Well, hello, ladies and gents Roberts acts keto Savage.com.
And today I've got special guest, Johnston, Riley on the
line and she is a five year, veteran of the ketogenic
low-carb diet. She does CrossFit.
She's had two kids. She's done all kinds of
different diets, and she is a Savage when it comes to athletic
performance and really honing in and figuring out what
macronutrient distribution and a style of eating works well for
her. And the people that she works
with within the cost, fifth setting.
I learned a bunch. She's in our master's program
right now for nutrition currently.
She's doing a whole bunch of Commence with her cross-feed at
CrossFit. Athletes tongue twister there.
But super, super great conversation.
I feel like we're very aligned with how we think towards
nutrition. I learned a lot from from her.
I'm excited about what else? She's got going on currently.
So, definitely sit back, relax. Enjoy the podcast with Jocelyn.
And just we are laughs. How are you?
Good? How are you today?
Robert? I'm doing wonderful.
Wonderful. Well, so I was perusing on your
Instagram and you're doing CrossFit and a high level with
ketogenic approach, which you don't see a whole lot of.
I think you see a lot more of it now than you did a few years
back, but I'm always curious to speak with athletes that are
doing keto with all of these. You know, how League likely
demand. Any activities that people just
say is impossible? Yeah, so I started my adventure
on a ketogenic diet just over five years ago and like you said
at the time it was fairly heretical to be doing a
high-intensity sport like CrossFit without a lot of
carbohydrates. I had done.
So I've been doing CrossFit for almost 14 years and had a good
period of time of competing in CrossFit back when we used to
have a level of And called regionals.
I was there all the time and I was on my provincial team for
Olympic weightlifting went to Canadian Nationals for.
I think five years in a row. So definitely was doing the like
high-intensity sport, heavy weight, lifting kind of stuff.
And then I had my second baby in 2016.
And that was kind of like a full reset of anything training in
competitive and I'd really rough pregnancy.
Bring my body. And after I had that baby,
actually, I had gone back to doing like Like a traditional
macros kind of 40, 30, 30 split, hmm.
And actually gained weight. After I had the baby when I was
like, well this is not working. And at the time I was reading
about it was Bulletproof Coffee was kind of this trend and I was
like, okay. Well, I had switched to working
out in the morning rather than in the evening just on the baby
schedule wasn't really loving working out on an empty stomach
but didn't really want to eat a lot of food either.
So I thought I'll try this Bulletproof Coffee thing and I
enjoyed it. It was good.
Gave me a nice steady energy and then kind of went down the
rabbit hole of well, what is this all about, right?
MCT oil and then you get into the Ketone bodies and then the
ketogenic diet and that kind of sent me off going, like, okay.
Well, let's give this a whirl and it just was a really great
fit for me. And so now yeah, somehow, five
years has gone by and I'm still going.
It's kind of crazy. How the the Bulletproof Coffee
is. It was so many people's
introduction to the ketogenic diet before they even knew what
Kita was a time. The first time I'm my roommate
at the time was making this coffee with butter in it.
And MCT. Oh, I was like man, that looks
gross. I don't want no part of that,
but then I was hooked ever since.
So it's kind of like a that's the Catalyst I guess.
Yeah. It's the Gateway for a lot of
people. I think for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, you kind of a little bit
there after you talked about your second pregnancy, want to
make sure I didn't miss anything.
So after you were doing a traditional like Zone Diet, is
that what I heard it correctly? Yeah.
So I mean, I've done a lot of nutritional experiments over the
Is prior to CrossFit, I had done bought a couple seasons of
bodybuilding did figure for a couple years and then when I
transitioned into CrossFit they were at that time.
So that was around 2008, very heavy into the Zone.
Paleo combo zone diet. So I had done the original Zone,
way back when with the exact block prescription and it's a
very calorically restricted diet.
So I remember back then, I think it works out to I'm like a small
female according to their charts.
It was about Out nine hundred and twenty calories a day.
That's great. So you can imagine I was just
like catatonic on the floor, like cannot do anything on that
little food, so that nothing that all the crossfitters would
do was you would start to up the fat blocks.
So the Zone, Diet Works in these blocks of protein blocks of
carbohydrate blocks of fat. So then, I went up to five times
the fat blocks, and that's where I finally felt good, and I went,
okay, felt like, I had enough energy and could do all the
things I wanted to do, which reflecting back on that.
Now that It breaks down is almost a ketogenic diet.
So since there was a few little breadcrumbs, little Clues along
the way of things where I had that hint.
That like, hey, I think a lower carb high fat diet is going to
be where they end up, but it just took me a lot of years to
actually arrive. At that point.
What is the reigning champ as far as diets?
Go within the CrossFit Community.
Is there like a leading diet right now?
It'd be hard to say like the zone is still around in the
CrossFit material. Like, if you go take a CrossFit
level 1 course, it's still in the manual.
There's still questions on it on the test.
I think where that came from was.
They had this kind of Paleo Approach, right?
The CrossFit Mantra is meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Some fruit little starch. No sugar is basically just eat
real food, which is the what you should eat.
And then adding on a way to quantify how much And so at the
time and sort of the early 2000s, when CrossFit kind of
linked up with the Zone, there wasn't an easy way to do that,
right at what? Nobody had a smartphone in their
pocket. You can just punch things into
an app and know how many grams of protein carbs or fat were in
your food. So the Zone tried to make it an
easier way to quantify what you were eating still not super
precise. I think now we have access to
easier tools, that there's not as much need for that zone.
Block idea. Within the CrossFit world.
I think you kind of have a few different competing takes on
nutrition. There's certainly a small subset
of the like high-carb approach is still in there.
The core of the CrossFit CrossFit methodology stuff.
If you look at what they publish on their YouTube and Crossfit
Health, it's much more ketogenic.
Like they just had a CrossFit Health virtual conference a
couple weeks ago and the three people speaking on nutrition
where Thing about fasting really like and they had da dum,
D'Agostino talking about the ketogenic diet, and then they
had married, a needs from protein power, which is
essentially another version of a ketogenic diet.
So, from the core of the CrossFit stance, definitely
tilts more. Towards the low carb idea within
the CrossFit greater World. There are still people
recommending a higher carb approach.
So interesting, how like these different athletic Endeavors
wind up settling on a nutritional protocol for so
long. It seems Like, with
bodybuilding, it's always still the high carb approach.
Like, that's just what's ingrained in the way
bodybuilders think. So, like flexible dieting, If It
Fits your Macros, that's always been the reigning champ.
Least since I've been paying attention to it.
I don't know, either will ever really, you know, hold the, the,
you know, totem pole, top of the totem pole in that world, but
it's interesting to see like Endurance, Sports and Crossfit
kind of gearing more towards this little copper approach.
Yeah, and I think there's definitely a distinction between
a high level, like professional competitive crossfitter training
with a maximum amount of intensity multiple times a day,
like, dozens of training sessions every week.
The nutritional needs of that person are very different from
the average gym goer. It's going to show up to the
gym, maybe five days a week for an hour.
So I think that and those two things tend to get muddled.
So you'll see a professional CrossFit athlete.
Oh, say I 800 grams of Herbs a day and then an average person
with a desk job who does maybe an hour of physical activity a
day goes. I should eat that much to you.
Go. No, no.
