Lessons from the Ketoverse

Transitioning to Keto - Tips & Tricks

• Graham • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Ready to take your first steps into the world of keto or carnivore eating but feeling overwhelmed? This candid conversation between two friends who accidentally discovered they were on parallel health journeys cuts through the confusion with practical, immediately applicable advice.

Graham and Stephen share their hard-won wisdom about simple food swaps that can dramatically improve your health without requiring a complete lifestyle overhaul. They tackle common misconceptions about dietary fats, revealing why butter trumps margarine, why full-fat products paradoxically help you eat less overall, and how seemingly "healthy" low-fat options often hide surprising amounts of sugar and additives.

The discussion takes fascinating turns into unexpected health benefits many experience when ditching inflammatory foods. Both hosts share personal stories about chronic sinus infections, joint pain, and digestive issues that mysteriously disappeared after changing their eating habits. Their genuine surprise and delight at these "side effects" of better eating offers hope for listeners struggling with similar conditions.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is the emphasis on progress over perfection. The hosts acknowledge that occasional setbacks are normal and offer compassionate advice for getting back on track without self-judgment. Their approachable, non-dogmatic attitude makes complex nutritional concepts accessible, reminding listeners that everyone's journey happens at their own pace.

Whether you're curious about ketogenic eating, considering reducing processed foods, or simply tired of confusing nutrition advice, these straightforward tips provide a roadmap for making meaningful changes that stick. Try just one of these simple swaps this week and notice how your body responds – your journey to better health might be easier than you think.

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:

Hello everyone and welcome to Lessons from the Ketoetoverse. I'm with my friend, Stephen. We are talking about tips and tricks for those people that are, you know, tossing around the idea of a ketogenic or a carnivore diet. They want to reduce the carbs, they want to increase their protein and fat intake. Everyone's got their own reasons for doing so. We won't necessarily talk about those today I'm sure that'll come up on a different podcast but what we want to do is we want to provide some basic tips and tricks for people who are thinking about getting into this. What are some things that people can do to make, you know, even minor changes in their dietary lifestyle to start the journey of their ketogenic or their carnivore diet? Welcome, Stephen, to the episode. Thank you for being here.

Stephen:

Thank you, graham, looking forward to our conversation today.

Graham:

All right, perfect, so let's. These are in no particular order, by the way, although we do have some advice at the end that I think Stephen and I have used on our journey. We've been on this for coming up on two years, I would say, or close to two years, and we've mentioned this in Path Podcast, where we were actually on the same journey. We've known each other for over a decade. We were on the same journey but didn't know specifically about the food-related changes that we'd done. We both came to the same conclusion. We both started on that journey and decided to talk about our journeys. If that can help somebody else who's on the journey, we certainly benefit from listening to others and we hope that you might benefit as well.

Graham:

So my first one on the list, stephen, and this is one that's a bit close to the heart I have some family members who have decided that for them, margarine is a healthier choice than butter. They are from a generation where they grew up and they were adults in the 80s when they were told that butter and bacon and red meat are all going to cause heart disease and you should switch off butter for the same reason. It's high in saturated fat. Since then, I think since 2015, the American Heart Association has come out and said that saturated fat does not cause heart disease. Saturated fat from things like butter, bacon, red meat, even avocado, these sort of things that has no relation to heart disease. But there are still people who genuinely believe that butter is a less healthy choice than something like margarines.

Graham:

And in addition to that, you know, when people ask me about different foods and they'll open the fridge and I'll say, oh, the margarine would be something that I'd start with. They'll say, oh, you know what? I actually picked the margarine that's made with olive oil, or I picked the margarine that's made with this healthy ingredient. I'll actually pick up the margarine container, turn it around. And the second item on the list is canola oil, which, to me, is something that is not good for the gut, very high in omega-6s and can be a real problem. I know, stephen, you've got a lot of information when it comes to this, so my first suggestion is switch to butter. If you can get grass-fed butter, it's a little more expensive. If not, go for the butter that you can afford, but oftentimes grocery stores will have and you might have to look for it up in the corner or on the top shelf or something they might have a grass-fed butter that tastes absolutely delicious and, in my opinion, is in fact healthy. Stephen, what are your thoughts on that first suggestion?

Stephen:

Perhaps with a little humor. I've read and actually witnessed that Margin is one of those products. It's an oil-based product. Actually it's a petroleum-based product and if you put it outside, ants won't go near it. Other animals won't go near it. They won't eat it. However, butter. I've had my Bernese Mountain Dog jump on the countertop and eat an entire bar of butter as a result, and I've never had my dogs come anywhere near Margin when I used to use it because I thought too, oh, it's got olive oil in it. That was pre-diabetes and pre-illness, so I didn't actually pay a lot of attention to ingredients. But I certainly know now that most of what you see on there to your point is marketing as well as look at where it is in the ingredients list. According to laws here you list, the most highest content product is in the ingredients to the lowest content. So if you see it says contains olive oil and olive oil for your heart health and it's number nine on a list of 10 items. There's not very much of it in there.

Graham:

Very well said. The next one on the list here is and again, I have a family member who absolutely loves their pop. It's regular pop. They drank it for a long time. Unfortunately it has affected their teeth. I know it's affecting their health. Although this person is absolutely lovely, wonderful, high on life and has the best attitude of anyone I've ever met, they know that the sodas aren't great for them. Very hard for them to stop.

Graham:

So my suggestion is try and get rid of that high fructose corn syrup or even those diet sodas and I really want to hear from you, stephen, on this one the sweeteners, these artificial sweeteners and we see them on most diet sodas, actually do spike your insulin, not your sugar, which has the same negative effect on our health because, at the end of the day, insulin resistance is caused by a regular insulin spike based on the foods that we eat or the anticipation that sugar is coming, which is what diet soda does. So I would swap high fructose corn syrup sodas and you can read those on the label or even diet sodas with something like sparkling water. You can buy those at the store, although you can buy machines that make that at home and try and get the cleanest water possible, or even natural flavor waters, which, in my opinion, are better than, but not necessarily as good as, something like sparkling water. So swapping sodas for something like sparkling water as so swapping sodas for something like sparkling water as a lifestyle changed even your thoughts.

