The Keto Diet Podcast Ep. #036: Keto for Healing

June 4, 2017 By Leanne Vogel August 7, 2018

Interview with Meg Doll and Shawn Mynar, co-hosts of The Nourished Podcast, chatting with us about using the ketogenic diet to heal the body.

For podcast transcript, scroll down.

Show Notes & Links

• Feel awesome on your keto diet with The Keto Bundle
• Try my free 7-day keto meal plan
• Use #ketodietbook and win
• Subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app
• More from Meg
• More from Shawn
• Pre-order Meg’s book
• Check out Fat Burning Female

Timestamps

• Steps to using keto to heal your body (28:25)
• How keto works to overcome imbalance (31:20)
• Easing into ketosis for overall success (38:47)

Partners of The Keto Diet Podcast

Transcript

Leanne Vogel: You’re listening to episode number 36 of The Keto Diet Podcast. Today, we’re chatting about steps to using keto to heal your body, how keto works to overcome imbalance, how to adjust the standard keto approach to heal your body, and easing into ketosis for overall success. Stay tuned.

Hey, I’m Leanne from healthfulpursuit.com, and this is The Keto Diet Podcast, where we’re busting through the restrictive mentality of a traditional ketogenic diet to uncover the life you crave. What’s keto? Keto is a low-carb, high-fat diet where we’re switching from a sugar-burning state to becoming fat-burning machines.

A little thank you for all of the podcast listeners and supports. I met many of you on the book tour, and I’m so thankful for each and every single one of you. If you’re in need of a little boost of keto support, I’ve created a special offer exclusive to podcast listeners only. Use the coupon code “LOVE” on healthfulpursuit.com/shop and receive 15% off anything your little heart desires, from weekly keto meal plans with balanced keto, to my epic pack of keto resources with the keto bundle. Again, that’s “LOVE” for 15% at healthfulpursuit.com/shop. The offer will be valid until June 11th, 2017. Let’s get this part started.

Hey everyone. The show notes and full transcript for today’s episode can be found at healthfulpursuit.com/podcast/e36. The transcript is added to the post about three to five days following the initial air date of this episode. Let’s hear from one of our awesome partners.

The podcast is sponsored by Manitoba Harvest, the hemp-based food company. I love using their hemp hearts as an oat replacement in any oat-based recipe from porridge to oatmeal, cookies and everything in between. Hemp hearts are hemp seeds with the shells removed. They’re tender, fatty, zero grams of net carbs, rich in omegas, fiber, and protein. Listeners of the podcast can get 15% off your Canadian or US-based Manitoba Harvest order by going to healthfulpursuit.com/hemp and using the coupon code “KETO.” That’s “KETO,” all in caps, no spaces for 15% off. This offer is valid until August 31st, 2017. I know you’re going to love them.

If you have an idea for a podcast episode or want to submit over and above the review, which you can leave by going to healthfulpursuit.com/review, you can reach me by emailing info@ketodietpodcast.com.

We’ve got one announcement this week, and it is, if you got a copy of my book, we are still running The Keto Diet Book hashtag social media giveaway. This means that if you are taking pictures of the book, if you have a favorite recipe from the book, or you’re making food from the book or following the meal plans, or if you have one of the pictures you took of us on tour, share it on social media with the hashtag, that’s the number sign, #ketodietbook, all one word, and you are instantly entered to win either a jar of EPIC Provisions cooking oils or Kasandrinos Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Two winners will be randomly selected every single week from April 11th to June 20th, so we still have a couple more weeks to go. All you have to do is use this hashtag, share something from the book, and you will be instantly entered. This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents, and you can visit healthfulpursuit.com/ketodietbookgiveaway for more details. I’ll also include a link in the show notes where you can click there and learn more about the giveaway.

Today’s guests, we have two of them. This is a Keto Diet Podcast first. Our first guest here is Meg Doll. She’s a registered holistic nutritionist and passionate about supporting women through their health and healing journeys. As an eating disorder survivor, she specializes in educating women on how to cultivate self-love and properly fuel their bodies with a high-fat, real-food diet. Meg is also the cohost of the popular podcast, The Nourished Podcast, and is the author of the upcoming book Keto Freedom, I’ll include a link in the show notes where you can pre-order her book, go and do it, it’s going to be awesome, where she guides you through a life-changing journey of self-love and healing your body with fat.

Shawn Mynar is a holistic health practitioner nutritionist out of Boulder, Colorado. After healing herself from chronic illness, which included two autoimmune diseases, toxic mold exposure, severe adrenal fatigue, and leaky gut, with a high-fat, real-food diet, Shawn’s passion now lies in helping others do the same.