No, the needs of those two athletes are very, very
different and the goals of those two athletes are very different.
Right? So what is your nutrition
personally look like now? Okay.
So like a typical day. I usually try to delay.
My first calories of the day as long as possible.
So I try to drink a good 20 ounces of water and I'll take a
couple grams of salt first thing in the morning then somewhere
around 10:30 or 11:00. I'll make a bulletproof coffee.
I throw MCT oil, grass-fed butter pure stearic acid, and
grass-fed collagen in their blend that up, that takes me
through till maybe 2:30 in the afternoon.
And then I'll usually have my first meal as like, some kind of
breakfast food. So, like eggs and meat, and
maybe a few macadamia nuts. And then dinner time, maybe like
6:30 or 7:00. Usually, you know, some kind of
meat, maybe a little vegetable in there and sometimes I'll
throw in small portions of carbohydrate like a quarter cup
of rice or, which is like 11 grams of carbs or a few cooked
and cooled potatoes. Like six small little potatoes
is like 16 grams of carbs, right?
So little small amounts in there sometimes, And then that's
pretty much it. So like two big meals in a
fairly compressed eating window and then the Bulletproof Coffee
in there too. So even today with those, you
know, carb sources, you're still probably under 30 grams total
carbs, even with the rice and potatoes.
Yeah, for sure. And that's something I think
people are often surprised at about a ketogenic diet.
They think that it has to be zero carb, which I've done that
to. I've done a strict carnivore
diet in the past and it, it worked out great.
I felt great but just for sort of the variety and Mixing it up
with the meals once in a while. I I can throw small portions of
fruit or starchy carbs in there without throwing me out of
ketosis like between 30 and 50 grams of carbs a day.
I can comfortably stay in ketosis.
I find if I go over that amount, I just feel non-stop hungry all
the time and I hate that feeling.
So do you like our, do you think there's any performance benefit
that comes from that? Or is it more?
So you're motivated to that just to add some more variety and
texture to your Palin. Yeah, so So performance changes,
I mean the cool thing about CrossFit as we track everything
we keep score. So when I switched and I mean my
story is a little bit unique because I switched at a time
where everything was in the tank after I've been pregnant but
where I've ended up back now my strength, like my numbers that I
can hit on, you know, lifts and that sort of thing are about 80
to 90% as strong as I ever was, which I think is cool because
I'm 38 pushing up the ears and I don't train nearly as much as I
used to. I train Maybe.
A quarter of the amount that I used to and I'm from my
competitive weightlifting days. I'm about 14 pounds lighter.
So almost a strong. I trained a quarter as much and
I'm lighter. So I think that's super cool.
And then the performance on the more high intensity stuff.
I found that my top end gear stayed about the same but my
ability to like repeat that performance.
So say it's like a an air bike Sprint where I used to be able
to hit a number. I'm doing like a minute on a
minute off something like that. It used to always like the first
one would be great. And then it would just like fall
into the toilet by those gift one.
Whereas now I find my ability to like repeat those performances.
Like I could hold the same number across all five sets is
better. So it didn't really take
anything off of the top end. It also didn't add anything to
the top end, but it gave me a more sustainable top end, makes
sense. Yeah, that makes total sense and
I look at kind of what I've experienced with the
bodybuilding Endeavors, and I don't feel like I'm necessarily.
Longer having Gone Kid. I mean, I'm still I mean over
time I'm putting on more muscle gradually, but I feel like my
ability to recover and just sustain that same level of
intensity as much longer than it was before hand.
Like I remember doing like a set of, you know, squats when I was
eating a bunch of carbs and be like, my knees would be wrecked
for a week. It would really do squats for
another week. Whereas now I can do squats
almost daily if I wanted to because I feel like, I don't
know if it's more. So a matter of just the, you
know, anti-inflammatory effect of being on a ketogenic diet and
being able to recover The faster.
I think that's probably the biggest Catalyst from a
performance standpoint. Yeah, for sure.
The recovery and the anti-inflammatory effect.
I think is something under appreciated.
Hmm, about eating a high carb diet versus a low carb diet.
I think there's definitely something there, I sleep great.
I get, I've posted Lots on my Instagram, about my aura, my
data from the aura, rang about getting like on average, over
three hours of deep sleep every night.
And I think that's just a function of like, very stable,
blood glucose. Of that low inflammatory just
everything's nice and calm in my body and I get great sleep which
is just like amplifies the recovery and it's like it gets
everything spinning in the right direction.
So with even with you including, you know, like little bit of
rice potatoes, you're pretty much staying in ketosis, you
know, pretty much. I mean, you're you're pretty
much in a fat adapted State indefinitely.
Like, you're not having any crazy carb up days or anything
like that. Currently, we do my husband and
I would call it fatter day. So usually every Saturday we'll
have something Nothing like a high carb meal.
Like we'll go out for dinner or will have something at home.
But yeah the so there's usually like one meal per week sometimes
two where I eat whatever and so I've always been like super open
about that on the keto athlete and posted about it and stuff.
One of the rules we adopted for ourselves during the covid.
Lockdown was whatever, junk food.
We're going to eat, we have to make it from scratch so that it
takes a lot of work and therefore it's a tree.
So, You know, with my kids one day we made donuts, but we like
made them from scratch. Made the dough, let them rise.
We fried them in lard that I got from a local butcher like and it
took all day which mean we're only gonna do it once, maybe
twice a year, you know? No, I like special kind of
creepy but it's a good way to do it.
I've always tried to be super upfront about that because I
think you could make the argument either way that I've
been successful on keto, despite having a cheat meal every week
or You could say I've been successful on keto because I
have a cheat meal every week. I think you could make an
argument in either direction. So once about once a week, I
cycle of ketosis for sure. Do you personally do that more?
So from just like a psychological standpoint like
you're noticing more of a benefit like with your family,
like your kids to be able to kind of have that lack stay.
Or is it do you think it's providing some benefit from like
a hormonal standpoint? You know, I'm not sure.
I would. I do it more.
So for the, the social aspect like you said, and I find I can
kind of plan in the week. So if I'm going to be at my
uncle's house for dinner and they're having lasagna and go,
it's going to be okay. That'll be my cheat meal or you
know, work like you said we're going to do something special
with our kids. We're going to make pizza or
something. And then I work for the CrossFit
home office on their level, one seminar staff.
So I travel on the weekends quite a bit and then we always
go out for dinner on the Saturday night.
So then I just know, you know, I don't have to stress out about
it or worry too much. I just got this is going to be
my meal that's like off the wagon for the week.
So it just works well to be a socially normal human.
Yeah. No, I totally, I mean, I totally
respected lot of people in the keto space that are really
dogmatic towards that. And I don't ever want to be
classified in that group. I mean, I don't do that, but I
feel like, you know, you obviously know what your body
responds. Well, to, you know, what your
mind responds. Well, to, you don't have a
problem, including that, and then getting right back on track
as obviously not hindering, you know, your day-to-day.
So, you know, more power to you as far as I'm concerned.
One of the things I've really been hard line about the last
couple years is avoiding processed vegetable, oils seed
oils. So even on those cheat days and
that's part of why we make things at home, you know,
avoiding fried foods. If we're going to make french
fries. We're going to make them at
home. We're going to fry them in beef.
Tallow like old-school how fries used to be made.
