Part 1: Navigating Roadblocks on Your Keto and Carnivore Journey

Ready to transform your health with keto or carnivore eating but worried about the obstacles ahead? This candid conversation between Stephen and Graham unpacks the major roadblocks you'll likely encounter and equips you with practical solutions to overcome them.

The dreaded "keto flu" strikes most beginners as their bodies shift from burning glucose to fat. We break down exactly what's happening physiologically when those headaches and fatigue hit—your body's flushing out water and crucial electrolytes. Our simple fix? Strategic electrolyte replenishment through bone broth or quality supplements without sweeteners to ease this temporary transition.

Digestive adjustments are inevitable when switching to higher fat consumption. Your liver produces bile to break down saturated fats, but finding your personal equilibrium takes time. We share our embarrassingly honest bathroom stories and explain how to fine-tune your fat intake based on your body's signals.

Many fear nutrient deficiencies when eliminating food groups, but our blood work tells a different story. Stephen went from taking 38 supplements as a vegetarian to just two on his current diet. We discuss which specific supplements like D3, K2, and magnesium might be beneficial and why tracking your food intake initially can identify any nutritional gaps.

The perceived cost barrier of quality meat deserves scrutiny. When you eliminate processed foods, restaurant meals, and unnecessary supplements, most people find their food budget remains stable or decreases. We offer practical tips for sourcing affordable, high-quality protein through farmer relationships, bulk purchasing, and strategic shopping.

What about navigating restaurants, social gatherings, and family resistance? From what to order when dining out to handling well-meaning but misguided dietary advice, we provide tested strategies from our combined years of experience. Stephen even shares how he maintains harmony in a household where his wife follows a vegetarian lifestyle.

Leave us a review if you've faced similar challenges or have questions about starting your keto or carnivore journey. Your experience might help fellow listeners overcome their own roadblocks!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Keto Roadblocks
• 5:52 Overcoming Keto Flu Symptoms
• 14:53 Managing Digestive Issues
• 23:23 Addressing Nutrient Deficiencies
• 36:22 The Cost of Quality Meat
• 47:22 Navigating Social Challenges
• 1:00:36 Perceived Health Risks
• 1:12:06 Family and Household Resistance
• 1:18:34 Muscle Loss Concerns
• 1:25:18 Battling Carb Cravings and Addiction

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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: 0:18

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Lessons from the Keto-Verse. Today we are talking about the biggest roadblocks someone might face in adopting a keto or carnivore eating lifestyle. So what are some of the things that you may face, are likely to face, and we've got some conversation around how you might overcome those obstacles, because we have all been there and it is a perfectly normal part of changing your eating lifestyle. Stephen, welcome and say hello.

Stephen: 0:55

Hello everyone. Good to see everyone out listening to our podcast this evening. We've got some really interesting items to speak about around roadblocks that we face as you're adopting the keto and carnivore eating lifestyle.

Graham: 1:11

All right, perfect. So let's start off with number one, and this one is something that I expected, something I'd heard from other people people that I know that had gone through this and you know, let's call them influencers that talk about this and that is the flu symptoms. Some people call it keto flu. So these flu symptoms that you might experience during the initial transition that can include things like fatigue and headaches and irritability, flu-like symptoms as the body adapts from burning glucose, from carbs, to burning fat and being in a state of ketosis instead of those carbs. So one of the things that we recommend or at least I recommend as trying to mitigate this roadblock, because it is likely to happen and what's happening here. There's a couple of things.

Graham: 2:14

When your body is used to a lot of carbs and storing that carbs, that turns into glucose getting that glucose into glucose, into getting that glucose into cells is you're also holding a lot of water People talk about in the first couple of weeks of going to a keto or carnivore diet, they lose a lot of weight. A lot of the time, that weight is actually water. It's your body saying, okay, I don't need to hold onto this anymore. One of the things that also happens when your body's flushing that water out, and it can go out in all sorts of different places. I don't want to make it sound awful. It's not that awful, but it is part of the process.

Graham: 2:53

One of the things that can happen is you can also flush out electrolytes that are very important to the body. When those electrolytes get flushed out from the body, saying I guess we don't need to hold on to this unnecessary water anymore, those electrolytes can be flushed out. At the same time, we recommend restoring those electrolytes and there's a lot of different brands out there. There are ones with some kind of sweetener added to it and there are also plain ones. It's obviously up to you which you choose the sweetener ones that may trigger people to want to eat other sweet things.

Graham: 3:42

So for those people who are worried about that, we recommend going and looking for a non-sweetened, you know good brand of electrolytes to be able to restore those electrolytes back in the body. That's only going to happen for a couple of weeks, maybe one or two or three weeks. You can also get those through bone broth. A nice warm bone broth can replace a tea and give your body a lot of those good nutrients. So, stephen, I want to hear your experience in going through, if you went through, this keto flu at the beginning of your new eating lifestyle. Yeah, thank you.

Stephen: 4:23

I certainly did. I recall the keto, the two-week keto flu, keto-like flu that affected me and made it very difficult for me, in particular because I already had IBS. So all of the other symptoms that go with it were just exacerbated. So were it constipation or diarrhea? It was just a factor or two that much more severe. So that can be discouraging for someone that's in a situation like I was in, and I would say stick with it because really I mean you touched on it.

Stephen: 4:51

Really what's happening is your body's moving away from let's call it your addiction to glucose and feeling your body that way, to moving towards consuming fat and processing the fat that's in your system and then shifting to ketosis, which is a very, very efficient burn.

Stephen: 5:10

And I can tell you, when I was at peak with my diabetes, these symptoms would show up when I exercise, when I tried to do something, I would actually get flu symptoms, not from actually fasting and not from switching to keto carnivore, but because my sugar would drop so radically from, say, cutting wood, which I cut and collect my own wood, and I wouldn't be able to last very long. It'd be 90 minutes tops. But yet when the body got used to this and I was well past the flu systems and used to being in a state of ketogenesis. I could go out all day as long as I had water and I didn't feel the need to even eat because my body was actually consuming that lunchbox that was around my belly, instead of the one that used to be full of starches and sugars and everything else.

Graham: 6:00

Yeah, and one thing that I should also mention is one of the ways that people get around this keto flu, or at least try and reduce the symptoms, is to reduce the carbs in a day. I'm just making up this number. You may want to reduce the carbs in the first week by 20% and then reduce it a further 20% the second week and a further 20% the third week. By the fifth week, you've all but eliminated the carbs. You can decide. You know what your carb level is going to be.

Graham: 6:47

Keto is generally somewhere between 30 and 50 milligrams of carbs. Carnivore is generally zero carbs, and so reducing that carb intake over time is another way to get around some of those flu-like symptoms. But you're likely to experience them For the most part. For most people, they do go away and it's actually not as bad as you think, and coming out on the other side, you start to feel pretty amazing after going through that process. So we recommend sticking with it and if you need to do that gradually over time, that's certainly something that can be a good strategy for some. Stephen, what was on your list?

Stephen: 7:28

The next one I'd like to speak about we sort of almost touched on and that's the digestive issues. And this can linger beyond just the keto flu because, again to your point, you're adjusting your carbs down and that adjustment period, due to lack of fiber from plants, can sometimes lead to either constipation, in my case, is more likely going to lead to diarrhea and bloating, certainly gas, and make you just generally feel uncomfortable. I mean that's you know, candidly, that's because you're changing your diet. It's no different, like for those of you who are globetrotters out there. You know, anytime you go to a new country there's's an adjustment period.

Stephen: 8:02

There's, you know, different things that are in the foods that you're used to spices, it could be even just the tiny bacteria that's in there.

Stephen: 8:12

That's not something that you're used to.

Stephen: 8:14

So it's that same kind of adjustment and, of course, in the luxury of your own home and when you're adjusting your diet, which I want to mention, it's probably not a horrible idea in terms of recommendations also to not eat in restaurants because you can get cross contamination. You could be accumulating carbs without realizing it and some of the foods, particularly like French fries and things like that, are highly inflammatory because they're done in vegetable oils. So you want to take care of yourself in a way where you can establish kind of boundaries of what's acceptable, and the best way to do that is manage it yourself and if you can I know it's difficult for those who are traveling but even if you can and I've spent upwards to a year at a time away from home for work and where you know I've had a kitchenette and cooked for myself so you have to be a little bit more proactive and probably stay away from things that will have hidden sugars that will just make that keto fluid we talked about and your digestive issues, not something you can overcome in a week or two, but something that'll linger for weeks because you're still in that cycle of addiction or sugar. How about yourself? What do you think about that?