Stephen:

Yeah, I think that's a good strategy. We've had to do the same. My wife of 17 years actually got me into diet pops and even during the period of diabetes, before I wore a CGM, I was influenced by the marketing that suggested that diet pops don't harm you and they won't raise your sugar. Well, I can tell you candidly they make an absolute mess. They're a grass fire for your intestinal biome. So I know in my particular case from drinking it for years, part of the reason I had dysbiotic bacteria in my intestines and poor general gut health leaky gut, etc. Was caused by a prolific amount of consuming these sodas. So you raise the potential of making your own, so to speak. That's also a word of caution. If you're using SodaStream or one of the other products is, make sure you read what's on there, because it says old-fashioned lemonade. There's nothing old-fashioned about it unless you were a chemist in the 18th century or 19th century, and none of the ingredients that are in there are are particularly healthy.

Graham:

So what you can do is no better than than a, than a soda or a diet soda. These things are exactly the same syrup that they put in the junky pops.

Stephen:

Exactly and like. So, for instance, if you add lemon fresh lemon add a little apple cider vinegar. It'll give you a nice spark to what it is you're consuming. We do that quite regularly. Be cautious when you're doing it, because it is acidic and it will cause the it to bubble up a bit. So use it, enter it in after you've you've done your carbonization slowly, because otherwise you're going to be wearing it. But it's, uh, it's way, way, way, um, healthier. Even just a dash of salt, graham, if you add some celtic salt, uh, and I think I don't know, future podcasts talk about the qualities of salt, but let's assume that you get a good salt, not the stuff that you would necessarily get at a discount store, but actually good quality salt. I sprinkle a little bit of that in there and you can consume lots and lots of that.

Stephen:

The fizziness is usually what people are attracted to, but what they don't realize is there's an addiction associated with sugar. Sugar is considerably more addictive than even cigarettes and it's hitting the dopamine and your brain is reacting to it and consequently it's hard to get off of that stuff. I know it was for me and it's still a challenge for my partner. So don't beat yourself up if you have one occasionally but know that it's not doing you anything other than that effervescent feeling of oh, I remember the feeling of having a you know a can of cola. Beyond that, it's not doing you any good as a diabetic, the assumption that a diet one is doing any better versus the regular. There's a whole bunch of other things that are in the diet pop that are far worse than the syrup that's in a regular pop or soda. So just avoid it if you can.

Graham:

It's funny how many times you and I have realized that the diet version of something or the low-fat version of something is exponentially worse than whatever they were replacing it with, which is part of the frustration of the journey, also part of the enjoyment of learning these things and making lifestyle changes. I'm glad you brought up salt, uh, stephen, because my next one here, and this was a journey for me as well when I started off on this journey I was absolutely convinced that salt was bad for us. Reduce your salt. This is what they tell people when they have, you know, blood pressure problems or heart disease, and certainly we're not here to replace your doctor's advice. But at the same time, we need electrolytes, we need those minerals that are in salt. Our cells benefit from having those electrolytes to allow for water, htl, to enter the cells, which actually gives us that feeling of not being thirsty. A lot of times, when people drink a lot of water and they're still thirsty, they're flushing out a lot of their electrolytes or they lack electrolytes which open up the pathways to allow the cells to absorb that the water and the nutrients. And so my suggestion is to replace the iodized table salt with something like Celtic salt, which I think you're a fan of, redmond salt sea salt. These are, in my opinion, all improvements.

Graham:

One of the things that I will mention is iodized salt.

Graham:

The reason they put iodine in salt so many years ago was because there was a goiter problem at the time in the West and they realized that the goiter problem was caused by a lack of iodine in the diet.

Graham:

It is relatively easy and cheap to add iodine to table salt, but at the same time, what they do is they strip out all of the other minerals that are in something like a sea salt or a Redmond's real salt that comes from a dried up ocean from over a million years ago, when there was no plastic.

Graham:

So you're not going to get microplastics in your salt. So one of the things that you may want to consider and again this is something that we recommend researching would be to switch over to something like a Redmond's RealSelf that does not have iodine in it, but maybe to add something like a Lugol's iodine solution, which is a relatively cheap option, and have a couple of drops of that a few times a week to make sure that you're getting your iodine. That is a whole lot of benefits in addition to avoiding problems like goiter. And then you have the best of both worlds. You get all the you know the many minerals in addition to the electrolytes in salt, and you still get your iodine or iodized salt that we typically see in any diner, with something like a Redmond's Real Salt, or maybe you can name some of the ones that you appreciate as well.

Stephen:

Well, salt's an interesting thing. I mean you've raised the point with seawater and being contaminated and people consuming salt that's extracted essentially from the ocean. So that's definitely problematic. But, as well as you know, a lot of people are really into Himalayan salts. I just recently witnessed at the local butcher, a lady biologist, I believe was her background had a means of testing salts and was doing it for the owner and he immediately pulled off the shelf a number of salts that were actually full of lead. So there was actually lead in the salt.

Stephen:

So you know, to your earlier point and I think the theme is consistent across these topics is just because it says olive oil on it doesn't mean one. The olive oil that's in it is of any great quantity to provide anything good, assume it's at the right quantity. Is the olive oil that's in it any good? Is the salt any good? What else is in with the salt that they're not disclosing? So it fundamentally comes down to understanding your supply chain and understanding where are they getting this from? Where is it being mined or where is it being grown? How are they preparing it? What's in the soil? Are the feedstocks that are being provided, whether it's cattle or, if we remain on the topic of vegetables can be contaminated, and whether it's pesticides and a host of other things. This is all something that has to be considered, because anything that's going in your mouth is going to stay there, at least for a few hours, and could result in health improvements, or it could result in adding to your unwellness.

Graham:

Excellent, love it. One of the things that I had on my list here was the idea of switching to a better cut, of a better source option of red meat. I love ribeye, so I'm just going to use ribeye as an example. You can use any cut of beef. The best way to feel full, in my opinion, out of all the ways to feel full, is to get the best sourced steak that you can find and eat that until you're full. You no longer want to eat that meat anymore. That meat doesn't taste good anymore. That's when your body is saying you know what? I'm full, I've got enough. And one of the things that I noticed and I challenged my friends to check this out as well is when you have a nice cut of beef from somewhere, more any red meat, really and it's more red meats, I would say, than chicken or turkey or those kinds of things that tend to be less satiating, in my opinion, is, if you're having steaks a couple of times a month, even just once, try and see if you can find a regenerative farm or a butcher that buys from a regenerative farm, and see if you can find a grass-fed and it doesn't have to be grass-finished A lot of the time I will eat sort of a corn-finished. This is when they fatten up the cow at the end. I think there's lots of opinions out there that it should be grass fed, grass finished. In my opinion, if you can find something that's you know, the majority of the time grass fed, even if it's corn or some other way finished to fatten it up, sometimes those taste better. Realize that.