So even on those like higher carb cheat days.
I try to be really careful about keeping the process vegetable
oils out of it. And then I find You know, on
that, keeping it anti-inflammatory, then I feel
okay, the next day. It kind of took me a little bit.
Even after I'd gone keto to realize that all those High
omega-6 oils are terrible for like joint pain and recovery,
and it even makes my asthma feel worse, like just all of those
inflammatory processes. Dee Dee.
I'm innocent even independent of carbohydrates.
Give, you had, you know, like a higher fat meal independent, the
car behind carbohydrates with those Omega-6 is and you feel
all those the same Sensations. Yeah, and that's you know, so
like oh, you're going to go out to like a bar with your friends.
I'm going to order the chicken wings because they're low carb,
and then I would be like, I still felt gross after and it
gives me this kind of yucky feeling in my throat and you
don't maybe my knees, and my back hurt, a little more than
next day and you go. Oh, yeah.
Okay, just because it's like low carb is is one big step in the
right direction. But then also the the quality of
all the other things you're eating and the quality of the
faculty. It's I think makes a big
difference in whether you're going to be successful or not
with keto. Yeah, there's been some pretty
pretty compelling information. Put out here the past year to
bounce, you know, people collating the Obesity epidemic
more. So with process seed oils than,
you know, carbohydrate or sugar consumption necessarily, which
is pretty interesting. Yeah, and I think that's
something I've gained more of an appreciation for over the last
couple years and maybe it's just, it's all kind of coming
out at the same time that basically, when people are
getting unhealthy, you have all these highly Able
polyunsaturated fats making their way into your cell
membranes, and then it's making your fat cells dysfunctional,
and making them insulin resistant, and then you cannot
manage your blood sugar and then you end up with diabetes.
So it's the, it's the polyunsaturated vegetable oils.
That are giving you insulin resistance and then, the insulin
resistance gives you carbohydrate intolerance and now
everything goes Haywire than its metabolic.
Chaos, basically, yeah, we definitely want to avoid that.
You mention that you put stearic acid in your coffee.
What's the motivation behind that?
Yeah. Oh, stearic acid is a 18 carbon,
long chain, saturated fat, fully saturated, fat cholesterol
neutral. So there's, you know, different
molecule length of the saturated fats myristic acid palmitic
acid, stearic acid or 14 16 18, carbon chains super stable.
Those long chain saturated fats. There's no empty carbons on the
Chain. If you want to think of it like
that. There's no empty places at the
table. So if you can get those ones
into your cell membranes, It actually helps your fat cells
function properly. It can increase your metabolism
in the sense that, like, one of the things you can measure is
your body temperature, every morning.
And if you have chronically low body temperature, that's that's
not a good sign. When it's a sign of low
functioning metabolism. So stearic acid is helps with
sort of the opposite of the polyunsaturated.
Vegetable, oils. Nice table.
Cell. Membranes keeps your body
temperature. Your metabolism functioning
nicely has an effect on the Hypothalamus where it suppresses
appetite because it's basically just a signal that everything is
good in your body that you're like well fed things can run?
Functionally that it's not a stressful State.
Yes, their gas is the bomb. I eat a ton of stearic acid and
I don't ever experienced any GI distress from it.
I don't know. If you've followed Brad Marshall
on right at Marshall and I'll be yeah, he's got some pretty
interesting stuff on it as well. Yeah, I by my stomach acid from
fire in the bottle. Nice.
He's great. And that's kind of where it
started with red Marshall and There I can't say his last name.
Deborah. Milski.
Yeah, gated. Yeah, it's super interesting.
Like that's I didn't know that we get the keto bricks, which is
all cacao butter and cacao butter.
Yeah the highest source of stearic acid.
So I've been diving super deep in the research there and it's
pretty interesting stuff. I mean people that's the thing
about fats, like people just assume fats are all in one, you
know unit. They don't break it down over
the different types of fats, but once you start diving into the
research there, it's you can't help but notice that there's
there's each fan. That responds little bit
differently within the cell, and you want to optimize for the one
that's going to give you the best results.
That's why I avoiding. All these highly inflammatory
omega-6s is what people need to do.
Yeah, and I'm generally not a fan of the kind of counting
macros or If It Fits your Macros approach for that reason because
it just dumps, all proteins are the same.
All fats are the same. All carbohydrates are the same
and they are absolutely not like obviously my very Pro fat person
about 70% of my diet is fat. But like we've talked about
right pro-inflammatory. The polyunsaturated omega-6 is
can be quite harmful. Whereas other, you know, long
chain, very stable saturated fats.
Like stearic acid are very beneficial.
So we can't just lump in fat. Yeah, so hopefully I G like
it's, you know, there's big differences.
Totally totally agree. And I've come from a background
with like, the, the flexible dieting, and I don't want to
generalize and say they're all like that, but it seems to me
them the training philosophy within that Community.
That's, it's, like, it's all about the calories.
The macro nutrients and it doesn't really matter what
that's made up of like people that are following a flexible
learning approach. I can't say.
The majority of them are actually reading the ingredient
labels, which is pretty important.
Yeah. What about when you said you had
a rough pregnancy, that that was when you were eating more of the
Zone diet, right? Paleo Zone die.
So, okay. The Zone was early on in my
CrossFit journey and then during my competitive years of
weightlifting and Crossfit. So that would be like 2011 to
2016 ish? I fell into carb backloading and
if the to yeah, so kind of similar the idea of like low
carb all day train, you know the afternoon or evening and then
carb up like crazy at night. I'm saying idea being yeah, you
use super high glycemic carbs, like sugar candies spike, your
insulin and supposed to help you like replenish your muscle
glycogen and grow and everything.
So I did that for like quite a long time, which was fun,
because you get to basically candy every day.
But I took it way too far. I think it was just like, I
started to live for the junk food fix every day.
And I was, I was very strong and, you know competitive, but
getting progressively heavier little bit, a little bit every
year. I went up a weight class twice
in Olympic weightlifting. I think so great in a shorter
term performance. Anything but not a sustainable
way to operate. A definitely not a prolonged.
Eva T kind of life. I wouldn't say so.
Yeah, I think by the time I had my second baby that was 2016.
I had probably gotten myself to a place of like overdoing it on
the carbohydrate for sure. And then pregnancy is basically
like a stress test. It's a whatever, small
smoldering little problems. You have in your health or
metabolism, they get Amplified when you get pregnant and so, I
started off it, what would be considered a healthy point?
And then towards the end, my blood pressure got wildly out of
control like 120 over. 200 ended up having to take the baby out
of me early at 37 weeks. He's cool now, but yeah, just
like mentally I had a really bad time with it.
Physically. It was hard.
Had a C-section a second one. So it was just like I think too
because I had gone right from like, my kind of peak of
competitive stuff and really enjoying the personal pursuit to
wiping it right down to zero. My analogy was always like, my
we have two boys. My oldest son was born in 2010
and then I had all this fun competing and enjoyed the fat
physical Pursuit, and I always would laugh and say to people,
it's kind of like my analogies. Like my husband.
He really likes to build things like imagine if you build Built
your dream house. You put all this work into it.
You made it. Perfect made it just the way you
liked it and someone's like you can have another baby, but you
got to burn my house down. If you like.