Graham: 9:29

Yeah, so this is something that I experienced as well, and there's in addition to what Stephen talked about. There is a process going on when you're switching from call it a primarily carb or glucose reliance for energy over to saturated fat from you know, whether it's avocado or butter or eggs, or, you know, a ribeye steak lots of ways, coconut oil you can get saturated fat from a lot of really good sources. There's something called bile. Your bile is primarily a fluid produced by the liver, and that bile aids in the digestion of saturated fat. So it is used to break down the fats to be able to be used by the body, and so the liver secretes the bile and then flows to the gallbladder and the gallbladder then says okay, we've got some saturated fat that we need to break down and get all of the goodness from it. We're going to match the bile to the amount of fat that you've eaten. So let's say you've had some eggs and avocado and a really nice steak. Your body is going to use the amount of saturated fat that it needs and it's going to meet that with the bile in order to break that down. Once the body says you know what, I'm good, I've got all the saturated fat that I need the rest of the saturated fat. Let's say you ate more than you needed. Of course, how are you going to know early on in the process? Your body says, okay, we don't need the rest of the saturated fat, and out goes the other end. In my opinion, there's no health downside to that that's my opinion. Downside to that, that's my opinion the body is simply saying I've been able to use the amount of saturated fat. I've matched that with the bile to break it down, to give the body all the goodness that it needs. The rest of it is going to go out. The other end that can also contribute to things like diarrhea. Perfectly normal If you're finding and I've had this advice from people early on if you're finding that your stools are too solid up your fat saturated fat, if you're finding that your stools are too runny, try decreasing the amount of saturated fat and hopefully you can get into that equilibrium where your body is getting just about the right amount of saturated fat, where it can meet that need using bile and you're not having too much of the remainder going at the other end. So sorry to be too graphic, but there's a little bit of advice on how to avoid things like diarrhea, which may actually be caused by getting a little more saturated fat than you need.

Graham: 12:28

So let's talk about the next one on our list nutrient deficiencies. And you know you've heard Stephen and I talk on a number of occasions on how, if you eat a ketogenic or a carnivore diet, that you're going to get all of the nutrients that you need. One of the things that I did early on when I was going through this process and the process took a number, let's call it six to nine months where I was constantly adjusting what I was eating, as I was learning what was good for me and what was not good for me, as well as what's working and not working in my own personal scenario, and I was tracking the foods every single day and taking a look at whether I was short in any things like vitamins or minerals, and so where I would find if I, if I was short in any of those scenarios, I would add certain things back. I tried to get those uh vitamins and minerals from whole foods. So I would, you know, see that I was low on calcium, for example. I would eat a little bit of cheese, um, to up my calcium level, and you can do that with any. You know scenarios that you're going through If you're low in vitamin C.

Graham: 13:48

Stephen has some great advice on um, getting that through uh, a drink that he makes in the morning. Hopefully you can talk about that, stephen, and um, you can get that through other things. You can add back some fruits and vegetables and and and relatively tiny amounts just to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals that you need. So I recommend using something like MyFitnessPal. There's a number of food tracking apps out there. I know it sounds like a lot of work. Once you've done it for a couple of days, it doesn't feel like a huge chore. But what you get over time is this historical glance at whether you are giving your body everything that it needs to operate at the optimal level. And if you get there over time, you're going to hopefully find that your blood work, your energy, how you feel about yourself, the confidence that you're going down the right path, increases significantly. Stephen, your thoughts on nutrient deficiencies.

Stephen: 14:49

Well, candidly, I've been under the care for years with a naturopath and, as I've talked about in the past, when I was a vegetarian, I'm pretty confident that I was supporting the quarterly earnings for a number of dietary supplement companies across North America because they consume so many of them. I recall my mother at one point saying how many do you actually take? And I never actually counted, and one day I did and it was 38. I sent the list to my naturopath and she said you know, you're taking way too many supplements. You've got very expensive pee, and so I had to reel that in a little bit. And what was interesting is it converted back to a keto carnivore diet and had blood work done. I went down to just two, and one of them was magnesium and the other one for me was zinc, because that has some suggested benefits.

Stephen: 15:44

There is some research supporting that that will help normalize sugar. So a lot of the things that I'll take like, for instance, you were talking about my drinks there's one I do in the evening with Ceylon, cinnamon and chia seeds because I'm more keto than carnivore. I allow it to float for about 10 minutes and it gets really big. It starts to look like fish eggs and you consume that and it'll help big. It starts to look like fish eggs and uh, and you consume that and it'll help reduce the and I see it again on my cgm. It'll help reduce any potential spikes that sometimes will happen, um, leading to the dawn phenomena when it naturally rises. It helps with my biorhythms again. Uh, since we last did our last, uh, our last podcast, I'm still getting flatlined from doing that.

Stephen: 16:25

And then in the mornings, as a preventative measure for me in particular, because it's pretty common with diabetics is to avoid getting kidney stones. So what I do is I put fresh lemon in water. Sometimes I use lime. If I carbonate water with a soda stream, I'll add lemon juice, which, unfortunately, is pasteurized. It's not nearly as potent, it's freshly squeezed, but I put enough in there for flavor. That helped for those who are out there that are addicted to sodas, or pop as we call it in Canada. That's another way to do it have the fizziness but put some natural water in there and it's actually helping your liver with the lemon. There's lots of good research suggesting that.

Stephen: 17:10

So the net effect is I am getting my biotin, my folate, my vitamin C. I am having and consuming my yogurt to increase my fat. I am using different chia seeds and other small seeds in there that will help with fermentation process and to with my digestion. And I know, for somebody who has ibs, usually it's diarrhea, it's rarely constipation, uh. So, uh, like for me I'm, you know, like I say I'm now. Uh, I was once pinocchio when I was a vegetarian. I'm now a regular boy that emphasis on the regular because my body's got into an equilibrium. I've had my microbiome studied, I've had my blood work done to look for nutrient deficiencies and I was very low in vitamin B when I was a vegetarian. I had to have an IV done to boost my B levels and I don't have to do that anymore.

Graham: 18:08

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up For those that are interested. My staples for vitamins are D3. Even though I do get a lot in the summer, I double what I take in the winter winter just because you can't get as much from the sun in the winter. Where we live, if you're in the southern parts near the equator, you can probably get the right amount of vitamin D3 all year round and that's a fairly easy thing to check with your doctor through blood results. But I take vitamin D3. I also take vitamin K2 and vitamin A. The thing about I also take magnesium glycinate, especially an hour before I want to go to bed. I found you know very recently that I find it much easier to fall asleep quicker if I take magnesium glycinate about an hour before I'm ready to go to bed. It's working for me, so I'm going to keep trying it.

Graham: 19:12

But the importance with vitamin D3, dr Berg has some great videos on this YouTube videos or even his podcast that's B-E-R-G. He constantly talks about the importance of vitamin D3. The reason why vitamin K2 is critically important is it navigates the vitamin D3 into the bones, which can actually replenish and keep those bones healthy. So the vitamin D3 relies on the K2 in order to do that. One important thing is these are they require fats in order to be activated, so you do need to make sure that you're getting the most healthy for you. Those saturated fats are also needed in order to activate the vitamin D3 and K2. So for somebody that's not getting enough saturated fat, those vitamin D3 supplements and or the K2 supplements may not actually be doing what you want them to be doing and therefore you've got expensive P, as Stephen so eloquently put it. If you're getting enough saturated fat along with vitamin D3 and K2, you may find that your bones are healthy over time. Stephen, next on your list.

Stephen: 20:36

Actually, before we move to those, I just wanted to pick up on a couple of things that you had said. So you mentioned magnesium for sleep and it's funny I haven't been taking it and I've been suffering from some insomnia. So that's definitely a one. And for those of those out there like me that are dealing with mental issues like PTSD and when you're under stress and if your cortisol levels are high, my doctor at the time my naturopathic doctor had recommended ashwagandha and it works just fine for me.

Stephen: 21:10

And there's another root extract called valerian that works quite well, but I am in that 16% that gets wicked nightmares on valerian, so I'll only use it during the day. If I think that for some reason I'm getting amped up from my environment, then I'll use that, and that's really helpful, because the problem with the cortisol is when the cortisol goes up, anything you're consuming at that point is just going to get turned to fat. It's like it becomes a secondary task for the body. At that point, what's not going to digest properly or or, worst case scenario, you'll get an IBS reaction and you won't get any nutritional value from what you just consumed, no matter how wonderful it was. It'll just go right through you, as those that have IBS know.

