Keto Answers Podcast: Low Carb Lifestyle | Ketogenic Diet Nutrition | Holistic Health

Just like a calorie isn't simply a calorie, a nutrient isn't just a nutrient.  For instance, the zinc in pumpkin seeds isn't absorbed the same way as the zinc in red meat, so it doesn't give you the same health benefits.  The source of your nutrients and the quality of that source are fundamental to your health.  Choosing anything less than the highest-quality, most nutrient-dense foods can lead to excess weight, higher risk of metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases, lower energy, and worsened cognitive function. That's why today I sat down with board-certified nutritional consultant and primal eating expert Nora Gedgaudas to talk all about nutrients. Nora is also a board-certified neuro-feedback specialist, best-selling author, speaker, teacher, and researcher with over 20 years of clinical experience.   In this episode, she breaks down which nutrients we need the most and how to get them from our diet, while dispelling common nutrition myths. 

Most people start a ketogenic diet to reap the fat loss and energy benefits of running on fat instead of carbs, but beginners often struggle during the initial keto-adaptation period – the phase in which your cells adapt to burning fat for energy.  During this keto-adaptation process, your body goes through fundamental cellular changes that improve how you store and create energy, which takes some time.  Today, ketosis researcher Chris Irvin, also known as The Ketologist, joins me to explain what keto beginners can expect from their keto-adaptation phase, how to speed up the process and minimize side effects, and how to use the ketogenic diet for optimal health once you're fat-adapted. Chris Irvin has a background in exercise and nutrition science and he has conducted research about ketosis alongside the famous doctor, professor and researcher Dominic D’Agostino at the University of South Florida. Chris is an expert at taking complex ketosis research and turning it into actionable and digestible information. 

Whether you're a competitive endurance athlete, biker, CrossFitter, or barely entering the fitness world, you've probably heard that the best way to fuel your body and speed up recovery is by loading up on carbs.  You may have also been told that the source of those carbs doesn't matter, so you can indulge in pasta all you want.  When Steph Lowe was doing long-cross triathlon a few years ago, she was told the same thing, but she refused to go with the flow.  She believed there had to be a better way to increase performance and endurance without relying on sugar and processed foods. And she was right.  After her own experience as an athlete, Steph Lowe became a sports nutritionist and founded The Natural Nutritionist, where she uses a LCHF ketogenic diet to help other athletes improve not only their performance, but also their blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, mental well-being, and much more.  In this episode, she breaks down why athletes are harming their performance by relying on carbs, and how to make t

What if everything you were ever taught about dietary fat was wrong?  According to science journalist and best selling author Nina Teicholz, it is.  Nina is an investigative science journalist who became popular after writing her NYT best selling book The Big Fat Surprise, in which she unmasked the truth about saturated fat and how our grain-loving nutritional guidelines are based on bad science and special interests. In today's episode, she explains why we should all embrace saturated fat again and how deeply the low-fat dogma has harmed our health in the last decades. She also reveals why your doctor doesn't recommend a diet high in saturated fats, even though the science clearly shows saturated fat is amazing for our well-being and isn't the culprit of heart disease. Listen in to hear what truly happened to saturated fat, nutritional policy, and our health. 

Could you eat only meat and water for a year?  Today's guest, Dr. Shawn Baker, is doing just that. Dr. Baker is an orthopedic surgeon, weightlifting world record holder, and pioneer of the carnivore diet. He became a vocal leader of the carnivore movement over a year ago, when he transitioned from the ketogenic diet to fully carnivore.  He eats around 4-6 pounds of meat per day, water, and 0 plants -- and he's thriving.  However, he admits that if 5 years ago someone had told him about the carnivore diet, he would've thought it's ridiculous.  That's why in this episode he busts common myths about the carnivore diet and explains how and why it works.  He also tells us how he ended up eating just meat, how he's improved his health and performance in his year as a carnivore, and other meaty details. 

Whole grains are promoted as the cornerstone of a healthy diet by authorities like the USDA, the American Heart Association, and the Food Guide Pyramid.  There's just one problem: Grains are also the leading cause of heart disease, especially modern crops like wheat and corn.   When Dr. William Davis came to this shocking realization, he began conducting research and later published the New York Times best-selling book Wheat Belly, which then turned into a series of books. Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist, best selling author, and the medical director and founder of the Wheat Belly Lifestyle Institute. With this work, he defied the traditional set of nutritional guidelines and beliefs that embraced grains and shunned fat. His research showed that fats weren't responsible for heart attacks, but grains were. When he put patients on a grain-free diet, their markers for heart disease went down and they experienced other perks like faster weight loss, reduced joint pain, and improved mental clarity.  In today's