She uses functional testing in her private practice to get to the root cause of her clients’ health issues and from there uses the power of food as medicine to address hormonal imbalance, gut-health issues, adrenal fatigue, thyroid dysfunction, weight loss resistance, and more. She also hosts a group class every season designed to transition women safely into ketosis called The Fat-Burning Female Project. In her free time, Shawn enjoys dancing, yoga, Netflix binges, anything having to do with bacon, kombucha, and reading in coffee shops. I’ll also include a link to Shawn’s Fat-Burning Female program in the show notes, so be sure to check for that.

With that, I’m excited to introduce both Meg and Shawn to the podcast. We always have such a great time when we get together and today is no exception, so let’s cut over to the interview.

Hey girls, what’s going on?

Meg Doll: Hey hey.

Shawn Mynar: Hey Leanne.

Leanne Vogel: Hey! So excited to have you both here. Let’s start off. Meg… tell us a little bit about yourself.

Meg Doll: Hey! Well, I’ve been here before so maybe you’ll recognize my podcast voice, which I wish I had a better podcast voice, but anyway…

Leanne Vogel: You have a fine podcast voice.

Shawn Mynar: I love your podcast voice.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah.

Meg Doll: Well, thank you. Yeah, so I’m Meg. I am a … Well, Meg Doll, people know me as. I am a holistic nutritionist here in Canada, and I also have a podcast with Shawn, so that’s why we’re here together. I’m just really passionate about helping women find a way to nourish themselves, and I also speak a lot about self-love and that is where my passion is, in guiding women through this journey of self-love because I truly do believe that that is the missing piece to so many of our healing journeys. We have everything in line, and that self-love piece is missing, and that’s kind of where I come in, and that’s what’s I do, is help people with that piece.

Leanne Vogel: Awesome. Shawn, what about you?

Shawn Mynar: Hey everyone. My name is Shawn Mynar. I am a holistic nutritionist as well, and I’m here in Boulder, Colorado, which it’s currently snowing in April, so that’s sad, but other than that it’s a great place to be; however, my practice is actually all online. I see clients one-on-one. I really dive in to the reason why they are having certain symptoms because most people come to me with this list of symptoms but were not actually looking at the root cause. That’s my job, is to find that root cause, mainly with functional lab testing, and then from there, we’re actually able to really truly heal.

I kind of got into this because of my own health issues, which I think we’ll talk about in detail in a minute, but I’ve had autoimmune disease, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, I mean you name it. I’ve been there, I’ve done it for myself, and that really spurred me to have this deep passion to help others, because I learned so much in my own journey that now I can just share with the general public and really help everyone get to this place where they’re feeling amazing because feeling amazing is awesome, and a lot of people aren’t quite there so why not get everyone there? We’d all be a lot happier. That’s what I do and why I do it.

Leanne Vogel: You two have a podcast together. Let’s chat a little bit about that because it’s awesome.

Meg Doll: We love our podcast. It’s so much fun. We just celebrated our second birthday not too long ago, so it’s been two years, which is crazy. Honestly, Leanne, I think our listeners are very similar to yours. We have an audience of basically all women, and a lot of them do have that history of a disordered relationship with food, and now they are looking to improve their health as well as their relationship with food. They’re looking at it holistically, so how they can improve their diet as well as their relationship with exercise and themselves and stuff like that, so it’s pretty cool.

Shawn Mynar: And it’s called The Nourished Podcast. We chose that name, I mean obviously, two years ago, but we really wanted this kind of all-encompassing, we can talk about everything under the sun because when you’re dealing with health, it all comes back to nourishing, whether it’s your body, your mind, your spirit. Whatever it is, we talk about it all.

Leanne Vogel: And for health, because it’s grown with you. I mean, that’s why it shows Healthful Pursuit as well, because it’s allowed me to be vegan and paleo and all the things that kind of move along with it and more of the body acceptance conversation.

Where are each of you at with your health right now? Where are you focusing? What are you looking at? What are you using to improve your health? Why don’t we start off with Meg.

Meg Doll: Yeah. Sure. Well, that’s a really good question because I am currently battling a parasitic infection right now. That is definitely my main concern right now. I’m really looking to eradicate this thing. It’s been with me since, I’m guessing, October 2015. That’s when the symptoms started showing themselves. I got really fatigued. My immune system has always been amazing, like I never get sick, and all of a sudden I was getting all of these infections. I would be … My boyfriend would get sick, and I normally wouldn’t get sick around him, and I just started getting violently sick every single month. It was very cyclic.

I finally found out I had a parasite back in August of 2016, and now I am still dealing with it. I just finished my protocol not too long ago. I had tried antibiotics, but those didn’t work. I just did a very intense 10-week protocol, and that just finished, so now I’m waiting to hear back about the results and stuff like that, but that is currently my health goal kind of thing. With that, just balancing everything else out that kind of went awry due to the parasite.