Graham: 21:57

And I, yeah, thank you for that, stephen. I should also mention the reason I mentioned magnesium glycinate specifically for me. There are a number of versions of magnesium. I highly recommend doing some research on those different versions and what each one of those different versions does. So the reason I mentioned magnesium glycinate specifically is it seems to be the best for me for, um, helping with sleep. I also, uh, take one in the morning, um, just to get me ready for the day, and I found that that has helped a little bit. So generally, I'm, you know, three to four supplements, and if I miss them for a couple of days I don't feel it much. I just find that that's a really nice equilibrium for me to keep going. And so, to your point, people can be on an excessive number of supplements and that can get very, very expensive without necessarily the benefits in return. So on your list even, yeah, for sure.

Stephen: 23:06

Thanks very much for passing it back over to me. I'll go to the next one, which is really around the high cost of quality meat and sourcing grass fed or organic animal products can be expensive. We both know that, especially for larger households. You know we're both empty nesters at this point, so it's a little bit different for us but it's still like everything is expensive.

Stephen: 23:30

I mean, I just noticed the other day organic peanut butter went from $8.99 to $13.99. And I don't know if it was because we just had a long weekend and I live in cottage country, but I was shocked like that's a 40 or 50% increase in the price of organic peanut butter. And that's not even meat. So I don't purchase my meat at the grocery store. I go to the butcher. I haven't been there or needed to because I've stocked up recently. But yeah, I mean there's the trend for anything that you're purchasing is going to be higher. But what's interesting is when you look at your overall grocery bill and there's been some great shows I've seen on television where people were overweight and they went through their house and 95% of what they were consuming, or greater, was ultra processed, clearly not good for you. So you could argue that you're burning. From a health perspective, you're burning your money in the parking lot would probably be a healthier alternative. So you cut that out and all of a sudden in your budget you have more money available to actually eat. Well, and when you're satiated and you've had a good meal like I had from the butcher today. They call them, ironically, chicken eggs and they're not chicken eggs. What it is is a chicken breast and the inside has ricotta cheese and it was wrapped in bacon and it had a jalapeno. I was centered out and had a jalapeno pepper that was stuffed with ricotta in the center and it was absolutely fantastic. I didn't even need to put any seasoning on it. I could just the smell of it going through my kitchen tonight I was like, oh man, I can't, you know, I can't wait to consume that. Tell me, you feel that way 20 minutes after you you've hit your local pizza joint and you're sipping on a beer and you feel awful, right. And, um, if you're somebody like like me with IBS, chances are I was renting it anyway because I I don't. I couldn't hold anything in, it would just go through me. And now I'm sitting here probably an hour and a half after I ate and I still feel completely full. I have no cravings, and maybe we should talk about that for a sec too.

Stephen: 25:34

Is that when you switch the keto carnivore diet, you don't feel driven to the pantry to search out and balance the combination between salts and sugars. You're not chasing the salt and chips because you don't consume them, or an excessive amount of nuts. And the chocolates, if you're going to have it, it's a dark chocolate. Well, interestingly, anything is 85%. I tend to aim for 85% or higher. No sugar added, and yes, they kind of rip you off because 100 grams at 85% added. And yes, they kind of rip you off because 100 grams at 85%, if you move to 100%, you're getting 50 grams.

Stephen: 26:10

But no one's going to sit down and eat an entire chocolate bar of 100% organic, because, one, you'll end up with a sore tongue because you'll end up having little tiny tankers on your tongue from it. And two, don't really need it and there's some health benefits to consuming it. Um, I, I make what I call poor man's reeses and pal peanut butter on that dark chocolate as well. So then I'm getting some additional fat and some protein and I know what I'm consuming is of high quality, which doesn't disrupt the good meal that you had. Because if you eat, uh, good, high quality meats, chances are like, in the order, you're eating them.

Stephen: 26:47

So if you are keto, you're going to do like me you'll have a salad and then you have your meat and then have your yogurt, maybe with a few bio-rich fruits like, for instance, organic blueberries, not the ones that are grown in farms that are the size of your thumb. Those are not obviously good examples. Or even just your local strawberries that are kind of a little. They're not too too sweet, they're a little bit tart. That's usually a sign that has lower sugar and you add a little bit of fiber to that, which will help blunt the sugar, because that's what I'm aiming for.

Stephen: 27:22

You know, you'll feel fantastic because everything you just consumed is definitely going to carry you into the next day and the way you and I work is you can call dinner packing lunch for tomorrow, because in essence, we don't eat again, usually until 12 or one o'clock, because we don't feel like it. Last two days I haven't eaten before 2 pm because I didn't eat to. I didn't want to. The day before that I didn't eat all day until the evening because it was super hot. I was outside working, cutting wood and doing that sort of thing, and so I didn't feel I needed to, because the night before I had a massive steak and like probably almost too much. You know I had a hard time finishing it, but I wasn't going to waste a New York strip, so I consumed it and I didn't feel the need to even eat the next day.

Graham: 28:06

Yeah, interesting. You say that because you know our local butcher sources has some really good sources of regenerative farm grass fed beef, and their ribeyes are the best I've ever had. They're call it twenty seven bucks plus tax. Let's call it 30 bucks. For easy math, that 30 bucks will last me 24 hours Because if I eat that giant ribeye steak if I want to throw some butter on top I will, but generally I don't need to the ribeye with absolutely nothing else. I might have some you know bubbly water or something, but that will I will likely not eat until dinnertime the next day. So when it comes to the cost of you know the cost of carnivore, no, you don't need to be sourcing grass fed or organic animal products. It can be expensive, especially depending on where you are in the country or around the world. Things like you know ground beef, pork, shoulder eggs in bulk, where you can get them Costco is a great example of that that the opportunity to actually cut down on the cost and we've talked about this a lot of times, but maybe we'll approach this a different way.

Graham: 29:41

The first exercise is add up your total grocery cost for a month. You don't need to tell anybody about it, just keep track of it for a month or two. Add on the fast food, as we've talked about before, because a lot of people don't include that in their food bill, but it is part of your food bill and often significantly more expensive than you can imagine. Add on any restaurant visits. I know when we go out with our family we used to be able to eat for under a hundred bucks. There's no way now. It's impossible. It's like 125, $145. And of course, they now want the 25% tip. Add on the supplements to that bill. Add all that up for a couple of months and take a look at that total bill. Well, that's your starting point for buying the best of a selection of keto and carnivore friendly foods and you'll probably find that you can buy significantly more nutritious meals for about the same price or possibly less.

Graham: 30:41

A second tip when it comes to this hurdle of the high cost or the roadblock of high cost of going keto or carnivore. High cost or the roadblock of high cost of going keto or carnivore connect with farmers where you can. If you're right in the middle of the city, yes, this is going to be harder, but for a lot of people who live out in suburbs. There are likely farmers in your area. Might be a half hour drive, might be an hour drive, but you can buy in bulk. You can take a look at the cost benefit of buying a freezer, which is what we did. It made sense because we were saving so much money by buying in bulk directly from the farmer, cutting out all of the distributors, cutting out the retailer costs, we were getting that beef for significantly cheaper.

Graham: 31:30

Go to farmer's markets where possible. Your money is going to the people who are, you know, the individuals that are growing your food. Get to know them. They are some of the best people I've ever met. There's nothing better than walking up to your farmer and then telling you about the week, how things are going, what kind of challenges they're going through, and they're always putting aside some goodies for you and maybe even the dog if you're friendly enough with them. These are ways to reduce your costs.

Graham: 32:01

And so also, get on your mailer list at your grocery store, if they have one. I'm on it. I'm surprised every now, and then I'll get a mailer out that says hey, uh, this, uh, medium ground beef. Uh, so, not lean ground beef, but a more fatty version of ground beef, which is what I prefer and what I will always buy. It was half price. Um, you know, every now and then it's half price of the lean ground beef.

Graham: 32:27

I go to the grocery store and I buy every single one that they have there. I clean them out, I put it in the freezer and now I'm eating for a lot cheaper than I normally would. So for me it's a better meat at half the cost. Those are all tips and tricks to be able to control the cost of this perceived cost, or high cost, of going to a keto or carnivore diet, this perceived cost or high cost of going to a keto or carnivore diet. And you may find, in getting to know these people, that there are sources of food available to you that you had no idea were available. And you start to make some friends with some pretty awesome people that are doing the difficult work to get good food on the table. Anything to add, stephen? Before I go on to the next one, yeah, just real quick.

Stephen: 33:13

One of the things you can do too, if you're like well, listen, I kind of live in the city or in the suburbs, I don't really know any farmers.

