i did a video about keto being a fad obviously i said it wasn't but then it started to make me
wonder if there are any real limitations to keto hello Wellness warriors welcome to Mind Blowing
is to help you to understand that your mental health and physical health working well together
is what creates that overall sense of well-being if this is something that you want to work on
subscribe because i make new videos every week so by this point
most of us know the basics that in order to do a ketogenic lifestyle you lower your carb
intake to 20 grams of carbs or less and your body just magically starts to use fat for fuel
you lose weight and everything is rainbows and unicorns but actually we know that
the only part of that that was true was that you lower your carb count down from
whatever 400 to 20 grams of carbs or less and this does allow your body to access the fat
that you have stored on your body and begin to use it for fuel but it doesn't happen overnight what
is not talked about a lot is the fact that there are hormones involved in this process so obviously
when we decrease the amount of carbohydrates we're eating we dramatically increase the possibility of
getting into ketosis because carbohydrates raise our insulin levels and block our ability to use
the fat on our body for fuel right because carbohydrates are toxic in large amount to our
body and so insulin needs to step in to clear up those carbs that are floating around in your blood
this is something that we learned from dr westman at least that i learned from dr weissman early on
when i started to research what exactly is happening with my body but as we do more
research what we actually figure out is that there are other hormones that are actually involved in
what happens to the food we eat we have cortisol we have leptin we have ghrelin and there are more
of them and they have an impact on what our body is doing so today i'm only going to talk about
cortisol because i want to show you something that we're not focusing on that we probably should be
focusing on if we're trying to understand what our bodies are trying to accomplish however i will say
that you probably could go through the exact same process for leptin you probably could do it for
ghrelin you probably could do it for mtor probably so you could probably do it for every one of the
hormones but i'm just using cortisol right now because i think it's a good example and i have
information about it so cortisol is known to psychologists because it plays a role in how
we manage stressful situations so for everybody who's ever heard of fight-or-flight cortisol plays
a pivotal role in fight-or-flight it's going to make us make some carbs so that we can use our
body to get out of this dangerous situation that we happen to be in now when our body is making
carbs in this situation so when cortisol is saying hey make energy so i can run away from this tiger
it actually also blocks insulin from putting that sugar away because that would be counterproductive
so for those of us who are insulin resistant and then get into a stressful situation so my insulin
is already not working well and then cortisol is actually saying hey don't do anything right now
but i'm eating excessive amounts of carbohydrates that's why my insulin is not working well in the
first place then what's actually happening is that unfortunately i'm now in a situation where
there's a lot of carbohydrates in my system for some stress that i'm living if i actually need to
do something physically to end the problem that's happening in front of me the carbs will get used
life will go on but what about those situations where what's stressing me doesn't take physical
energy from me to do or is long term so that the stressor is there and it's going to be there
for extended periods of time well now that stressor is continually pumping carbs because
cortisol is turned on so carbs are being pumped into my bloodstream regularly to help me to fight
this fight that's not actually happening because the stressor is psychological or the stressor is
long-term and there's nothing for me to physically do right now one of the examples i can give you
this is people who have job stress they work from monday to friday by the time the weekend comes
they use the entire weekend just to recuperate sleep rest prepare for monday where they go
and start it all over again we could also be in relationship stress we can also be in financial
stress any of these stressors can create the story where cortisol is high extended periods
of time interfering with the actions of insulin which is already in a problem because you've been
eating too many carbs and therefore we have a double whammy happening you know even just the
fact that i can't stand the way i look so if i'm overweight and i hate it is a stressor to me which
would then keep me in this high cortisol situation which would then create a situation where i'm
having insulin resistance or i'm contributing to my insulin resistance now when we continually have
high cortisol that actually impacts our immune system and it can compromise our ability to fight
off disease then we find ourselves getting sick and of course being sick is a stress around the
body so of course you end up producing more cortisol again depressing your immune system
now cortisol is also important for helping us to reduce inflammation however what happens if
cortisol is on all the time like i said with those people who their work is very stressful
or their relationship is very stressful so now cortisol is high for extended
periods of time what happens to the action of cortisol in its attempt to fight inflammation
well its actions become diminished the same way that when you're insulin resistant
the action of insulin becomes diminished when your cortisol is too high for too long you will
also see the same diminish in this ability to function so now i will be inflamed and then
my cortisol isn't functioning well so then being inflamed will cause me to be even more inflicted
and then we have ever present carbohydrates that are not helping this situation
now because cortisol is activated by the sympathetic nervous system the parasympathetic
nervous system needs to be quieted because both of these systems are energy hungry
systems the parasympathetic system is involved in the digestion and absorption of your food so
right away you can see that if cortisol is turned on for too long by the sympathetic nervous system
your ability to process food has now been compromised which would mean that a you're
not getting all the nutrients out of the food that you should be getting but also b
now we're opening the door for digestive tract problems if it's severe it can lead to ulcers
irritable bowel syndrome colitis and other types of you know intestinal issues and what's worse
is that those intestinal issues are actually an inflammation of the mucous layer so once again
there's the inflammation piece of the puzzle which is going to keep cortisol trying to be turned on
it's a vicious cycle now of course there are more issues than what i've just named there i
just wanted to give you a few for you to see how cortisol is playing a huge role
in us remaining inflamed it's playing a huge role in carbs being in our blood system which is
playing a huge role in the action of insulin in in your insulin resistance it's playing a huge role