Before I did get this parasite, it just seemed like after years of dealing with amenorrhea because I do have a history of an eating disorder, so just very similar to you Leanne, I had amenorrhea for many, many years, and the summer before I got this parasite, I started getting very clear signs that it was coming back, some spotting. Then all of that totally went away once I got this thing. I’m really, really hoping to eradicate it, and then focus on hormonal health just like you did and get my period back because that would be freaking awesome.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. Having your period is so great. As I do the period dance.

Meg Doll: Yeah…

Leanne Vogel: Supposed to get mine tomorrow, so I’m kind of crampy and just ready for it.

Shawn, what about you? What are you focusing on right now for your health? I also want to ask you about your practice and what you see, but let’s start off with what you’re working on right now with your health and how you are working on it.

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, well, this actually, this question comes at a really awesome time for me because while I first got diagnosed with my very first autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis nine years ago, and then, because kind of dealing with that for the past nine years, and then two years ago, actually about two and a half years ago, things really went south for me. I was dealing with all kinds of health issues, like I mentioned, almost everything. Total hormonal, basically absence of all hormones, major stage three adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, I developed another autoimmune disease Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and I was just feeling absolutely terrible.

I could barely get out of bed a lot of the time, had major brain fog, just joint paint, all of it. Just everything you could think of, and actually it turned out to be an exposure to toxic mold that was causing me some major inflammation, and it’s actually termed chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Once I got that diagnosis, things just really, I mean everything kind of made sense, and they were all kind of, fit together, but it was this huge protocol to get through, and in the process, I was feeling terrible, but I’m happy to report that everything is 100% cleared.

I’ve gotten everything kind of back in line. I feel amazing on a daily basis, which hasn’t been that way in so long that it almost still seems surreal to say that. I’m kind of just working on just maintaining that. I’ve learned so much in the process, like I mentioned, but to keep myself feeling this way is my main goal for the rest of my life, essentially.

I mean, I took a huge change in my diet, a huge change in my workout routine. I come from a fitness background. I used to be a personal trainer, and so that meant a lot of over exercising, a lot of under-eating. I’ve had to completely change that mentality in this process, make sure I’m eating enough, make sure I’m listening to my body and only working out to the degree that it wants me to. That’s all been such a huge process.

Right now, I mean, I am 100% keto. I absolutely love that. Again, I think we’re going to talk about that in a minute in a little more detail, but that truly changed my life and changed my health. That’s my main focus, health-wise, and then just being super happy and getting back to the life that I kind of lost there for a while I was trying to heal from all of this.

Leanne Vogel: That’s so perfectly sad of just losing that life and also not even knowing how good awesome feels, like just completely forgetting.

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, and you mentioned my practice, and I think that’s one of the big things that happened with my clients on a one-on-one basis, is they come to me with bloating or fatigue, constipation, these kinds of things, and it’s like they lived with this for so long that they don’t understand that that’s not normal, and you really can actually feel amazing. Most of us are just in this fog of kind of feeling okay, but you really can feel good again.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, it’s so true. Okay, so let’s dive into the keto pool.

Shawn Mynar: Woo!

Meg Doll: Yeah!

Leanne Vogel: Meg, why don’t we start off with you… like how you found keto, if you’re practicing keto, what that looks like for you.

Meg Doll: Yeah, of course. I’ve been eating paleo, I guess, and I know all three of us don’t like diet labels, of course, but if you were to label my diet, it would be a very paleo diet. I’ve been eating that way since about 2014, I think? I just, you know, digestive issues, all that. I grew up with insane digestive issues, and once I eliminated grains, that completely went away.

I know, Leanne, you even mentioned that in your book, grains were kind of the ticket for you, like once the grains were gone, your IBS issues were completely gone as well. Very similar to me, that was like that thing that I just needed to get rid of. Paleo made me feel really, really good; however, after a few years of eating that way, I noticed that I still wasn’t my healthiest. As I mentioned, I still had some hormonal imbalances, and I was experiencing crazy blood sugar fluctuations. I was hangry all of the time, and I was one of those people that had to eat every two to three hours. If not, I would get dizzy and lightheaded and all of that sort of thing. Then I contracted this parasite as well.

With all of those symptoms, mainly focusing on my hormonal health and my blood sugar balance and also eradicating this parasite, I started practicing more of a keto diet. Basically, a high-fat, low-carb paleo template. Thanks to Shawn, she was the one that kind of gave me that loving nudge to do it because I felt like I was doing everything right, and I was in such a rut.