Stephen: 33:19

Look for a co-op in your area, because often those farmers are coming to the co-op and getting their chicken feed. And I go to my local co-op and I'm often will hang out and just listen to the conversations, because you can learn so much from the farmers. You know, yeah, our yields are down on spinach or our yields are up on you know, nobody's getting fruit this year because you know it's too dry, uh that sort of thing. So it kind of dials you into the reality of what you're experiencing. And they can often give you guidance too and say this butcher's really good, if you're looking for X or I can put you in touch with them, or sometimes they'll even have bulletin boards and they'll have the names from them. I know in my particular co-op too, is if you're like like in my case, my wife is a vegetarian so me purchasing a cow and putting it in the freezer is just not practical.

Stephen: 34:13

First of all, it would take me two years to get through all that meat. But teaming up with someone that's in the local area and perhaps sharing is potentially a good thing. But I generally like I don't mind if I'm spending a little bit more, because I'll tell you what I'm going to share this with you right now. Graham, I went to my local grocery store I won't name it and I went oh wow, you know, there was horrendous traffic because it's cottage country and I wasn't going to make the extra 30 minute trek to go six kilometers to see my butcher because I had to get yogurt, some other things which he doesn't sell. And I thought, well, maybe I'll just look to see what they have in terms of meat. And I went oh wow, you know, new York strips are on sale. So I thought, wow, that's three, four. And I looked at the price and it was $34 for three and I thought, well, that's not so bad. They're smaller than what I normally get, but I'm probably paying $28 for one. But of course mine is grass-fed grain finish, so it's much higher quality.

Stephen: 35:16

I did not buy it because my eyes can see that that's not red meat, that's pink meat. I don't eat pink meat, I only eat red meat. So it's not even close to the same quality. So I look at my body and go okay, I don't describe that as a treat. It's the right thing to do. People talk about oh, I put high octane in my car, even though it doesn't ask for it, and give it a treat. No, we're not talking about that. We're talking about instances where, yeah, certainly, if you're on a budget, that beats eating licorice, walking out of the store for sure, all day long, but if you can afford it and you manage your portions accordingly, I would always reach for the best meat you can afford.

Stephen: 35:59

Because if you buy a roast at the butcher and pay $150 for this roast which sounds insane, it's probably a six or seven pound roast You're going to as a single person. You're going to have that thing, single person you're going to. You're going to have that thing for probably four or five meals. So compare that to what I paid this weekend. My wife had nachos they're not really hard to make and I had roast beef and she drank a soda and I drank drank a club soda with lime in it and the bill was 150 bucks with the tip. Drink a soda and I drink, drink a club soda with lime in it and the bill was 150 bucks with the tip you know, for two. So how many, how many roast beefs could, and and those chicken egg things that I had, can I buy with 150 bucks? I can, I can probably get two weeks supply with that amount of money.

Graham: 36:44

Yeah, great point. I love your tip about the co-op. When we recently moved and so of course, we had all our connections in our old neighborhood Big challenge in moving to a new place and my wife jumped on Facebook, found local groups, just put out a couple of questions. We're looking for some healthy eggs from a farmer. We're looking for the best butchers. It was unbelievable the amount of information we received over the next couple a farmer. We're looking for the best butchers. It was unbelievable the amount of information we received over the next couple of days.

Graham: 37:14

We've made, you know, if I think about sort of four years ago, when I wasn't even thinking about this eating lifestyle, compared to now, the number of friends that I've made that are you know in this space, whether they're the farmer, whether they're the butcher, I've met some really amazing people and it's you know, it's one of those you know. Put that in your book of awesome. Of the fun parts of this journey is you're actually meeting some fantastic people that are like-minded and it makes a huge difference in, you know, the support kind of network that you put together in feeling like not only is your money going to the right place, it's going to great people and you're benefiting greatly as a result. Let's jump to our next one. So this one is something that probably everybody who goes down the keto or carnivore eating lifestyle will face, and that is social challenges. And what do we mean by that? Difficulty navigating restaurants. What should I order? Because, uh, let's face it, restaurants always have vegetarian choices. Uh, they may even have vegan choices. Uh, I have never been to a restaurant that has carnivore choices. I'm hoping that changes in the future. But and I want to hear your, your experience in this as well, stephen but it's the difficulty navigating restaurants and parties, family meals where non-meat options dominate. You know the pastas and the pizzas and the chicken nuggets and you know a lot of non-food items. In my opinion, those are going to dominate these meals.

Graham: 39:00

I'm always amazed when there's actually events that I've gone to, where I've gotten there, and literally the only thing that I wanted to, the only thing that fit my my sort of food test, were carrots and celery, and I don't care how much I eat. I am never going to actually feel full with the carrots and celery, and so I was hungry all night. I ate carrots and celery and it just wasn't doing anything for me. One of the things that I adjusted is when I know I'm going to a social event and I'm not sure what the food's gonna be, and I'll usually either inquire or see if there's a menu or whatever. If I'm going to a restaurant, if I'm going to a party, if I'm going to a family event, if I'm not sure that there's going to be something that's gonna fill me up, I'm going to eat some, you know, half pound of ground beef before I go, because the worst thing that's going to happen is I'm not going to eat, there's not going to be anything to eat, but I'm also not going to need to eat anything. I, you know, if there's a little bit of beef there, if there's scrambled eggs, if there's even deviled eggs, sometimes I might even even though I know in the middle isn't the best for you I might dabble in those things, but I've already satiated myself, my body doesn't need to eat, and so that would be one of my recommendations in going there. The second recommendation is a little less about the difficulty in navigating, but the difficulty in navigating conversations, and we haven't really talked about this before, and I heard this tip from one of the influencers that I listened to early on and I thought this made a lot of sense.

Graham: 41:04

Some people are going to react like you have three heads. If you tell them you're carnivore or they're going to have no idea what you're talking about. They've never heard of keto. They don't know what you're talking about. All they know is the standard American diet and, of course, that's got to be the best thing for you, because that's the one that's recommended For those people who don't really want to share that information if they just want to.

Graham: 41:28

You know, if people are saying, oh, I noticed you're a bit of a picky eater and you might hear that from time to time and you don't really want to get into it, one of the things you can do is let people know that you've adjusted to a modified Mediterranean diet.

Graham: 41:48

And as soon as you talk about a modified Mediterranean diet, people go, oh, I hear that's very healthy, that's very good for you, and you go from having three heads to, oh, you're doing a great job, congratulations. So that's one of the ways to navigate those social challenges If you just want to keep people at bay as far as what you're doing, because at the end of the day, it's none of their advice or, sorry, none of their business what you're doing, because at the end of the day, it's none of their advice or, sorry, none of their business. What you're doing. That's one way to push them back. You can tell your doctor that, if you want, and your doctor will say, oh, that's wonderful. But if you tell them you're eating a lot of red meat, they're going to tell you you're crazy and you're. You know you're. It's not going to end well, stephen, what do you say about social challenges, because I know you've experienced these as well.

Stephen: 42:33

Yeah. So my personality type's a little more blunt, I think, than yours. So if someone says, you know, listen, I can eat anything in moderation, I say, yeah, it shows, because they'll be overweight, they'll be sucking on an inhaler, they'll be doing whatever it is that they're doing, and you and I have talked offline about that before and I'll just say, look, I used to look like you, you know, the last time I was at my peak weight, my kids were younger and my son took a picture of me and I think I burst a button on the tuxedo I was wearing because it didn't fit me anymore, and the tails of the shirt were sticking at the bottom, so you could see bare skin. And you know, and when I saw the picture after a couple of minutes after on my phone, I was really embarrassed by that. So and that was because, you know, we've talked about this before as my diet reflected my lifestyle, I considered what I ate was secondary, because I was in the gym and I made, you know, all of these assumptions in my mind which didn't correlate with my blood results, and I ultimately ended up becoming a diabetic. That was entirely preventable. If I had to just listen to it, my body was screaming, you know, five, 10 years earlier. So I'm grateful that the body's an amazing thing and, kind of like your dogs, they'll forgive you for whatever silliness you've committed to, that they have to bear witness to, and they'll still love you to death. And it's amazing what the body will do to bounce back from something like that. But the point is you and I are in the same place. We're not going to continue to bend the metal back and forth, back and forth, even under the social pressure, because there's nothing worse.

Stephen: 44:06

And again, you know this is a call out to my fellow IBS sufferers. And again, you know this is a call out to my fellow IBS sufferers there's nothing worse than, you know, having to use someone's washroom at their house four times because 10 minutes after you ate you're in excruciating pain, abdominal pain. You're not sure you're going to be able to make it home. So what do you end up doing? Is you start cutting out social activities? You're right nasty when people want you to eat, because you know the only way that you can avoid this happening especially if you're right nasty when people want you to eat, because you know the only way that you can avoid this happening, especially if you're triggered is by not eating anything, and that's still not a guarantee, you know you still might end up having to to visit their washroom. So you know these are.

