Can I Cheat on the Ketogenic Diet?

Let’s be real for a second… Life happens and sometimes we fall into a trap where a cheat has happened. We might have planned it. We might not have. Either way, it will happen to you.

The real question is… Can I cheat on Keto? What will happen to me and my journey?

The answers to these questions really depend on the type of person you. Each person will handle the Keto Diet cheat situation a bit differently. This is why the answer is not a one fit all solution.

Dr. Boz and I had a long conversation on this exact subject. We talked about how we handle these situations and we give tips on how you can handle them too!

Here’s the video replay if you want to watch it in full.

Or here’s the transcribed version of the video so you can read it.

Jennifer Marie: Hey, friends. How’s it going? I’ve got an unscheduled live happening because a friend of mine, we wanted to jump on and talk a little bit about keto and maybe problems that we’re having, things we wished we knew when we started. Let’s see. What else? Just … We wanted to chit-chat. Let me see if I can invite friends in. Can you guys here me okay? I was having trouble.
Hey, Christina. I was having trouble with my audio just a bit ago and I was hoping that it’s all great now. If you’re just hopping on, let me know where you’re from. I see Christina is from South Georgia. Hey, Angela, from Knoxville. If you could, tell me where you are in your journey. Oh, let’s see if I can bring my guest on. Let’s see, hang on. Okay. You guys are going to love who’s coming on with me. Let’s see here. Oh, you want to see a few pictures inside the cookbook? Ooh, I have it with me, look. Look, here’s the cookbook.
Here’s some of the beautiful pictures. I am so proud of this book. There’s just some really good, really good pictures. Yay. Let me see if I can … Oh. Did I just miss that? Hold on. I’m trying to invite my guest. There we go. Let me see if I can … Hey Karen, how are you? Sorry. My finger’s all in the way. Hey! There’s our guest.

Dr. Boz: Hi! I may have a [inaudible 00:01:54].

Jennifer Marie: Oh, you froze! You guys we have been trying to connect and do this Facebook Live platform for the last, I think hour and a half. Then we get to chit-chat and let’s see here … Oh no. Dr. Boz is frozen. What happened? Yay! Let’s see here … Oh, Dr. Boz is going to have to jump back in. Well I tried to bring Dr. Boz in. We started chatting and we were chatting about our beginning journey and things we wished we’d known and we’re like, “Oh my god, this would be a good live. We need to tell people our struggles. We need to talk about what we struggled with in the beginning. Things that we think of. Things that we’re a little smarter now that we know”, and we could have made it a little bit easier on ourselves through our whole journey. Let’s see here. Oh, Sylvia has the cookbook on pre-order. Yay! You know what? Oh, sorry. I got distracted. So you guys wanted to see pictures.
Look at how beautiful … I mean, there’s just some really, really good recipes in here. Look at all the sauce recipes. Oh my gosh. This comes out next week. Next week! And you know … Oh my god. Look, look, look. Like there’s just so many … Sorry, I am missing comments. Okay. If you pre-order the book when will you receive it? I’m pretty sure … Well, it comes out on the seventh and Amazon is really good about shipping so I took that as we would get it shortly thereafter. But you know what, I’ve totally forgot to tell you guys something and this is me … Oh, hold on. My guest wants to be included. Yay! Let me approve. Let’s see … Okay. Did we get her in? Maybe not. Let’s see if this is going to work. Yay! Did it work?

Dr. Boz: I can hear you! Can you hear me?

Jennifer Marie: What happened?

Dr. Boz: Okay. I don’t know. I have a doctorate in medicine but clearly I don’t have a doctorate in Facebook. Oh man, so as soon as it was working I was like-

Jennifer Marie: We were … you froze. You were like … So we were talking about the book. People were asking me to show pictures of recipes within the book and just how gorgeous it is. Oh my gosh. These are my favorite. Oh my god. I’m so proud of this book. But you know what, I’ve done a horrible job in telling people that right now, it’s only a little over $15 on Amazon. This is going to be almost $23. So it’s really inexpensive right now, but the best thing is, is if you pre-order it, you are going to get access to the video course that is normally a paid thing that I do. So you are going to get access to the course, but here’s the other thing, I created a three month meal plan, and it has shopping lists. It has your shopping list. It has your … Oh what is it? Sorry. The recipes, the nutrition, the meal plan. It has everything, all in one. So you can just print those off as you go.
This is what keeps me sane in the kitchen. Like I have to have a plan, know what I am shopping for, know what I am cooking. And this is what keeps me sane. So all those things you get when you order this book that right now is on sale, how great of a deal is that? Right?

