The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting with Cheryl McColgan

Is low carb and Keto really sustainable? Cheryl has been doing low carb for the last five years and Keto for four with great results. She lost some weight, along with improvement in long-term anxiety, depression, sleeping, and brain fog. Cheryl also talked about the benefits of intermittent fasting. Giving our bodies time to heal and decreasing inflammation.

About Cheryl:

Cheryl is the founder and editor of Heal Nourish Grow, an ultimate wellness, healthy lifestyle and advanced nutrition site.

She helps others develop the confidence and habits to create lasting change and greater health by sharing her wealth of knowledge and over 25 years of experience in psychology, addictions studies, fitness, nutrition, yoga, health and wellness.

Coaching others to reach their personal version of ultimate wellness is her passion. Cheryl came to low carb and keto in 2016 after a particularly difficult time in her life in which she was gaining weight, not sleeping well and overly stressed, despite lots of healthy behaviors.

Once she began low carb, there was a huge shift in her health and outlook. Not only did she lose the weight she gained, but long term anxiety, depression, sleep and brain fog greatly improved.

At nearly 48 she’s feeling better than ever and uses her experience and research into keto to educate and coach others to greater health and wellness. She posts keto food ideas daily on her Instagram stories and recipes, research and wellness content at HealNourishGrow.com.

www.feedingfatty.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (00:01):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. I'm your host, Roy Terry. So where the podcast, you know, we're journaling our, we are kind of chronicling my journey through the health and wellness, trying to become, uh, more, more healthy and have more wellness through, uh, nutrition, physical fitness, uh, mindset, just, uh, you know, kind of well-rounded well-balanced is we're not necessarily, uh, you know, doing anything that's off the charts. And from time to time, we also bring guests that are professionals in this field. And today we're a fortunate, fortunate enough to have Cheryl McCall going with us. She is the founder and editor of heal, nourish grow, and ultimate wellness, healthy lifestyle, and advanced nutrition site. She helps others develop the confidence and habits to create lasting change and greater health by sharing her wealth of knowledge and over 25 years experience in psychology, addictions, addiction, studies, fitness, nutrition, yoga, health, and wellness. Cheryl, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. We certainly appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks so much. You bet. If you wouldn't mind, tell us a little bit about your journey. I know that, uh, you know, we've talked a little bit about in 2006, you kind of came to the low carb and keto after, um, you know, some particular, a particular time in your life. So if you could just give us a little background on that, that would be great.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (01:35):

Yeah. I think it's actually 2016 or something like that, but we can, Oh yeah, no worries. We'll give you the timeframe, just cause some people like to know how long you've been doing this because you know, a lot of things you hear in the media is media is like is low carb and keto, is it really sustainable? Well, I've been, you know, low carb for five years at this point in keto for four. So I would venture to say it's pretty darn sustainable. Um, but how I got into it from a health perspective is, um, I had, you know, like everybody getting a little older was working a really stressful job and was starting to put on some weight. And I was not super happy about that because my whole life I've been focused on health and wellness. Right. And I wasn't really eating anything substantially different or doing anything, but I wasn't sleeping well.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (02:20):

And I had a lot of stress in PS for people out there, weight loss as a goal, getting stressed and sleep under control is a bigger component of that than anybody likes to talk about or wants to think about, but it is don't we know. Um, so anyway, once I started kind of digging around and I'd done it all at this point, so I'm going to be 48 here shortly. And I grew up in the nineties where it was a low fat craze still and you know, all through my teenage years. And I don't think I ever like touched butter for years and years and years because I was so, you know, low fat and then I was vegetarian for seven years. So every time I would come across a paradigm where I thought it was, you know, the healthiest thing, right. Uh, I would, I would do that and I'm pretty committed.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (03:05):

So I built for awhile, but, uh, I think one of the benefits is I'm also very science-minded and open to learning about new things. And so whenever I'm faced with new information, new studies, new research, that kind of goes against what I might've previously been doing. Aren't willing to take that on. And so when I started reading about keto and low carb and, um, you know, when I first started there, wasn't nearly as many resources and things as there are now. Um, but I've read enough that it, it convinced me that, yeah, this is what I need to doing. This makes a lot of sense if I think about it in, you know, how we eat or how we should eat from an evolutionary perspective, um, you know, it made perfect sense. And so I kind of just jumped right in and really, really quickly started feeling a lot better.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (03:53):