Graham:

You know later that night you're not hungry for a midnight snack anymore. You may wake up in the morning and your first habit is to oh, I got to have breakfast. Well, check out if you're actually hungry. You may not be hungry until noon because your body has filled up on something that's so satiating, so fulfilling, and it's got all the nutrients that it possibly could use that it's more than happy to go into. You know that that state of I'm missing the word here, being serious here hungry, I didn't want to eat. I felt great, I had tons of energy, and so I had the benefit of getting all those nutrients and being full and being happy and all the benefits of fasting as well. So, stephen, your thoughts on switching to a better cut of red meat?

Stephen:

I'm also a ribeye fan and interestingly, I find that, also like you, grassfed grain finish is a more delicious cut. There's less of a gamey nature to it because it is a little different if you're used to eating Perhaps. Maybe the grocery store meats have a tendency to be fed other things that are not nearly as healthy, and so there is a different texture. There's usually a different color to the meat, but there are other factors that can affect color. I just find, generally, that the ribeyes that I'm buying are certainly not your large industrial size grocery chain meats. They're of a lower quality. People tend to look at it and go, oh wow, I could buy four steaks for $20. Sure, that's still way better than a box of Oreos for dinner. But everything is relative and, as you work along this continuum that you and I are talking, like anything else, it's its own continuous improvement process. So you're always looking at avenues of improving health outcomes by improving the quality of what you eat. You are what you eat, so really what you're driving towards is what do I enjoy consuming that is of a high quality, that satiates me and makes me feel well? I couldn't agree more. In fact, recently I purchased and I know it didn't come from the same normal source. I purchased some ribs and actually just cooked them up last night and I've actually done some consulting with meat processors in the area that produce bacon and pork, and I understand. Culturally and religiously pork's a no-no for some people. But for the purpose of this exercise I opened up a bag of what came from my butcher's store but was clearly not packaged by him, because they had run out of the very delicious ribs that they normally have that comes from a local farm. My wife is not a meat eater. Her immediate reaction when I opened up the package once she came into the kitchen was do we have rotten eggs in the fridge? What's that smell? And it's interesting because I'm quite sensitive to that, having worked across from a slaughterhouse and done the work for one of the major US entities that produces pork-based products and I could tell you that it was almost like a trigger, because that particular order was very familiar to me because I smelt it every day I went into work. So I don't know how healthy that was Now again. Still way healthier than a bag of Oreos, but I won't purchase those again. I'll go without. I'll double up on my steak, I'll double up on my organic chicken instead.

Stephen:

Because, again, as we go along this process, graham, as you know, you start to become somewhat differential to the source, the quality, and when you have something that's of a lesser quality, which more often than not you and I are experiencing on the rare occasions we go to restaurants it's nowhere near the quality, whether it's ribs or a steak, and you're obviously paying more in a restaurant than you're going to at home. For even a very high quality You're not going to get a steak nowadays, where you and I are, for under 50 bucks. Money can be saved. Your health can be saved.

Stephen:

Eat at home, know where your product is coming from, farm to fork, ideally, and, as you said, you can, sort of you know, approximate what you're willing to accept. Does it all have to be grass-fed? I mean, dr Berg and others talk about how important that is. I would agree with you, rib-eye, that I don't even require a knife, for that comes from my butcher and my trust is. In a way it gets puts you in the right frame of mind when you're eating it, because you're not sitting there like you are in a restaurant going. I wonder how long this has been sitting there. I wonder what it's cross-contaminated with. I wonder if they based my, my, my steak in some kind of vegetable oil to uh to make it look more crisp. You know the peppercorns look darker whatever it is. So I think you're spot on in what you're saying with respect to how and when and where you purchase your meats.

Graham:

Excellent. So the next one on my list and, Stephen, I'll let you start with this one, because I know this is a passionate topic of yours and you've got a lot of insight is trading seed oils, and I'll explain what seed oils are. Is trading seed oils and I'll explain what seed oils are, but maybe I'll hand it over to you, Stephen, to talk about trading seed oils with something healthier, like olive oil, avocado oil, or even tallow, which comes from beef, or ghee, which is essentially butter without the protein. So switching from seed oils to more healthy cooking oil options.

Stephen:

I think it's certainly something that people need to be looking at it carefully. There's tons and tons of information around the brain body benefits of omega-3s and how they promote anti-inflammation, whereas omega-6s are disrupting them. And the issue is it is theoretically possible to get a canola oil that is extremely high quality and will not cause that disparity between omega-6 versus omega-3 ratios, which is what's ultimately making us sick. However, good luck finding it. It's the same issue with some of the other oils. It is possible to cold press some of these oils, but there's very, very few manufacturers that are in that particular streams because they're trying to compete at prices and through a manufacturing process that isn't profitable. Hence, a lot of palm oils, kernel oils, canola oils, which are typically on industrial farms. They end up in these high heat, high processed systems. Hydrogen oils, oils they're the same thing that's in your margarine. They're all causing inflammation in your body. So if you're consuming, just take you were talking, you and I were talking about this offline prior to to this podcast. Just look at the back of your your favorite salad dressing and look at xanthan gum and all these other things that are in there and it begs the question why are those in there, red dye. These things are not good for you. They're going to make you unwell, which means that, to your earlier point, if you're eating three things and two of them are not good for you, you're not going to get the benefit from that one thing. It's not going to win the fight in terms of your overall health improvements and outcomes, and one of the advantages whether you're keto or carnivore, one of the advantages of carnivore is you're on a much more strict focus on that specific meat that you're consuming and so you're not getting any outside data from maybe other things you're eating that are unhealthy. That then makes you think that the meat you just consumed is unhealthy.

