Why Keto didn't work for me Long-term

Got into grad school, I needed something that was just like a quick workout, something that was fun, competitive. I knew I didn't have time to do triathlons anymore. I wanted to try something else out. So I got into CrossFit training. And that is also when I kind of came across the ketogenic diet. So for my master's thesis, so I went, I did a two year program at James Madison University, and we had to do a master's thesis study. And a lot of my classmates were doing more survey based studies. And I knew that I wasn't going to be super interested in that in that for two years.

So I, I talked to my advisor, and he, he basically said, you know, find something that you can be interested in for the next two years, because you're going to be spending a lot of your time in that area. And he and I basically said, I wanted to do an interventional study a diet intervention in a exercise population. And at that point, I was just getting into CrossFit. So I figured that would be a great exercise population to, to use. And I was getting into the ketogenic diet, as it was just coming becoming popular at that time, it was like back in 20.

This was in 2014 2014 2015. And so I ended up doing the first human clinical trial looking at the ketogenic diet and a non elite and non elite CrossFit athletes. That study was very successful, lots of cool stuff came out of that which we can dive into if you want. And then after I graduated, I kind of just continued on in the low carb, keto space, this is when it really started to get popular, kind of in the mainstream. And I adopted a lower carb lifestyle for myself. And I started working with clients who were interested in that. And throughout that period of time, and throughout the years, I just kind of went down a lot of different rabbit holes. And I started to find that for myself, I was going way way on the ends of like, low carb keto, and a little bit too, too extreme.

And I started to find clients were doing that as well. And they were starting to get, they had positive results in the beginning. And then they were starting to get some negative negative results and just not able to sustain it. And so I started experimenting with myself with incorporating more carbs, a little bit less fasting and kind of using different tools and strategies to fit with what I was doing. And then started implementing that with my clients. And that's where I kind of developed this metabolic flexibility, side of things where we're really just looking to kind of be able to utilize both fuel sources appropriately and efficiently for the activity that we are doing for our lifestyle, all of that. And that kind of brings me to our I ended up writing a book and starting a podcast. And now I'm here today i i stopped doing CrossFit, I believe it's been about two and a half years. So I actually or maybe closer to three years, I actually ended up getting injured.

And this is kind of part of my journey. We all kind of go through periods and we kind of make mistakes and do things and realize, Oh man, I could I could have probably avoided that. And so I actually got injured at a point in my life where I was really kind of stressed out in all areas of my life and I was still I was using CrossFit as my outlet, and I wasn't paying attention to my recovery. I wasn't paying attention to fueling appropriately for what I was doing. And so I ended up hurting my back and it wasn't like a it was more of a chronic type injury. But I ended up stopping CrossFit and in you know taking some time off and then actually getting more into bodybuilding style training and that's what I've been doing since then just kind of hypertrophy focused