I lost the weight that I had put on. Um, had a lot of really amazing brain benefits. I actually think that's one of the biggest reasons that people should, um, you know, be watching their carb and sugar intake is because the effects long-term effects it can have on your brain. Um, so yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question. That's how I got into it. And I've taught yoga for over 10 years and was a runner and all this crazy stuff. So all this health and wellness stuff has just been a part of my life for really, you know, my whole adult life now.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (04:22):

And you have a, um, a health issue as well.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (04:26):

I did. So I actually make it as short as possible. I had had a fibroid tumors and by the way, if I knew what I knew now, I probably would've changed my diet then, because those kinds of gross and things in your body can really be fueled by glucose and sugar. But I had a ton of proprietaries, a lot of pain ended up having a partial hysterectomy. Um, and then a few years later it started having some more problems and long story short of how they did the surgery. It, it, the fibroids ended up in planting all over my abdomen. So then I, they thought I had cancer for a while. I to live for two months thinking I had cancer before I went to the Mayo clinic and they took them all out. Thankfully, no cancer. It really was a huge wake up call.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (05:09):

Uh, like I said, I, you know, I'd been involved in all these health and wellness practices for years and years for up to that point. Um, but then to still realize like, Hey, I, you know, I'm doing all these healthy things, but I still have this major problem. What else is there? And that's kind of when I started going off the deep end with the research and sort of the, um, you know, biohacking type of things, these kind of more advanced methods, um, to work on, you know, getting your health back in particular metabolic health.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (05:41):

Yeah. And that's, you know, a good point that you bring up is, uh, so much has come to light here about the inflammation and how it's, uh, you know, I, I may be over-exaggerating this, but it seems that inflammation team tends to be a catalyst for so many things for it to go wrong with us. And I think that the, if I'm not mistaken, the carbs and the sugar, they actually can fuel that inflammation even more.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (06:08):

Absolutely couldn't agree more. I mean, the more and more I read it and research and listened to other doctors that work in these fields and talk about it. Um, the inflammation is the root over in, I mean, inflammation in and of itself is not a negative cause it's your body's response to a pain process or a, for something insult right. And it's actually needed for healing. But the problem is we're more state of information all the time. Right. And carp Kroger certainly do that a lot as do you, um, polyunsaturated that's, they're finding a lot of these vegetable things like soy and corn oils are very, very inflammatory and people as well. So there's this whole other side that you can go to neon just, um, you know, restricting carbs and sugar is, you know, these other ingredients that are also kind of harmful to us and also environmental factors, different chemicals. I mean, there's just so much it can be overwhelming sometimes.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (07:01):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, the other thing about carbs is, um, the addiction factor. You know, we talked a little bit about this when we had a conversation the other day, and it's, it's important that people realize that my opinion, again, carbs are basically like, uh, smoking alcohol crack, crack crack, you know, it's, it's, it's an addiction and we don't realize, I don't think we give ourselves enough of a break to say, we've got to, um, it's gonna take some time to move away from eating this heavy carb. And you, you're probably in a better position to explain that, um, also the carbs and the sugars they release, I guess the, the good endorphins. So you go back to your sleep, you know what you said? And, um, we, we seek that for energy, but we also seek it when we need to have a little bit of a emotional lift, I guess. Yeah,

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (08:05):

Yeah, absolutely. Because when you eat sugar sweets and particularly the food industry has at this point designed food that is perfectly the amount of salt, sugar fat in it, that lights up your brain. And so it is addictive in a very, very real way. Uh, you know, you eat some sugar, you get a dopamine release in your brain. Dopamine is happy. Uh neuro-transmitter right. So it's, uh, there's every reason to believe that it's truly addictive, not only in a physiological way, but also just, uh, uh, habit and emotional way is like, it's what we tend to reach for when we're celebrating or when we're sad or when we're, everything is really around food, you know, greens and everything. So, and that's the sad thing about it in comparison to other addictions is for example, you don't need alcohol to live, right? In fact, most of us will be better off without it, even though I love it red, line's good.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (09:04):

The beauty of those kinds of addictions, like cocaine or alcohol or whatever it is, you don't need those to live. You can go cold Turkey, you can leave those behind and your body functions even a thousand times better without it. But that's not the case with food. You still have to eat something. Um, so you can't, you can't go cold Turkey. You can't just stop eating. I mean, although we are going to talk about fasting today kind of later, but, um, you know, that's the challenge with the food addiction is that you do actually have to still eat. And that is one thing that really low carb or keto helps with is that it puts your hormones, ghrelin and leptin or your hunger hormones. Right. So Raelin, I always like to think of it as, you know, the little gremlins that from the movie back in the eighties, like crazy after dark, if you feed them. So that's your hug. And that's how I remember that one. And then leptin is more the satiety hormone. So what happens as you do keto over time is that these hormones balance out a lot more. And so it becomes easier for people to avoid the carbs and sugar because they're not hormonally being signaled to constantly eat that food again. So I think that in that regard, it's really a great way of eating for people to have a true food addiction.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (10:17):