Stephen:

If you're having a body reaction, as we discussed before, I had a long history of IBS. I don't anymore it was inherently caused by inflammation from these bad oils. So your French fries that you're buying, you can say, well, hey, those are keto, right, because they're no. Potatoes are created equally. I mean, frankly, poinsettias are a plant, but don't try consuming those right. So some things are just flat out not good for you, and usually it's also the addition of that end product and how it's processed that makes it even worse. So anything that's at a very, very high heat, like these oils are typically used because they're very, very cheap Palm oil is probably the cheapest on the planet it's fundamentally bad for you and what it causes is this inherent increase in inflammation in your body, which leads to symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other terrible things, including issues with raising the biome in your stomach and destroying good bacteria, and this is why people are feeling so unwell, because it's crept into all of the products. So if you are still keto, like I am, and you are consuming salads, make your own salad with a high quality extra virgin.

Stephen:

It's very important extra virgin oil, olive oil or avocado oil that's also cold pressed. Know where the source is coming from. Check the source to make sure it's not polluted. There's lots of news right now covering olive oils that have been adulterated with other products because of shortages and seasons That'll likely reconcile this season, because it doesn't appear that Spain and Portugal and others where most of the olive oil is produced Italy, are having the same issues, or Greece, so we should have a good crop this year.

Stephen:

So, again, what I do is I go to an actual vendor that only sells olive oil. I don't buy it at Costco. I don't buy it at Loblaw. You can, but you need to do your research first for that specific brand and find out where it came from and make sure that it isn't a lower grade oil, because essentially then you're comparing different naming conventions for still an oil. That's not very good for you. So, yeah, I'm proponent of that.

Stephen:

Avocado oil's advantage, as we talked about offline, is that it'll take heat more so before it starts to break down than than olive oil is. So olive oil is uh there's lots of research on this very best when you don't cook with it at all and you just use it in your salads. I personally use it on my chicken to hold the seasoning is. I don't particularly like the taste or flavor of avocado, but I'm baking at a sensible temperature 350, 300 degrees Fahrenheit, so I'm not, you know, in the 500 range. You know, on a barbecue using it or something like that, where you know the high heat could actually start to damage the molecules that are in the olive oil.

Graham:

Excellent and I'd mentioned earlier. I would talk about some examples of seed oils, because some people may not understand what that means. Stephen mentioned palm oil. You might see sunflower oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, canola oil, canola oil being the big one. It's a Canadian product. It's actually from the ripe seed, and so they changed the name as a marketing option to canola oil. It is truly amazing how many products in the middle of the grocery store contain canola oil. It's something that I've certainly moved away from.

Graham:

Some people switch over to olive oil. They find really good sources, because it is difficult to find ones that are still in a healthy state, and that's less so for avocado oil. So to your point, you know, going to a store that just has olive oils, you're going to be talking to the experts about which ones are the best options, and their reputation is going to be, you know, resting on the fact that they're selling you a quality product. Some people may switch to avocado oil. Again, it has a higher smoke point, which means you can cook at a hotter temperature, which may be an advantage for some. Others have moved all the way. Like me, I went from olive oil to avocado oil and I've stuck with ghee, which is basically butter with no protein. It has a very high smoke point. I like the taste of it and I can use it in cooking basically anything and I don't have to worry about it, and you can find relatively inexpensive options out there, although you can also find the more fancy grass-fed, grass-finished ghee. To me, that's not necessary. I wanted to change it up a little bit, stephen, and this is something that I did in my journey for about six months, and that is to track what you eat. For a little while. Let's say, you don't want to change anything at all, and maybe while you're tracking what you eat, you may want to make less changes to what you eat, so that you can understand, basically, your current state.

Graham:

Using something like MyFitnessPal, I know, is a popular one there's a number of them out there that allow you to enter in the food that you've eaten in a meal, and it used to be quite difficult to do this. You'd have to do it on paper, you'd have to track and you'd have to look up things. Today, you can essentially say I had three eggs, or I had, you know, a stick of butter, or I had a steak, or I had a bowl of cereal and it will do all of the calculations for you. It gives you an idea of a couple of things. It gives you an idea of your macro ratios, which is carbohydrates to fat, to protein ratios. Those are the three macros. It will also give you an idea of your micronutrient intake. So are you getting enough vitamins and minerals to have a healthy lifestyle?

Graham:

When I was tracking these things, I had already made a number of changes, and the reason I wanted to track them was because I wanted to figure out A, were these changes contributing to a more healthy lifestyle? I believe they were, but I wanted to make sure. And then, b, was there anything that I was lacking? I found out that I could up my calcium intake, so I added a bit more cheese. I found that, you know, I was probably low in magnesium. I knew I was low on vitamin D, even though I walked every day.

Graham:

In the winter there's not as much sun, and so I had to up my vitamin D in the winter. But I spent six months tracking everything in an app. I didn't have to do it after that because I essentially eat very similarly every week as far as my meal choices go there, you know know, there's a fairly short list, so I know that I'm getting what I need and, um, I added a few things cod liver oil a really good quality cod liver oil so that I could get my omega-3s and vitamin a and and so I made a number of changes as a result. But it was amazing to be able to go back and track what I ate and look at the history and, uh, and it gave me peace of mind that the journey that I was on was a sustainable one. What are your thoughts on this, stephen? I don't know if we've ever talked about whether you did this or not, but I'm interested in your opinion.

Stephen:

I haven't done it to that level of granularity that you've done and actually it was informing for me to hear about these particular apps. Where I use it is integrated into my constant glucose meter. So when I exercise or when I eat, I record the meals in the app that correlate to whatever my sugar or glucose is at that time. So the rationale behind that is to monitor where am I before I start a meal? Where am I two hours after a meal? Do I normalize? Did I have a spike? And if I've had a spike, I'll go back and look at well, did I have a spike? And if I've had a spike, I'll go back and look at. Well, what is it that I consumed? Did I perhaps revert to some old habits, like you were talking earlier about habits and how hard they are to break? Did I have a snack after my meal, even if it was a keto, a dark chocolate keto, with two inches of organic peanut butter stacked on it? Did I have a reaction? Are there stress factors or other elements that are going on with my day-to-day life, be it work or otherwise, that are contributing to it? Even as insane as it may sound, I've noticed that, depending on what I'm even, and I rarely watch TV, but when I do, if I'm watching something that's particularly violent, it destabilizes the entire digestive process for me and will actually cause my glucose to go up. So there are external environmental factors that can contribute to that and there's ways in which to manage it. So I believe strongly in the holistic view of what it is that you're doing and how you're doing it, what your body's doing in that moment.