Stephen: 44:42

I consider that a far more awkward social consequence than saying hey, man, I don't do double eggs or, um, yeah, I understand everything in moderation. Have you eaten a poinsettia in moderation lately? It'll kill you dead, right, like it's just a silly statement and we're not condoning eating poinsettias. They're for Christmas ornamentation, not for consumption. But, all jokes aside, I mean I think at this stage of my life, I really honestly don't care, because it's my inner voice, is my coach, not someone else's utter voice.

Stephen: 45:15

So I listen to what my body is doing, not what someone is trying to tell me, and I'm perfectly happy if they have a different opinion. I've even clashed with naturopaths, you know, because they'll say something like yeah, I don't think carnivore is um healthy and like have you seen my, my podcast buddy's um blood results because I'm more keto? Um, and it works for me, and he's full carnivore and he's had similar, better outcomes, you know. But again, I don't. You know what works works and I'm I'm happy to take some guidance, whether it's from them, my plumber or my electrician, but at the the end of the day, the ultimate decisions are my own.

Graham: 45:53

Yeah, and I'm so glad you said that. People will certainly accuse me of speaking my mind when it comes to this topic as well. I'm not shy about it. Some might be more shy about it, especially at the beginning. It's such a wonderful thing when you get to the point where you're feeling great, your blood works in the right place. It gives you the confidence to say this is what I'm doing and it's working. And some people will take notice. Some people will tell you that you're crazy, but who cares at the end of the day?

Graham: 46:23

One of the things I wanted to mention about navigating restaurants just before we move on is I found, you know, three years ago, when I started on this journey, when I went to a restaurant and I asked about you know, we'll call it hamburger patties, with nothing else on the plate, there were a couple of things that happened. They'd look at me strangely. They'd say, oh, I got to figure out what that's going to cost. And they'd come back and say I'm being told that I've got to charge you for three hamburgers. So now I'm eating $50 meal with three patties, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Graham: 47:00

What's interesting in call it the last six months or so, on the rare occasion when I go to a restaurant. I'm certainly not going to go to that restaurant again, but occasionally, when I go to a restaurant or even a breakfast place that my wife and I go to occasionally, I'll say this is what I want, just the protein and the fat. And not only will they now have very reasonable prices for those things, but often I will get the waitress who now is no longer surprised about what I'm ordering saying, oh, are you on the keto or are you doing carnivore, um? And I'll say yes and they'll go oh, that's so interesting. I'm trying the same thing.

Graham: 47:40

It's amazing the number of times that I've seen that, and I wonder if it's because and I don't know this for a fact, but I wonder if it's because the people that go into the restaurant and order this way are all looking pretty chiseled and looking pretty thin and feeling pretty confident. And the waitress goes there's a theme here and maybe I should pay attention to what these people are doing. No idea if that's true, but in my mind that's a reality. Stephen, what's next on your list?

Stephen: 48:09

Yeah, I got to jump down the list a little bit because I want to talk about perceived health risks and we're not doctors folks, so I want to underline that before I mention these things. But there's a fear for high cholesterol. Do your research and focus on triglycerides, certainly, but the LDLs and HDL factors, you know they're actually naturally produced by the liver anyway. So there's a lot of conflicting information around that. I know it gets very confusing. Graham and I spend a lot of time between the weeks doing research and we'll send annoying emails back to one another, usually with colorful language, talking about how ridiculous a particular study is, because you know they countermand one thing in the first two paragraphs of something they say later. But yeah, it's okay to have lemon meringue every once in a while. It just isn't. It isn't, unfortunately. I wished it was. You know, my old nickname of cake face is one I quite enjoyed, you know, or so I thought back in the day, and it no longer applies. So I think you know these health risks that people think are going to exist. Honestly, just baseline where you are now and ask yourself the same questions that Graham and I ask ourselves each day, and that is, you know, do I feel better, do I see improvements? And you're going to have bad days. I mean, I got up this morning and I was flatlined, like I said, if my CGM was my heartbeat I would have been dead because it was dead flat all night. And I was flatlined, like I said, if my CGM was my heartbeat I would have been dead because it was dead flat all night and it was like under five. And you know, I woke up this morning and there was a few things going on in my personal life. My sugar immediately went, you know. Oh, thank you cortisol, nice to see you. Here's a nice big, you know, serotonin rush. And next thing, you know, I'm at 7.9. But it didn't stay there for very long and, and obviously the caffeine in the coffee is going to increase that as well. So being dialed in all the things I just described takes time to learn about your own body.

Stephen: 50:02

People react differently when it comes to stimulants, when it comes to consequences, and obviously there's there's there's a number of different sources for whether it's heart disease or cancer. You can read about, but I know one that I gravitated to was the Truth About Cancer. It was written by a gentleman out of Texas and I won't say much more about it than that. Just go do your research. And there was in fact a study I read today to the UK talking about increased incidences of colon cancer somehow associated to the COVID period. I'm not sure, when I read the study that, why that correlation was indicated. It wasn't causality but correlation, perhaps because people had a more sedentary lifestyle. But they started to check for cancer, colon cancer in particular, at 45 instead of 50 in the UK so that people can catch it sooner.

Stephen: 50:57

And I know from having had polyps which are a precursor to cancer. I've had three colonoscopies. I had polyps the first time. Second time nothing. Third time, absolutely nothing.

Stephen: 51:09

She just said for you in particular, I need you to have more fiber. Hence I started including hemp seed, flax, two varieties of chia on top of the drink at night and really bolstered my gut. I also had my gut biome checked to see if I had any dysbiotic bacteria and we talked about this on a previous episode. I found out I did because I used to travel a lot to different countries. That probably caused some issues. The one with antibiotics are basically a grass fire for your microbiome. So it's restoring that balance by looking at okay, what foods am I consuming today that are going to boost my, my uh microbiome?

Stephen: 51:52

And you can, you'll usually know, and what? How do you? How can you tell if those things are out of whack? You'll get sick, and so so, if there's something going around like we had a virus go around recently and I think I shared this with you, graham Um, I had it for about four and a half hours. I could feel it coming on going. It feels so good because I worked out at the gym and I was not as strong as normal and I thought, okay, well, I'm going to have a nap, I'm going to chill, and ironically, I didn't get the chills, but my wife did the next day and had it for two. And I'm not. I'm not picking on vegetarians, I'm just saying that I had my zinc in me, I had my magnesium, I've been eating my meats, controlling my mental state and you know, I'd love to find out what my actual body's biological age is, rather than how many birthdays I've accumulated, because I really think you and I are rewinding the clock.

Graham: 52:41

Yeah, or at least hitting pause. I totally agree and I'm not sure I can add anything. That was an excellent summary, one of the things that I think can help people, and I recommend listening to our podcast a few episodes back on the influencers that had the biggest impact on our lives. Each one of those people is an absolute goldmine of information and you know, stephen and I have probably combined for many, many, many thousands of hours of listening, reading research papers we're not suggesting you have to do that, but those influencers it's actually pretty easy to jump down that rabbit hole and start to be really interested in that information.

Graham: 53:33

There's a documentary on YouTube called fat exclamation mark FAT exclamation mark which is a great eye opener for people that we recommend taking a look at.

Graham: 53:44

And you know, it really comes down to building confidence in yourself, in the fact that this lifestyle is healthy for you, Because if you have a constant fear of people saying, oh you're, you know you're going to have a heart attack, you're going to get cancer, all of these things, if you're in fear of that, that's not a great way to go through life.

Graham: 54:06

If you do get to the point where Stephen and I are, where we are 100% comfortable that we're eating in a healthy manner and the outcomes are going to be beneficial. It creates a real sense of resilience, I think, for anybody who kind of has a different opinion. I now know that the you know, thousands of hours of research that I've done is more than the 10 hours of training that a doctor will get on nutrition, um, and so I don't know anywhere near as much as they do when it comes to the overall um sort of way the body operates, and I'll never pretend to Um, but I am going to uh, I, I, I am confident that I have a in-depth sense of, you know, the effect that food has on the body, and I think it's really important to build up that confidence, and it does take time, and so we recommend taking that time.

