How I've used Carbs Strategically to Achieve Metabolic Flexibility
Aug 22, 2022
My name is Rachel Gregory. I'm a board certified nutritionist. And I work mostly with women, I coach, a lot of women, I have group coaching and individual coaching. And a lot of my kind of wheelhouse is around women who have experimented and gone into the Keto, low carb space have gone through a period of you know, ketogenic diet saw good results, and then kind of hit this sticking point or this kind of point where they were just like, Okay, I can't really sustain this anymore. It's not working with my lifestyle, I'm starting to get a little bit carb phobic, and not really been able to enjoy some of the foods that, you know, I used to enjoy. And so that's where I kind of come in and using keto is can be, I think it can be a great tool. But going through it myself, I'll get kind of back up a little bit I went to, I went to undergrad in at University of Miami, and I got my undergrad degree in athletic training.
And while I was studying there, I thought that I wanted to be an athletic trainer. And then I started to take some nutrition classes and got really, really into Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. So I decided to go ahead and get my Master's in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology afterwards. And when I was getting my masters, we had to it was a two year program at James Madison University. And we had to do a thesis and do a study and a lot of my classmates were doing more survey studies. And I knew that that wasn't really something that would interest me for two years, because it was two years of you know, diving deep into a specific topic.
So I talked to my advisor, and I told him, I wanted to do more of like a human clinical study style study. And so I ended up doing the first study looking at the ketogenic diet in non elite CrossFit athletes. And so that was a very successful study in the sense of we were looking at how much body fat they could lose over a period of time, compared to a in going on a ketogenic diet compared to a standard American diet. And so that was back in 2016, is when I graduated from grad school. So that study got published. And then that just propelled me into the whole world of keto, low carb. And that's really when it actually started to become a lot more popular. Within nutrition, we know things ebb and flow throughout the years and so keto kind of was starting to peak around that time.
So it kind of it just lined up well with what I was, you know, researching. And then beyond that, I adopted a ketogenic lifestyle for myself, went really strict keto, for probably two plus years, and I started having, you know, some adverse effects got very carb phobic, didn't really know where to go, and then kind of figured that out over the years. And it brought me to this concept of metabolic flexibility. And so that's really kind of my wheelhouse now is teaching specifically women how to incorporate keto strategically as a tool, and really dive in to just really being able to use your metabolism to its full degree, right, being able to use fat and ketones for fuel when it's warranted, but then also being able to use carbs and sugar when it's warranted and the specific situations, and then going back and forth between them effectively, back in 2016, I was kind of like I mentioned, deep into keto.
I personally adopted it myself, because I found really great results and more. So some body composition changes, but also just the mental clarity and the kind of ability to get away from like really focusing on food all the time and kind of having that afternoon slump. And energy levels were just really great throughout the day. And so that's really like at that point, I was like, oh, man, I don't need carbs anymore. Like I'm good. And I started, you know, experimenting with fasting and I thought, you know, fasting is this whole other wheelhouse and I just kind of went down the fasting rabbit hole, and then eventually got to the point where I was just trying different things.
And with keto I, like I mentioned I started to become a little bit carb phobic. And I realized that I needed to switch things up and start to especially with my performance and getting more into exercising and bodybuilding style training a little bit away from CrossFit. So I started incorporating carbs and I started seeing a at first it was hard because my body was just so kind of metabolically and we can talk about this metabolically inflexible on the other side of the spectrum. So when I initially started introducing carbs, I was getting kind of all of the same issues like my blood sugar was dropped up spiking too much I was having energy fluctuations throughout the day.
But once I started to adapt to that and kind of realize how I could use carbs strategically around my workouts, you know, before bed, it really it really just was a game changer. And so that's kind of how right now how I, I guess live my lifestyle is really just trying to optimize both sides and really staying that balance of being able to tap into, you know, fat and ketones for fuel, being able to fast whenever I really want to or need to and not really have those adverse effects from fasting, or kind of fear, fasting in the sense that a lot of people do, but then also being able to use carbs, you know, around my workouts, like I said before bed if I want to kind of wind down some hormone regulation, things like that.
So it's really just that metabolic flexibility and being able to go back and forth is what I strive for. Because I think it's kind of the you're getting, you're actually getting the best of both worlds if you're doing this strategically and implementing specific strategies kind of within that and within your own personal lifestyle to help with that.
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