If you have a chronic disease like type II diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer's, hypertension, or atopic dermatitis, it's unlikely the severity of your condition will ever diminish under traditional healthcare.  Why?  Because our health system is designed to dull external symptoms with drugs instead of fixing the root causes of chronic conditions, which are often a mix of genetics and lifestyle factors.  It's far easier to prescribe a drug than to provide tailored health strategies for each person's unique lifestyle and condition -- and the result of this is a life-long dependence to prescription drugs.  Today's guest, Chris Kresser, is striving to change this model of healthcare.  Chris is a functional and integrated medicine provider, one of the most influential people in the health space, author, and entrepreneur who's been studying, practicing, and teaching alternative medicine for more than fifteen years. He believes diseases should be treated from the root cause, not the symptoms. This approach is called funct

There's no doubt our exercise and diet habits have drastically changed since the hunter-gatherer days.  We now exercise in machines and have immediate access to high-carb, high-calorie foods. These changes, although convenient, are harming your health more than you think.  Today's guest, Mark Sisson, explains why and what to do about it.  Mark has been advocating for a healthy lifestyle rooted in the way our ancestors moved and ate since 2006 in his popular blog Mark's Daily Apple. He became a leader in the Paleo community, popularized his eating philosophy called The Primal Blueprint, and recently turned into a vocal supporter of the ketogenic diet.  He has published books about primal living and ketosis and created his own primal supplement line.  In this episode, we chat about why he switched endurance exercise for fun strength and power workouts, how he first got into paleo primal living, how to make the leap from the paleo diet to ketosis, and much more. 

The most effective ways to upgrade your confidence, relationships, energy, and mental performance are also the simplest.  Biohacking means doing small but powerful changes -- biohacks-- that have a profound and long-lasting impact on your health. Today's guest, Tony Wrighton, shares his favorite biohacks for leveling up. Tony Wrighton is a Sky sports presenter as well as an author, one of Britains most popular NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) experts, and host of the top-rated podcast Zestology.  He has published three NLP-related books, which have been translated into 12 languages. In this episode, we chat about neuro-linguistic programming, using the ketogenic diet to heal, becoming fat-adapted, the carnivore diet, using intermittent fasting while traveling, and more hacks for a better life.

The quality of your food determines the quality of your health. It's no coincidence that the overconsumption of ultra-processed foods goes hand-in-hand with the rise in obesity and heart disease all over the world in the last few decades. The best way to achieve optimal health is to focus on finding, eating, and enjoying real, high-quality food.  Today's guest explains exactly how to do that.  Vivica Menegaz is a nutritionist, cookbook author, keto blogger, and former professional food photographer. In this episode, we talk about how to make healthier food choices, how to find local and seasonal foods, why detoxing is actually necessary (when done right), and much more. 

The way you perceive and interact with your food affects your health. Counting calories, obsessing over macros, eating on impulse, and binge-eating as a "reward" all foster a harmful relationship with food that makes you miserable and unhealthy.  Today's guest, Chris Dufey, knows this first hand. Chris is an author, speaker, former personal trainer, weight loss expert, and entrepreneur who went from feeling sluggish and tired in his early 20s to healthy and fit after improving his relationship with food.  In this episode, he joins me to talk about why it's better to focus on the quality of your food instead of the quantity, why you don't need to track nutrients intensely, how cheat meals harm you, and other steps you can take to upgrade your relationship with your food.     

Movement is more than just your workout. It's the way you walk, how you sit, how you stand, and the facial expressions you make.  Everything around us affects our movement, and in turn, our movement has a ripple effect on our physical, emotional, and mental health.  In today's episode, movement coach, licensed massage therapist, podcast host, and founder of Align Therapy™, Aaron Alexander, breaks down why optimizing our movement is vital for optimal health. We look at how our modern environment encourages incorrect movements and postures that end up causing pain, inflammation, and disease, and exactly what we can do to prevent it. Listen in to find out how you can foster healthier movements and enjoy a dynamic pain-free life.

Did you know that over 40% of Alzheimer's disease cases have one main cause?  Today's guest will tell you what it is (hint: it has to do with nutrition). In today's episode, famous science journalist and brain food expert Max Lugavere joins me to talk about how we can protect our brains from dementia and boost our cognitive performance with proper nutrition. He also explains the truth behind the onset of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and how we can easily prevent them.  Max is a filmmaker, TV personality, and science journalist passionate about brain health. He's a contributor to major publications including Medscape, Vice, Fast Company, and the Daily Beast. His latest book, Genius Foods, breaks down all the research he's done over the years on brain health, cognition, diet, and lifestyle habits.  Listen in to find out how you can protect and supercharge your brain through your food choices.