Dr. Boz: You know, it’s also the best part was, I have … I am teaching teenagers how to cook and I got one of the early books and said, “You can cook anything out of this recipe book.” And they have totally been able to do it. The instructions are well written. The pictures are helpful. And I think they are better cooks than me. Okay. Do it. I don’t want to do it.

Jennifer Marie: I love that. I’m going to do that with my teens. Hand them the book and say, “Make me something.”

Dr. Boz: Anything.

Jennifer Marie: They’d probably go for the desserts. They don’t like cooking dinner.

Dr. Boz: Yeah. I don’t know if they found that section of the book yet, so maybe because those are … you got to go to the grocery store for those options.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Kristen, there is a meal plan in the book, but if you pre-order you get a three month meal plan. I had it printed. It’s a downloadable … it’s a printable thing but I had it printed and look at how thick that bad boy is. Like this is also something …

Dr. Boz: Wow.

Jennifer Marie: I know! And I send out weekly free meal plans every week to those who are on my e-mail list, but this is a compilation of all of my history of stuff that you can print out. It’s bundled all in one and I think it’s just such a really good freebie to get when the book is on sale. Like it’s a win-win right? So I’m just so proud. I am proud of the recipe book because I know that people are going to love it. I know it’s going to be so helpful. So … So Dr. Boz and I, we talk often and we were sitting there chatting. We were talking about our ways in how when we started keto, the struggles that we had, and we were thinking, man this would make a really good live just to kind of chit-chat. This is not our normal Sunday live. I mean we just decided, you know what? This is a good conversation. Let’s just jump on and do a live and talk about it so everybody can hear what our struggled were. Like we’re real people right?

Dr. Boz: Yeah. Who all took an hour to figure out how to make my new phone say can you do Facebook Lives on this phone? I think it’s impossible. But here we are. Thank god. Persistence is very important. It’s a good thing we have keto brains for extended concentration.

Jennifer Marie: Yes, and patience. Yes. Yeah. So we were totally thinking of things that we wished we knew before we started keto. In our journeys, we’ve been doing this awhile. But tell me, Dr. Boz, what’s one thing you wished you knew when you started?

Dr. Boz: So I had this beginning that was … I wasn’t quite ready to do keto. I had again learned enough about it that I would recommend it to a patient, but I hadn’t started it myself. These were patients with really significant brain injuries. So I think my instructions to those patients, I just need to ask for forgiveness on how disorganized my instructions were at the beginning, and really I fumbled through it the day mom said, “All right, I’ll give you six weeks.” I mean that’s what we said. Six weeks. And our beginning was … we were … The focus, [inaudible 00:09:13] I remember that the focus at the beginning for me was, I just didn’t want to fall off the wagon. I didn’t want her to fall off the wagon. I wanted compliance. And so we had no allergies. No dairy problems, no cheese. I wish I would have known that if you just get through that first week without that sweet flavor, it’s amazing how easy it is. I had been kind of on that … I was a big fan of Truvia at the beginning. I was still putting it in some coffee if I needed that in the afternoon.
I wouldn’t do it in my morning coffee but there was something about the afternoon where sweet was helpful. And then any type of dessert or sweet taste, I was using all these sugar substitutes because I just didn’t … I couldn’t have imagined that it was going to be as easy as it turned out to be. So I wish I could go back and tell myself, just give it a week. Do one week. And so I wish I would have known that. I also think … I waited so long to try to fast. Probably 11 months of just keto. Just saying I couldn’t possibly imagine skipping a meal. And my weight loss had happened a little bit in those nine months. It wasn’t robust. I wasn’t really doing it for weight loss, but I can’t believe how much once you do that first fast and you step over the threshold, I wish I could go back and tell my previous self just try it. One 36 hour fast. Just step over the threshold.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah.

Dr. Boz: And then your brain is kind of blown like, oh my gosh, I just did that! So I wish I wouldn’t have waited so long to try that.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Well, I mean and that’s a real fear too because I remember hangry episodes. Like hungry and angry. Hangry episodes. So the thought of fasting is scary. Especially when you say 36 hours.

Dr. Boz: Right?

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. So I think that’s a real-

Dr. Boz: Am I upside down on your screen?