At that time, Shawn was dappling with keto, and she was like, “Meg. I really think this is what you need to do.” Shortly after I did find out I had a parasite, and for any parasite protocol … I have my own private practice too where I work with clients one on one, and when I work with those clients, and if we know that they have a parasite, because both Shawn and I run comprehensive stool analysis tests, and when we find out that they have a parasite, I will put them on a protocol that is very limited in carbohydrates and high in fat because you need to restrict those carbohydrates in order to starve that parasite. If you’re eating carbohydrates in excessive amounts, even moderate amounts, you’re just contributing to that overgrowth and that parasite.

In an effort to eliminate that parasite and also support my hormones and just to finally, once and for all, regulate my blood sugar levels, I adopted more of a keto approach. What that looks like for me is it’s very relaxed, I would say. I am not restricting carbohydrates in any way because as I mentioned, if I placed restriction within my diet, that triggers a bunch of nasty demons in my head, so I really don’t place restriction on my diet, but I go in to every meal focusing on the … The focus is that fat and always choosing those fatty cuts of meat. I can’t remember the last time I had a chicken breast, nor do I even ever want a chicken breast ever again. Honestly, it’s so not appealing. And just focusing on the fats, those fatty cuts of meat. I really do, I’m liberal with those low-carb veggies. Right now, to be honest, whenever I have a dense source of carbohydrate, my symptoms really flare out.

Really, the ketogenic diet has been doing me wonders for the past year. I started eating this way in April of 2016. Shawn, she has this amazing program called The Fat-Burning Female, and it really teaches women just how much fat you actually need in order to be ketogenic because I think a lot of people think they eat high fat, low carb, but they’re really just low carb, and they’re actually not high fat. As Shawn was creating this program, I was kind of her guinea pig, and I really got to understand truly what a ketogenic high-fat diet is. Since then, I’ve been eating that way, and I’ve, honestly, been feeling so good despite my parasitic symptoms.

But yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at, and I’m so grateful that I did stumble across this diet because it’s been so supportive for me, personally, during this protocol for my parasite. It’s just the perfect way to be eating at this time, but because it’s actually helped me regulate my blood sugar levels at the same time, I can’t even imagine eating any other way because I do not miss being called hangry by my family like every single night. That was like the worst thing. I was so embarrassed and now I’m never referred to as that, so that’s pretty awesome.

Leanne Vogel: Totally, it is. What about you Shawn, how did you find the keto diet? What are you doing now? How have you adjusted it to work for your body?

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, so like I mentioned, whole history of health issues, and culminating in this chronic inflammatory response syndrome from being exposed to toxic mold and living in a moldy environment. I was working with this protocol with my doctor, and it just kind of almost fell into my lap that the keto diet made so much sense for my healing, because some of the most prominent symptoms in all cases of chronic inflammatory response syndrome are neurological symptoms, so brain fog and memory loss, word recollection issues, things like that, and it was so, so bad for me.

I literally lost my personality. I lost my ability to be in conversations with more than one person. It was so terrible that when I actually thought about it, I mean, the keto diet is so incredibly amazing to heal your brain, and I was dealing with these neurological issues stemming from having inflammation in my brain, and the keto diet’s also great for inflammation, so why not combine the two and really get some healing?

I started to transition into a keto diet back about eight months ago, and I will tell you that within about a week, I felt like a completely different person. Not only with … The brain fog was totally lifted. I got my personality back. I’ve had the ability to be in conversations and work and have clients, but also that fatigue that I was experiencing, totally gone. I felt completely awesome, and that’s when, like I mentioned, keto really changed my life, it’s because of that.

From there, obviously, there’s no way that I was going to go back. From that point on, I’ve been on the keto journey, and not only that, it just, it’s such good food. I’m eating all of my favorite foods to the exact quantity that I want, and that’s really another big point for me when I switched to keto is the food freedom. I have never in my life ever experienced food freedom. I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t know what eating intuitively meant, because like I said, I come from this past of always being on a diet, always restricting, always caring a little too much about what I ate and how many calories and how much fat, just back in the days of the ’90s and 2000s when we thought that that was bad.

To finally be in this place where I had normal hunger signals, I felt satisfied after my meals for hours at a time, and I was eating all of my favorite foods was just the most freeing thing that has ever happened as far as my diet goes.

From there, kind of realizing and not demonizing carbs. I don’t think carbs are bad. I don’t think people should go zero carb. I don’t really feel that there’s any need for that because, I mean, why totally eliminate an entire macronutrient? I mean, even though we don’t technically need it as humans, it still just seems weird to completely take them out of the equation. But to enjoy those carbohydrates when I feel like it, I really have this new intuitive sense to where I’m eating so much fat, and I’m eating a decent, moderate amount of protein, that I have this satisfaction. But then when I have this desire for carbs, I just have them, and it’s totally fine, and I feel really good still.