the need to solve the issues that are happening in our life so that our cortisol production can
actually come down and therefore our insulin can get back to normal because they affect each other
all hormones affect each other the same way that if i'm walking and i hurt my right leg
from that moment forward i will be walking differently my entire body will be affected
by the fact that i hurt my right leg my left leg will be trying to compensate my whole body will be
out of kilter right because one part affects the hole and your hormones are the same if one of your
hormones is out of whack all of your hormones are going to be somewhat out of whack there's
actually another huge limiting factor of keto and it's actually us so you and i will make or break
whether or not keto functions correctly for us what you believe about the ketogenic lifestyle
why it works why it doesn't work what you need to do how much you need to do how hard it will be
how much energy effort time how long will you do it for is it a diet or is it a lifestyle
do i really need to do 20 grams or can i do 30 or 40 or 50 you and i are the other limiting
factor that can cause problems and the way that the ketogenic lifestyle is going to
improve your health keep you stable or even diminish your health see a lot of people adding
fat and bacon to everything and their weight goes up their health diminishes because they didn't
take the time to understand that keto is not about adding fat keto is taking the carbohydrates
down to 20 grams or less the same way that cortisol affects everything else that's happening
in your body your understanding of how to do the ketogenic lifestyle affects your application of
how you're doing the ketogenic lifestyle which then affects how your body reacts to
everything that you're doing it's sad because i've watched keto channels where i see people
cycling in and out of keto because they're using it as a diet rather than recognizing that it's a
way of life that to be successful means that you do it and it's not a way to diminish your
of course you can you know i started to say that it's like the truth is yes it can be a
way to diminish your weight and then you go back to eating the standard american diet standard
canadian diet but actually all you're doing then is real yo dieting and every single one of us
knows that yo-yo dieting causes problems and if that's what you're doing are you helping yourself
so that's the limitation of keto right us if i do these mistakes if i treat keto like it's
cookie cutter like it's one size fits all if i don't stop and look at violet what are the things
that trigger you to want to eat cookies violet what are the things that you believe about food
what are the things that your family believed about about food what's your history where did
you come from when i don't stop and take a look at what did your body do violet
with the excess of carbs because like i said my daughter was six when i started to gain weight
like excessive amounts of weight my daughter was already six under six i looked fine
but was i fine no every single joint in my body was killing me so what is your body doing violet
with the carbohydrates we don't all do the same thing it's not to say that the carbs are not bad
for all of us but what does your body choose to do with the carbs versus what violet's body
chosen do the carbs i don't know what would have happened if my body had chosen to put the
carbs in fat when i was 20. would the fat have motivated me to lose the weight sooner i don't
know but i do know that until i learned about keto i probably would have just been yo-yo dieting
if you really want to make sure that we are not the limiting factor
then what we actually have to do is understand that keto is a lifestyle it's a long-term
process that you are embarking on to live a healthier life to build a healthier body to
repair the internal damage that we were doing by eating poorly to solve metabolic issues to
be healthier in general if i truly truly want to address the limiting factors of the ketogenic
lifestyle i need to understand that i'm the biggest limiting factor how i do it matters
we get to decide what success is right and if i decide that my success is a number on the scale
when i arrive at that number it's going to determine what i do next
and trust me if you're doing a ketogenic lifestyle appropriately you will arrive at that number
rather quickly and now the question becomes do i have a bigger purpose to keep me doing this
again i'm the limiting factor right because if i don't have a bigger purpose to keep me doing
this and i've arrived at the number on the scale why am i still doing it
and we step into that yo-yo dieting cycle versus if i have a bigger reason to do my ketogenic
lifestyle for violet it was our inflamed hip that stopped me from being able to sit
not not just stand to sit it stopped me from being able to walk up the stairs it stopped
me from being able to do my activities what's your reason going to be but i'm suggesting to
you make your reason something bigger than weight is your health worth eating properly from now on
maybe you have grandchildren that you want to see go to college or university maybe you have hobbies
that take a lot of physical energy and you nee and and you notice that you're tired all the time
you need to make your goal bigger than the number on the scale you decide what your goal is
and you decide whether you keep working and doing what you're doing long after you've arrived
at a place where you're more comfortable do i make a new goal do i keep going forward do i
keep allowing myself to feel good i could want my spouse to live a ketogenic lifestyle as much as i
want i can want my spouse to be more muscular i could want my spouse to change their hair color
i could i could want a bunch of stuff from my spouse but if my spouse doesn't want it
it's not gonna happen and the truth is it's the same for me if i don't want something for me
it doesn't matter how many people tell me it would be great for you violet you would look
good like that violet you should do that violet every tool in the toolbox is only as good as the
person using it right so if you decide to use the tool appropriately you will get the results
that you want i guarantee you if you go to the hardware store and buy a hammer it's not going to
come home and magically make you a set of shelves you actually have to buy the hammer get the nails
find the directions and cut the pieces of wood and then create the situation where you can then
turn around and use that hammer to put those nails in and until you get to that stage that hammer is
useless to you we have a lot of information that helps us to do a ketogenic lifestyle the correct
way 20 grams of carbs or less and there's lots of information about why that's necessary lots
of videos on my channel how you use keto is going to determine what kind of success you have so are
you seeing it as a weight loss diet or are you seeing it as a healthy new way of life that you
will do forever if you want to know more about how to do this ketogenic lifestyle correctly
there's some videos here that are going to help you i want to thank all my wellness warriors for
coming back because i love making these videos for you i want to thank you for watching Mind Blowing
Healthy and Wellness with Violet and i really can't wait to talk to you guys again next week