Stephen:

And some may view that I take it to an obsessive level because I'm constantly monitoring. I can even monitor how often I'm monitoring. It'll give me a readout for how many times I've checked in that two-week period my glucose readings and it's likely, by most standards, over the top. But I'm that dialed into it using that same method as you. Now it won't give me the. I'm entering the information on a historical basis of what I'm consuming. It won't say those four eggs you had this morning have 28 grams of protein. I know that. I know how much is in my bacon. I know that what my ratio needs to be, based on my weight, of how many grams of protein I need to consume, especially as I'm still trying to load up and build muscle because I spend a fair amount of time weekly in the gym doing strength exercising, which again has an impact on my glucose and makes me more metabolically resilient. So I think it's a number of factors that you pointed at that should include, at least as a foundation.

Stephen:

They say in real estate, they say it's all about location, location, location. In this space that we're describing, it's all about diet, diet, diet, and everything emanates from that. If you're trying to enjoy your walks, as you do, if you're trying to build muscle in your mid to late fifties, as I'm trying to do, so I don't atrophy, so I don't. I suffer from sarcopenia, like so many do at our age. So these are things that individuals will be able to modulate, but it ultimately starts with everything we talked about in this webcast, which is what are you eating and what do you expect the outcome to be?

Stephen:

Because if your body's finding what you just consumed, in terms of what it's doing to your biome, how it's making you feel unwell, you're less motivated to go to the gym, you're less motivated to try to increase the maximum amount of weight you push, you're less motivated to do two and a half miles on the elliptical, you're less motivated to go for a walk with your dog, as far as you would, because you don't feel that great. So this whole process. Well, let me turn this into a question. How many times have you had a cold or the flu over the course of the last year? How many times?

Graham:

Had a flu, but it's the first time and I'm going to say this was a month ago. It hit the whole family pretty hard. Fortunately it didn't hit me for a couple of days so I could look after the wife and kids in the house, but it hit me. But that's the first time that I've had any sort of illness in the last two years. And that's the first time in my life because I have a problem with my sinuses and I actually had an MRI to find out why.

Graham:

Why was it that I was getting these sinus infections at least once a year? I could feel it coming on and it wouldn't go away. And the problem is I needed antibiotics to try and get rid of it because, as I found out, there's this divot in my sinuses that the bacteria infection can hide and my body can't naturally flush it as it wants to. I haven't had a sinus infection since I switched over to this diet and it was so consistent in the past and I'm talking consistent for 25 years of having at least one, if not two or three, in any given winter. Since I switched the way I eat, for some reason I have not had a sinus infection. I have not had to take antibiotics, which you know, doctors know is not good for your microbiome in your gut, because of course it's killing the good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria, and so I've never had more energy and I've never been sick less.

Stephen:

Yeah, I want to continue to pull on that thread a bit because a lot of what you said resonated with me as well. I had several martial arts and soccer injuries that resulted in my nose being broken three times, and professionally once. So I had a sinorhinoplasty and any time that for those that don't know, the sinorhinoplasty is a pretty significant operation. My nose was essentially put back together and for the longest time I had seasonal allergies. Like you, I had sinus issues. I would get really nasty sinus infections, which is all associated with inflammation, and until you raised that point, I hadn't really thought about a graham in that context. But I even went so far as to see a specialist in my local original hometown and he checked my sinuses because I said I don't have a deviated septum, I have this, and that he goes you don't have a deviated septum. And I said, well, I'm having issues with my congestion or what have you, and he said no, you're not, because he tested my airflow and everything else and made a determination that that wasn't the case. So what was interesting is that the change in diet actually made those symptoms go away.

Stephen:

I have a lot of very expensive products that are burning through their shelf life that I paid for, that I don't require or use this time of year, as you and I both know, depending on what your heat source is it's the winter air it tends to get dry in your home. I used to have much like you. I would have one pretty, you know, lose a week, week and a half of work kind of illness that I would have to deal with, whether it was a stomach flu. Usually it was respiratory related and, yes, we live relatively close and I didn't get the one that was going around this time and there were plenty of people that had it and I think it's a combination of my vitamin regimen and diet that prevented it the magnesium, making sure I have sufficient zinc, getting D3 and pill form because you and I are experiencing darkness by 4 pm, 4.30.

Stephen:

It's getting better, but with this weekend with daylight savings time. But the point is we're not getting what we need and you and I knew that, even with our diets and we went about improving outcomes and I don't have those symptoms anymore Offline. You were talking about how your shoulder isn't bothering you anymore because of the diet that you're on. So this is how dialed in we are in our respective cases and how interestingly it intersects with what you experience and you having sinus issues. I don't think you and I knew up until this podcast that we both had similar issues. Now, isn't that interesting.

Graham:

Right yeah, 100%. I guess it's one of those things that people just live with, right. They think they just I got to live with it. There's nothing I can do about it. There's nothing I can do about the arthritis or the shoulder pain Anything with an itis on the end, which means inflammation. There's nothing I can do about it. Well, the fact is, there might be something that you can do about it, and the only way to find out is to give it a try, don't realize.

Stephen:

They're just like consuming a bad diet has knockdown effects. Consuming a good diet has knockdown effects too that are quite positive, and you may not necessarily always be observant of what those are, and it takes a moment like this to reflect and go oh, that's interesting. I haven't had sinusitis now for like three or four years.

Graham:

Why is that? Yeah, I'm more than happy to leave that behind. I got to tell you that those were constant 24-hour headaches that made it difficult to sleep, and I would always fight it for as long as I possibly could because I did not want those antibiotics. And I look back fondly at the fact that I, you know, knock on wood, I haven't had to do those since. All right, let's move on to our next item thing. You know, small things that you can do in when you're starting out on your journey Ditching low fat options with full fat options.

Graham:

This is something to me. This is like. There's a couple of subjects that we can talk about here. The first is you'll see low fat advertised all over the place Oftentimes and you know we'll talk about in reading the ingredient list, hopefully oftentimes what they replace full fat with because fat is delicious.

Graham:

If anyone's ever had bacon and some people can't have bacon or choose not to, but for those that love bacon, there's a reason why we love bacon it is the fattiest of all fatty meats for the most part, unless you get that awesome ribeye, and so full fat is very tasty and very satiating. It's very filling, but we think if we eat fat. I have a family member who absolutely is convinced that if they had fat from a steak that they're going to get fat. I found the exact opposite, actually, I'm full, I'm fuller, I eat less and I tend to lose the right amount of weight to get me to where my body should be, as opposed to eating the sugar and seed oils that they replace fat with in order to offer a low-fat option. So the first is you know, try and avoid the low-fat options of you know butter or milk, you know cottage cheese, these kinds of things.