I think just combining the amazing, I guess, health benefits of a keto diet with the amount of food freedom you can have from that has just been a total game-changer for me and for my clients.

Leanne Vogel: That’s awesome. I think we can all relate to the whole food freedom thing and just not worrying, ever, about food.

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, just not even thinking about it, like going hours without thinking about food, that has never happened in my entire life.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, me neither. No. I know that Meg’s like hangry pants experiences. Totally. I remember actually having a conversation with you about being hangry, when we were both hangry.

Meg Doll: Oh my gosh. Yes. I definitely remember that, and I do not miss those days. I just did a workout today, and it was so nice that I was able to leave that workout and not have to rush home and feel like I had to eat the fridge. I was able to take my time getting home and prepare a nice lunch for myself afterwards, and honestly, that would have never happened before. Thanks to keto for that too. It’s awesome.

Leanne Vogel: Totally. More of my interview with Meg Doll and Shawn Mynar after this message from one of our podcast partners.

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Leanne Vogel: Let’s chat a little bit about healing our bodies with keto because, I mean, the two of you are definitely coming from different places and in different places with your body status and your health status. Why don’t we start off with Shawn and kind of talk about specifically strategies that you use within the ketogenic diet to heal your body with autoimmune stuff and everything going on.

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, I mean, I think we can all agree that the majority of health issues that people are facing stem from either inflammation or hormonal imbalance stemmed from blood sugar issues, immune system dysregulation, or a combination of all of them. That’s really where I see the keto diet to be such a benefit beyond just people looking to heal their diabetes, their insulin resistance, and that kind of thing. There’s also this niche here with people like us that don’t necessarily have those conditions but still have this desire to regulate our immune system and to keep our inflammation low in our bodies and to keep our hormones on track.

I think it’s just kind of this missing piece to the puzzle that I have really found to be really super important for especially women who are dealing with, like I mentioned, the bloating and the constipation and weight gain and inability to lose weight without knowing why, all of these kinds of symptoms, so much of them can be healed if we just take a look at what’s going into their mouths in the way of their diet, and how can we kind of alter that to be more anti-inflammatory.

Just, not even that, but just eating enough food. I think the keto diet really also helps with people to finally be eating the right amount of food for their bodies. Just combining all of these things and all of these tools into one really easy, really awesome plan makes so much sense to me beyond just the typical ways that people use keto.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. What about you Meg? What kind of tools have you used with keto to heal your body?

Meg Doll: Well, honestly, I’m in the midst of writing my book right now, and my book actually covers from Alzheimer’s disease to cancer to diabetes to eating disorders, how a high-fat, low-carb diet can serve you.

What’s so fascinating to me is that it can literally improve the health status of such a wide range of people, like the amount of health conditions I have covered throughout my book is just incredible, and it’s because, really, a high-fat, low-carb diet just brings a balance to your body. It just balances everything out. It removes that inflammation. It provides your body with the nutrients that it needs to calm that inflammation and fuels so many processes throughout your body, including your brain.

That’s one of the reasons that I’m so passionate about a high-fat, low-carb diet is because I come from a history of a mental illness, and one thing that really disturbs me is for conventional eating disorder treatment, doctors and practitioners don’t typically look at the quality of the food these eating disorder patients, also mental health patients, they don’t pay attention to the quality of the food going into their body, which is very sad because if it wasn’t an eating disorder and it was another, you know, like a mental illness of some sort, there would be a much different approach.

It would be like, okay, let’s make sure they are getting an abundance of nutrients to support their brain health. One of the nutrients that we need most is cholesterol for our brain, and not to mention that, like speaking about ketogenic diet specifically, those ketones. That is our brain’s preferred energy source. Our brain loves ketones. That’s a huge passion of mine, is educating people on viewing eating disorders as a mental health illness, a mental illness, and that high-fat approach to this is so incredibly healing.

I know once I started eating more high-fat, I could … You can just tell that you’re healthier mentally, and I wish I would have started eating this way so long ago because I think everything would’ve just been that much better. I honestly do believe … I threw this question out on Instagram a while ago, I was running a giveaway on Instagram for a keto cookbook, and my question for the entry was “How has keto helped you?”

Obviously it was like all women submitting their answers, and I was blown away by the amount of women saying, “Keto helped me love my body.” I don’t believe a diet is the reason you love your body, like I don’t think that is the case; however, I think the ketogenic diet provides our bodies with the right quantities, just like Shawn said. This is likely the first time in my life I’m ever eating an abundance of calories and feeling really good without obsessing about it. But I truly do believe that the ketogenic diet provides our minds with the right fuel and enough fuel, and that’s why women start to love their bodies and just moving to that self-acceptance because they’re finally fed and their minds are finally nourished. I truly think that is so fascinating about this approach to eating.

