Video: 8 Low Carb, Keto Hacks for Women

November 20, 2015 By Leanne Vogel December 21, 2018

The 8 simple low carb, keto living hacks for women – intermittent fasting, hair loss, inability to sleep, dry eyes, cyclical ketosis, and building healthy gut bacteria.

A YouTube-only video from January 2015. Now sharing it on the blog because there are a lot of tidbits in here! Never miss another YouTube exclusive video, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

For video transcription, scroll down.

Highlights

• The best time to weigh yourself
• The best time to measure your ketones
• What to do when your macros are imbalanced
• How to balance fertility with low-carb, high-fat, keto eating
• Intermittent fasting for women
• What to do when you can’t sleep

Resources

• Watch: 10 signs that intermittent fasting may not be right for you
• For balancing your adrenals: Himalayan rock salt (for those without thyroid imbalance) and grey sea salt (for those with thyroid imbalance)
• Starches for healthy bacteria: green banana flour and potato starch
• Get a copy of my keto program, Fat Fueled Program & Meal Plan
• Save 15% with The Keto Bundle, a bundle with The Keto Beginning and Fat Fueled Programs in one!
• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

Video Transcription

Hello, keto health seekers. I am super stoked to be finally making this keto video today for all of you out there that have been doing low carb, keto for a while, maybe you know what ketosis is, perhaps you’re following the plan in the Keto Beginning, my keto book, and Meal Plan, a Complete Guidebook, to introducing yourself to ketosis. Maybe you’re done the first couple of weeks, perhaps you’re done 30 days, and you’re thinking, “Okay, now what? I’ve been in ketosis and using nutritional ketosis with whole foods for the last 6 months. I’ve gone through a lot of different things and had to hack my way through things that I never learned in school. Using my education as a basis for discovering different things about ketogenic living.”

First off, I want to tell you that, if you’ve finished the program in the Keto Beginning, in my keto book, it’s time to play and start to understand what your body’s all about, and what your limits are. First, to that, is weighing yourself. The best time, at any time, is to weigh yourself in the morning. If you’re like me, and you had your Natural Calm before bed because I always have at least 2 servings of Natural Calm before bed, I always have to go to the bathroom in the morning, so go to the bathroom, weigh yourself, get on with your day.

When to measure ketosis. There’re a couple of ways to measure, and I’ve talked about this in the Keto Beginning. There’s urine strips, blood strips, and breath strip. The best time to take your number, I find, is in the morning. Once you get used to feeling what it’s like, you don’t need to measure. You’re still benefiting from a low carb eating style, even though maybe your number is .2, or .7. If you’re eating low carb and feeling awesome, then you’re going to go through waves [00:02:00] where you’re in ketosis, you’re out of ketosis, and that’s totally fine. Don’t force yourself to eat. I get asked this question all the time. “I’ve reached the end of my day. I’m not hungry, but my ratios are all messed up.” Don’t worry about it. You did your best. Move on.

If you are starving, if you’re really hungry, don’t not eat because you aren’t in your plan. Especially for women, it’s super important for our bodies to feel like we’re nourished and safe. This goes into a lot of infertility issues and calorie restriction. Even with that low fat eating style that many of us were accustomed to before doing this, the more at risk your body feels, the less likely it’s going to be okay with carrying a child. If you’re sending the message to your body saying, “Not enough calories. Not enough calories.” Your body’s thinking, “Fight or flight. Fight or flight. It is not safe to have a child here. Therefore we’re not going to produce enough hormones. We’re not going to allow a pregnancy to take place.”

Even though you may not want to be pregnant, maybe you’ve had 5 kids and you’re done, or maybe you’re 20 and that’s not even a thing for you, making sure that your fertility is healthy regardless of where you are in your life is important. Making sure that you’re eating enough calories, or just enough energy .. I hate that C word, calories, yuck … You want to make sure that you’re eating enough, that you’re satiated so that your body doesn’t get that response like, “Oh my gosh, we’re starving. We shouldn’t be producing hormones.”

Another piece to this is intermittent fasting. There are a couple forms, and I explain them in the Keto Beginning. I’m finding that more and more of my women clients have benefits with intermittent fasting when they do not count their blended coffee as being part of their eating window. The reason we can do that is because if that blended coffee or tea is primarily fat-based, now we’re talking less than [00:04:00] 2 to 3 grams of carbohydrates in that blended coffee, so maybe you add just a touch of coconut milk, that should keep you ketosis, or protein. If you add around upwards of 20 grams of protein, for instance, collagen, which I love, having 1 to 2 tablespoons of collagen in that blended coffee will continue your intermittent fast, will keep you in ketosis longer, and it sends a signal to your body saying, “It’s okay. It is safe. Continue creating hormones, continue being awesome. There’s lots of fuel here, but we’re going to continue fat burning through ketosis.”

