A Deep Dive into the Ketogenic Diet Benefits – BioTrust Radio #6

Ketogenic diet benefits

Are you ready to take a deep dive into keto? From weight loss to ketogenic foods to freeing yourself from the shackles of sugar and processed foods to a step-by-step approach to maximizing the ketogenic diet benefits, and much more, get the full scoop on today’s hottest diet in this episode of BioTrust Radio, our weekly health and fitness podcast dedicated to answering YOUR nutrition, exercise, and supplement questions so you can get better results faster! In today’s show, Shawn (a keto expert) and Tim peel back the layers on keto, giving you the low-down on the ketogenic diet benefits as well as who the ketogenic diet benefits most.

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In part one of our two-part series on the ketogenic diet, we just scratched the surface on today’s most popular diet trend. In this installment of BioTrust Radio, Shawn (who’s been keto for 20 years) and Tim take a deep dive into the ketogenic diet benefits, including its weight loss effects.

But that’s not all. We’ll be peeling back the layers beyond just the basic ketogenic diet benefits. In fact, we’ll even tell you exactly WHO the ketogenic diet benefits most. As you’ll find out, we’ll be covering a TON, including:

  • How effective is the ketogenic diet for weight loss
  • Whether the ketogenic diet offers a “metabolic advantage”
  • How the ketogenic diet benefits appetite management and craving control
  • What are truly “healthy” foods
  • The best way to shop at the grocery store
  • One of the most powerful ketogenic diet benefits is breaking you from the shackles of highly palatable and addictive processed foods
  • How you can combine keto, Paleo, and fasting to reach a better, more enlightened state
  • Metabolic flexibility and how one of the least talked about ketogenic diet benefits is teaching the body to better and more efficiently use fats and carbs for fuel
  • “Food is the most widely abused anti-anxiety drug in America, and exercise is the most potent yet underutilized antidepressant.” – Bill Phillips
  • How the practice of fasting can empower you and radically improve your relationship with food
  • The exact steps you need to take to avoid the “keto flu” and other common problems people experience on keto
  • How fasting, interval training (and intense exercise), higher fat, and lower protein and carbs can enhance ketogenic diet benefits
  • The one supplement “for anyone in the world on any diet” should be taking every day for as long as they live for better health
  • The specific adjustments you need to make if you’re struggling with weight loss
  • Women, hormonal fluctuations, and keto; what women need to do to enjoy maximum ketogenic diet benefits
  • One of the most talked about ketogenic diet benefits is its potential to “starve” cancer; find out how one person used keto to shrink a brain tumor by 80 – 90%
  • What’s the difference between a cyclical ketogenic diet and a targeted ketogenic diet
  • Will a cheat meal or cheat day cancel out the ketogenic diet benefits
  • Carbs are NOT essential
  • While keto is not the one true, be-all, end-all diet, the ketogenic diet benefits folks with poor insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance arguably the most
  • What’s a typical day in the life of a ketogenic dieter look like
  • What are the most common and popular ketogenic foods
  • How Dr. Roberson used the ketogenic diet and BioTrust Low Carb to drop 40 pounds
  • Why IC-5 is “incredible” to enhance the ketogenic diet benefits on insulin sensitivity

We’ll cover all these ketogenic diet benefits, who the ketogenic diet benefits most, and many other topics to help you better understand the ins and outs of today’s hottest diet and much, much more. Enjoy!

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Ketogenic Diet Benefits

Shawn: Hey, this is Shawn.

Tim: This is Tim.

Shawn: And we are back for Part 2 of the ketogenic diet, digging in, giving you all the information that you ever wanted to know, including the lowdown on the ketogenic diet benefits. We want to empower you, we want to give you the truth, and I think there’s a lot of misinformation and myths out there. So, Tim, do you have any other thoughts on maybe some of the ketogenic diet benefits or how it works?

Tim: Yeah, I think that’s a good topic to get into because you cited some really important studies on the ketogenic diet benefits in terms of weight loss, so maybe let’s talk a little bit about the weight loss side of it. And I think that healthy aging or anti-aging is one I want to come back to as well. But the weight loss side of things, just studies show that it’s markedly effective. Now, there’s some recent research that’s saying it’s not better than other diets, and Kevin Hall has done some research, and I really respect and appreciate all that he’s done because it really gives some very critical insight into how things are working. But I think we have to remember that some of those studies are conducted in metabolic wards and we live in a free-living society, so we have to take that into consideration.