Graham:

And part two of that is take a look at the expensive sour cream container. Where I live, it's the gold version. Read the ingredient list on the top of the line sour cream, or at least one of the more expensive sour creams, and compare that with the cheapest sour cream and you'll be very surprised at how many ingredients they have to add to the cheap sour cream to actually make it edible enough or tasty enough that you'll eat it, versus the more expensive and you know might be a couple of bucks more. They don't need to add anything to it. You'll read an ingredient list of one or two things, because the fat is not only filling, but it also tastes great.

Graham:

So steven your thoughts on moving from the low fat to the higher fat options, and this could be ground beef. It could be. You know we all eat extra lean ground beef. I'm lucky enough to have a grocery store that has, you know, other options other than extra lean ground beef, because if I eat the other options, the more fatty ground beefs, I'm fuller for a lot longer and it tastes absolutely amazing.

Stephen:

Yeah, it's interesting because the meats, the extra lean meats, are actually more expensive than the regular hamburger is, which is kind of ironic. There's more. There's, you know, usually more processing that's involved and a more secular part of the animal that's being harvested that is considered lean, as well as what they're being fed. So that's point number one. Point number two, with respect to other products other than meats, it's hard to find out how much sugar is on meat because they don't one provide it, and I'm not being coy here. There are some times when you'll go to the grocery store where they've piled all kinds of seasoning and stuff that's on, say, a chicken, that's a raw chicken or salmon. You have no idea what's in that. And if you are a diabetic, as I am, in remission or otherwise, I would strongly recommend you not purchase those. There's another reason for that I strongly believe, having known somebody that worked in the industry and the family is that some of those meats are not always, but sometimes they're on their way out. There's only a day or two left on them, and to make them still appetizing, they'll douse them with all kinds of seasoning and hope you don't notice when you throw it in the oven. So certainly be cautious about that. But coming back to the other things like the butters and yogurt I mean, and while not just yogurt but also sour cream, those are pretty big staples of my cultural family Sour cream and yogurt was always present, but it was always Greek and it was always. The sour cream was like you said you spin it around and you're not going to be confused by what you're reading so very, very standard ingredients that everybody could understand. You know milk solids and that sort of thing and cultures and what have you. So that's really important. And ironically, as a sidebar, if you look at the world's tallest bodybuilder, olivier Richter consumes a massive amount of 7,000 calories and I'm not here to suggest that people need to do that. A big big part of his diet is these proteins, including Greek yogurt. He eats probably what I would consume in a week in Greek yogurt, but he's on to something he continues to add on muscle. Greek yogurt is a protein.

Stephen:

But the thing I really want to stress, particularly for people who are concerned about sugar Compare, compare what 4% cottage cheese looks like compared to 2%, and when you flip it over and look at the ingredients, you're going to find sometimes twice, even three times as much sugar in the lower fat. So think about that. It's less fat, but it's way more sugar. Which one do you think is going to cause you greater harm, especially as a diabetic?

Stephen:

The same applies with yogurts. Go ahead and pick up that pretty labeled yogurt that's got lovely black cherries on it and you will find in that small little container probably an equal amount of sugar as you're finding in a can of soda pop, which we already covered, is not a good idea, diet or otherwise. It's amazing. So five grams I know it by heart. I have two brands. Five grams is in the Oikos brand, which is a Greek natural yogurt, and the great part too, for people to pay attention, particularly with yogurt, graham, as we're talking about this, don't just look at how much sugar is in it. Also look at the percentage of milk fat and also look at how much protein's in it. There are Greek yogurts out there that have 11 grams of protein per serving. That's a lot. That's a chicken breast in terms of grams of protein. So there's ways to stack and assemble a very satiating diet that includes these if you're not lactose intolerant and if you are been there too, but amazingly, as I cleaned up my diet. I'm not lactose intolerant anymore. I don't have the same inflammation. I've taken out all the seed oils. So my health improvements, my eyesight's better All these different factors that we've touched on in previous podcasts and we'll drill in in future podcasts fundamentally come down to sticking to what you had said in a previous podcast.

Stephen:

Stick to our ancestral diet. Because why? Because sour cream was in my home, butter was in my home. Even what we called Maslow, which was like a tallow, was regularly used in frying pans to provide some kind of oil to the meat so they wouldn't stick to the frying pan. They didn't have Teflon back in those days. So you know it was a way that we just naturally cooked. You know our salads had vinegar on them, which was essentially the same benefit that you get from apple cider vinegar.

Stephen:

So when you decompose all those meals, what you discover, graham, is every single thing that we were consuming had a strong health outcome before maybe even they understood it. You know it wasn't over-processed, it was made fresh, it was made with love in the kitchen, be it your mother, your grandmother, one of your other relatives. And what you consumed, relatives, and what you consumed the fish was fresh from the market. It wasn't frozen and stuck in a freezer somewhere at the back of the grocery store. Everything you knew for sure where it was coming from. The salmon didn't fall apart when you were trying to eat it. It was still firm and fresh. Or bought fish to the one you're catching in a clean lake and you'll be shocked at the difference in the quality and texture of the meat. That applies to everything that you're consuming when it comes to meats or vegetables.

Graham:

I think it's such a good point about that. And just to add and you inferred this the fattier and I talked about this as well the fattier and when I say fat I mean saturated fat the fattier the food, the more full you're going to feel for longer and the better it's going to taste. And so people might say and you used a really good example of or cottage cheese is going to potentially be more expensive, but keep in mind that you are going to, overall, eat less if you switch over to a naturally high saturated fat food. One of the next topics, and you know hoping on a future podcast, we can actually talk about some of the foods that you and I have come up with meals, snacks, that kind of thing because we all tend to get hungry from time to time. How have we dealt with those hunger pains when we get hangry? But we want to, you know, avoid some of the ultra-processed foods. So I'll leave that for another day.

