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Does it really have to be Keto versus Vegan?
Hi everyone, Jessica here. I am sorry that it has been so long since I have published a podcast! I have had to get my life back in order, I recently moved and I had to slow down to take out time for family. Anyway, I am ready to get back to business! That means I am ready to get back to helping you acheive your goals!
Choose both for ultimate healing power!
In this episode, my primary focus is to show you that there is no such thing as keto vs vegan. You can absolutely have the best of both worlds! In fact, it is much encouraged for you to do both.
The benefits of doing both numerous! You get to take the mitochondria fueling fats from the keto world and the energizing vegetables from the vegan world. The result is a nutrition powerhouse! Say goodbye to the processed meats, cheese, and dairy out of the keto and the bread, pasta, and beans out the vegetarian!
Are you not ready to part with some of these food items? No problem! You will not have to eliminate the carbs forever. You will simply learn to intermittently cycle them in your diet a few days a week after doing at least 2-3 weeks of strict keto.
If you know me, then you know that I am not a big proponent of long-term carb restriction! There are several different theories on this, but overall the keto diet is meant to be cycled off and on throughout the year! I will explain this more when I discuss keto-carb cycling!
An important takeaway is to remember that before even choosing between keto vs vegan, you need to make the ultimate decision to consume foods to fuel your mitochondria and avoid those that are highly processed. I think one of the things that turned me into the keto vegan or vegetarian is the relentless times I have explained to people that hot dogs, sausage, and other processed meats are not healthy. I have had many people ask me, “well isn’t it low carb?” Well, yes it is, but you are putting carcinogens into your body. It doesn’t count!
Keto diet and chakra balance
Okay, before you even decide on a keto vs vegan lifestyle, I would like to reiterate the importance of incorporating chakra balance into your life. I feel that before you start any type of diet, you should always lay the groundwork for mental stability. By this I mean, get your head screwed on straight! If you don’t have the right attitude or don’t pay attention to your chakra centers, then it will be hard to follow any kind of diet.
Once you are done listening to this podcast, I highly recommend you refer back to my following two podcasts, which are Keto diet and chakra balance for your health and How balancing your solar plexus chakra can help with weight loss. I would recommend that you first listen to the Keto diet and chakra balance for your health and then proceed on to the one about the solar plexus. In order to learn the most, I would listen to the whole season of podcasts regarding the Keto diet and chakra balance for your health! All of it is pertinent to your success on the keto diet!
Getting started on the keto vegan diet
Necessary tools
Ketone monitoring devices
Prior to starting your keto vegan diet, it is necessary for you to gather all of the supplies that you need. The tools that I recommend include the Keto mojo blood monitoring device and the Breathalyzer. You can also purchase urine test strips for monitoring, even though I am not a big proponent of these due to accuracy. It is best to monitor your ketones through your blood! I will discuss more about the Keto-Mojo in a little bit!
Carb monitoring
Another critical component to monitoring your keto diet is by calculating your net carbohydrate intake. The best way to do this is by using the Cronometer app! I love this app because it makes carb monitoring very user friendly. All you have to do is download onto your phone and then enter in your biometrics. You get to pick which type of keto diet you would like such as rigorous or relaxed. I tend to like the relaxed or moderate version because it allows for around 40-50 net carbs per day. However, if you are dealing with a long-term illness such as chronic fatigue, it may be advantageous for you to do a rigorous setting, which is 20 net carbs or under.
Overall, I find it very difficult to stay under 20 net carbs. If I want to do an aggressive keto, I tend to like to go with staying under 30 net carbs. I think that this is a sufficient number which will still give your mitochondria a boost, while allowing for you to get into a deep ketosis. Personally, I think that this makes it easier for people who are keto vegans, such as myself.
When you decide to go with Cronometer, I would highly recommend that you purchase the Gold version. It allows for more in-depth monitoring of your keto diet and incorporates an intermittent fasting component. If you are interested please go to my show notes and click the Cronometer link.
Purchasing a scale
Okay, so now we get to talk about a scale ! First off, if you don’t own a scale then I would recommend that you purchase one. Overall, I have seen more success with my patients who own a scale. I know they sometimes can not be fun, but they are essential for compliance. Even if you don’t weigh yourself every day, that is fine. Maybe make it a point to weigh yourself at least once a week at the same time for consistency.
Foods
The foods that you pick are not keto vs vegan type foods. They are incorporated into a keto vegan food! You will focus on good healthy fats and delicious vegetable recipes. In the future, I am going to be coming up with a 30 day meal plan for those of you who want to tread in the Keto Vegan world. One thing to keep in mind is that Keto Vegan is not the same as Keto Vegetarian. If you are wanting a keto vegetarian approach, you would just follow the keto vegan diet plan but incorporate eggs or fish.