And this ties into how the ketogenic diet works because from a weight-loss standpoint, it seems to have an extremely beneficial effect on satiety. So, your feelings of fullness, so you’re not as hungry. I mean, think about when you diet to lose weight, one of the biggest obstacles is just being hungry. And if you’re hungry, I mean these are metabolic adaptations to dieting, and one of them is to get hungrier. This hormone “ghrelin” goes up, this hormone “leptin” drops down; leptin being a “satiety hormone” and ghrelin being a “hunger hormone,” and that’s just a physiological response for survival.

Then on top of that, tasty food tastes even greater when you’re in that position. So it’s really all these things. Your body is making adaptations to match calorie intake with calorie expenditure. Another one of the intriguing ketogenic diet benefits is that ketones themselves may have satiety properties, but stimulate anti-hunger. So stimulating the production or release of these anti-hunger satiety hormones, CCK…

Shawn: Neuropeptide Y.

Tim: Exactly. GLP-1, GIP, and also kind of down‑regulating ghrelin production. So, that is probably one of the major reasons why we see weight loss, such effective weight loss with a ketogenic diet. I think Dr. Volek has done some research talking about maybe a metabolic advantage being one of the major ketogenic diet benefits. Dr. Kevin Hall’s research kind of disputes that or maybe downplays it a little bit. Be that as it may, the research shows that it’s effective and Dr. Paoli kind of seems to come back to the satiety thing. But you’re basically burning a lot of fat, and if you’re eating less, then you’re going to be losing fat.

Shawn: One of the biggest ketogenic diet benefits that I see is that we’ve talked about this level of addiction to food. If you’ve seen documentaries like Fed Up, and things like, that you’ll see that—Fat Head is another documentary that’s really good—that we are addicted to processed foods, and they’re made to make us addicted. There’s something called the “Bliss Point” that these food scientists, these food engineers have worked around, making you addicted to food. That whole “You can’t eat just one” thing. It’s real. If you think about that potato chip, there’s a level of sweetness, saltiness, oiliness, and crunch to it. Why do we like bacon? Why do we like these certain foods that are just like so amazing and addictive? At least bacon is ketogenic.

But there’s a reason that all these foods, these fried foods in particular, that have the dough or the batter, and whatever that’s fried, it has this level of oiliness and crispness. And then we add salty and sweet and it’s so amazing to us, and it’s literally the Bliss Point. There’s like dopamine and serotonin and these things that are released and it’s drug-like. And this is how people get addicted to overeating. No, it isn’t 100% your fault. Hey, just stop eating.

To me, one of the greatest ketogenic diet benefits is it’s going to make you back off the sugar, back off the starches, back off these processed carbohydrate foods that fill the center of every grocery store in bags and boxes, and you’re going to get more into whole food. And you’re going to break yourself of that addiction. It’s a powerful one. They showed in the—I think it was rat or mice—but that it was more addictive than cocaine, sugar. And I think sugar’s in like 70% of our food supply. So it’s everywhere. What is it? How much do we eat a year as Americans? Isn’t it like 67 pounds or something like that.

Tim: I think it’s more than that. I was going to say like 250 pounds.

Shawn: Maybe. It’s crazy.

Tim: It’s an enormous amount.

Shawn:   It’s probably another person’s worth of weight, in sugar. Which is just absurd, like it’s a crazy thing. And I can tell you, I don’t know what people were eating whatever hundreds of thousands of years ago, but I know here’s the thing, like I know 100 or 200 years ago what my great-great-grandfather was eating and it wasn’t a ton of sugar. This processed bleached sugar that’s whatever now like omnipresent in our food supply. It wasn’t artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors, GMOs, antibiotics, rBGH, and whatever all these things. They were just eating more whole food.

And I really think several ketogenic diet benefits can be realized when it’s merged with intermittent fasting, which I think is very common, like you said, even like biblically it was mentioned. I’m sure if you look at a lot of ancient texts of many different religions and many cultures, you’d see fasting as being something that was very common to reach a better, more enlightened state. We’re calling it cognitive clarity. I mean, you look at the Bible, it’s associated with fasting. They do that too ready themselves for sacrifice, essentially, and to get into a higher state of consciousness and all those kinds of things.