Yeah. And the other thing, uh, what I've noticed is, um, you can actually have a carb or I guess maybe people react different, but I've actually felt like I've had carb hangovers before where, you know, you get up in the morning and, um, well you just, your head feels stopped up. You just feel cloudy and, you know, you can trace that back to some, you know, around here going out and eating, uh, you know, Mexican food with chips and very carb heavy. And, you know, I noticed the cleaner I eat, I wake up in the mornings, much clear headed and just not congested in all stopped up and probably some food allergies in there as well. Not saying it's all that, but I, I guess I feel like I've kind of linked that back to, you know, if I eat a heavy carbs the previous day, I can expect that next morning that it'll take me a couple of hours to get out from under it.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (11:12):

Yup. I definitely heard the same thing from other people. And I think it, you know, everybody is a little bit bio-individual and so somebody, maybe if you eat a whole food carb, like sweet potatoes, for example, might have a different effect than some of the more processed things. But, you know, that's just something people kind of learn over time what really works. Yeah. But in general, I would say would be better with anything that's whole foods, even if it's more carby that, that tends to agree with people's systems a little better.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (11:42):

Yeah. And I was talking about the totally bad carbs in, uh, you know, fried, fried, fried phase. Is that, yeah, it's like a carbon, a good sweet potato. Uh, uh, probably not as much, Oh,

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (11:56):

Ever feed hard to, uh, you know, really gain weight or, or have a whole lot of trouble. You're really, truly only eating whole foods. So I think, you know, for a lot of people that think that they can never, you know, give up, totally give up carbs. It's like, well, you know, we're not saying do this forever. We're saying, you know, depending on what your goals are and where your health status is, I think you shared with me when we had our pre-call that you had diabetes. So obviously you have some different things, different goals there, then maybe some other people that are, you know, safe, your only need to lose weight and you're not diabetic, you know, you might be able to enjoy carbs a little bit more. I think it's always like, what are your goals is what I always go back to.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (12:35):

Yeah. And I just, you know, I have to be careful with the carbs because they do, you know, I can check your blood sugar enough, you see that they, especially the bad ones. And that's what I'm talking about is just eating really poor, poor choices, junk. You know, I can see that it just drives me up where, you know, you can eat more of the better carbs or the other thing too. I think if you, um, if you mix it with a fiber, I don't know, there's all kinds of combinations that you can do to make it a little better, but trying to get out and take a walk. That's another thing that I've done is, uh, you know, after a meal, just trying to get out short 10 minute walk or something to kind of walk that down helps a lot as well.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (13:18):

No, there's definitely this idea of, you know, glucose disposal. And so, uh, walking or exercise after eating a higher carb meal is a great example of that because it drives your blood sugar down more quickly. Uh, there's also a supplement that I'd like to mention for people that might not be familiar with it called berberine. Um, there's been some studies on that and that is actually almost as effective as Warman in controlling glucose, after party meals. So if you're a person we're saying love Mexican food, and you know, you're going to have some chips that night and maybe some of the beans or whatever, then it might be a good idea to take some berberine with that meal so that it mitigates some of the impact of the carbs.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (14:00):

Okay, cool. I'll write that down. Yeah. All right. So, um,

Terry - Feeding Fatty (14:04):

So you mentioned fasting, sorry.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (14:06):

No, no. That's where I, that's where I was actually going to go there. Yeah.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (14:08):

Okay. So you mentioned fasting. What are the benefits of fasting? I mean, there are so many different time.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (14:16):

I think he might still be muted. I can't hear you. Can you hear me now?

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (14:20):

No. Um, it's look like we've lost. Can you hear me?

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (14:26):

I can hear you now. And now they're curious. Oh, Whoa.

Terry - Feeding Fatty (14:30):

I don't like not being all excited. I was like, I was like, fascinating, fascinating. So can we talk about the benefits of fasting and then there's so many different times, you know, you know, from four hours to 12 to 16, and then you said 60 other day and my eyes

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (14:52):

Almost popped out of my head. Um, so can we talk about that?