Stephen: 55:06

Yeah, I was just going to add, if I may, for one sec, so, that one of the key distinctions I want to sort of build on what you just described is and I want to stress this for our listeners we're not saying that doctors are bad because the sources we're going to happen to be endocrinologists, epidemiologists, respected researchers. We're looking at longitudinal studies with a good group, because when you do a meta analysis, a meta analysis means you're putting a loop around a whole bunch of studies of which it's only as good as the studies in which you last sued. So meta-analysis doesn't mean more of a good thing, it could be more of a bad thing. And, like we talked about in a previous episode that we did, we talked about the fact that there are many instances where you know entities out there that are promoting a particular slant to this are spending more money than NIH on the research which is, you know, you wouldn't ask the assailant in a crime to, you know, be the judge to their own prosecution. It doesn't make sense.

Stephen: 56:13

So I have to have, for those of you that have a research-centric bent, what I would akin this to more is a personalized analytical analysis. So personalize it, do your baseline analysis against okay, here's where I am today. The same ways you would if you're going to the gym saying, okay, I currently weigh 178 pounds, I can bench press 150. Okay, we'll put all those KPIs in there, those key performance indicators, and this is where I'm at right now and this is what I'm doing. So that's personalized. You don't need a coach for that, you can do that yourself. You just have to be somewhat regimented in your approach to your well being. So, all factor in all the things that you do, see what happens to your body when you work out just before you go to bed on a treadmill or something to that effect, you'll notice. If you're wearing a CGM, like me, your sugar will drop. You'll have a nice smooth night, especially when you introduce Ceylon, cinnamon and some chia and your magnesium and so forth, and you'll sleep very well.

Stephen: 57:11

So if you look at each of those parts of your life as segments that you're intending for a specific outcome, then you're going to be. You're going to be your own 24 and seven doctor slash, chemist slash, botanist slash, butcher, slash everything you know. So become that Renaissance person that takes interest in self and determine what it is that's triggering you. Because, for those of you with PTSD. If you get triggered, all of the magnesium and zinc and everything else you've taken goes out the window. We all know that, because your stress hormone will be so high, your body is in a fight or flight state. That's not going to work. So, incidentally, when that happens, probably best you don't eat anything. Drink some water, keep hydrated, make sure you're getting enough sodium, potassium, that sort of thing like your trace minerals. But there are times when you're actually doing your body a favor by not asking it to row the boat and repair it at the same time, right.

Stephen: 58:08

And the other thing I wanted to add to that, if I may, is keep in mind so go back to first principles and say why am I doing this? I'm doing this to lose weight. Okay, then you need to focus more on the methods to losing weight in a healthy way, at a rate that's appropriate, and you would use your blood levels and other things to test to see if you're normalizing to a metabolic outcome that you're aiming towards. That's very different than someone that's going hey, listen, I'm only interested in antophagy at this stage because I've had some past illnesses. I'm really concerned about cancer. I'm concerned about these other things. They may already be at a healthy weight.

Stephen: 58:47

So they'd have to look at root cause and analyze okay, how can I eat better, what do I need, what does my body like and how does it react to it? Because in some cases you could be some kind of a variant around what myself and Graham are doing. Graham's more carnivore, I'm more keto. You might find that carnivore works better for you. You may find under certain conditions, as I do, carnivore works better for me.

Stephen: 59:11

When I'm not feeling that great but I'm still hungry, I dump everything and I just eat meat and then I find, for whatever reason, my body will take more time to digest that and, yes, my sugar will rise over the night because it's slowly working through it, but I'm not getting a spike. You know that's over the top because there's no fats, there's no fruits. Like most of us are quite sensitive if you're a diabetic to fruits anyway, so they're usually in small quantities. So I'll cut all that out and give my body a chance. But if you're not doing it for something specific and you say and this kind of leads into one of our other questions here, graham, where you know, can I have cream in my coffee in the morning.

Stephen: 59:57

Yeah, and you're trying to, as Dr Fung and others have suggested, do a 16-8 or an 18-6, that's certainly going to help with your weight loss and it's certainly going to provide other indicators. But if you're stressed out first thing in the morning with the Don phenomena, just by nature, and then you decide to not consume food because I've tried that too, your cortisol will be even higher and now your body's in a state of inflammation. I found, interestingly, when the days when I was stressed, if I started with a breakfast which I don't typically do of eggs and bacon, my sugar was fantastic. Five hours after that, because I took one stressor out of the equation, my body wasn't going hey, I think there might be dinosaurs around here and we're also hungry. I took one of those equations away.

Graham: 1:00:46

Yeah, and I should mention Stephen and I both know that dinosaurs lived on the planet Earth way before humans did. It's a term of reference that we always find funny Call it the saber-toothed tiger, whatever you want to call it and I'm glad you brought up the topic around doctors. Every single doctor that I've ever met I know some personally and obviously have had many doctors over my lifetime Every single one of them is super intelligent, wants to do the right thing. Super intelligent, wants to do the right thing, and a lot of times they are required to follow certain guidelines, and you know that's certainly understandable, that that's the position that they're in. Stephen and I have, you know, got a second opinion from other doctors, and the vast majority of the influencers that have guided us are medical doctors and PhDs with excellent reputations. So it's simply getting a second opinion, and doctors are an incredibly important part of our society, so we always want to make sure that people understand that. One of the things, stephen, I wanted to bring up and I want to hear more I'll tell my brief story and then I want to hear much more from you and that's around family and household resistance. So now we're talking about, within the four walls of your house. This could be kids, but maybe to a lesser extent. It could be more to do with your spouse, and there can be additional challenges if the father and mother are not living in the same home. So obviously they're going to, you know, maybe be resistant to the changes that the other spouse is making when it comes to food, but let's focus on partners your spouse, for example.

Graham: 1:02:42

During our journey as I was walking down this path, my wife was very encouraging. She knew about the blood work results and she was very supportive of the journey that. She knows that I generally go down, which is a really deep rabbit hole, doing way more research than anyone would deem necessary and coming out the other side with a pretty good hopefully confident understanding of what's going on and how to fix it. And so what I found myself doing is never in a million years would I want to tell my wife how to eat. Um, what I would end up doing is I would watch call it 20 or 30 videos, and then I would pick the one or two that I thought were really on point, really intelligent, and we'd watch it together, and we'd watch it together, and we'd watch it together so I could get her opinion on it, because I wanted a second opinion from somebody who cares about me and is only looking out for what's best for me not to convince her to change. It was more to say hey, does this make sense to you? She's a medical professional, she has a lot of training when it comes to people's physical and mental health, and so I wanted her opinion, not to convince her to change, but I wanted her opinion.

Graham: 1:04:13

Inadvertently, what happened over time is she started to learn the things that I was learning. I would give her the sort of the Cole's Notes version whatever you want, the Cliff's Notes, whatever you want to call it the sort of condensed version of what I was finding along the journey. And again, not to convince her to change, but to be a second check to somebody that you know not only do I care about her opinion, but I respect it a great deal. And so she was probably in this journey just sort of making her own changes, maybe a couple of months behind me, and again, I was not convincing her to do this, she was making the changes all by herself. At some point she very quickly caught up to me because she was starting to see the benefits, like I was, and so for me it was the perfect scenario, because I had a lot of support at home.

Graham: 1:05:06

You, steven, are in a different scenario, where your wife and yourself, I believe, started out as vegetarians. You ended up moving over to the ketogenic, slash, carnivore way of eating, whereas your wife remained a vegetarian. I want to hear a little bit about from you on. What is it like to go through that journey? What is it like to prepare meals in a house that has those challenges, because you've made it work.

Stephen: 1:05:38

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. It's a good question and I'm not going to do a play on words, but I think the important word that you kept repeating is journey, and journey is singular, it's not plural. So my wife has her journey, I have my journey and we're respective of each other's journey. I've used this analogy in other applications to say that we're all trying to reach a certain particular outcome. If you're a mountain climber we talk about hitting the peak and there are many paths to that and if you're mindful of that path and you do your research and you see the results that goes back to individualized accountability for your care then you'll make the appropriate decisions For ethical reasons.

Stephen: 1:06:23

My wife won't consume meat and I highly respect that and that's her choice, and we live in an area with lots of wild animals and I used to hunt and I still fish and that sort of thing. I don't do that on our property. I don't hunt at all, actually, unless, of course, you're in orange clay. Then you're probably in trouble. But beyond that, these adjustments are just natural. If you love the person that you're with, you're going to make some adjustments.

Stephen: 1:06:51

I'll sometimes tease her and say, okay, this is for sure the best piece of roast beef in the whole wide world and if there's one tiny piece left in the back of the kitchen, I need you to cover me because I'm going for it. So we joke about you know what we both eat. I even saw a t-shirt once that was a deer. It said John Deere and it was peeing on the grass and the moniker said my food pees on your food, which I thought was hilarious. She wouldn't let me buy it. I would have walked around with town with it, but that's kind of where we're at.