Leanne Vogel: I have always tried to explain the eating disorder connection with keto and how it can help you overcome it, and you just nailed it. If I could just take that recording and then share it with everyone, because as someone who had anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, it actually, and I just started opening up with this recently, it wasn’t until I found keto that I actually overcame bulimia.

We’re talking like three years ago. Although I had done a lot of healing up to that point, I was still binging and purging, and it wasn’t until I embraced the fat, and it just nourishes every part. I know when I went through the eating disorder programs at the hospitals and stuff, they would just pump you full of crap. They would actually make you eat garbage food.

Meg Doll: Like Oreos.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah.

Meg Doll: I know, I had-

Leanne Vogel: And cakes and ugh…

Meg Doll: I had a client come to me and she was mortified. She was like, “I am trying to recover from mental illness, and they are pumping me with Oreos” and I was like, “Girl. I am not going to do that to you.”

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, it’s really challenging, and that was one of the reasons why I left the program because I knew that I was sensitive to gluten and dairy, but they were telling me that it wasn’t that I was sensitive, it’s that I was scared of it, and so it’s-

Meg Doll: Oh, goodness.

Leanne Vogel: … really challenging in that space because on one side, you get it. It’s just like, get food in these people so that they can gain weight, but on the other side, it’s like if they were just given fat like you know, instead of those-

Meg Doll: And getting lots of it. Yeah.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. Like those shakes that they used to give, they were just like sugary sugar bombs.

Meg Doll: Like Boost.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. Instead of that, make a keto milkshake. Get everyone involved.

Meg Doll: Yes, exactly. Honestly, that is truly where my passion lies. I would love to, in five years from now, all these health practitioners view it the way we do it, a mental illness that needs to be supported with mind-building foods, and that is fat.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, totally. Let’s look at your practices also. I know that when I got started with keto, I don’t know if both of you experienced this, but I thought keto only had one way, and that that one way was like 20 grams or less of carbohydrates, a lot of fat, not really a good attention on the quality of ingredients.

More of my interview with Meg Doll and Shawn Mynar after this message from one of our podcast partners.

Keto salads. They’re a staple in our house. Great for when you’re in a rush, need to boost your fat intake, salads can hold a lot of fat in them and still taste great or give you that volume in your belly that you don’t always get from standard keto food. But let’s talk dressings for a sec. Sure, you can make your own, and they’ll probably taste great, but sometimes, making your own dressings takes up time, requires ingredients on hand, and just isn’t practical.

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Leanne Vogel: What have you seen with that standard ketogenic protocol and what do you work with your clients on in order to get them off that protocol and develop a ketogenic protocol that works for their bodies? Why don’t we start off with Shawn.

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, so I totally agree with you that keto has so many different approaches. I mean, for me personally, my keto diet looks different every single day. It just depends on what I feel like eating. It’s always going to have a ton of fat, which is awesome, but sometimes it’s going to have less protein or more protein, less carbs or more carbs, and that just kind of, I think really makes the freedom part available to people.

When I explain that to my clients, then it becomes a lot more doable. I think a lot of people hear, just in general, what the ketogenic diet is based on what they have seen on the websites or whatever, and they get really scared. It just seems really restrictive and extreme and all of this negative stuff, but when you break it down into being able to do what you feel like to the degree that you still feel good, and that’s kind of the main measurement is how do you feel, that gives people so much freedom and it gives them the ability to have the control so they don’t have to abide by these specific guidelines. They can have their own guidelines based on their own bodies and how they feel, so I think that’s really important.

I also have built into my practice, and this is also what I do in the project I created for females, I’ve also built in a way to ease into ketosis. I think one of the big problems for women especially, and women that need healing, hormonal or thyroid or something like that, I think there’s great benefit to hormones and your thyroid function in a ketogenic state, but getting there can be the issue, especially if you were used to eating a decent amount of carbs, and then all of a sudden, the next day, you’re like, “I’m zero-carb. I’m going keto.”

Your body’s going to freak out a little bit, and you’re going to go through some serious transition. You’re going to not feel great for an extended period of time until you get into ketosis. I want to mitigate that. I want to make it a little bit easier and gentler on the body. We take the approach of easing your way into ketosis, slowly making that transition into the higher fats and the lower carbs and moderating the protein along the way too. I really think that that makes a huge difference so that … Because, I mean, I think we’ll all agree that there’s a lot of negative stuff out there about keto for women, but I think that that’s why is just because sometimes, it’s taken too extreme, and it doesn’t need to be.

As long as we can ease into the process over the course of maybe three or four weeks, and then make sure that you’re eating enough food in that entire time, it’s so much gentler and you won’t have this total freak out where your hormones could go awry. Instead, you’re getting all of the healing benefits. That’s something I’ve also built into my practice.