Whoa. I don't really want to burn that
house down that became the the euphemism for being pregnant was
Burning Down the House. And then, you know, people are
like it'll be fine. You can build that house again
after like wouldn't really want to build it again.
I already built one. I liked so did it.
Basically I'm going to bounce back.
Then I would say it was at a good place about a year later a
year later. Yeah, I started doing keto when
the baby was six months old. Mmm.
And then from there, things started to get better took about
four months for me to hit my stride with keto.
Where I was like, oh, I feel awesome.
Now, we're definitely with some ups and downs in the beginning.
Took about four months to get that full adaptation thing
complete. And then by the time, he's about
a year old. I felt pretty good.
So you were doing the carb backloading?
Ting all throughout the pregnancy then while I was
pregnant, I was not really doing anything.
Good. Yeah, it was all over the place
of. Yeah, sometimes eating sometimes
feeling not like I want to eat at all and you know, you go
through different things where sometimes you have complete
aversions things that you like. I developed a real love of like
berries strawberries. Look like that was my big
craving when you started doing. He do after he was born.
Did that affect like your milk supply or anything or did your
body pretty much function pretty well with that it went.
Okay, that was right around the time that he was starting to
transition to solid foods and stuff.
So gotcha. Yeah.
I know. I people have asked me that
quite a bit about like breastfeeding on keto.
I wasn't quite in the keto thing when I was still full time
breastfeeding with him. Yeah.
She got you my wife pregnant right now.
She's 29 weeks today actually. Oh, yeah.
Congratulations. Yeah.
Thanks. Thanks.
She's been, he do the whole way through the pregnancy, some
curious to see how, you know for her birth and breastfeeding goes
with being strict. He's a bit strange because so
many people think that you can't do, you can't have a healthy
pregnancy. If you're doing a kid, you think
that you can't do without carbs, but I haven't noticed that at
all with her and I would think I mean if I could go back and do
it again, I would absolutely do it with like an animal-based
keto because like, what does that baby need?
It needs like all the good fats to grow its brain.
It needs tons of protein to make its body.
It needs all these nutrients. Like, that's where Getting the
good stuff. Yeah, it's not coming from oats
and rice and totally nutrient deficient foods.
Like it's kind of a funny thing, isn't it 100%.
So after after the C-section, did you like avoid training
entirely for several months and then like how that impact you
mentally? Yeah, it was, you know, they
tell you to wait six to eight weeks and then I started just
really gentle stuff. I called it pajama Fitness or
flip-flop Fitness the first little bit if anything required
me to exert. Myself more than like taking off
my flip-flops. Then I was probably trying too
hard. So just super gentle like hip
Bridges and seated presses. And like I put a lot of time
into rebuilding my hips. I was 26 when I had my first
baby and I'm 32, and I had the second one.
So it was definitely different, being older and I wanted to do
it right. I wanted to take the time and
not push too hard too soon. I had some nerve damage.
Inside from my c-section. So my one whole side of my hip
didn't really function to well. So just a lot of like slow and
steady and kind of took that opportunity to like go back and
start over, you know, if you're like, oh if I could go start
cross over again, I would totally do it this way.
I'm like, okay. Well, I'm just going to view
this as an opportunity to like turn back the clock and do it
like that and rebuild better than the first time.
So I would say now I feel like healthier and more functional
more stable 38 now than I did like 10 years ago.
Yeah, awesome. I feel like I feel like, you
know working out being healthy doing resistance training,
especially if you get the diet dialed in like it's truly the
Fountain of Youth. I mean your ability to bounce
back from an injury is just so much better.
Your ability to maintain your muscle and then your Mobility as
you age is just such like night and day difference between
people, that work at people that, don't ya.
And I don't know where those those roads start to diverge
somewhere. In your mid-30s.
I think, for most people wear, You start to see these two
paths, take off very different direction that I think you can
get away with some shit in your 20s and not really suffer too
bad and then it catches up with you somewhere between 30 and 40
for sure. And you see a clear difference
in quality of life. And yeah, like you said, ability
to bounce back and, you know, even chances of getting injured
in the first place. If you've taken care of yourself
and I think resistance training is like the number one, the big
lever that you can pull. That's going to provide the most
benefit. It for your longevity, totally,
why? CrossFit of all the of all the
athletic Outlets, you could have pursued, what Drew you to
CrossFit. Well, that's a good question.
So I played no Sports as a kid. I was very not athletic at all.
It was way more of like a math nerd and a Band Geek and all
that kind of stuff. So Athletics and sport was like
not on my radar until I was in grad school.
So, like early 20s, and I was like, I should probably like
workout. I should probably get fit, you
know, gets Any whatever was the goal at the time?
So started just going to a regular gym.
And the girl that was my hair stylist.
Is my best friend's cousin at the time.
She was doing prepping for a figure show and I was like,
well, she looks great. It's like I want to do whatever
she's doing. Hmm.
So then I got into that bodybuilding world for a couple
years and kind of discovered just genetically, have a good
ability to build muscle is kind of like a little short stocky
build those like, okay. Well, this is cool.
And then did, you know, a couple seasons of the shows and the
prep and all that, which was tough, you know the dieting
especially It was done back then was very mentally challenging.
And then that was kind of I had done a show called The Emerald
Cup in Seattle. I've done that.
Yeah, yeah. Is it was a really fun one, but
I was backstage with all these girls and everyone was just
talking about all the different drugs.
They were on like openly and this is kind of like naive
little girl from Canada and I was like what the fuck?
I was like, I just want to work out and like be healthy and
live. Look good, you know I was like I
am not in for this so it was kind of that point of like I
felt like if I was going to be more competitive, I was going to
have to go down the pharmaceutical road and it
wasn't super into that. And I at the time, I read an
article in a muscle and fitness magazine because I was
subscribed to all those things back.
Then it was called the hardest workout in the world and it was
about crossfit workout called the filthy 50.
And I like a lot of people when they try there first crossfit
workout. I thought I was very fit.
And so I was like, oh, bring it hard.
What in the world? I was like body building and
running half marathons and doing yoga all the time and stuff.
So and like many, I got just owned my first workout, just
like punished so bad and had this Awakening where I was like,
oh my God, like I thought I was fit.
I am clearly. Not like there's something to
this and I got to figure out what it is.
And so my husband and I we were not married yet, but just
dating. At the time we both started
goofing around with Crossfit workouts ourselves and We had
both quit our jobs. In the meantime.
I used to work for a as a financial analyst for an
investment firm and he was running a restaurant and in a
total fit of probably sheer stupidity.
One day. We both came home from work and
we're like, let's quit our jobs and be personal trainers.
So we did and we open this little personal training Studio.
And then, so he and I were goofing around with these
Crossfit workouts. And then we started using them
with our clients. The people we were training, and
they really liked it. They were having more fun and
they were trying harder, and then we found, they were
experiencing less injuries on like normal day-to-day tasks,
like shoveling the driveway or gardening in the summer.
And we were like, okay. Well, this is cool.
And then it just kind of yeah, just, we just kept following,
what was working, and what we liked, what we're having fun
with? And somehow Like 14 years gone
by nice. No CrossFit.
Super cool. Like I have the most respect for
CrossFit athletes because it made it does require totally
unique. I mean you have to have just
Extreme Conditioning throughout night from a muscular standpoint
from a cardiovascular respiratory standpoint.