Stephen: 1:07:23

So, for instance, in all seriousness, tonight I had the chicken that I had mentioned from my butcher and you know she made me a salad and she didn't actually at that point want to eat, but she said you know, I know you'd enjoy the salad. I went and bought some stuff locally and she put it together for me, which I thought was really nice. And she isn't picking on me because I'm consuming something that was alive, you know, a month ago, and I'm not upset that she's relatively healthy, more so than me. She's not a diabetic, her sugar isn't elevated. If she had serious health concerns and I saw that she wasn't taking care of herself, then I would certainly step in to save her from herself, so to speak. But again, there are reasons why she is the way she is and she supplements and does other things to make sure that she remains as healthy as she chooses to be in her own journey, those other things to make sure that she remains as healthy as she chooses to be in her own journey.

Graham: 1:08:21

Yeah, fantastic summary. Let's jump to the next item on your list, Stephen.

Stephen: 1:08:33

Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much. There was another one that sort of jumped out at me and I do apologize for maybe for some of the folks that are listening if it appears that we're bouncing around. But you know, this is one that I wanted to talk to you because I work out four or five times a week and I was even thinking about this today prior to us compiling this list, and thank you for doing that.

Stephen: 1:08:52

The potential muscle loss, rapid weight loss on keto variants may include lean muscle, protein intake or exercise isn't optimized. I would suggest for anyone to independently do a search, as I did on. Dr Jason Fung speaks to elite athletes about intermittent fasting and the stages. He's a nephrologist. The stages are when you begin cannibalizing muscle or protein, and I'm not talking about genetic illness, dna issues or metabolic issues like that. I'm talking about the average person and when that would occur, that cannibalization is actually a starvation. That's not what we're talking about. And even for people that do hyper extended fasts because they're trying to reverse their diabetes and they're morbidly obese, that still is going to be under the direction and control of a doctor because they're facing in instances that Dr Fung highlights in his book, they're facing imminent death, you know, and that's that's very drastic and very serious, but we're not. We're not talking about that. I can tell you categorically that.

Stephen: 1:10:03

You know, there's plenty of examples about vegetarians. There's a claim that one of the strongest men in the world is vegetarian. That's all well and good, but I have to go back to the first principles again. For me personally, what did I experience? I discovered that I had muscle loss, despite trying to work out regularly when I was a vegetarian, because I couldn't consume the right proteins and the right quantities that weren't either inflammatory, that were full of estrogen I'm talking about the typical things that vegetarians will gravitate towards and so I essentially found that I was getting weaker towards, and so I essentially found that I was getting weaker. You know, today I was at 95% of my peak benching.

Stephen: 1:10:45

I wasn't tired. I don't look like someone who's 58 years old. I'm as big or bigger than some of the kids that are in there in their twenties and that wasn't always the case. You know, I leaned out to. You know I'm six two. I leaned out to 178 pounds and, you know, found out that the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated was not going to hire me to do the next shot. So I thought well, you know, I might as well put some lean muscle back on, and I did and became stronger for it.

Stephen: 1:11:14

So I think the the idea that you're weaker I would argue from doing this since I was 16 years old for 42 years is weakness in the gym, if you're dialed into your body, it's usually a sign of overtraining, not because you ate meat and not necessarily because you have to eat just solid the night before. So listen to your body and you'll see as you dial in and take care of yourself and you get rid of the ultra processed foods. It's hard to figure out what's wrong with your body. When everything you're eating, right down to looking at a glass of water, starts to make you sick, you're in trouble and that's where I was. So when you start peeling back the onion and you start eating properly and you're still going to the gym and doing the other healthy things, you're even doing, like I told you, you know, cutting wood.

Stephen: 1:12:04

90 minutes in I would sweat right through my shirt at peak diabetes and I was absolutely exhausted and I would sleep for like three hours because I had nothing in the tank, because I was on a sugar diet, because my body was still feeding off of glucose, not anymore. I would just go into ketogenesis and my brain would be happy about that. Dead, rotten cells. Not so much because I'd be in a state of endophagy and yeah, you know you feel a little bit tired after. But I bounced right back in about 30 minutes as soon as I had a good carnivore dinner. That night that was my only meal. I felt fantastic.

Stephen: 1:12:35

So I went to the gym the next day just as strong as I normally would be, despite the fact that I fatigued my body cutting one of the largest trees I've ever cut in my life. That was downed in a windstorm. So, as a 58-year-old male who had assistance from about a 27-year-old man, I was able to keep up with him. He's very strong and I did all the cutting and he did all the all the lifting and we were a great team and that's a good place for me to be.

Graham: 1:13:05

Yeah, there's not much more I can add to that. Um, eating enough protein, um, in, you know, can avoid that potential muscle loss. Uh, because your body needs protein to build those muscles and rebuild those muscles. One of the things that people should consider and investigate if they're thinking about well, am I going to the keto carnivore route or am I going to go to the more expensive GLP-1 receptor?

Stephen: 1:13:35

route.

Graham: 1:13:36

And this is all the rage these days. As far as the drugs that you get injections on and all of a sudden you're losing weight, there's a number of drawbacks to that process. Certainly, those GLP-1 drugs can be beneficial in certain scenarios, but one of the things that you should consider and should investigate is the percentage of muscle loss that's a part of that actual overall weight loss. That's something to look into. Look into when that peak weight loss actually matures. It can be around 20 months potentially matures. It can be around 20 months potentially. What it's generally doing is it's creating new, non-insulin resistant fat cells. It's creating about 13% more fat cells in your body. If you stop taking those GLP-1 drugs, you are likely to gain 13% more weight than the day before you started taking the GLP-1 drugs, not to mention the other side effects that are involved in it. Certainly not trying to talk people out of that process. My recommendation is to look into all of those things to make sure that this is the commitment that you want to. You know the road that you want to be committed to, versus potentially changing the types of foods that you're eating and potentially getting to the same results without all of those downsides, which includes muscle loss over time. Stephen, I wanted to talk about, uh, one other one here, sure, so the last one on our list, uh, stephen, um, and this is something that I've certainly experienced, uh, earlier on, um, less so, um, since is the carb cravings and the addiction. This can be a very real addiction. This can be sort of I miss the taste and the crunch of those of my favorite chips versus. You know, I need something right now because I'm hungry and I'm going to resort back to my Neanderthal brain of grabbing whatever the fastest thing that I can possibly get, which could be a bagel, a sandwich, chips, cookies, ice cream, you name it. Everybody's got their carb cravings.

Graham: 1:16:16

One of the things that I did early on is I had selected certain things at the grocery store that I could eat quickly, and I'll just focus on a couple. I tried to find dried beef or biltong. It's hard to find those things, but there are ones out there, so if I was hungry I would chew on that. You know, dried beef or biltong for a while it's like, you know, chewing on kind of celery-like beef, where you're actually chewing and the art of chewing actually, I think, psychologically makes you feel like you know your body's getting enough food, so I didn't need a lot of it, but it was something to chew on.

Graham: 1:17:03

Really good sourced olives, I found were surprisingly good at getting me to feel full, and I would need maybe two or three. So when I say good quality, they're usually, you know, twice as big as you'd normally see in the plastic containers. These are the glass jar ones. Yes, they're a little more expensive. I didn't need to eat a lot of them. A jar of these would last me, you know, a month or two in the fridge.

Graham: 1:17:29

But I found when I had those cravings early on, I grabbed two or three of those olives, popped in my mouth, maybe a piece of cheese, and I was good to go until the next time. I was going to eat next morning or whatever, and I tried to avoid eating anything within, say, two or three hours before I was ready to go to bed because I wanted to get a head start on the fasting, on the autophagy, and I wanted to carry that into the next day, where I get up in the morning and the first thing I do is I'll have my electrolytes and I'll go for a very long walk to again take advantage of that autophagy I want to hear about you know anything early on with you as far as carb cravings go, and whether and how did you mitigate those roadblocks, and are you still experiencing that today?

Stephen: 1:18:22

Yeah, I guess the most important thing is I would start the conversation with your fridge and inform your fridge and say I'm the one that decides what goes in you. You don't tell me what goes in me, so your fridge is not your greenhouse, your fridge is not the local farm, unless you've got some kind of magic going on in the back of your fridge. So you decide what's in there, and same with your pantry is go through it and just don't bring it home. You can't crave what you don't have.