Graham:

But one of the things when people ask me you know what's an easy way to eat more healthy? Because I'm so confused when I walk down the aisles in the grocery store I see the heart healthy symbol, I see the low fat, I see the you know the healthy cereal I see here in advertisements. This is good for you, that's good for you. It's so bloody confusing that I don't know what to buy. And I have been there so I completely understand where. You know where this, where these people, are coming from. I completely get it and I totally understand. One of the things that I do let them know is when you go grocery shopping, the ideal scenario is that you've already decided what you want to buy before you go, already decided what you want to buy before you go, and you've eaten a higher fat meal before you leave. So it's an easy example a higher fat ground beef, throw a couple of eggs in there, mix it all up, eat as much as you can uh, you know, half an hour before you go grocery shopping and then where you can stick to the perimeter, because that is most of the time, if not all the time, going to be better for you than the stuff in the middle of the grocery store.

Graham:

There are certainly exceptions in the middle of the grocery store. You know I like to eat olives, but I prefer to get the you know the better quality sourced olives, just because I find they taste better and I'm going to eat them. I'm more likely to eat them before they go bad and you have to throw them out because you really didn't want to eat them in the first place. Those are in the middle of the grocery store. So I certainly have exceptions, but where you can make a list so that you're already deciding what you're going to buy before you go.

Graham:

Don't go on an empty stomach because you're going to tend to buy things that are quick, satiating foods like chips and crackers and what have you, because you want to eat those in the car on the drive home and stick to the perimeter where, for the most part, you are going to walk home with a healthier grocery list. You may have to eat it faster because that box of food that lasts a year it's not going to be good for you, but it lasts a heck of a long time. You may need to go to the grocery store more often, but at least you have better quality food for you and the family at home.

Stephen:

Your thoughts, stephen I couldn't agree more the way you described it. You know, staying to the perimeter, yes, I wander in the center from time to time, either to traverse to the other side or scoop up some coffee, and it's still something that I enjoy, but I take my coffee, you know I'm an intermittent faster. I take my coffee with my cream and, yes, it kicks me out of ketosis for a little bit, but I slide right back in there and very short order. So, yeah, there, there's certainly where you shop, how you shop. It's a great idea not to go in there hungry because you will, as you said, I've, you know, literally guilty as charged prior to my diagnosis. I would do that. You would grab some chips and eat those while you're heading home.

Stephen:

You know, to make a meal for the kids and these habits are habit forming and they become beliefs. Oh, you know, I was shopping, this is my little reward. And you're eating something that's filled with maltodextrin, which is just another fancy word for sugar, and you're getting this sugar spike and you feel even worse by the time you get the groceries unloaded. You can't make your meal fast enough. So now you're snacking on other stuff and then you're not eating a proper meal because your sugar is elevated and you know your body's confused by what's going on because you're still trying to add food to it and then you have the risk of overeating while you're trying to eat a normal meal because now your sugar's crashed, because it's 30, 40 minutes after you started consuming stuff in the vehicle. So there are a whole bunch of hacks and tricks and you mentioned some good ones to avoid and certainly how you shop and when you shop and what you purchase. Very difficult to stay disciplined when you have an empty stomach and you're in a grocery store.

Graham:

Well said, well said, and I know we're coming up on the hour, and so I think we've talked about a lot of really interesting options today. Maybe in the future we'll get into some specific meals or specific snacks that may help with keeping us satiated, healthy and feeling the best we possibly can. But, you know, one of the things to keep in mind and something that I've had to keep reminding myself as I've been on this journey, is you know, I think when people make a change to their health, an improvement to their health, no matter what it is and in this case we're talking about food when they make improvements, that means change. Change can be stressful, and what we end up doing if it is successful, is we end up stopping the listening of one group's advice and starting the listening of another group's advice. And what we need to keep in mind is you are potentially on a different part of the journey as somebody else. So if you're just starting out and you're just trying to figure this out, and you might be listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos and reading books and that kind of thing, you are on a much different point in the journey than somebody else. So you may decide and I'll use this as an example and I want to hear your thoughts on this.

Graham:

Stephen is you might hear you might decide that I'm going to switch from canola oil cooking. You know nice, cheap, giant jug canola oil from Costco. I'm going to switch that with olive oil. I'm going to try and find the best olive oil that I possibly can, and somebody might come along and go oh no, what you should be doing is you should be using tallow and ghee. Well, you know what. They may not be wrong, but you switching from canola oil to olive oil is a significant step up in the journey towards a healthier lifestyle, and so do not feel pressured that you're doing the wrong thing when you're actually making a good choice like that. And so you're going to hear a lot of don't do this or do this. You're going to hear a lot of don't do this or do this.

Graham:

I think people need to be aware that when they're speaking to other people, the best thing you possibly can do is be an advocate for them, to point out that they're actually doing something you know, doing something significant to improve their health, and we should avoid, when we're giving advice or when we're listening to advice, we should avoid this idea that, oh, even though I'm making an improvement, I'm still not doing something as well as you are and you're farther along in the journey.

Graham:

Because what that can do is it can send you right back to just buying the canola oil and giving up because you're too confused. You've heard too much information. You're hearing all of these different opinions. The fact is, you may end up going from olive oil to avocado oil, to ghee or to tallow, and you may decide that that is the journey for you, or you may stick to a high-quality olive oil that is significantly better than what you were doing before. You should pat yourself on the back and you should know that you are on your own journey, and I don't call this a diet, I call it a lifestyle. You're on your own point in that journey towards a better eating lifestyle. Don't let anybody discourage you by thinking you're not far enough along or as far as they are your thoughts.

Stephen:

Stephen, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the biggest enemy is really yourself and how you perceive your own success and what you define as success. I mean, I wear a CGM. I had amazing sugar when I was overseas for work because I couldn't snack. There were no distractions, I was focused on work and what have you? There was a latency effect. I got back home into certain habits and I noticed immediately the same as last time I traveled that my sugar was up. And then I got on my case about my sugar being up, which raised my cortisol, and I stopped looking at other environmental factors that were increasing that sugar, which had probably nothing to do with anything other than my cortisol, was up from stress.

Stephen:

So it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that's number one. So you have to be wise enough and aware enough of what's going on in your body and essentially strip away all of the factors that might be contributing to a different outcome than you had last time you consumed roast beef. Maybe the roast beef isn't bad, maybe it's not that the butcher made an error in what it was that he gave you. It may be that you may be in an agitated state and it wasn't the best time for you to eat. So just take a break. You're not going to starve to death by missing a meal. It's not going to happen. You might feel, oh, I'm starving, but there's plenty of evidence out there that people have gone literally weeks, and sometimes extended months, without eating, so you will not start.