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (14:57):

Absolutely. And this is one of the things I am most passionate about for a variety of reasons that we'll probably get to at some point, but I really feel like it's one of the most powerful health tools that we have outside of your diet. So if you have somebody that's really resistant to ever, you know, going low carb or really changing their diet, if they can just incorporate fasting, it has got a huge impact. And, um, the thing is it's, it's, it's slightly more challenging when you aren't eating low carb to fast because you haven't even got that blood sugar. So you're going to have those spikes and you're still going to be getting all these hormonal signals to eat, which makes it, it just makes it more challenging. Uh, once you become low carbon, you've done it for a long time. Your body becomes what we call fat adapted, which means it's very trained and all of your medic metabolic processes have upregulated in order to be able to use fat for fuel.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (15:46):

And so if you don't eat, that's fine because your body has, you know, even the thinnest among us has a ton of body fat that you could live off of for days if you needed. Um, so I think it's still doable. I've had plenty of people do extended fast that are not keto or not low carb, and it's just, they can do it. It's just more challenging. So before we get into the different types, like you said, though, I kind of just want to like touch on this idea of why fasting is so powerful and also why local

Speaker 4 (16:21):

Amazon's here. Amazon's here,

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (16:34):

Come here, come here, honey. At the door. It was Amazon one last bell. Whoops. He is, Oh my gosh. Terribly behaved dogs. They're very protected. Cut off. Wait, gosh. Oh my gosh. Now, where were we fast? Yeah, you were going to, you know, let's just back up and talk a little bit about, you know, what, what it is, and then you were going to say, you know, what are some of the benefits that we can gain from that?

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (17:08):

Yep. So the, before all that, just a little backstory, there's kind of two ideas of, uh, weight loss at this point are two theories, right? And calories in calories out. We all know that women that's, what's been hammered into us for years, eat less, move more. It's all about the calories. Right, right. Um, and there are plenty of people that will just hammer that until the day they die. But the true why is somewhere in between, it's not just calories in an inner energy expenditure. There's this other side that's hormonal that we kind of touched on a little bit. Um, but what happens with keto and fasting is that you regulate some of these hormones out and that contributes weight loss as well. And then there's kind of this other one that's been coming around the keto space lately. And that's this idea of polyunsaturated fats, which I mentioned before, the bad vegetable oils that create inflammation there, they actually, the two guys that do this are super techie and super scientific, but I'm going to say it in the most basic way that basically mucks up your mitochondria.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (18:10):

So your mitochondria or the part of your cell that generates energy. And when you have too much polyunsaturated that it just kind of messes that whole system up and it doesn't allow you to burn fat as easily. Um, so there's a combination of factors. It's not just move more, eat less. That's not the end of the story. There's sleep, there's hormones. There's all these things that we've already talked about. Right. But as far as the fasting, what, why fasting helps in this process? Of course, because you're not eating, you're reducing calories. So if you believe in the calories in calories out, yes, you're going to lose weight for that because you're going to eat less food. Um, but there's also all of these other amazing benefits. And there's, by the way, the whole article on this, on my site with all the citations about the benefits of fasting, because there's so much, I love it.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (18:57):

Um, but I really started doing it. So like I said, I've been in yoga and all this craziness. I mean, I've done all kinds of fasts. You guys, you guys are the age group. You might remember the master cleanse. Remember when that was real big, it's just like lemon. Okay. So, I mean, I've done that. I've done these argumentative. Kitchery cleanses, I've done juice staffs. I mean, I've, I've tried it all and I've, I always have done fasting in some shape or form mostly from being around the yoga community. But then in 2016, I think this is why I've been where you got that. One of the dates we were talking about is that I learned about the Nobel prize for autophagy and basically autophagy is your body's cellular cleanup process. And it happens most strongly when you're not eating food. Right. So, because I had had those tumors and because there was a lot of cancer in my family, I was like, Hey, well, I've, I've done bassing before I can do that.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (19:47):

And it does all these amazing things in my body. I should probably do that on a more regular basis because of those health benefits. So autophagy is one of them. And that typically kicks in anywhere after 24 hours, it's happening to some degree all the time. So even when you wake up in the morning after an overnight fast, your, and then there's also the fact that it increases your human growth hormone. So as we age human growth, hormone declines, and that is one of the things that really helps you maintain and build muscle. And the more muscle we have as we get older muscle is the most metabolically active things. So I think we just lost Terry, but, um, but the it's most metabolically. So it helps you burn more calories if you have more muscle. So human growth hormone for that reason is a very good thing.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (20:54):

Um, that's about 48 hours and longer. And then after 72 hours, we have this immune regulation regeneration thing that happens. Um, again, that's on my site and I've got the study cited. And then anything after that, it's debatable. Whether anything beyond 72 hours is necessary, but again, it depends on your goals. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. There still benefits there's. Um, and if you're not in ketosis already, just by fasting for 18 to 24 hours, you'll go into a state, usually of a low-level ketosis. So that's just some of the, there's a whole bunch more on the thing, but that's all the benefits.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (21:30):

Well, so, um, is this, is this like building up to run a marathon? Is that, I mean, do you want to fast for, you know, 10 or 12 hours a few days or a few times, and then work your way up into the, the 60 hours? Or is it something that you can just say, Hey, I'm doing 24 hours and just jump in and do it?