What it also does is send a message to your adrenals saying, “Everything is good.” If you’re finding that, while you’re intermittent fasting, you’re starting to get a little bit anxious and nervous, and a little bit stressed, that’s probably because you’re adrenals are getting the message saying that things are not safe. Including those blended coffees, primarily fat based, will help with that. Because you’re using your adrenals, and the function of your adrenals, to maintain ketosis, you’re also using your liver to maintain ketosis, throughout your intermittent fasting experience, even if you are having that blended coffee, it’s super important to make sure that your liver and adrenals are healthy before you start intermittent fasting.

If you lack sleep, you’re always exhausted, maybe you have psychological imbalances, or you’re working out a whole bunch and there’s a lot of stress happening in your life, it’s best to fix those areas before you intermittent fast. As I mentioned in the Keto Beginning, something that’s very helpful for your adrenals and your overall health is Himalayan rock salt. If you use Himalayan rock salt in addition to a high fat, low carb eating style with moderate protein, your body should naturally heal itself. Another question I get asked is hair loss. If you are not eating enough carbohydrates, you will lose your hair. Just make sure you’re eating enough carbohydrates. Around 50 to 75 [00:06:00] carbohydrates per day allows me to keep my gorgeous hair, and nice and shiny and awesome, and also stay in ketosis most of the time.

Inability to sleep. Here’s another low carbohydrate issue. You want to make sure that you have enough glucose in your body that your body can still have access to it. If it does not, cortisol increases, which breaks down your muscle to release some of the glucose that’s stored in your muscle tissue, because protein can also increase your glucose levels. What happens is when cortisol increases to breakdown this muscle to then get the glucose that it’s missing from the diet, your cortisol levels are increased, therefore you’re not sleeping. The best approach to this is just make sure that you’re eating enough carbohydrates. Dry eyes, skin, and nails. Also, make sure you’re eating enough carbohydrates.

Healthy gut bacteria. This is a cool one. Probiotics, for a lot of people, as well as myself, just don’t work. Something that I’ve been playing around with is using polyphenols to increase my healthy bacteria, so that would be things like high quality, good, good, good, mold free coffee. Blueberries are another good one. I usually have those at night. Chocolate, unsweetened chocolate also has polyphenols. You can also play around with resistant starches. I’ve been using sweet rice flower. Make sure that it’s sweet rice flower and nothing else. Specific forms of potato starch also have resistant starch as well as plantain flower and green banana flower. These have starches in them that go straight to the gut to help build up healthy bacteria.

1 last tip for building healthy bacteria, and also having beautiful hair, skin, nails, beauty, awesome, is collagen, grass fed collagen. The cool thing is that collagen doesn’t clump up together like gelatin, which means you can put it in practically everything, and you don’t even taste it. [00:08:00] Carb up days. In the Keto Beginning, I start talking about cyclical ketosis. I feel like this approach to cyclical ketosis, where you’re moving in and out, and in and out, is helpful for your body, especially if you’re like me and trying to boost your hormones throughout this whole experience and get the healthy body that we’re all after.

I’ve tried 2 different types of approaches. 1 is every 7 days I eat 1 gram of carbohydrate for every 1 pound that I weigh, so it usually ranges between … I start around 130 grams to upwards of 150 grams, all healthy carbohydrates. Talking about extra guacamole, avocados, sweet potatoes, roasted vegetables, those sorts of things. More kale, maybe a smoothie with a bunch of greens in it, and so we’re talking healthy carbohydrates not packing in the sugar. The second approach to carb up days, or that cyclical practice of ketosis, is going on a protein fast. This is actually where you’re eating that same amount of carbohydrates, so for me it would be like 130 to 150 grams of carbohydrates in a day, still tons of fat, but no protein, less than 5% protein.

What this does, it helps increase autophagy that is when the cells in your body help push proteins out of it for a cleanse. You really feel like you’re cleansing. The last couple of ones that I did where I wasn’t eating a lot of protein, by the end of the day I had a major headache, and by the next day I felt like I had drank 2 bottles of wine. There’re 2 different approaches. 1 is you just increase your carbohydrates; naturally you’re going to be eating more. This is a really good option if you have to do a major workout the next day. The second approach I found is more of a detox. This is, every 7 days you are eating less protein [00:10:00], a lot more carbohydrates, the same amount as the other option, and tons of fats. 2 very different ways of doing it.

I don’t want to say which one I prefer because they’re both very different and kind of do different things. I think for health standpoint and where I’m trying to go I’m going to continue to do protein fasting for a little while, and see how that goes, but I definitely wanted to introduce you all to it so that you could test it for yourself and perhaps tell me which one that you like most. I will be helping all of you along as I go by continuing to share resources and guides and everything.

If you don’t have a copy of my keto book, the Keto Beginning, you can get it on my website. I’ll include the link below this keto video, and if you have it, thank you so much for supporting my work and playing around with this eating style with me and learning about your body. I encourage you, if things don’t feel right, play, just continue playing and seeing what works for you, what doesn’t, and in the end, you’ll feel so much better because I know that I do. I’ve never felt this good in my life. Yeah, I hope that helps, and I’ll see you around. Bye.

This entry was tagged: eating high-fat, eating keto, eating low-carb, fat-adapted, keto, keto basics, keto diet, keto life, ketogenic, ketone, ketosis, low-carb paleo, what is keto