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. 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. 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.