Jennifer Marie: No!

Dr. Boz: Okay. On my screen we’re both upside down right now so I’m just going to keep going.

Jennifer Marie: No, no. You’re good.

Dr. Boz: [inaudible 00:11:27].

Jennifer Marie: Everything’s good. That’s got to be weird to be watching us upside down.

Dr. Boz: Yeah. You know … that’s kind of how I felt the first year, few months of … The other thing that I had done, as I was really big into the bone broth as a bridge for a meal. And I suppose you could call that part of the fasting, is I went to one meal a day and used bone broth at the beginning and I really found it as the only way I could skip … you call it skipping a meal, but the difference between my metabolic numbers when I was really fasting. Like once I did the 36 hour salt and water only, and comparing that to the … probably the struggle of having that bone broth, having that salty, warm liquid and then any time I felt a little bit of a craving or a little bit of a struggle, I would do that, right?
And so I mean I think I would sweat the smell of chicken. I had so much bone broth those first nine months. And you’re like … Yeah. I think that’s me. It’s real.

Jennifer Marie: Jonathan says … So Jonathan says, “I actually get disappointed when I have to start eating again.” That’s life goals for me. I want to get to that point because I am still at the … I don’t know, 36 hours is a struggle for me, but I mean it’s a mental block, too. When I do it, I was like, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad!” But then-

Dr. Boz: Yeah. The fasting was one thing that I really … I would tell myself, try that again. The other part that I wasn’t great about at the beginning was how much the accountability of checking my numbers and posting them [inaudible 00:13:19] turned out to be. So I really had been keto for almost two years, and last summer, I am trying to coach some patients along, and they are big social media patients and they just could not imagine that fasting for … and I was asking one of them to fast for 72 hours every week for eight weeks in a row. She had a serious health problem. She wanted to get pregnant, and I said, you have diabetes. Your baby’s health depends on you getting these numbers improved before you get pregnant.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah.

Dr. Boz: And yeah. So it became this that [inaudible 00:13:54] mental shift of why am I fasting? And then giving the credit to somebody else, like saying, okay when I get irritable I don’t care as much about giving up for my own but when I had a patient kind of checking on my numbers, it made all the difference to just kind of go public with what I was doing. And if you have read the book, you can see in there how much I was like, I don’t care if anybody knows. I am happy with what the science is teaching me. I am super thankful for what it was doing for my mom, but don’t tell anybody [inaudible 00:14:31]. Nobody needs to know. So going socially and posting my glucose numbers and my keto numbers, like Dr. Boz ratio, it was a little difficult for me at first, but I just can’t believe how much it helps me. That accountability, and just being a part of a community that does this, skip a meal thing. I like that.

Jennifer Marie: I need to start posting back in the group. I really do. And I also feel like when you get stressed, like these last two weeks my daughter’s had some issues and I focused really hard on her. So isn’t this crazy that when our kids are suffering or when something else has happened, whatever we were doing with ourselves, just goes by the way side, like we didn’t even care. Did I even eat? Or did I make this or what was I doing? I don’t even remember. We’d stop everything we do and we do for our kids, but I don’t know. It’s just … I can’t have that major stress, and fast. And I probably [crosstalk 00:15:36]. I probably should be fasting.

Dr. Boz: I love the energy. Yeah. When I have new people coming into the keto group and they come into my support group and they’ve just read the book and they are super excited. And you have these folks sitting around the table, sitting in the support group and they’ve seen the scene before, where they come in and they are really excited, and they feel so good and they are on week two. And we all say, yep, we’ve been to week two before. And that [inaudible 00:16:04] of saying, just wait till you go to a funeral. Just wait until you have the car explode and nothing went right in the whole day. Just wait until … And it is. That’s life. That is the journey and there’s so many parallels when I’ve been doing this keto coaching or having that support group for people who want to learn about keto, how many parallels are to the same strategies that I use with addiction.
They are alcoholic, they are sober for two weeks, and we’re like, this is the easy phase. Now wait. Here comes the chapter that’s hard and that’s when life gets stressful. Even when it’s a positive stress. Like something went right and you’re like, this is when I would have sugar or in their case, alcohol. And you’re like, it’s in the long journey that you say, “How do you change that behavior”, and boy, when I applied all of the strategies I told my addiction patients to use, come to a support group, don’t think you got to be perfect. You’re coming just to kind of have that team. And boy, I will tell you, I have more successes out of that keto group than any other single group [inaudible 00:17:21] present.
So that’s powerful.