Stephen: 1:18:50

And my wife is excellent at this, because I'll go through the litany like I'm teasing a small child that's looking forward to Christmas and go hey, just went by the ice cream store and it doesn't appear that busy. Would you like me to get you some? Whatever her favorite is banana boat or something. And she's like no, I might do horrible things to you if you come home with it. And then, of course, I'm going to eat it. So I take that as fair warning and I don't do it, or I'll be at the store, because people sometimes and I'm guilty of this because the way I was raised with food I think food is love, love is food, and sometimes what you're giving your partner is not ultimately in their best interest, especially if you know that they have certain addictions or issues.

Stephen: 1:19:33

In my particular case, my wife was addicted to soda. I never really drank a lot of pop until I met her and then all of a sudden it was like I couldn't get through the day unless I had two or three Cokes or Pepsis. And then suggesting that, oh, you know, I'm doing the healthy route because I'm doing it with a diet Pepsi. Do a little bit of chemical research on what that's doing to your body as well. You may have fooled your blood sugar, but that's nothing else. You haven have fooled your blood sugar, but that's nothing else. You haven't fooled anything else, including your microbiome. So just general food avoidance is key to those cravings.

Stephen: 1:20:05

And yeah, every once in a while my wife and I will scream into the ether and go oh, we would sell a child for a chance to get a Reese's Pieces right now, a bag of chips and a two liter of Coke Again.

Stephen: 1:20:19

Of course I'm joking about all of that with what same as the dinosaurs? But I'm using a bit of humor to suggest that, you know, be kind to yourself and just don't put yourself in a position where it becomes a temptation. And if it does and you're at a party and you find yourself reaching for the latest Doritos because you were addicted to those, or you used to have skin that was orange, because you ate so many Cheetos, then have one or two and then just stop and say, can I stop? And if you can't, then don't put yourself in that scenario, just stay away from that bowl for the rest of the evening. So I think it fundamentally comes back to this practice of well-being in terms of what we consume and how we consume it. Where we consume it, what is our body doing at the time that we're doing it will help.

Stephen: 1:21:08

I mean, I walked by some beautiful bags of chips when I went and I picked up my Greek yogurt today I went wow, you know, I remember I used to buy those. Oh my, they got family format size, wow. And then I also remembered I could sit in front of the TV, quasi bored, and kill that entire bag of chips with my wife, with us bantering back and forth on which one of the two of us ate more of the two pounds of chips that were in there.

Stephen: 1:21:34

Right, and then I'd have the rubber tire the next morning around my belly to prove that that's what I ate, and I didn't feel good all day. And you wonder why? Because you know there's sugar in those Like that turns into sugar, those potato chips, and they have maltodextrin, which is just a nonsense word for more sugar.

Stephen: 1:21:50

So I think fundamentally that's what it comes down to is if you are disciplined enough, you have that conversation with your fridge enough you have that conversation with your fridge. You have those conversations ideally in your head and not out loud, so people don't think you're crazy in the grocery store going you don't need to take that or you don't need to buy that.

Graham: 1:22:14

Your body will thank you. Yeah, and the one thing that I'll add and I'm not sure how well known this is your microbiome is made up of a number of living things bacteria and there's more bacteria in your own microbiome than there are people on earth, many more. Your microbiome is actually pretty critical to your survival and how healthy you are. There is a symbiotic relationship with that bacteria. One of the things that people may not understand is there's a lot of different kinds of bacteria and there are beneficial bacteria and there are bacteria that are not beneficial. I'll just use the example of bacteria that prefers carbs versus bacteria that prefers going to disappear over time or at least be significantly reduced, so they are not the loudest bacteria screaming in your microbiome that I want this kind of food.

Graham: 1:23:36

So it is going to take some time for you to get to the point where, if you're eating you know, let's call it a strict carnivore diet for the time being which is, you know, quality protein, quality saturated fats the bacteria that craves the carbs that you've been addicted to in the past is going to be reduced and die off, and so they are not going to scream at you to get those carbs into your stomach.

Graham: 1:24:10

What's going to scream at you are the ones that are enjoying the carnivore you know high-protein, high-fat lifestyle that you've moved to, and I can't remember how early on this happened, but it was within a couple of months of going to a strict sort of keto carnivore lifestyle where I was sitting around and all of the foods that I absolutely loved and would blindly grab a handful of, you know, whatever it might be the bagel, the sandwiches, the mini sandwiches, the chips, the cookies, whatever was around at a party, I would be constantly grabbing something and eating it. And I remember sitting there one day and I looked around and I thought I don't even have an interest in eating these things anymore. And to get to that point where, all of a sudden, my body's not even looking at that as food, much less craving it. And it was a real eye-opener to the point where I realized I had sort of adjusted my microbiome that was now craving the things that were actually healthy for me.

Stephen: 1:25:36

Stephen, what's with you? I really liked what you just said, graham, because you actually reminded me of a study that I just looked at that may tie in the microbiome and I'm going to propose to our listeners they can let us know, but I think we should do a session on strictly the microbiome, some things you can do, and I'll give you a little teaser, because you're the one that prompted it, from those comments. So, interestingly, there was a recent study that talked about the possibility that and I'm going to pronounce it the best I can two studies related to Acromantia muscifila and Lactobacillus species may have anti-cancer effects and while other research may indicate that lactobacillus can also contribute to tumor growth in some pancreatic cancers, it certainly is promoting the idea that more studies are required. So, generally, with healthy cells or even just marginally heading in the direction of cancer cells, it looks like there's some promising research. What does it really say? It says that basically, you have an anti-cancer machine built into your body. That, at least, I can't say it's the start or the end. I'm not an endocrinologist, but it's certainly a part of the solution to staying healthy and certainly regaining your health. Because, interestingly and I thought there might be an interesting connection around this and we're picking on one that's particularly fatal and that's what the study was about. But I mentioned lactobacillus species.

Stephen: 1:27:08

Where do you think we can find lactobacillus species as a bacteria? What foods do you think contain it? So it's mostly fermented dairy products, actually, and so your kefir, your yogurts, sauerkraut, kimchi, certainly pickles if you're making your own pickles, and you had mentioned the olives and if they're fermented, then you would be getting it there. And what's interesting is what hurts? Let's go to the next step. Well, what hurts lactobacillus? Because it's naturally occurring in your microbiome.

Stephen: 1:27:43

The biggest thing high intakes of certain sugars can negatively impact lactobacillus. So there's your answer right there, and that's what can cause dysbiosis. So all those ultra processed foods I was consuming, all the other things. That's why I had four dysbiotic bacteria in my stomach, because I was growing the wrong ones and I was low on the others. So you know again, I just go full circle to our discussions before.

Stephen: 1:28:07

When you take care of yourself, take care of your body, it'll take care of you. My symptoms for IBS have all but disappeared. I've cut out ultra process. I don't consume sugar. I swear like I have some kind of disorder Anytime I grab yogurt.

Stephen: 1:28:21

Bring it home. I haven't paid attention. It's got 16 grams of sugar in it. I just brought one home the other day, my wife's delighted and I took one spoonful at it and just spit it across the room because I haven't had anything that sweet in my mouth in years. So this is what keeps us vigilant is to pay attention to our bodies and you know, the evidence is catching up to the reality of what our bodies are already doing. They don't need those doctors' permission to do what they do. They need our recognition and acknowledgement of what it is that your body requires. So do your analysis, do your study, take care of your microbiome and what you're consuming, whether it's kefir, if it's sauerkraut and it's amazing, prior to getting off of the sugary diet, I'd sooner pick a fight with Mike Tyson than eat three spoonfuls of sauerkraut.

Stephen: 1:29:10

I hated it. It was too sour. I didn't like it. It made me angry. Now I eat it and I don't even find it sour, and I consume a lot of lemons. I don't find them sour anymore either. I you know I used to. It used to really bother me and it doesn't anymore.

Graham: 1:29:27

I, uh, I. I was the same and I went from uh, not really liking it to making my own Um. I need to make another batch Um. If I remember, it was the cabbage chopped up. Fill it up with water and add 4% anywhere between 2% and 4% of the best salt that you can find and let it sit there for call sure that it's full.

Graham: 1:29:58

Recommend getting a sauerkraut pot because it allows for the gases to escape but ensures that no contaminants get in. It's a relatively cheap investment, often looks great on your countertop and now you can make your own sauerkraut. And is there anything better can make your own sauerkraut, and is there anything better than making your own food? What a great way to leave off the podcast, stephen. Thank you so much. One of the things that I love about this podcast is I walk away smarter every single time because I've learned something from Stephen, and I want to thank you for another great episode, stephen. Thanks very much, graham, and I appreciate it. All right, everybody, thank you for listening to another episode of Lessons for the Keto-Verse. We will see you next time, thanks for tuning into Lessons from the Keto-Verse.

Speaker 1: 1:30:51

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.