You see that in Buddhism and other religions too. So, this is something we’re meant for. And then, again, like ketogenic dieting, it’s eating whole food. I’m not saying you have to be a ketogenic dieter year-round, but it’s certainly something to think about like as getting into ketosis is a normal thing. Why are we never in ketosis now? That’s the question I’m asking.

And then, like I said, I like this whole paleo/intermittent fasting/keto thing because that’s what I’m seeing as healthy. I eat keto most of the time, and I go into cyclical and targeted, which we can talk about; and then I like to eat the whole food, healthy food. Which to me, healthy food doesn’t mean low fat. Healthy food means food-food-food. Just eat food. Not engineered food with Bliss Points and high margins and water injected in and antibiotics, and whatever. No, just eat food. It’s that simple. You won’t be as addicted, you won’t be overwhelmed by this intense need. I mean, if I put raw nuts in front of you versus ones that have oil and salt and maybe even like some kind of like maltodextrin and like honey salted peanuts or whatever, you won’t stop eating. I guarantee. If you put them side-by-side, you’ll eat a small handful of the one nuts, and then you’ll eat the whole tub of the others.

Tim: Exactly.

Shawn:   It’s an addiction and it’s that Bliss Point that I’m talking about. So once you get away from all that stuff and you are eating however you want to call it, just more whole food. There’s the new diet Whole 30. You can call a paleo, primal, ancient, or Whole 30, or whatever, obviously eating more whole food is the healthier way to go. That old thing about eating and shopping around like the outside of the grocery store and keeping away from the middle aisles. And then, just not being afraid to do a fast, not being afraid to tap into arguably one of the most powerful of the ketogenic diet benefits: using your fat for fuel. I think it’s just healthy to have what they call “metabolic flexibility.”

Tim: Love it.

Shawn: And that means that you can use those dual fuels, that you’re well-adapted to both. And the longer you do it, the more adapted you become, the more efficient you become at getting in ketosis, and ultimately, the greater the ketogenic diet benefits you experience. You’ll get in much faster, you don’t have this “keto brain fog” or “keto flu” or some things that some people might experience; especially that aren’t very knowledgeable of how to do it. So that metabolic flexibility is really cool.

Tim: Yeah, that’s awesome, Shawn. Great shares there. I love how you talked about how empowering it can be when you’re doing it. You talked about eliminating those processed foods and I think another topic for a future conversation is the Bliss Point and things like that, because another example that came to mind for me was peanut butter. And that a different level compared to just eating a handful of nuts, because it typically does have that combination of added sugar, salt, and even some added oils, or it has the natural oils expressed.

But the empowering aspect of it, to me, really stood out as one of the important ketogenic diet benefits because, from a coaching standpoint, so many people really have what I like to call a “poor relationship with food,” where it’s either used it as a coping mechanism. I think Bill Phillips was the one who said that exercise is the most underutilized form of treatment for depression, and food is the most abused. Something along those lines. But the fasting, to me, is another layer of that empowerment because you start to realize that you do have a way when you practice it.

Shawn: You gain control of your life.

Tim: You gain control of your life. And I think “practice” is the right word when we’re talking about fasting or diet, the way of eating. Because it is just like our craft, we’re constantly practicing it and learning how to gain control of our lives. Fasting, to me, has been especially enlightening in that standpoint because there’s many social situations that that I don’t have any difficulty not eating, because I feel I have control over that. Not to say that you shouldn’t eat in social situations, but just based on what I’m personally working on at that point in time or practicing, it’s not an issue. But many coaching clients that I work with don’t know how to navigate themselves in those environments. So the empowerment was something that I thought you mentioned that was that was really important.

One thing that you did mention was the “keto flu”, which is obviously not one of the ketogenic diet benefits. So I think it may be a good segue into talking about some common things that may be problems or issues that people experience with the ketogenic diet, and maybe even how we overcome those obstacles.

Shawn: Yeah, so a few of them would be—and this is only typical, I think, of people that are very new to the diet, that aren’t “keto-adapted,” and maybe don’t know how to properly get themselves into ketosis, which is where the real ketogenic diet benefits can are experienced. There is the keto flu, which some people say they experience mild flu-like symptoms. And I would say this is a very small percentage, like maybe less than 5%, maybe even less than that, would experience “mild flu-like,” where they just feel achy and sick. I honestly think a lot of that has to do with maybe how high a carb‑eater that person is and maybe how addicted they are. Because if you think about coming off of any drug that you’re addicted to, it probably feels like a mild flu. There’s some other reasons, potentially, but I think that’s actually something that’s fairly relevant to mention.