Like you can't really have any lagging, you know, gaps in your
Fitness. Like you have to pretty much Run
the game. And basically, yeah, and I think
that was it makes it interesting and fun because it's It's never
boring. You're constantly switching it
up and doing all different kinds of things.
And so then over the years there's those opportunities to
like I'm going to focus on weightlifting for a while and
learn all about that. And then you're like, I'm going
to focus on my gymnastics for a little bit and then I'm gonna
learn all about like conditioning programming.
And yeah, so there's all these little Avenues you can go off of
but you still kind of stay true to the core of what CrossFit is
all about, which is specializing in not specializing and trying
to be broadly, good at as many things as you can.
Yeah, then it like the community of CrossFit.
I think is something that is super important.
So it brought a lot of very cool people into my life and gave me
all these opportunities to travel and meet other people.
And yeah, so like the community aspect of it has been really
helpful and keeping me dedicated for the long term if there was a
pitfall to CrossFit. What would it be?
Oh, okay. So the things that.
Yeah, good question. My personal experience over the
years. So, I was saying, one of the
great things about CrossFit is we keep score.
So, you know, the old school was a logbook now, it's mostly apps
that you do it. So when things are going well,
you know, exactly how well they're going.
You. See, your lifts go up, you see,
or times go down, but then the kind of depressing part is when
things are not going well. Like, after having a baby, you
know, exactly how much less fit you are.
So that's a bummer. Got ya.
So there's definitely like the mental aspect of if something
happens. The throws a wrench in your
Fitness. It's mentally hard to get back
on it when you have to be fully aware of, like how much you suck
right now. So that's, you know, you have to
be prepared for that mental hurdle.
I think there's, you have to have a good coach and you have
to be in the right kind of community.
I think it's like, it's like a tool, right?
So, you can take a hammer. And you can use it to build
something beautiful, or you could smash yourself in the
forehead with it. Right?
It's like how are you going to use this tool?
So I think if there's like poor coaching or unsupervised, people
have a tendency to gravitate to like the sexy moves.
It want to do handstand push-ups or they want to do muscle ups,
or they want to get a big squat snatch, but they're not taking
the time to build the base of strength and Joint conditioning
and all that kind of stuff that you need to be able to do those
things. Well, so if you kind of do too
much too soon. You'll just end up injured.
If you don't pay your dues and do your time to build the base,
like you better have some good solid regular push-ups before
you're upside down and a handstand push-up, you know,
dropping yourself on your neck, right?
So if you haven't built the base, I think that's the
equivalent of hitting yourself in the face with the hammer.
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of technical stuff
involved in CrossFit. So if you don't have some pretty
good Form and Function, you just asking for injury.
Mmm, makes. And that's the role of the coach
is to progress you. The charter for safety and
Crossfit is mechanics consistency, then intensity.
You have to have good solid mechanics.
First. You have to be able to keep them
consistently all the way from the first rep to the last rep
and work out. And then you can start to apply
intensity which means like heavier or faster or any of
those kind of things. And how many days you typically
doing CrossFit currently a good week?
For me is like between three and five.
I'm way less routine. Now.
It just sort of seems to be a function of like the way life
goes and kids and all that kind of stuff.
My oldest is 11. So I've been doing a good chunk
of my training with him the last year or two kind of started
during the pandemic lockdown. So that's super fun.
He's a competitive gymnast. So then, in between his
gymnastics training days, we do just a little bit more strength
and conditioning. Try to make sure you squatting
and doing lots of pull-ups and dips and planks and building the
base. Like we just talked about, can
do a muscle up yet. He can.
Yeah, impressive. I know, I know he can do a
strict muscle-up. Nice, pretty cool.
Hey, those muscles when I was doing CrossFit that like, from
what we see from our perspective coaching adults, what?
Builds the best base of Fitness that carries you through the
rest of your life as gymnastics. No, I totally believe that.
It makes it makes sense. Yeah, the strength of
coordination, the flexibility and most Eels, if you build them
early enough, they just seem to stay in your brain for your
whole life. Do you do a lot of like
stretching and flexibility Mobility to work like
pre-training or do you kind of just worked it into your
day-to-day? Yeah, you know what?
I am quite flexible and I had done a lot of yoga prior to
CrossFit. So I came into CrossFit already,
very flexible. And if anything a little bit too
flexible, access range of motion is just more to control when
you're under heavy loads at high speed.
So I actually had to work. Especially when I was doing a
lot of Olympic weightlifting. I had to be had to work to be a
little bit less flexible, which is sort of the backwards problem
from what most people have. I coach CrossFit in my gym,
three or four days a week. So I'm just up and moving around
and doing warm-ups and a million reps with a PVC pipe.
So I get a lot of General daily movement in my life.
And therefore, I don't, Have times where I just work on
Mobility, but that's not to say, but I acknowledge that that's
not the case for most people. I don't have a desk job.
I don't set all day. Most of my day is moving around,
you know, I do a million stretches and movements and
squats and things just as a course of function of my job.
So then I actually don't have to do a lot of dedicated Mobility
time. Know that makes those into think
people stuck in front of a computer all day long.
That those are the ones that need to be really putting in
that from active stretch work. Yeah.
And I think that is super, super important to have good
flexibility, because then you can be in better positions.
You're safer. You have better power output and
then just like functionally throughout all the years of your
life. Flexibility is just so
important. Yeah, totally agree.
I know you're not tracking calories and macros or anything
really just did right now by any means.
But do you have any rough guesstimation of how much you're
eating a day? Like how many calories total?
Yeah. I mean I certainly have done.
Tons of calorie macro tracking and stuff.
My general intake is about a gram of protein per pound of
body weight. So between 120 and 130 grams of
protein, try to keep the carbs that probably between 30 and 50
for the day. And then, the fat is probably
122, maybe 200 grams of fat in the day.
Depending I really go with my appetite, which fluctuates, you
know, week to week month to month, that kind of stuff.
I definitely make no attempt to like restrict anything, if I'm
hungry. I just eat more.
Usually start with protein and then add in the fat.
So what does that work out to probably between 2,500 and 3,000
calories a day? Yeah.
It's pretty good. I mean, I see, like I've seen
all these Trends come and go within the, you know, keto
space, but just adding space in general and one that I've always
been fighting tooth and nail, is that people that just
chronically under eat and just restrict far too much.
They don't do themselves. Any favors from metabolic
standpoint from Muscle building standpoint because they're
constantly eating some thousand calories.
Yeah, so I'm sure you probably see this all the time too.
And you consuming personally 2,500 to 3,000 calories a day
and functioning as highly as you are.
I mean, it just goes to show that people have to fuel their
bodies properly. So I don't know why people keep,
you know, having this restriction mindset, it top of
mind. Yeah.
I mean, especially with I feel strongly about that with female
athletes to from wanker, you know, fertility and hormonal
perspective. I think a lot of women get
Ourselves into a really difficult place by trying to do
that overtraining and under eating.
And I think the fat, especially for I'm going to say women.
But men and women, right? Like, fat and cholesterol
saturated fats. Those are the basis of all your
sex hormones, or testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, both
men and women. You can give yourself some
severe hormonal Problems by under eating fat, especially
like, one thing I noticed from the kind of early days of
CrossFit competitive. I was kind of at two Thousand
Eleven to Fifteen sixteen era. Where girls would be training,
hard, lifting, heavy. So these were like lean fit.