But yeah, if you just kind of focus on that and also just really, really make sure that people know that they have the power, it’s not based on this super strict percentages and ratios, just listen to your body and see what feels good and go from there. You have so much more freedom, and you feel good doing it, which is amazing.

Leanne Vogel: Yes. Completely. It sounds very similar to a little bit of my daily fat burner Fat Fueled profile where I see time and time again, some women, especially with adrenal dysfunction, thyroid irregularity, and they try keto for like five days, and they just crash and burn, and they can’t get out of bed, and they’re just a hot mess. So I love hearing that in your practice, you’re incorporating more of baby steps towards keto and understanding that the HP axis actually plays a huge role in gluconeogenesis, which is the creation of glucose from your fats and your proteins. If you don’t have balanced adrenals or your thyroids is a little bit wonky, that’s going to affect your ability to go through gluconeogenesis properly without feeling dizzy and horrible.

Even that, in and of itself, is just, it’s frustrating. Like what Meg was saying earlier of just like, hopefully in five or ten years, some of this stuff will be more accessible. I think it takes awesome entrepreneurial women like us to just keep sharing the message and keep encouraging people to listen to their bodies and know that there’s not just one way of doing anything.

I know that I used to get in trouble a lot in school because I have a different mind, so teachers would be like, “Get the answer,” and I would find a totally different way of getting the answer in a math question, and I would fail. They would fail me because it wasn’t the way that they taught. It’s like, but I got the answer.

Shawn Mynar: You still got the same answer.

Leanne Vogel: Exactly. I think that’s very much like this. Yeah, that’s really cool. Meg, what about yourself?

Meg Doll: How I integrate keto into my practice and adapt it to people, well, I come from a history of, you know, when I first launched my private practice, it was basically about helping girls move into intuitive eating because that was something that held me back for some many years was following a diet plan. I was constantly in that diet mentality. That seemed like, big picture. Still is part of my practice today, and basically, like both of you guys touched on is, I just help my girls become intuitive with this way of eating. No diet rules, no tracking, no MyFitnessPal. There is not one thing on Earth that I hate more than MyFitnessPal.

I help my girls remove that from their life and really tap into their intuition, and I honestly believe that we can tell when our bodies needs a little bit more carbohydrates. There’s a difference between a hunger for protein, a hunger for fat, and a hunger for carbohydrates. I can easily tell the difference in myself, and I teach my clients how to do the same.

Just like Shawn said, there’s a lot of fear in regards to the ketogenic diet because I do think a lot of women who first hear about it just literally think it’s eggs, bacon, and wilted spinach with butter on it, and-

Leanne Vogel: Yes.

Meg Doll: Honestly, though, right? Because-

Leanne Vogel: I mean, that sounds kind of good.

Meg Doll: … it’s like… Well, it’s delicious, but I mean, it gets old pretty fast, right?

Leanne Vogel: Yes.

Meg Doll: I love your book, Leanne, obviously, and I’m pretty sure probably every single person listening to this podcast has your book, and you touch on the fact that you’re missing out on so many nutrients. Something that Shawn and I both do is, it’s get really clear, just know your veggies. Eat veggies in abundance, focus on those low carb, nice fiber-rich veggies. Eat them. Go wild and load up on the fat, and while you’re doing that, your hunger signals are really going to balance out, and just make fat a priority. That’s what I really focus on.

In my book, it’s not as intense as yours, Leanne, doing the whole how-to and meal plans, and here’s your different profiles and stuff like that, but obviously I explain what a keto diet is and the steps to take in order to achieve a high-fat, low-carb diet. I start off saying, “Add fat to your meal, and then add more fat,” because as we all know, it’s much higher than you ever anticipate, and then instead of thinking like, eliminate carbohydrates or restrict carbohydrates, I like the mindset of switch your high-carb foods to low-carb foods. I like that more of like a switch mentality, and that’s kind of how I teach people.

Leanne Vogel: That’s awesome. Yeah, I always imagine it being like the regular food pyramid and just flipping everything upside down and getting rid of grains. Yeah, so that’s really cool.

Meg Doll: Yeah, do the opposite of that.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. Anything you’re told to do, just go on and do the opposite, and you’ll be great.

Shawn Mynar: One thing I think all of us do when we are teaching this style of eating is really focus on the quality of foods. I have so much passion for that because I don’t want people eating canola oil or these random, weird processed oils or even like grain-fed 80% lean beef. I really want the quality of food to be there as well, because you’re going to be eating a lot of it, and we’re looking for anti-inflammatory benefits, and if you don’t focus on the quality, then your inflammation’s not going to do anything good.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah. That’s so true. Meg, what’s the title of your book, and when does it come out?