The protective effects of the ketogenic diet, including weight loss and brain power, happen thanks to abundant fatty acids and a strict carb restriction of just 20g/day. But what would happen if the carbs went down from 20g to zero? That's exactly what the carnivore diet does.  In this episode, filmmaker and low carb veteran Chris Bell compares the health effects of both the ketogenic diet and the carnivore diet. He also explains what mainstream nutrition gets wrong about carbs and plants.  Chris Bell is a former powerlifter and filmmaker with many successful documentaries under his belt, including Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, Prescription Thugs, and Trophy Kids.  Listen in to learn what the carnivore diet really is, what it does different from keto, and how both can help you. 

The fuel your body runs on determines how you feel and perform.   Relying on carbs when you should be using fat, or vice-versa, can lower your workout performance, mental energy, and productivity.  Metabolic flexibility unlocks your ability to switch between fats and carbs easily so you can adapt to different situations. Dr. Mike T Nelson is an expert in metabolic flexibility and our guest today. He has a PhD in Exercise Physiology, a Masters’ in Biomechanics, he’s a professor and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, and a professor in human performance at Carrick Institute for Functional Neurology. He's dedicated his career to figuring out how to make the human body stronger, healthier, and more adaptable.  In this episode, he goes deep into what metabolic flexibility is, how you can achieve it, how to balance your carbs and fats for optimal performance, the health markers you should track, and a lot more. 

  What is more likely to lead to heart disease: cholesterol or insulin resistance?  According to one of today's guests, Dr. Brian Lenzkes, it's the latter.  Dr. Lenzkes is an internal medicine doctor with extensive knowledge in clinical nutrition. By working closely with his patients, he's discovered insulin resistance is central in many metabolic diseases, much more so that cholesterol or triglycerides.  Today he sits down with me to explain why we need to start paying attention to our insulin sensitivity and how we can keep it in check with a ketogenic diet.  Rachel Gregory also joins me in this episode to talk about optimizing exercise with a low carb diet.   Rachel published the first ever human trial about the effects of the ketogenic diet on CrossFit athletes, and the results will impress you.  She's a board-certified nutrition specialist, athletic trainer, and entrepreneur.  Listen in to learn how a ketogenic diet can improve one of the most important health markers and make your workouts more effectiv

Inflammation is one of the major culprits in virtually all diseases.  Today's guest, Dr. Will Cole, has devoted his entire career to helping people with autoimmune inflammatory conditions, so he's an expert at dealing with inflammation.  One of the tools he implements to reduce inflammation in his patients is nutritional ketosis. A ketogenic diet can dramatically cut down inflammatory reactions and improve metabolic function. The results he's seen on his patients are nothing short of impressive, and in this episode, he tells us all about it.  Dr. Will Cole is a leading functional medicine clinician, chiropractor, author, lecturer, and a firm believer in personalized health. His individualized ketosis approach has made his functional medicine practice famous.  Listen in as he explains how to treat inflammation with ketosis, how to optimize your ketogenic diet, and what functional medicine is all about.

To improve your health, all you have to do is pay attention to what you eat. That's what today's guest, Emily Schromm, learned while she was in the process of healing her chronic acne, digestive problems, and fatigue. She explains why a high fat, low carb approach is the best to eradicate these health problems.  Emily is a successful personal trainer, nutritional therapy practitioner, CrossFit coach, fitness star, and CEO of Evolved Motion and Herbal Element. She created the first and only functional workout pack called the EMPACK, and she helps thousands of people around the world with her Superhero Challenge and The Body Awareness Project.  Tune in to find out how Emily healed herself, how she eats now, and how you can listen to your own body to find balance and be at your best every single day.

Common nutrition advice champions eating more plants, more vegetables, and more natural foods. But what happens if you turn your back on that advice? What happens when you instead cut out all plants and only eat meat?  That's the Carnivore Diet, and today's guest Ryan Munsey experimented with this diet for 30 days.  Ryan is a former fitness model, with a Dietetics degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition from Clemson University. He's a writer for leading fitness publications (Men’s Fitness, T-Nation, EliteFTS) is a member of the Men’s Health Fitness Council, and the host of the Better Human Project Podcast. Listen in to hear his results, as well as find out why you should pay attention the quality of your food no matter what way of eating you follow and why strength is the most important factor of health.

Calories in vs calories out is a great place to start with weight loss, but where those calories come from does matter.  Carbs make you fat, and we're exploring topics such as carbing up, cheating on keto, and what that does to your body, your gut, and your progress.  We'll also discuss "realistic keto". Because let's face it: you're going to eat pizza again. It's a part of life. How can you incorporate "life" into your low carb diet?