You've been eating Keto, How do you Start Eating Carbs Again?

So you've been eating keto, how do you start incorporating carbs? Again, there's a few ways to go about it. So let's chat about those.

So the first thing I would do is think about incorporating carbs around your workout, right. So pre and post workout is the first place that I like to start reincorporating carbs because you're going to use those most effectively at that time. So if you're incorporating carbs pre workout, it's going to give you a little bit more energy for your workout, and your body is going to soak up those carbs and use them during the workout. And then post workout. Incorporating carbs post workout is going to help with recovery, and your muscles are going to be super sensitive to actually taking in those carbs and soaking them up after your workout.

So if you've been keto for a long time, and you're looking to reincorporate carbs into your diet, I always like to start pre and post workout if you're someone who does work out, another reason why post workout can be beneficial, especially if you're someone who is who works out a lot, maybe you have higher stress levels throughout the day, incorporating carbs post workout can help bring you back into more parasympathetic state. And that just means like more of a rest and digest mode. Right.

So increasing carbs can actually help lower cortisol. Cortisol is our overall stress hormone. And so if you can do that post workout, that will help get you into a state where your body is going to recover better, right. So when you're working out after your workout, we want to make sure that we can upregulate that recovery as soon as possible. So in incorporating carbs post workout can help with that. So I always like to structure carbs, pre and post workouts as the first step to reincorporate them after long term keto. So another tip to think about when you're increasing carbs after keto is to do in a way when you have a meal, and you're increasing carbs, you want to think about reducing the fat intake of that meal, right. So you want to keep protein pretty much the same. But when you're increasing carbs, you have to, you know, take something else away. So increasing carbs, and decreasing fat is going to be your best bet for a higher carb meal.

And you know, if you want to start off by potentially just doing that with one meal, or like I mentioned in the previous point, pre or post workout, so if you're having a pre workout meal, you can reduce, you know, the fat that you would typically have, if you were following a you know, a higher fat keto diet, bring that fat a little bit, you know, lower and increase the carbs a little bit while keeping protein, you know where it's at, you don't want to bring fat all the way down, because fat will help to, you know, slow the digestion a little bit. So you don't want to have fat at a complete zero when you're incorporating carbs, but you do want to bring them down, right. So that's just something to think about when you're incorporating more carbs into your diet, think about lowering those, that fat and the particular meal that you are increasing those carbs in.

So the next thing to think about is sticking with Whole Food carb sources. So things like potatoes, squash, fruit, things that are you know, more whole food they've you know, grown from the earth, I always say somebody has grown from the Earth at some point is a whole food carb that is going to prevent you from overeating, because those types of carbs are going to be much more filling and have a higher satiety value, and less, less kind of ability to overeat. Because the palatability of them is going to be lower, versus if you were going to have a carb that was a little bit more processed, like a bagel, or you know, crackers or something like that, those are going to be a little bit more higher palatability and you're going to want to your body is just going to naturally want to eat more of it.

So if you're going from a period of time of not having a lot of carbs, if you're looking to bring carbs back in, it's going to be in your best interest to stick with the whole food carbs first, and titrate those in so like I said, different types of fruits, different types of you know, potatoes, squashes, things like that. And then obviously other vegetables as well, there's going to be fiber in those as well. So that's going to help with slowing the digestion down of those carbohydrates and minimizing some of the blood sugar responses that you might get. If you have gone from low carb keto, and you're looking to reintroduce carbs, one of those things that we want to think about is making sure that we're managing our blood sugar as best as possible. So sticking with the whole food, carbs that have more fiber in them, that's going to also help regulate that as well.

So the next thing to think about is pairing your carbohydrates with a protein or fat source. And I talked about this a little bit before but when you you know consume our carbohydrates, you want to make sure that you're not consuming them on their own. I always say like no naked carbs. When you consume carbohydrates on their own, it's going to cause your blood sugar to potentially spike a little bit higher or maybe even a lot higher than if you consume them with a protein or fat source. So just consuming carbohydrates thinking about always pairing them with a protein or fat source so that digestion slows down a little bit and you don't have these huge spikes and dips in blood sugar levels. Lastly, remind yourself that carbs are not the devil they can actually benefit If you use them strategically, and you incorporate them in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle. 

Thank you so much for watching. If you want to learn more about nutrition, fitness or metabolic flexibility, you can check out our website Matt Flex life.com. There you can find our podcasts and Netflix and chill our nutrition and exercise programs, our latest blog posts, free recipes and much more