High-performing girls, presumably doing that with a lot
of carbohydrate like 50 to 60 percent carbs.
And then as we all got older, I know.
Personally, I think six or seven women that had PCOS and couldn't
get pregnant and had to do IVF and you're like, what the heck?
Like, PCOS is a disease of insulin resistance.
Write the first line of treatment is glucophage.
Foreman. It's an insulin sensitizer.
Right? So, and it's usually associated
with like, obesity and diabetes and those sorts of things but
you're like, you would never look at these girls.
You think they're lean and strong and high performing and
yet they have a disease of insulin resistance that affects
their ability to have a baby when they want to go.
Like that's like and so young to like late 20s early 30s, and I
think it's just from, I mean you could make the argument either
direction. Is it too much carbs?
Or is it not enough fat? Or is it both, you know, yeah.
I think you're onto something for sure.
I mean, when I would compete and I'd be backstage with the other
competitors may be talking about what they're consuming.
I mean, I've stepped on stage of people that would go as far as
to cut out fish, oil pills from their diet for trying to remove
as much dietary fat as possible. And I mean, I would just see
their hormone levels tank, you know, on the male side of the
spectrum too. So I mean, imagine from a female
standpoint, especially if you're trying to get pregnant, it's
certainly far from optimal and I feel like that, you know,
there's been an interesting shift within the keto space as
well. As of late, a people
associating, a kid ink diet with simply removing the
carbohydrates, but not having enough natural fat.
So, proteins, been given this Halo and people are consuming a
ton of protein and I'm by no means want to say people
shouldn't consume a lot of protein.
But if you don't have enough natural fat, you're still not
doing yourself any favors. Yeah, totally.
And especially if you're already at or close to your ideal body
weight, like if you're fairly lean and you don't have a lot of
body fat to mobilize, then then you better believe you go to be
eating a lot of fat to fuel your And your body and your muscles
and everything else. Like energy has got to come from
somewhere. Totally.
You mentioned earlier that
whenever you go above about 50 grams total carbohydrates your
Cravings intensifies that. Yeah, I so caloric, or what do
you think's causing the Cravings there?
Yeah. I think it's just like it the
carbohydrates. And, you know, especially if
it's combined with any kind of vegetable oils.
It just tickles the brain and just the right way to get those
like, craving behaviors. Like Set the level of the
hypothalamus or suppression of cholecystokinin with like cck.
Like sugar will do this specifically fructose.
Also the omega-6 linoleic acid. It binds to your endocannabinoid
system. So like gives you the munchies
in the same way that cannabis does like Elevate sap.
Mmm. Yeah, so I just find if I go
over, you know, and maybe it's the effect on blood sugar.
Maybe it's a little bit of like a hypoglycemic rebound.
If blood sugar goes up and then the insulin comes out and
correct like over correct. Then you end up hypoglycemic
could be any of those things. It's definitely independent of
the calories, like scene or something with like, zero
calorie sweeteners. Yeah, I try to avoid for the
most part, the zero calorie sweeteners.
I'll do a little bit of monk fruit sometimes in a few
different recipes, but for the most part I find I would rather
have something that's like a real food.
Like, you know, if I'm going to make a recipe and it's going to
have a little bit of Honey or a little bit of banana mushed up
in it or something. I find my body can make sense of
it. Tastes sweet and it is sweet.
You know, the taste that comes in your mouth is followed.
I'd buy a certain amount of carbohydrate that's in your
digestive system. As long, as those two things
stay linked together. It seems, I seem to be able to
manage appetite and cravings and stuff better.
If it's too much then it makes it Go haywire.
And if it's too much of the artificial sweeteners and it
also seems to make things go Haywire.
Yeah, it's super interesting. I feel like you know so much the
discussion around food and nutrition is is honestly more so
psychological than it is physiological.
Especially with us humans because we're such a unique
species, but I talked to so many people and just simply having
the sensation of something sweet hit their tongue.
I mean, they just their Cravings run rampant.
So a lot of people, you know, go to Quito or low car because they
have better. Eliminating, those Temptations
than trying to moderate it. So, I mean, it makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah.
For sure. I am not a big fan of like, The
keto treats and keto desserts and you know, just still eating
junk food, but switching out the type of sweetener.
I think it negates. What is the major advantage of
Quito which is it suppresses your appetite.
So I think when you start to have that hyper palatable
combination of sweet and fat together, It dis regulates your
ability to control your appetite.
Yeah, totally, totally agree. Yeah, you said you've been doing
this now for five years. Yeah.
Yeah, January 2020. Makes 2022, makes it five years
and there's no plans and deviating in the foreseeable
future. It's worked obviously pretty
well for you. That's for.
Yeah, and I've, I mean, I've done a lot of different
experiments and from that kind of base of Quito over the years
to continue to Tinker and figure out what works.
And I'm not like dogmatically attached to anyone.
Ideology for sure. Like and I kind of acknowledge
that nutritional needs change over the course of a lifetime to
like, especially with women, right?
Go through all these different phases of your life.
So I'm totally open to, like, do keep doing what works and if it
stops working, try something else.
I've from that base of Quito, you know, kind of figure it out.
Okay, a lot of artificial sweeteners aren't great.
I don't feel good. When I do a lot of that, I did a
nutrition challenge early on that was of like micronutrients.
I was like, I'm you know, I'm pretty good with my macros.
I know what makes me feel good. I was like, I'm going to try to
add more micronutrients. I'm going to add vegetables, or
greens to like every meal. I'm going to put spinach in my
eggs in the morning and I'm going to eat more bell peppers
and like lower carb vegetable Foods.
I did it for 30 days and I felt awful.
It was the worst / felt and I went into it being like, I'm
going to feel so good and my You know, all these things that that
you just kind of hear about like plant foods like, oh my skin is
going to be great, and I'm going to feel so good.
I'm going to have such a great immune system and it was the
complete opposite. I felt awful.
So then I went okay, like really a lot of plant foods and I don't
agree with each other. You think that?
Because I've done similar experiment since weird because I
never noticed a benefit from, including a lot more, you know,
micro greens and stuff like that.
Like, I totally get it. If somebody wants to just, you
know, have a different variety or Texture in there.
On their plate, but I don't see any inherent benefits from it.
Do you think? That's because if you remove
them for so long, that your body kind of becomes intolerant to
the minute takes quite a bit longer to, you know, acclimate
to that again, or do you think it's just black and white?
Your body doesn't like it. Yeah.
I don't know. And I think certainly anytime
you make a big dietary change. There's a period of adaptation.
Same thing with keto same thing. If you haven't eaten a lot of
meat and then you start eating meat again.
So that was where I was like, I'm going to give it the full 30
days. You know, I felt like garbage in
the first week, but I was like that can happen when you try
something new. So I was like, I'm gonna, you
know, give it the complete length of this nutrition
challenge just to kind of feel it out.
And yeah. Got to the end of it.
I was like, okay. We'll try try that.
That's I don't have to do that again.