The most common foods for a keto vegan lifestyle include the following:
Good fats
avocados or avocado oil , grass-fed butter, ghee, grass-fed tallow, coconut oil, cacao butter, olives or olive oil, sesame oil, MCT oil. This also includes: organic pastured eggs (vegetarian), raw nuts such as macadamias, animal-based omega 3 fats such as wild-caught Alaskan salmon (for the keto vegetarian), and various seeds (pumpkin, sesame, cumin, and hemp).
Proteins
Hempeh, Tempeh, Tofu( must be organic because of soy), nuts (macadamias, almonds, pecans, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts), and seeds( flax, hemp, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, psyllium seeds). For Keto vegetarian, any type of fish or eggs, depending on which type of keto vegetarian you are-pescatarian or lacto-ovo-vegetarian.
Strict Ketosis for 30 days then integrate carb-cycling
I highly recommend that you try to commit at least 30 days to a strict keto, which means 50 net carbs or less. You may find that you have to go under 35 net carbs to really get into good effective ketosis. If so, then that’s okay! You can always go back to 50 net carbs a day once you are in good fat-burning mode. You will find your sweet spot after a while!
If it seems too difficult to commit to a month of strict keto, at least try 2 weeks! You will find that you will feel so good after the 2 weeks is up, you may want to go for a longer period of time! Most people that I talk to feel this way!
After you have done your strict keto stint, then start incorporating a higher amount of carbs about 2-3 days a week. Now, when I say higher carbs, I mean a net carb amount of about 100-150 net carbs those days. These are the days to incorporate nutritious foods such as mangoes, basmati rice, sweet potatoes, and other foods that have a higher nutrient value but are high in carbs.
Also, those days are not a time to binge on junk food! You don’t want to undo everything you created!
Purchase a sauna to help with detox from keto flu
A sauna is a perfect method to help detox when you are burning ketones. As I mentioned earlier, when you go into ketosis, you are essentially burning fat stores first in your liver and then in your body. While this is great and is improving your health, you also need to detox. There are several ways that you can detox, but my favorite one is a sauna.
When you choose to use a sauna, you are passively sweating out toxins from your body. In turn, this will give your liver a break that it needs. Some people ask me, ” Well, what about my long hours at the gym? Doesn’t that help to eliminate toxins? ” The answer to this is yes it does, but not as much as when you use a sauna. You see, it all comes down to active versus passive sweating.
Passive versus active sweating
When you passively perspire, you eliminate all kinds of toxins in your body, such as heavy metals, mold, and more! When you exercise you are incorporating active sweating, which is considered “fight-or-flight time” and your body is allocating energy toward your muscles, lungs, and heart. However, when you passively sweat, with sauna therapy, your body is heated from the outside rather than from within, a much more restful state. Passive sweating allows your body to use the energy generated from the incandescent lamps to heal and repair itself, as it decides that this is an excellent time to release toxins through your sweat.
Benefits of sauna therapy
Sauna therapy has a range of benefits! Anything from helping to alleviate muscle aches to assisting with cancer treatment. It actually has been linked to direct cancer cell death. Even the Greek physician Parmenides said, “Give me the power to create fever, and I will cure any disease.3”
The magic of hyperthermia is wonderful! The principle of hyperthermia is that cancer cells are much more sensitive to and intolerant of the effects of excessive heat than normal cells. Tumors have an impaired ability to adapt their blood circulation to the effects of high temperatures. Since cancer cells are weaker than normal cells, they are more susceptible to damage from the heat provided by the sauna3
.According to the National Cancer Institute, “Hyperthermia (also called thermal therapy or thermotherapy) is a type of cancer treatment in which body tissue is exposed to high temperatures. Research has shown that high temperatures can damage and kill cancer cells, usually with minimal injury to normal tissues. Many studies have shown a significant reduction in tumor size when hyperthermia is combined with other treatments4.”
Choose wisely when purchasing a sauna!
If you would like to proceed with a sauna purchase, I have two companies that I would recommend. The main reason I recommend these companies is because they both have saunas which incorporate near-infrared light. When you are opting to get a sauna, you want to make sure that yours has the ability to do near-infrared light for optimal mitochondrial healing.
Which company you choose, will depend on your preference. I recommend that you go to my article on the blog called, Seven ways sauna therapy will heal your body. In this post, I discuss the two companies I recommend and what I like about each. This article also delves into some other great benefits of sauna therapy.
