's interesting, in contrast to the bread we get today, is, you know, when you go to the back of your fridge and find a loaf of bread, it's like a treasure hunt. It's been there for three weeks and it looks just perfectly fine, like it did on the shelf. That's not a good thing. When we were eating unprocessed breads, that stuff would go bad in three days. You would have a small plant growing on it because they didn't have all the preservatives in the food. So this is just our reality now.

Stepen:

The reality is that we're not eating the same way, we're not cooking as much, and you know, I was a single father for a long time, so I can hear the people out there going listen, you guys have missed an important thing. I'm way too busy to come home and prepare a big meal. Well, I got this to say to you this morning. I had eggs and bacon. It took I timed it for this for this podcast. It took me just under seven minutes to prepare very thinly sliced bacon and three eggs and I finished them in under five minutes. So I had a 12-minute lunch.

Graham:

Amazing. It's so interesting around the lead-in from ketogenic diets to our sort of day-to-day you've talked about this. You know knowing where every washroom is along the way there's a lot of people that can relate to these things even in your own building knowing where the washroom is at work or whatever. Or you know being happy to be at home because your washroom is not only your own but it's very close by and it's private. Stephen, you're a very physical guy. You're at the gym all the time. What have you found in your journey around basically eliminating carbs for the most part and people's concern around? Listen, I'm physically active. I can't afford to give up carbs. It's going to ruin my training regimen. How have you found that changing, like I said, from a variety of different ways of eating has affected your ability to be physically active?

Stepen:

Yeah, it's a great point and a very good question. I think it depends mostly on the type of food you're consuming, the quality of food you're consuming and the type of exercise you are doing. So I'm doing a combination of low impact. I live in a small town with access to trails on my property, so walking the dogs is low impact. I don't need a lot of carbs for that kind of an activity. Same with the gym. I'm more interested in the protein and if I am consuming carbs, they're going to be carbs that are associated with saturated fats, like, for instance, greek yogurt and what have you. And I provide that sort of as a baseline. And today, just as a matter of fact, you know, here I am encroaching on my 58th birthday and I just bench press the same weight that I used to bench press in college, which was just under 225 pounds. So there's and it's fair to ask you know, were you able to do that when you're a vegetarian? I was quite a bit more sick with my diabetes, so I don't think it's a fair comparison and I want to suggest you can't lift weights and still be strong as a vegetarian, because I believe it's worth checking. But I believe one of the strongest men in the world is a pure vegetarian. You know, gorillas are vegan and they're the strongest land animals on the planet, and so forth, and our anatomy is pretty close to theirs. But, all that being said, I've had no negative effects.

Stepen:

Now, if you're going to and I go back to Dr Berg and David Asbury again for this if you're doing marathons, you do need carbs and you will need carbs. And if you're doing a prolonged fast, you're going to need probably some professional assistance, whether it's a medical doctor or a naturopath, and I would make sure my medical doctor was more trained in nutrition than both you and I are in terms of what we know and what we understand. But you definitely need to keep an eye on your sodium, your potassium, when you're doing extended fast, because what you're doing when you're doing a fast, you're putting the body under stress and then you layer on top doing a marathon. It's not very wise to go out and run a marathon on an extremely low carb diet at that point, because you need those carbs, you need to be able to process them. But we're talking about people that will burn, you know, four or five, 10,000 calories a day, and that's not most of us.

Stepen:

The same applies, I think, to women, whether pre-menopause or post-menopause. It's worth doing the research to find out what their body does and then monitor it accordingly, because some women certainly if you're pregnant, you know I wouldn't recommend any kind of intermittent fasting, but the fasting process itself and then going to the gym and then eating within 30 minutes causes your T-MOR. It's capital. T-m-o-r causes it to absolutely balloon, and that's one of the elements that helps increase muscle mass, and muscle mass is created from proteins. So the combination of the right time, the timing of what you eat, stacking which is a biohack where you eat Perhaps if you're on keto, you would eat something that is perhaps like a salad.

Stepen:

It will coat your stomach and reduce the absorption or slow the rate of sugar absorbed into the bloodstream, so you don't get the sugar spikes All of those things help remarkably when it comes to the gym, because if you're in a sugar spike, what does that mean?