Stephen:

You certainly want to make sure that, if you're going to go down that path to lose weight, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about generally, as you said, a lifestyle you will have to modulate. You will have to make changes and adjust. There's something called metabolic resilience. Your body will plateau, whether it's weight training, whether it's walking. It will plateau because our bodies strive for equilibrium. So sometimes you have to switch it up. Continuous improvement process of looking at your own body and saying, well, today I did this, it worked for me last week, but it's not working for him the same way. Well, switch it up. Maybe look for even fresher fresh eggs, maybe look for even better beef, and be in that mindset of, hey, I'm doing this for me and as far as other people are concerned, I could literally look at my results from last week. I'm the same person with the same inputs and the same inputs and my reaction. If I was a patient of self, of how I did last week compared to how I'm doing this week, I would ask myself the question, in the absence of the information I already have, and go Stephen, what did you do last week and what is different than this week?

Stephen:

So the reality is being too hard on yourself in this journey is completely unfair to yourself and obviously, diving into a bucket of ice cream because your friend's getting better results and still manages to eat pizza, that's their journey, and I love the word journey. It's that this is not a destination and what's amazing, what's amazing about that is when you think about how long you've been sick without knowing you were sick and you had IBS and you had all these other issues that you kind of pushed away because you get the kids to their activities. I got to do my work, I got to do this or that and you have a friend that says, hey, you know you okay. Today, like I noticed, you know you're maybe spending more time, perhaps not, at your desk and of course they're being polite because you've spent majority of your day going in and out of the washroom, because you're reacting from your lunch that was unhealthy or what have you. So these kinds of changes that you're modulating, think about it. No-transcript. Good for you.

Stephen:

In a matter of 15 or 20 minutes I can clock in on my CGM, but don't expect that, eating beef with one meal, all of a sudden you're going to drop all the weight that you want. All of a sudden your blood markers are going to be perfect, etc. It's a progression and as you begin to narrow the field of potential inputs that are causing certain outputs, you no longer like. You'll feel like you're back in control, because now you know hey, it's not the meat and it's not the yogurt and it's not the salad and it's not the salad dressing. So what else is going on with me? Right now, and maybe a day or two later, you are unwell and that's why your sugar's up, because your body's already finding something that you haven't experienced as a symptom. So be kind to yourself and realize okay, I got next week to do better. If I so choose Now, if you've done something you know that's not good for you, then you've seen the results. You can't argue with the math. You know what the solution is.

Graham:

Better to know the solution than to continue to accept the problem and the consequences that come with it. I think that's really well said, and one of the really interesting things about that journey and everybody being on their own journey is every little thing that you do to improve your health, and that can be as simple as switching from margarine to the best butter that you can afford or the best sourced butter you can afford. Those little things make little improvements. If you do a lot of little things over time, you're going to potentially see a lot of improvement, and one of the things that you touched on so eloquently is by the time that I'd hit what I think is my ideal weight and I had more energy and I felt better and my brain fog was gone and my arthritis was gone and my IBS was gone and all of these things that boy. Looking back, I'm like how the heck did you live through all that? What I realized is I wasn't broken. There wasn't some fundamental thing that was wrong with me. You know I was just going to get old and I was going to die sick. That I, that I had this new lease on life, and it is exactly what you just talked about that control and I think this is a really good segue to the very last piece of advice. And and you touched on this you're going to fail. There are going to be moments where you're going to fail, and everybody has a different version of fail.

Graham:

Right, I was at Costco last week. For some reason I had a hot dog with the bun, with ketchup and relish. I just I wanted it. I probably went to Costco hungry and that wasn't a good idea. I went late afternoon, when I'm ready to have that steak or whatever it is, and I was walking out of Costco and I thought why did I do that? Now, healthy occasionally, I switched it over, so in that case, I was eating healthy most of the time and I had something that was bad for me, so it really didn't affect me that much. The next day I did feel a little bit of arthritis, but it was a tiny little bit. It was enough of a reminder to me to. You know, maybe you just want the hot dog and not the bun. Next time you don't want the ketchup, you don't want the relish, and you know what? They're bloody tasty. Maybe get rid of all the sugar stuff.

Graham:

It's okay to fail, you know some people might say I had this chunky thing on Friday. I guess the weekend is ruined. I'll start this new thing back on Monday. You can do that if you want. Or you can choose to start again on Saturday morning, not beat yourself up, pat yourself on the back and say you know, like you said, it's been 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years of eating a certain way. That's gotten me to a certain point that I don't like. It's not going to fix itself overnight, and the habit change to the point where it becomes a lifestyle versus effort does take some time, a lot of the time. It's better to do this slowly, make good decisions that you can stick with, and if you fail, it's okay, get back up, try again the next day. You're not alone. I've certainly been there and that's called being human. Your thoughts, stephen, as we wrap up the podcast? Yeah, I think.

Stephen:

as a wrap up, all I would say is I couldn't agree more. And you know people that beat themselves up. All they're doing is getting in their own way of their success and just get back on the horse. I'm not a fan of cheat days. I don't believe in that. I think cheat days set you up for cheat weeks and cheat months. Just don't dwell on it. Don't dwell on the negative, just carry on and go.

Stephen:

Okay. So I'm not going to do that again, because I'm going to remember next week how I felt and I'm not going to eat that again. I'm going to adjust. Or maybe I'll have some sauerkraut and stack some stuff in my stomach first. That increases my bioreactivity and so I'll have an easier time digesting what I'm consuming right after it, which is still a healthy way to go. I feel satiated and I don't feel bloated. I'm not getting gas, I'm not getting all these other contributing factors, so it's just being dialed into what it is to your point, to your body, and when you slip and slide, it's just a gentle reminder that you don't want to go back there. It's not really a failure. It might be more of a sidestep to say yeah, I remember that and I see the same with my sugar. I'll see it go up and go. Hmm, what did I do? Well, I had a decaf coffee at nine o'clock at night and that stirred my you know my adrenaline, and now my sugar is higher. So now I'm going to have to address that tomorrow.

Graham:

So it is what it is. It is what it is. We're not robots. We're humans. We're going to make mistakes. What also makes us human is we can actually go back and fix those mistakes. It's not like you've murdered somebody. Eating that box of junk food or that bag of junk food is not the end of the world. You can recover. The most important thing is you try. Stephen. Amazing conversation, Thank you so much for today and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you 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.