I figure it out between the leafy greens and almonds that I
was overdoing it on on oxalates with some of the early years of
Quito because Everything is almond flour, almond butter
almonds almonds almonds, which I can do in small amounts, but
when it was like becoming such a huge part of my caloric intake
for the day, then the oxalate toxicity was showing up as like
joint pain, like skin breakouts, especially like along my jawline
and stuff. So, you know, continue to Tinker
and then realize, like, okay can't overdo it on the, on the
plant, the natural plant herbicides can only do those
things in small amounts. So that helped Did a just over a
month of strict carnivore? Let's see what that's all about.
That was, I felt really good. I did it in January 1 year.
So I live in the Prairies in Canada.
So it seemed very like, seasonally appropriate.
Hmm. It was like if I was an early
settler and lived here, what would I eat in the winter?
There's no plants. So it would be whatever deer
moose or elk. I could manage to find.
So that was interesting adverse effect with that at all.
I mean, did you have anything? You didn't like about it other
than just, the lack of writing? Yeah, and that was basically I
just like, I felt great. I had no like digestive issues
or anything but partly because I've been pretty animal-based
keto for quite a long time before making that switch.
It wasn't hugely different than what I was already doing.
You prefer with Crossfit didn't wasn't hindered at all.
Yeah, actually it felt great. I just felt very like
clear-headed and energetic and yeah, I felt like really good
through that whole time. Basically just it's a bit
boring. That's the worst thing I could
say about it as like is just a bit boring and repetitive.
I really like to cook. So it challenged my cooking
skills to like come up with more varieties of ways to prepare
meat and stuff. But yeah, something overall
generally, very positive and I still eat probably. 90% of my
calories or animal-based but just for like a little bit of
variety. I'll add in like like macadamia
nuts. A few little things, need a few
veggies here and there once in a while.
But still mostly meat eggs, butter cream would be the like
bulk of my calories for sure. Yeah, you can't go wrong with
that, man. Carnivores, great.
I've done it. I feel like the benefits.
For not doing carnivore and just kind of having a little bit more
flexibility with a, you know, standard kids, unique
approaches. You got more variety from fat
sources. You can certainly make the
macros work with a full-blown carnivore approach, but you just
have a lot more variety. And I kind of like the ride as
long as you don't have any sensitivities to those Foods.
You're using. Yeah.
I like to, I like the idea of seasonal eating, you know, local
full fresh natural ingredients. I live in Saskatchewan in
Canada. So like big farm country.
Tree. Like I said, in the winter,
there would be not much more than animals available.
But then kind of late, summer, and fall.
I really enjoy the seasonal variety.
And, you know, I have a pear tree in my backyard, but for
about two weeks of the Year, makes these amazing pairs.
So then I'll be like maybe a little bit, higher carb, or just
enjoying some of those Foods when they're available, but
they're available for such short periods of time in the air, you
know, I don't bother eating blueberries in January that had
to get shipped in. South America or something.
Like it's I just don't see even nutritionally the benefit in
doing that way out of season, but I think sticking to like
that little seasonal, variety of things good.
Yeah, it's been interesting to see the whole fruit and Honey
Thing pop up within the carnivore Community, as of late.
Everybody's talking about eating, you know, carnivore, but
then also fruit on a regular basis and honey, but like you
just said, there's a lot of times on the year where you
would not have Access abundance of fruit.
So it would really make sense from a single seasonal
standpoint. Yeah, and I think if you look at
like seasonal, variety did a nutrition seminar on this last
year. I'm like seasonal eating.
It's about like where we live. We have strong differences
between summer and winter. Hmm.
Plant foods are available, maybe three months of the year, like
kind of late summer, August September, October kind of
berries, pears and apples. And then you get into like the
tubers and squashes. Potatoes, sweet potatoes
pumpkins, that kind of stuff, so, three months of the year and
then the rest of the year, what would you be eating?
Well, large game animals, maybe some fish.
We have, like, good Northern Canadian fishing around here and
that's pretty much it. So, you'd be eating meat and fat
in plants in about a three to one ratio about nine months of
the year. Basically, no plants about three
months of the year, some whole plant Foods available, same
thing with Honey, and that sort of thing.
Imagine I eat little bits of honey once in a while and I try
to think of only eat it as much as if I had to fight a swarm of
bees to get it. It's a good way to put it.
If I had to put that much effort into getting this honey.
It wouldn't be happening that often.
So small amounts once in a while, you know with like big
long breaks in between. No it makes total sense.
Is it like freaking cold right there?
In Saskatchewan right now, it really is.
Yeah, I think Today when my kids left for school at said, feels
like minus 33 which is Celsius, but it's almost the same in
fahrenheit. That's crazy.
I used to live in Minnesota and it was super cool of time there,
but then I think about people in Canada and I'm just like that's
a whole nother ball game. I think we're probably not that
different than back then, Minnesota.
Actually. Yeah.
It's and I'm in Arkansas now,
that's kind of nice. Having to warmer weather little
bit more. Yeah, that's cool though.
But what do you got in the pipeline?
What sketch excited when you get playing as far as athletic and
Verse what's coming up? Yeah, so things that are kind of
on the roll. Now my baby I was talking about
the my youngest is in kindergarten this year.
So that kind of frees up more of my time.
He's gone to school. I went back to school.
This year. I'm doing a master's of Science
and human nutrition really enjoying brushing off, the old
academic skills and being back in school.
So that's really fun learning, lots of stuff there.
Like I said, I work for CrossFit HQ.
You now. So I get to travel all over the
country on the weekends and meet other crossfitters.
And it's the course that certifies new trainers.
Do CrossFit level 1 coaches. So that's really awesome.
I love visiting other places and meeting all these new people and
then within our gym Community. I'm developing more nutrition
courses. So we're about to start one in
March that were calling the glucose group.
We're gonna have people where continuous glucose monitors and
we're going to test Bunch of different foods, so it'll be
interesting. You can like, yeah, pretty
pre-portion foods. And then the idea being we're
all going to share the information and kind of see how
different it can be for everybody.
And find a way of eating, over the course of that month, that
keeps average blood glucose. I guess in American milligrams,
per deciliter would be like under 87 and minimize glucose
fluctuations. So, it doesn't necessarily have
to be low carb. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
Maybe it's different types of carbs.
We're going to test out, like, bananas versus Rice versus
potatoes vs. Cooked and cooled rice.
Like the resistant starch thing that you can do to bring down
some of the carbohydrate. So that's really fun.
I put together a series of seminars last year that I
delivered live, but I'm working on putting them into an online
course format. So people can access them
anytime. I think I did six different
nutrition topics. Very cool.
Yeah. So what is the what's the
Academia? Like right now with your
master's program? Is it they talking much about
the ketogenic approach to nutrition?
Or is that not really in the conversation?
You know what, it actually really is.
So, the program that I picked is out of Connecticut, the
University of Bridgeport. So it's a fully online Master's
program, which was part of the criteria for me, being an adult
with stuff on the go had to be all online.
Very flexible. So this one tracks to write the
CNS, a certified nutrition specialist, licensing exam, when
you're all done and then the CNS has a subspecialty called the
certified ketogenic nutrition. List, so if I wanted to go into
being able to treat like kids with drug-resistant epilepsy and
like prescribing a clinical ketogenic diet in a medical
setting. So the CNS license allows you to
kind of same practicing rights as like a dietitian but a little
bit more specialized towards they call it like functional
medicine based, which is kind of a code word these days form or
whatever. You want to call it.