Meg Doll: Eek. It’s called Keto Freedom, which I’m super happy about because freedom is one of my favorite words, and it’s basically about how the keto diet can help you just ultimately in all the ways, but before I actually start talking about keto at all, I take you through this entire journey to self-love and the four components you need in your life in order to actually cultivate self-love. It will be out in December, so I’m super excited about that. My manuscript was due in April, so I’m just working on the editing process now.

Leanne Vogel: Which is the best part. No.

Meg Doll: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Leanne Vogel: It’s like you get so sick of reading your own book, and now I’m reading my own book again. I’m like, “Wow, I didn’t even know I wrote that.” Which is crazy because I’ve read the book probably 30 times but you’re so in the zone with editing that you’re just, you’re not thinking that way, so I cannot wait for your book to come out.

Meg Doll: Right, and Leanne, your book is huge so-

Leanne Vogel: Dude.

Meg Doll: … no wonder you would forget bits and pieces.

Leanne Vogel: Oh my gosh.

Meg Doll: I would too, but it’s honestly amazing. I just love the chapter in your book where you refer to keto, or your approach to keto as 50 shades of keto. That just plays off of this conversation, really, and that’s exactly how all three of us approach this way of eating.

Leanne Vogel: Yeah, it’s so true. Shawn, The Fat-Burning Female, where can people find that?

Shawn Mynar: Yeah, that’s on my website at shawnmynar.com under courses. We’re, right now, in the middle of our summer session, so I kind of do a … It’s a six-week course that happens every season. It’s just a group of ladies doing this all together and going through the process and the change, and getting … We kind of make this switch to keto, but then we also talk about the food freedom and how to be intuitive within keto, how to find your best place, and how to just love it and make it more of a lifestyle instead of this “diet.”

That happens every season, so check it out.

Leanne Vogel: That’s awesome. I’ll include links to both of those things in the show notes if people are wondering. Oh my gosh, we’re totally out of time. This sucks. I could just chat with you guys forever and just keep asking you questions. I just have loved having you on. Where can we find you?

Shawn Mynar: We have the best chats.

Leanne Vogel: Don’t we? Totally.

Shawn Mynar: We really do.

Leanne Vogel: I hope everyone agrees. Where can people find you, Shawn? Where can people get all the things from you?

Shawn Mynar: People can find me on the web at shawnmynar.com, on Instagram @shawnmynarhealth, and I also Snapchat a lot. I love Snapchat, and I am shawnmynar over there.

Leanne Vogel: Awesome. What about you, Meg?

Meg Doll: She does love her Snapchat.

Leanne Vogel: It’s so crazy. I can’t keep up. How do you do it? There’s just too many platforms.

Shawn Mynar: There’s so many platforms.

Meg Doll: Leanne, you do Facebook live, so you’re busy there.

Leanne Vogel: I do?

Meg Doll: I mean, Instagram. Sorry.

Leanne Vogel: Oh, I was like. Oh-

Meg Doll: Yeah, not Facebook, sorry.

Leanne Vogel: … am I doing that now? I don’t even know my own name.

Meg Doll: Oh my gosh.

Leanne Vogel: Meg, where can people find you?

Meg Doll: Yeah, so my website, megtherhn.com, and I mean, you could listen to Shawn and I on our podcast, The Nourished Podcast too. I’m not so active on Snapchat, so I won’t even bother, but on Instagram, I post multiple times a day. I am also meg.rhn there.

Leanne Vogel: Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks ladies, thanks for coming by.

Shawn Mynar: Thanks Leanne, it was so fun.

Meg Doll: Thank you.

Leanne Vogel: Totally. The show notes for today’s episode can be found at healthfulpursuit.com/podcast/e36, and the transcript is added to the post about three to five days following the initial air date of this episode. Thanks again girls for coming on. I know that you shared a lot of valuable information for all the people out there, so have to have you on again to just continue to talk with us.

Meg Doll: We would love that.

Leanne Vogel: Okay, awesome.

Shawn Mynar: We love talking.

Leanne Vogel: That does it for another episode of The Keto Diet Podcast. Thanks for listening in. You can follow me on Instagram by searching Healthful Pursuit where you’ll find daily keto eats and other fun things, and check out all of my keto supportive programs, bundles, guides, and other cool things over at healthfulpursuit.com/shop, and I’ll see you next Sunday. Bye.

This entry was tagged: eating high-fat, eating keto, eating low-carb, fat-adapted, how eat keto, journey to health, keto basics, keto diet, keto diet book, keto for women, keto life, ketogenic diet, ketogenic for women, ketosis, low-carb paleo, self-care, what is keto