Some people get brain fog, and I would say that is possibly because they’re not getting into is ketosis deep enough, fast enough. So if they add fasting, if they add high-intensity interval training or a high level of exercise which depletes glycogen, you’ll get in faster. If they up their fat and lower their carbs and lower their protein, maybe the protein is too high, they can get in faster. I would avoid the whole net carb thing, where you’re subtracting out fiber and sugar alcohols and all these things, because there’s a lot of unique sugar alcohols, there’s a lot of unique fibers that may or may not act like other fibers or other sugar alcohols. It’s getting very complex, again, in a world of food science and food engineering. It’s not as simple as just subtraction and net carbs.

So if you’re trying to get into ketosis, I would put all that aside. That’s something that you can experiment with down the road as you’re “in ketosis,” and you’ve adapted for a month, two months, three months. Like maybe then you can start experimenting with different foods, maybe you can use a glucometer and look at your ketones and track it more scientifically. But that’s another thing.

Some people get cramps, like muscular cramps, I would say that is related to not hydrating enough because you can lose some fluid with glycogen depletion follows water. So you can flush yourself of a decent amount of water in the first few days in ketosis, so you may get cramps. So things like hydrating very well and adding back in electrolytes, especially I’ve seen magnesium is something that you want to keep. I would say it’s just for anyone in the world on any diet, to take a magnesium supplement, but especially if you’re doing keto, I would recommend taking magnesium every day, for as long as you live your life. It’s incredible how much magnesium is involved in. And you’ll feel better on it, you’ll have more strength on it, you’ll have better heart health on it. Magnesium is phenomenal, if you look into it. So that’s what I’d recommend.

And then if you’re not losing weight and you’re on the ketogenic diet, I would go back to the net carbs thing, which can really hamper the ketogenic diet benefits. Maybe you’re doing some things, you’re eating those Bliss Point foods that are somewhat ketogenic, but they have a lot of sweetness to them, saltiness to them, and you’re overeating. You’re still addicted, but you found alternate foods to be addicted to, then I would say in that case, back off anything, like artificial sweeteners even that are non-caloric that you think are low no carb, I would back off those. I would go with whole food, and then do the ketogenic diet with whole food and no net carb calculations. And I think you’ll find success and really start to experience the deep ketogenic diet benefits with all that stuff.

I know some women can have a little bit harder time. Sometimes there’s hormonal fluctuations, and this is because you’re eating a very high fat diet. It’ll affect cholesterol, which is another discussion, but let’s just say that another of the ketogenic diet benefits is that it is heart healthy. That’s pretty simple to say. But cholesterol is essentially the precursor to all these steroid hormones, meaning testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and all these things. So what can happen when you’re eating a higher fat diet, especially if you’ve been eating a very low fat diet, is you’ll have some hormonal fluctuations. But I found that even with women that are experiencing this, and of course because women have lower levels of these hormones I think they’re more sensitive to fluctuations in them, that over 2-3 weeks’ time of being on the diet, they settle in and it normalizes. I would say just ride it out, know that you’ll settle, and then you will start to fully experience the ketogenic diet benefits.

Those hormonal fluctuations can cause abnormal menses and things like that. So, I have talked to many women that that’s happened to. But again, within a month or whatever, they settle in and that kind of concern goes away. The great thing is you’ll be healthier, I think you have less risk of some of these diseases.

Quickly to talk about cancer. One of the most talked about ketogenic diet benefits is that keto may help with cancer. There’s this metabolic model that healthy cells can use—like we were talking about, “dual fuel,” like the ketones or the glucose—but cancer cells can only use glucose, which is really interesting. It’s like the Otto Warburg theory and Dr. Seyfried. Thomas Seyfried’s done a lot of work here. Dom D’Agostino has done a lot of work here. And basically, when you starve the body of glucose, then the cancer cells cannot replicate as well. And I’ve seen this.

I had a patient that had glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer. She was taken off everything. Nothing was effective, and she was given six weeks to live. I put her on the ketogenic diet and some supplemental ketones and MCTs, as well as some other supplements and she had 80 to 90% shrinkage of that tumor in her brain in that six weeks. It’s now been six months and she’s still alive.