Ketone and Glucose/GKI sweet spot
Alright, so now let’s talk about the fun part! Monitoring your ketones! It is so great when you get to see the results of all of your efforts. I encourage people to monitor their ketones often because it helps in terms of compliance. There is something about knowing that you’re in ketosis and realizing that you are earning the fruits of your labor.
The choice in how often you should monitor your ketones is completely up to you! However, I do recommend that you check them at least once per day, especially in the first couple of weeks. During this time, your body is making a big transition and anything can affect your ability to make ketones. When you are constantly monitoring your ketones, then you know which foods will throw you out of the ketone range you would like to be in.
For example, say your going along and you are in good ketosis of around 1 mmol/L. You feel so good, that you decide to eat a banana. Please don’t be surprised if when you check your ketones again, that you may be producing very little ketones if any at all! It doesn’t take much! Not that a banana is bad for you, but it can deter your efforts when you are trying to get into good ketosis for the first initial weeks of doing keto.
What is the ideal ketosis range?
As long as you maintain ketosis of 0.5-1.5 then you are in a good spot for weight loss! I have found that I feel the best around a blood ketone level of 1-1.5. Everyone is different, what works for you may not work for someone else. If you feel better with more carbs, then just try to keep your ketone level around 0.5. If you are dealing with a chronic disease or even cancer, you may opt to have a higher ketone level around 1.5 or even more!
Choose a good tool to monitor your ketones
When it comes to checking your ketones, the most accurate way is to check them in your blood. Yes, this involves sticking your finger, but it is the go-to method for doing a keto diet. The main reason that blood monitoring is the best mainly because the critical ketone used by the body is beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), which is carried through the blood so it can get to the cells to be used for energy and fuel. Since our blood ketone levels are not profoundly affected by different variables (unlike ketones in the breath or urine), blood ketone testing is the most accurate representation of how many ketones we are producing.
Buy a Keto-Mojo Meter to monitor your ketones!
If you are interested in purchasing a device for monitoring your blood ketones, then I would recommend the Keto-Mojo meter. The great thing about this meter is that it also can monitor your glucose level. Tracking your blood sugar is also very important because it gives you an idea of how effective your keto diet has been. Overall, you want to try to opt to have your sugars in the 80s range. It is also important when it comes to figuring out your GKI.
What’s all this talk about GKI?
GKI or also known as the Glucose Ketone Index, is a simple formula that tracks the ratio of blood glucose to ketones as a single value5. But more important, it’s a biomarker for tracking your metabolic health as well as your level of ketosis, and it’s easily tracked if you have blood glucose and ketone testing meter like Keto-Mojo.
When I am doing a strict keto, I try to figure out my GKI at least once every few days. If you go to the Keto-mojo website, they have a calculator there that can assist you in figuring this out. All you do is put in your blood glucose along with your ketone value. Your blood glucose does matter too when it comes to ketosis!
GKI values
If you are wanting to maintain a healthy lifestyle or lose weight, then you would opt for a GKI between 6-9. If you have some long-term disorder, such as type 2 DM or insulin resistance then you need to be between 3-6. For someone undergoing cancer, epilepsy, or some sort of chronic inflammatory disease, then you would need to go even lower like between 1-3! Please go to my show notes to access the GKI calculator on the keto-mojo website.
All you do is click on one of the Keto-mojo links and go to search at the top and type in GKI.
Join Healthologist and get guidance on living a healthy life
Recently, another blogger (thatorganicmom) and I created a forum called Healthologist. This is so exciting because, in this forum, you can find valuable information for improving your health and commune with other people on a journey toward wellness. We just started this platform, so right now we offer it for a price of only $29.00 per year! Get your membership now while the price is good!
I am so glad that you have found me on my blog! I want to help you find a healthier way of life through keto and chakra balance. Please listen to my podcasts and learn about finding wellness with the incorporation of these two concepts. Also, sign up for my email list to get personalized updates from me! If you interested in finding out more about what types of foods are allowed on a keto vegan diet plan, then go here.
Namaste!
References
Cole, W. (2018). Ketotarian: the Mostly Plant-Based Plan to Burn Fat, Boost Your Energy, Crush Your Cravings, and Calm Inflammation. Penguin Group USA.2,3
https://infraredsauna.com/blog/6-ways-saunas-help-fight-cancer/3
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/surgery/hyperthermia-fact-sheet4
https://keto-mojo.com/glucose-ketone-index-gki/#calculate_gki_tab5
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