How to use Keto to achieve Metabolic Flexibility

In undergrad, I actually didn't really explore the ketogenic diet at all. I took a few nutrition classes, like I said, I went to undergrad for athletic training, I actually thought that that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was be an athletic trainer. That's actually why like, I went to the University of Miami because they had one of the top athletic training programs in the nation. And that's how I convinced my parents to let me go there because I told them that I was like, if you let me go here, I promise you that I would that I'll get my master's degree paid for me because I'll be able to work as an athletic trainer and they had like 100% graduation rate of, of being able to do that.

So that was my main convincing point to let me go there. And I definitely I enjoyed my time there. I enjoyed, you know, working as an athletic training student, and then into grad school, you know, working as an athletic trainer, but I knew that, like it ended up not being what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But within undergrad, like I said, I didn't really explore the ketogenic diet too much, although I wish I had come across it because I was doing triathlon. So I was doing long distance endurance sports, and I believe that has a place there. But as I got into grad school, and as I kind of played around with the ketogenic diet, and then after grad school, I kind of went down this, this rabbit hole myself where, you know, I was feeling really good with it. And the main benefits that I had were just a lot less food focus throughout the day, you know, more mental clarity, things like that.

And I was like, Oh, wow, like, I don't need carbs, I, I feel great, and eventually got to the point where I wasn't feeling great anymore, I wasn't getting the results I wanted, I also kind of developed to this kind of carb phobic mindset where I was just really just honestly afraid to eat carbs. A lot of the women that I work with I've they've kind of gone through all the things that I went through, and especially with when we're looking at talking about fasting as well, because you know, that's a big part of it, a part of keto and and people adopt that. And that's really why I created my Keto for Women program, which is really just a program that brings a lot of women who have kind of gone down that keto rabbit hole, and they found results initially, and then they're kind of coming out the other side, and they're like, I got results. But now Now I'm not really sure where to go. And I want to have more of that balanced approach, I want to be able to go out with my kids and get ice cream and not feel like it's the end of the world. And so that's really where that kind of metabolic flexibility side comes in.

So you know, you can adopt a ketogenic diet for a period of time if it works for you. But then teaching you and, and instructing you how to bring those carbs back in so that it works for your lifestyle. So you can kind of get the both the best of both worlds in the sense of you're able to use kind of the full spectrum of your metabolism. And that's really what metabolic flexibility is, in a sense, basically, just being able, like I said, being able to use kind of the full spectrum of your travels and right, so when it'd be been being able to efficiently switch back and forth, right, so we know, like with fat and ketones, for example, using that when it's warranted.

So when you're at rest, when you're doing like low intensity exercise, when you're just sitting at your desk throughout the day, you know, sedentary, you should really be able to kind of tap into that as your main fuel source versus when you're doing maybe high intensity interval training or sprinting on the treadmill, or you're, you know, you're in a stressful situation using glucose and sugar as your fuel source, but being able to kind of switch back and forth, so you're not kind of stuck on either end of the spectrum. And I think the importance of that is just like I said, you know, just kind of thinking back to, you know, always kind of bringing it back to like practicality and like looking at our overall kind of genetics and things like that, we know that some research shows that, you know, our genetic and our DNA hasn't really changed, like 90 plus percent of it hasn't really changed in like the last 10,000 years, right.

So, but the way that we eat and the food access that we have has completely changed, right? So we went from hunter gatherers to you know, farming and factory and that's been just in the last 100 So years. And so if you kind of think back to that, like we used to be metabolically flexible, just by necessity, right. So there would be times where we would have food, there would be times where we don't so you're able to kind of switch throughout that there will be times you know, as the seasons change, we have access to higher carb fruit like fruits and things like that. versus you know, in the winter, maybe it was more so you know, animals and things like that.

So it's really just being able to efficiently switch back and forth between those fuel sources. And really kind of just gauging that based off of like, what your personal lifestyle is like like what your activity level is like what your everyday life is. And it's also one thing I want to say too is not just nutrition to like you, you don't just have to or you can't you can you can be you can become more metabolically flexible through other things as well not just nutrition. So for example, exercise, right so working in different energy systems within your exercise training. So, you know, doing work in the aerobic system doing work in the anaerobic system, and really going back and forth between that and Being able to switch efficiently without issues.

I think that's one of the biggest things as well when it comes to CrossFit. Because we know CrossFit is a very highly glycolytic sport. But then there's also times where it's not, like we talked about the skill work and the strength work, or even if we're thinking about the elite athletes, like those times when they go on those kind of, you know, half hour, hour long trucks through the different obstacle courses and things like that, like, they're not using you they're not in that glycolytic state the entire time.

And that's something that a lot of people don't realize, too. They think that it's kind of like a switch on and off between that right you're, you know, either you're in the your aerobic system or you're in your anaerobic system. It doesn't really work like that you're going back and forth between that you are it's kind of like a dimmer switch, right versus like an on off switch. So, just those are a few things to kind of be aware of