Tim: Wow.

Shawn: I can’t say that this is typical or it’s one of the common ketogenic diet benefits. I can’t say that I’m offering anything more, like I can solve the world’s problems. I’m just saying it worked for this one person. There is some science behind it. I would recommend that people do some digging and speak to their physician about the diet, if there is a cancer diagnosis of a friend or someone in your family, or you yourself. I would at least look into the diet. I certainly wouldn’t just let it go and say, “My doctor said that’s not interesting. I don’t trust that diet.” I would talk to a few doctors and at least look into it.

But one other thing I wanted to get into that I mentioned before is the cyclical and targeted ketogenic diet benefits. I actually do both. So, the cyclical means that you cycle on and off the ketogenic diet. Now, it’s really difficult to say how much, how often, how many days, what’s optimal to get the most of these ketogenic diet benefits? I do know that Dr. Wilson, in Tampa, did a study where they had dieters do the standard of basically the weekdays in “ketosis,” a ketogenic diet, and the weekend eating whatever high carb stuff. What they found is that basically it took until Thursday to get into true nutritional ketosis, so it’s not really that effective to do.

Now, if you’re highly keto adapted, like you’ve been doing ketogenic dieting for years—now they did keto adapt in for two weeks, which is good. But that’s different than maybe if it’s been six months. And then how active are you? Exercise is another question Glycogen depletion, like we talked about. So there’s a lot of factors there, but I myself like to stay metabolically flexible, so I do like one or two meals a week. So I think that’s fine. As long as you’re not going crazy.

Because keto has decreased my appetite, even when I have carbs and I have my “cheat meals,” I don’t go crazy. I always kind of dream like I’m going to go crazy and then when I sit down and eat I’m like, “Nah, I’m kinda full.” It’s kind of cool. That’s one of the greatest ketogenic diet benefits. Like I never just go hog wild anymore. My appetite is much lower. And of course, intermittent fasting added to the mix helps with that.

So the targeted ketogenic diet, that is using carbs strategically, because I don’t know if you caught this through the whole discussion, but here’s the bomb that carbs are not essential. They’re not essential. There’s no recommended carb amounts by any nutritional or medical body because you do not need them. Yes, like we said, like your brain needs some glucose, but you can make it. Carbs are not essential.

Tim: Whereas you need fat, you need protein.

Shawn: Right, and vitamins and minerals. Exactly. So that’s an interesting thing. But the targeted is using it around the workout. I play competitive sand volleyball. Sometimes I play 8-9 hours in a row, in the heat. And I will use it strategically to really maximize the targeted ketogenic diet benefits. I’ll have simple sugar that I am going to use for fuel. In this case, I wouldn’t want a complex carbohydrate. I don’t want fat and protein in the mix. I just want to use it and go through it, and then by the time I’m done working out, be back in ketosis.

So maybe the first two hours of my eight hours, I’ll have some simple sugar. This is a chance where I can have like this fun things that you think I’m missing out on, like the candy or soda or Gatorade, or whatever, and I can have it then and I perform very well. I feel like that “sugar rush,” I liken it to like when you’re a kid and you had sugar. You had candy, soda, whatever, and you like run around like, “Who gave that kid sugar?” Remember that? Do you guys listening to remember that, because now when you have carbs, when you have pasta or you have candy or whatever, and you feel tired, the difference between those two things is really that level of glucose intolerance.

Tim: Exactly.

Shawn: You’re on your way to metabolic syndrome Type 2 diabetes. And it’s really going to happen to everyone. If you start getting more sedentary as you age and you keep eating these foods and you keep overeating, it’s very likely that at some point you’ll fall into this metabolic syndrome path. So that’s what I would say, the ketogenic diet benefits those people who feels tired from carbs, you are going to benefit tremendously from getting on a very low carbohydrate diet, that’s high in fat, like a ketogenic diet, because that’s where you’ll see this energy boom. What’s cool is I see that incredible amount of energy when I do, on occasion, have the sugar now, because I’m so much more insulin sensitive. So that’s really cool. I kind of feel like the kid again, so to speak, in that way.