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (21:53):

Well, the marathon one is a great analogy because I think if you want to make it the easiest on yourself, it's kind of like using a muscle or working out or flexible, you know, the more you do it easier yet. So some of the initial times you do it, it might be a little bit more challenging, especially if you're not used to doing it. So I would definitely recommend yes, build up to it. Um, I'd like to see everybody do a minimum of 14 hours a day, which is mostly accomplished while you're sleeping. So let's say you cut, you eat dinner by six, you stop eating, you go to bed, you might not eat for an hour or two in the morning. And then you're good. You've already accomplished 14 hours and you're going to get some amazing benefits just from that, because, you know, we've all been around.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (22:35):

I mean, I think the bodybuilders kind of brought this into saying, it's not to say it's wrong, but again, depends on your goals. But you know, this eating every two hours and constant snacking and all of this, all it does is raise your insulin every time you consume something. And if you bind it, this hormonal theory, all that's doing is creating those crashes and burns all day. That stimulates hunger that creates all these metabolic effects that are not beneficial basically. So if you can get a solid 14 hours without consuming anything, that's, that's an amazing start. And you can, like I said, do most of that while you're sleeping. So it's really for that, most people is not that challenging except for the not snacking, like for dinner. I know a lot of people like to do that.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (23:14):

Yeah, yeah. That was my, you know, the evening in, this is a bad habit I developed years ago, but you know, that nine, 10 o'clock at night, if I don't go to bed early, then all of a sudden, you know, I'm wanting to go up to the convenience store and tell Terry, I said, I'll go up there for you. If you want a candy bar, be glad to go up there and get that for you.

Roy - Feeding Fatty - The Benefits of Eating Low Carb and Keto with Intermittent Fasting (23:40):

I'm almost going to talk about the, um, the, the low carb, uh, uh, I guess I'm going to pose this as a question, not a statement. So, uh, you know, there's, there is research around the fact that our brains work off of, um, the carbs, the carbs fuel our brains. And, but listening to some, uh, some other keto podcast and, and these were some medical experts. These weren't just the, you know, kind of the guy off the street telling me what he thought, but they were, um, medical experts saying that really our brains were designed to run off of fat. And so with the KIDO, we're kind of switching that back over from our, from our brain running on carbs, to running on fat myth. Can you, uh, can you, uh, elaborate on that a little bit? Is that the truth

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (24:34):

Stand sheet, these places? So your brain does actually need, I think it's 120 grams of glucose every day to survive. Well, here's what nobody ever says. Your body can make all that glucose. You don't have to consume 120 grams of glucose, because think about it. If that would have been the case, we'd all be dead. We never would have evolved if your brain couldn't function without carbs, that makes no logical sense. Right? So that we can just throw that out the door. There's also evidence that, and actually I love this study. This excites me so much, and I need to learn this lady's name, but I can send you the link later. She's a Harvard researcher, super smart smarty pants lady. And one of her research things is about glucose utilization in the brain. So one of the things that they think is happening in people that have Alzheimer's and dementia is that they can't can't process glucose in their brain very well anymore.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (25:27):

Or they're starting to call Alzheimer's type three diabetes. Actually, this is how attached to glucose it is. So, um, but what she discovered through her research is even in brains, and this happens by the way, and this is why I'm so interested in this. Um, my psychology degree, I went to grad school. I was in clinical neuropsychology. So I've always been into the brain stuff, but it, um, your brain never loses the ability to use ketones for fuel. So even if you get a brain, that's like a dementia brain that has already had some neuronal die-off. So you're, if you remember back to high school science, like the neurons kind of come together and there's a space in between, but anyway, the neurons are what helps your brain communicate basically, and those die with dementia or get damaged. Um, so, and they can't use glucose anymore because they've been so abused, but they can always still use ketones.

Cheryl - Heal Nourish Grow (26:16):

So I just think the implications for that are amazing because they, at this point they really don't have any good Alzheimer's drugs. Um, and so if you look at that, that's for an extreme example, but if you look at the rest of us, we just have an aging brain that this happens a little bit naturally over time that your brain is not quite as quick. And we can't remember quite as