Is it bad to go off and on keto often?
- Cycling on and off of the keto diet.
- Getting an accountability partner.
- Getting cravings, and what they mean.
- Having ketones in your body on a consistent basis.
- Our brains are wired for the dopamine release from carb foods.
- THE KETOGENIC DIET OR INTERMITTENT FASTING? WHICH ONE IS BEST?.
Keto Diet Tips Video▼
Is it bad to go off and on keto often? Because, I find myself doing that so science is kind of up in the air on this so the applied science and performance lab in Tampa Bay which is if you ketogenic. Dr. Ryan Lowry runs that lab I hope I got the name right they did tests on athletes to see if they could cycle keto and so they had athletes who were already keto adapted switched to a cyclical keto diet and and by that I mean they they had them go on and off keto basically at the weekends so during the week they would eat a ketogenic diet Saturday and Sunday they would eat a carb diet and then Monday they will go back on and then they compared that to a ketogenic controlled diet that was just ketogenic the whole time okay so those that cycled on the weekend didn’t really reach nutritional ketosis and we define that as 0.5 millimolar of ketones in your blood level they didn’t reach that level again until like late on Thursday so really what they were only getting was one day or one and a half days of real nutritional ketosis before they would cycle right back out so that frequency of cycling really doesn’t allow you to reap the full benefits of being in a ketogenic diet and having ketones in your body on a consistent basis and those results actually two summers ago I can’t remember how long ago but Jeremy and I did a six six-week trial where we did cyclical keto yeah and we found the exact same thing in fact he would go in by about Thursday and I would not necessarily be back into ketosis until end of the day Friday so basically just in time so we did not see benefits but what was interesting what we noticed is the psychology around our eating habits we would be looking forward to that Saturday and Sunday being off keto and it became something we were thinking about during the entire week so that I think that there’s some psychology behind that it’s really when you especially when your very first starting because you guys let me know if I’m wrong but when you very first start it feels very restrictive mm-hm you have cravings now now sometimes those cravings are simply emotional cravings right you’re used to comforting yourself with a stop at Hardee’s forbus was it biscuits and gravy right oh yeah you’re used to doing certain things to comfort and soothe yourself or to deal with emotional things maybe it’s after a long week you know we would sit down on Friday nights with the plate of nachos like that was one of our things and watch a movie so sometimes it’s just about your distracting me sometimes it’s just about getting it over and Crete getting getting I want to say getting over the cravings getting through the cravings to understand that what a craving really is is just you’re here at Point a so maybe you’re stressed you had a rough day and you want to feel different a craving is simply the difference between point a and point B so what other things can you do to make yourself feel comforted maybe that’s turning on the fireplace getting a cup of chamomile tea and watching a movie with your spouse or having a good conversation about what’s going on in your day yeah maybe that’s trying something new like meditation or yoga you know is is you know I want to do that what I really want is but if you do the other thing and you start to you start to realize just how good you can feel energetically and physically you know these things like you know some people will reach for a glass of wine well when you start studying your sleep sleep cycle you’ll realize oh wait alcohol is disrupting my sleep making me feel worse throughout the day in increasing my stress levels because I feel worse throughout the day and my goal is to mitigate this stress brainless stress down so if you find yourself going off and on keto I would take a good hard look at why that is is it an emotional event that you’re looking to soothe yourself with food which is very common there’s our brains are wired for it we do get a dopamine release in fact the dopamine release comes before we even eat the food it’s really interesting if you’re if you’re really fascinated and stuff like this the book atomic habits by James clear is a fantastic read and it really goes into these kinds of things and it’s a book I’ve read three about three times now I think I’m halfway through my third reading of it it’s just you read it the first time as well as once you read it the first time you get a lot out of it but then you read it the second time and there’s even more there so that would be my challenge to you so I’m just gonna add a few points to this that I because this isn’t really this was like you’re right we almost had like a addicts response to cyclical Pido yes not really all that good for us no there’s a doctor that I really like who runs a bariatric surgery lab named Robert Silas and he likens it to a carb addiction to being an alcoholic and he says an alcoholic who is sober you know who has a drink of alcohol that that’s falling off the wagon mean but that’s bad right when if somebody who’s been sober for five years has a drink that’s a significant event in their life right they give up their chip you know they do they’re it’s bad so he likens that to carb addicts and anytime were we’re doing that is were were giving up our chip you know were so addicted to it that we would sacrifice every you know all of this stuff that we had gone through just to get that release you know so he kind of likens it to that which I really resonated with me I don’t know if I would go that hyperbolic but it did resonate with me it makes it makes the point that wait a minute the way the brain treats carbohydrates and sugar is the same tone of a neural pathway and so when you start to think about think about it like that it changes how you react to it and we met somebody at Novell Kelson who shared a story with us about her husband and her husband would say I deserve I have a stressful job I deserve beer on the weekends I deserve that word is really really strong get over what you think you deserve because what you actually deserve is good health not the beer that’s that’s what you want that’s what you crave not what you deserve right there’s a difference so that was something I really struggled with until somebody that I work with a coach told me you got to stop thinking about what you deserve because you don’t really deserve anything in life you have to go out and get it we deserve good health and we have to go out and get it and isn’t that what we teach our kids and our grandkids I mean we teach them that principle so it’s it’s just reframing your language and figuring out what is it that’s causing me to go off and on so what we do when we so we don’t stay keto 100% of the time so what we do when we decide we make a decision so these are the rules that we have if we’re gonna go off keto number one it’s never just in the moment we can’t just go oh I’m going to eat I’m gonna go off heat oh right now it has to be pre-planned and where accountability partners so we have a set date and time to go off and we have a set date and time to go on and we have a discussion around that and that cannot change we don’t get to move the date back because what happens if we don’t have guardrails in place is it goes on and on and on and on and we learn that through our own personal experience yes and created those rules and so though work for us if you don’t have an accountability partner you can join my free Quito support group and ask for an accountability partner and the best way to do this you know I see a lot of people ask for an accountability partner but start being a cheerleader start responding to other peoples comments show up like you’re their accountability partner and eventually you’ll build a relationship yeah and then get on video calls with them I mean we have this technology this amazing technology these days get on like schedule a video call every week for 30 minutes and you just you each get 15 minutes maybe you want to make it longer than that but you each set a timer and you have time to talk and you just coach each other through things because sometimes we can get so hung up in our own stuff that we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel perfect any other tips.