Tim: Yeah. It’s awesome that you mentioned that because it reminds me of some research done out in Stanford by Christopher Gardner and his team. They did what was called “The A to Z Diet Study,” and basically looked at low fat to low carb and everything in‑between. And on average, they found that from a weight loss standpoint, things were pretty equivalent. But what they noticed when they went back and reanalyzed the data, is they were like curious why some people did really well. Some people ended up doing really well on one type of diet and some people did really poorly, and vice-versa on other diets.

So when they went back and they looked at the low-carb diet, for instance, they noticed that the low carb, high fat ketogenic diet benefits people who have poor glycemic control, lower carb tolerance, and poor insulin sensitivity. So I would completely agree that it is a very viable and excellent option for that population that would also stand to notice the most substantial ketogenic diet benefits, because like you’re talking about, that poor glycemic control usually goes hand-in-hand with being on your way to a bad health situation overall, and typically aligns with being overweight. So, from that standpoint, I think you’re right on point there.

We’ve covered a ton here. There’s a ton here and we really haven’t even talked about what a day on the ketogenic diet looks like.

Shawn: That’s what I was going to try and wrap up with. Yeah, that’s a great point.

Tim: Let’s wrap up then, Shawn, and kind of walk us through a typical day for a ketogenic dieter, without fasting maybe. And then tie in fasting, if you see a place for it. Let’s talk about how someone would go about maximizing ketogenic diet benefits.

Shawn: Yeah, so I normally skip breakfast because that’s the easiest time. Because you’ve fasted for the whole number of hours that you’ve been asleep—let’s say 6 to 8 hours—and then if you skip breakfast then you can kind of keep rolling. But if I am going to have breakfast, I love just eggs and bacon. I mean, it’s a classic, so I have eggs and bacon. I add butter to it. Another thing you can do is you could make an omelet. Use heavy cream or butter if you’re making the omelet. I use heavy cream. If I’m having eggs sunny-side up, I add butter to them. So it’s very easy and it’s really tasty. Great sources of fat on this diet: coconut oil, avocados, olive oil, mayo. I try and skip the canola-based mayo.

Tim: Maybe like avocado oil base mix.

Shawn: Exactly. Yeah, nuts and seeds, especially macadamias, walnuts, and these new pili nuts.

Tim: We have already mentioned that before.

Shawn: The pili nuts and macadamias are about 90% fats, so they’re really great.

Tim: How do you spell pili?

Shawn: P-I-L-I.

Tim: Okay.

Shawn:   So butter, ghee, heavy cream, sour cream, full fat cheese, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. Make sure to not have regular yogurts that have all that sugar and added fruit and whatever all that stuff in it. Like I said, eggs, bacon, cold water fatty fish, sardines are really good. That is a very high fat, decent amount of protein, and very low carb.

Tim: Sorry to interrupt, Shawn. You mentioned Dr. Dom. I’ve heard him mentioned before that his breakfast is often a can of sardines; especially when he’s traveling, because it’s a very easy food to travel with.

Shawn: Yeah, the little tins that you roll back. Exactly. He’s a huge fan of those, so those are excellent. Beef, poultry, coffee. Actually one of the things I get when I’m traveling, I’ll get like a sugar-free syrup at Starbucks, heavy cream decaf coffee. I don’t do any caffeine. I know maybe the sucralose in the syrup isn’t the best thing, but on occasion, to have this, it feels like a really good dessert and it’s super filling, and that will be my meal for like five or six bucks. I’ll get like the venti one or something and it’s like 500 calories, maybe, but like that will literally keep me going for 8+ hours. And that’s super easy to do. There’s a Starbucks everywhere on the planet. So that’s an easy one on the go, that you don’t have to cook, that isn’t any complexity. And another thing I’d say like the nuts and seeds are super quick. People ask what the quick foods are. You could precook bacon, you can have nuts and seeds, you can have vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, maybe asparagus—basically the non-sweet veggies. Things like tomatoes and carrots have a decent amount of sugar in them. Maybe some of the bell peppers, you might want to avoid for the most part. But having these things, it’s very easy for the most part. Avocado, adding some olive oil to it. That takes two seconds.

So a lot of these really aren’t that hard to do. And I would say that like for my meals, that’s what I do, as the guy sometimes. Like when I’m traveling, like you said, I can do these things. But at home, I’ll do some meals like it could be salmon with some cream‑based sauce or something. A great one is actually pesto. Pesto is delicious.

Tim: It’s awesome. It’s kind of on the border of the Bliss Point.