Stepen:

Is you're going to be in a sugar, your sugar is going to drop rapidly, and if you're in the gym working out and your sugar drops dramatically, it can even be dangerous. So these are things, particularly if you're a diabetic and if you're taking any kind of drugs like metformin. Those are things that you need to monitor, and I was for a time on metformin. I had huge digestive issues with it, so I got off it, but I definitely could not perform very well in the gym at all on that drug, and so my belief is from my own experience is there's nothing wrong with fasting before a meal if it's weight training or or just going for a light walk. But if you're doing an extended fast, you should probably stay to just a walk and not do the heavy weight training, because it's just putting more stress in your body.

Graham:

That's probably not required heavy weight training because it's just putting more stress in your body that's probably not required. Yeah, really well said. And I'll take the other side of that, which is my experience around. Let's call it two years ago, sitting on the couch wanting to go for a walk with the dog, and just struggling to get off the couch and get the boots on and the winter jacket or whatever, depending on what season it is, and as I reduced the carbs and the junk food and increased the protein and the fats, I just had more energy and so I went from. And so I went from struggling to do a couple of walks with the dog a week to getting up every day with the dog, to multiple times a day with the dog, to, you know, three or four, three kilometer walks a day, and sometimes the dog would just look at me like, are you crazy? I'm not going to gain, and the dog would stay home and I'd go out and and I'd use that time to listen to podcasts or listen to books.

Graham:

Um, you know, sometimes it was non-food related, but a lot of times it was food related, because I wanted to do some studying while I was walking and it allowed me to kind of, you know, get into this mindful exercise, enjoy my surroundings, but at the same time, I'm learning something, and so, for the vast majority of people you know, the vast majority of people are not running marathons. The vast majority of people have aches and pains, especially as they get into their 40s, 50s, 60s. They have aches and pains that stop them from any sort of physical exercise. Getting into a ketogenic diet can potentially relieve those symptoms, and it's the only way you're going to find out whether it works for you is to try it. It worked for me and it's going to potentially give you more energy.

Graham:

And at some point you're going to want to information that was actually allowing me to make more and more improvements to. You know my journey and so my take on physical activity as it relates to the ketogenic diet is it's going to have a materially beneficial impact. Again, my experience on your ability to be physically active and if being physically active just means getting out and doing a few thousand steps a day in addition, or getting a few thousand steps a day where you're not getting any today, is a significant improvement and is going to have a potentially a significant impact on your long. That's one thing we should talk about about keto.

Stepen:

I mean I'd recommend that you again look at Dr Fung's work. The nephrologist from Toronto Canada that pioneered intermittent fasting and had patients who were very, very sick on dialysis apply intermittent fasting and they had to go through, I'm sure, a nasty keto flu because they had other contributing symptoms that would have made their lives miserable and that was one of the only ways that he could prevent them from even worse outcomes was applying intermittent fasting. So if it can work for a really sick person that needs dialysis and is waiting for a kidney transplant, imagine what it can do for you.

Graham:

Yeah, 100%. Well said. Thank you, Stephen. I think we've covered a lot today on whether the carnivore or ketogenic diet is sustainable. Did we miss anything, Stephen?

Stepen:

No, I think we covered all the bases for sure. I think it's probably the general questions that people are asking Is it too expensive? Is there any nutrient deficiency? We already highlighted the fact that I was low in B12 and magnesium when I was on a vegetarian diet, and I should just mention too, the supplements I was taking certainly included B12 and magnesium, but I wasn't absorbing it, so absorption is definitely a factor and I would highlight that, like you said, this is the individualized health care it's not generalized health care that you and I applied.

Stepen:

We both did the research, we got the blood tests and we focused on what our bodies needed not what Jerry's and Mike's and Tony's and Sally's needed, but what our bodies needed. As it turned out, you and I aligned and came to the same conclusions, as you said, independently, and got great results. I don't worry about where public washrooms are anymore, you're not worried about the biomarkers in your blood tests anymore and we're both at a very healthy weight. We exercise, we have lots of energy and the minor inconvenience of the occasional keto flu the fact that you know the costs at the grocery store are going up anyway don't compare to the quality, at least for me. The quality of my life was when I was really sick.

Graham:

Yeah, I think that's a perfect place to end the podcast. On that note. Thank you, stephen, as always, and thanks everybody for joining us for this episode of Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Is the ketogenic diet sustainable? We'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning into Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Join Stephen and Graham next time for more keto tips and stories to fuel your health. Subscribe, share and let's keep the keto vibes going.