Whole Foods. Slightly more animal-based.
Like Pro fact and ketogenic diets and that kind of thing.
So it's really neat to see see those things changing.
It is it is happening. Are there like a lot of
prerequisites for that class and I from a bachelor standpoint or
do you just gonna go right into it?
Yeah. So this one another reason why
it was appealing to me, you do have to have an undergraduate
degree with a certain like minimum GPA.
But then they have the option where they build in the
prerequisite science courses. If you don't have a, an
undergraduate degree in a science.
Added Fields. I have a bachelor of Commerce
and an MBA. So I was all business and math
and stuff. So this one they have like the
first semester you take bio chemistry and Anatomy &
physiology and nutrition fundamentals, and all that kind
of stuff is built in. If you have a background in
science, as you can apply for advanced standing and Skip all
that stuff, but it is really neat how they built it into the
program. And then it's biochemistry for
the clinical nutritionist and its anatomy and physiology for
the clinical nutritionist. So they keep it very specific.
Like what you need to know and what you'll be studying.
So super interesting. I really enjoyed that part of
the program and now I'm into the next phase of it, which is the
current class. I'm taking is called
evidence-based nutrition. So the whole class is just
reading scientific studies understanding study design,
hierarchy of evidence, you know, from epidemiology all the way up
to, like, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, recognizing like,
bias and error in study design and all that kind of stuff.
So, I Of that. That's what I was doing for fun
before. I was just reading scientific
papers and you know taking a look at them and stuff.
So, well, you have to send me the link to that because I've
got my MBA as well, but I've never thought about going back
to school from a nutritional standpoint, but haven't found
anything that really, you know, lights me up as something that I
would want to get into. Because so much of the
nutritional information that I've seen is just still very
dated, but it sounds like this is kind of right there on the
Cutting Edge as well. Yeah.
Yeah for sure this and that was what?
Really appealed this program really appealed to me was that
like definitely seems to be more on the whatever.
We want to call it modern food science.
Yeah, not so much linked to the old kind of dogma of you know,
the USDA food pyramid that kind of stuff.
Hopefully we remember we're on The Cutting Edge of what's going
on now. Very cool.
I'll definitely check this out. Yeah, well sounds like you've
got all kinds of things in the pipeline all kinds of good
exciting stuff. That's how I like to operate.
I was up twenty thousand things on the go.
That's good. That's good.
You always you always doing something that You don't have to
get complacent. Well, where do people go to find
out more about you and follow along?
Yeah, so I'm on Instagram. It's at the keto athlete.
And then I have a website, the keto athlete dot-org.
So, yeah, I post on my Instagram.
I post about training and food and lots of different scientific
studies, that kind of started From.
Like I said, when I started doing a ketogenic diet, five
years ago, people were like, well, what do you eat?
And how's that going to work out and like, you'll never be able
to To train and all these things where I was like, well, I can
just show you what I eat. Like, it's pretty normal stuff
and I can show you how my training is going.
And, you know, further back like I've had tons of blood work done
and posted all the results, because you get all these
criticisms like, oh, you're gonna, you're gonna have a heart
attack eating that much meat near.
Like I don't think so, but I can check and you know, oh what a
put your bones. I'm like, okay.
Well I can go get a dexa, scan and see how that worked out.
And turns out my bone density is 2.5 times higher than like that.
Woman my age and you know, so I was just sort of it started off
a little bit about of just like sharing how it's going doing
CrossFit on a ketogenic diet and and it kind of morphed into more
of the scientific side and the ketogenic the key to a site dot
orc has like recipes and other like videos and blog posts.
I intermittently when I have time, I have a YouTube channel
as well where I'll post. It's also the key to athlete
post videos and, you know, results of blood work and all
that kind of stuff. And then my gym is CrossFit
Breo. You Bri.
Oh. Awesome.
I will certainly can't do that. I think that's the way to do it.
Like just document your journey showcase that on social your
website, your YouTube channel, and I feel like that for like
the general public holds so much more weight than just a random
cherry-pick study that somebody throws their way.
I feel like they can see somebody that they can relate
with doing and living the lifestyle with success.
And that's that's what you want to do right there.
Yeah, and I think that was kind of my mission was to be that
voice for like, okay, there's certainly the Kind of 40, 30, 30
carbs, protein fat. Split.
We're like, What if that didn't work for you?
Like it didn't for me. There are other options and
maybe your body type is like, my body type and we're going to be
more successful in higher fat and less carbs.
Like it's okay. And there are plenty of us, you
know, and it it's teams from people.
I've connected with it that ketogenic style of eating tends
to work for that body type, what you want to call it sort of
Mesomorph like kind of thicker more muscular build and there
are. There's lots of US male and
female that will tend to thrive on mostly protein and fat.
I think that's huge. I feel like I mean people have
obviously lost a lot of money fat and you know, lean down and
competed on Friday of sports with a variety of different
types of diets, but to be able to Showcase a way that is
counter to the norm. That's obviously working well
for you. I mean it stands to reason that
would be a lot of other people that would likely work well for
to. So to be able to Oh case that
it's an option. I think is super valuable.
Yeah, and just make people feel like, okay, with trying
different things. That's I don't feel dogmatic
about anybody has to do this one thing or this needs to be for
everybody. I think the only thing people
need to do is experiment and pay attention and find what works
for you. Don't really physically
performance-wise energy-wise mental health wise, just try
things and find what works. Well you are a beacon of light
to Johnston. I can appreciate what you're
saying. The message you Eating out there
for sure. Are you going to be posting your
experiments with like CGM and the CrossFit gym on your social
as well? Yeah, I we will post the
results. I've done CGM experiments.
Lots of time. So if you scroll back on my
Instagram and my YouTube channel, I've done CGM.
Experiments with like green bananas versus ripe, bananas or
the resistant starch experiment of like potatoes fresh cooked or
then cooked and cooled, right? Creates chains of resistant
starch. So less of the Search ends up in
your bloodstream and even like different keto labeled treats
are you know, Foods or things you go.
Is this really Quito or what's it doing to my blood sugar?
I will do that frequently. The nice thing in Canada.
We can just buy see GM's. You don't have to have a
doctor's prescription or anything for it.
So yeah, that's handy. So I just every once in a while,
order them and throw it on for two weeks and just play with
different things. I've done it with different
types of alcohol. There's no ketogenic alcohol.
Unfortunately, none of them when I'm ready.
Yeah. So yeah, I've done lots of
different experiments and will continue.
And now it'll be fun to see. So that's like just one person.
It'll be fun to see the same kind of tests with more people
and how the differences between individuals, I think will be
interesting. Yeah, totally totally.
Well, I will definitely link out to your social and your site so
people can follow along and learn more about what you got
going on. If there's ever anything I could
do. Bye.
Means just let me know. Yeah, for sure.
I've really enjoyed. That's part of the beauty of the
internet. These days is connecting with
other people, like you. That are doing cool things and,
you know, showing it can be done and all these different Realms
bodybuilding, CrossFit, and different sports and stuff.
I think it's really neat. So yeah.
Yeah. Will Johnson.
Keep keep doing what you doing. Keep putting that message out
there and keep killing it. Yeah.
Well, nice, chatting with you. Thanks for your time rubber you
as well. Take care.