Shawn: Yeah. I know, but it’s a super high fat, extremely low carb, actually pretty low protein. So it’s very keto and that’s delicious, and putting butter on anything is delicious. And you can have things like mayo or like the creamy dressings, but make sure to get the creamy ones that don’t have any sugar added. Those are heavy cream-based or sour cream‑based, and like a ranch dressing. You can dip your vegetables in ranch, you can put ranch on your whatever, like your beef, poultry, fish, or whatever. That’s right, ranch lovers, one of the ketogenic diet benefits you’ll enjoy most is that you can eat your heart out on ranch.

A lot of times I’ll do these hamburger salads, where you ditch the bun and usually you get a side with your hamburger, or something, and say I want a salad. Give me some ranch dressing, no croutons. And then you put your hamburger or cheeseburger on your salad, you throw some ranch dressing on it, and it’s super keto and it’s delicious, and it’s easy. It’s not very expensive. So, those are some things that I recommend.

Tim: Yeah, that’s awesome, Shawn. Two things that came to mind as you were rattling those things off: one we’ve talked about before, you’ve been keto for 20 years on and off, and it’s much easier now to reap the ketogenic diet benefits than it used to be, when it was a little bit more obscure. And just like paleo, there’s so many people that are keto now that all you have to do is Google Search “keto recipes,” and there’s a ton of stuff. Or you just, in your case, marry a wonderful chef who can make all these keto recipes. That obstacle of having very limited options is no longer an issue, really. You have pretty much any normal food that you could think of, you can keto-fy, which means it’s easier to experience the ketogenic diet benefits.

Shawn: Yeah.

Tim: Because of its popularity, restaurants are catering to it more and more. And then I just wanted to speak about Dr. Roberson, and he, as you can imagine, he is very busy. His breakfast that he said he looked forward to every single day was a chocolate peanut butter BioTrust Low Carb Protein Shake which is hands-down my favorite. But he would just mix in some MCT oil. And he said that for him, lunch was often an obstacle because drug reps brought in food and usually it’s like pasta dishes, sandwiches, things like that, so he would make do when he could, but a lot of times he would just go to a local fast food joint and get the double bacon cheeseburger with no bun and I don’t salad-fy it.

Shawn: keto-fy it.

Tim: keto-fy it.

Shawn: Yeah, I do that same shake. I’ll mix in some of the things that I was talking about. I do the one scoop of the BioTrust Low Carb, heavy cream, a little bit of that, some MCT oil, and then even some macadamia or walnuts, and blend it up. It’s delicious. Chia seeds sometimes, and it’s extremely filling. It tastes amazing, so definitely, BioTrust Low Carb is really good for that.

And I will definitely say that IC-5 is incredible on the ketogenic diet, which BioTrust makes as well, for insulin sensitivity, which is one of the key ketogenic diet benefits. If I want to have a little bit of carbs in my meal or if you’re eating out at someone’s house and they have some things that you’ve got to try, the IC‑5 is so helpful for that incredible supplement.

Tim: Well, and we didn’t get into it, but I’m just going to put this out there, because we’re going to talk more about this in the future. But there’s some synergy with anti-aging between IC‑5 and the ketogenic diet. So folks, a lot to digest there. No pun intended, but we’d love to hear your feedback on this, and certainly if you have questions or experiences with the ketogenic diet yourself.

Moral of the story, don’t fear the fat. But we’re also not saying that this is the one and only…

Shawn: The one true diet.

Tim: …. the be-all and end-all, but definitely encouraging experimentation and questions. Shawn, you dropped a ton of knowledge, man. That was awesome.

Shawn: Well, thank you.

Tim: We’ve got some more information on the blog about the ketogenic diet benefits, so just go to the BioTrust.com/blog. You can get some information there. You can also find us on Facebook.

Metabolic Age Quiz

Shawn: I think there’s some recipes that Shelley and I did on there, right?

Tim: Yes. Cristina, our Coach Cristina has collaborated with you guys, put some articles on recipes together. You can find us on Facebook. Just search “BioTrust Nutrition.” Find us on Twitter “@BioTrustNut,” and then on Instagram, just “BioTrust.”

We hope you guys have enjoyed learning about the ketogenic diet benefits and we’ll look forward to seeing you next time. Any other closing remarks from you, Mr. Shawn?

Shawn: Just be kind to the people around you. That’s it.

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