Jennifer Marie: When people ask me, “Hey, when should I start fasting?” I always tell them … like they want to know, “Hey, can I start keto by fasting?” And I’m like, “Oh my god. No.” I don’t think I could have done that. I had to …

Dr. Boz: Nuh-uh. No way.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. You have to fat adapted and then it’s like easier. Like it was real easy for me to do 12. It was real easy for me to do 14. 16 is where I started to struggle a little bit, just because of habits I think. And then now I am thinking 16 is a piece of cake, are you kidding? It’s no big deal.

Dr. Boz: When I’ve had patients tell me, and I am coaching people to say this is a skill that you are going to advance at, and they look at you like, “What?” And I had a gal come to the keto group last week and she sat down and said, “I’m four days in and I’ve already started fasting.” And I’m like, “No. Do not do that.” I paint this image of those little mitochondria in all of your cells, and they are so used to burning the pine needles, the quick energy, the fire that goes up and then it crashes down. Those glucose molecules. They are not used to burning the logs in their campfire, and that’s what ketones are. It takes awhile for those mitochondria to churn through and really pump out that strong steady energy. Once you got that baseline, you are not … it’s amazing how easy it is to say no to food and to really put the fasting cycles of 12 hours a day without any food. Start with 10 hours and go to 11 hours.

Jennifer Marie: One of the struggles that I dealt with in the beginning is, oh my god, travel! What am I going to do? What I am going to eat? Whatever. Now that I am fat adapted and been doing this for awhile, that’s when I fast naturally because I am so busy that I didn’t even realize I only ate one meal a day and I happened to go to dinner with friends. And I probably could have gone the whole day. When I keep busy, it’s so easy to fast. So easy.

Dr. Boz: Right.

Jennifer Marie: That’s interesting.

Dr. Boz: That first fast, that’s what I tell all my patients too is I remember hearing, I don’t know if it was from Jason [inaudible 00:19:42] or who it was saying, “If you are going to do this, the first day, just be busy.” And I’m like, that’s a really good advice because once the fuel … once your fueled, which is that keto adaption, as long as your brain’s got something to focus on, suddenly you’re going to turn around and it’s going to be evening and you’re like, oh wow, I didn’t eat again. Look at that. And I’m not … I wasn’t big into that. I think it wasn’t until when mom got to the part where she really had numbers that had to improve, or she was in trouble. And even in this last year, so she’s going to turn 75 this summer. When we started the book, she was 71. Right before her 72nd birthday. And we look at that journey that she has had and we’ve all had in our health. And just recently, she has stepped up and been more accountable at sharing her numbers online, which again, kudos to my 75 year old mom who will post online.
But she’s just like, “I can’t believe how much it helps to just say, ‘If I do this, my numbers to the group tomorrow are going to be awful.'” And so again, that journey of saying, how do you say no long-term? It’s a different level of commitment, but also the only kind of transparency to those around you, to do the social commitments. I don’t know. I also wish I would have known how powerful it helps my sleep, my mental focus. Three years in, whatever we were at, three and a half years in, is that right? And knowing that there was so much untapped energy and untapped focus that I wish I would have … I could go back and tell myself that. You are going to find a chapter of life that is so much … it’s amazing. It’s amazing how much I get done. It’s amazing how long I stay focused. And that was not the case even for the few months before, I could remember thinking just getting the time to read about a ketogenic diet, clearing that for my schedule, making my brain focus for this heavy read. Yeah. It was a struggle. I don’t know. I go back and tell myself all those things, like you’re going to have the best sleep ever.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. I think back to the beginning of my journey and I remember how difficult it was. Like this was a couple years ago, so there wasn’t a whole ton of information out there. There certainly wasn’t this strict keto, dirty keto, lazy keto whatever. There wasn’t any like whatever terms people decide they are going to be. It was just all or nothing it seemed like and I remember being so overwhelmed with the information. And I wished I could have went back and told myself, “Look, do the hard part first. Get through the three days of sugar hell detoxing from that and then don’t do the carbs that have the grains and the flowers.” Focus on those two very major things first, because those are two very major things to starting the keto journey. And I wished somebody would have broke it down that simple for me. Just those two things.

Dr. Boz: Yeah. To remember back to that step, it’s so long ago. You think, oh I forget how much I did … like I struggled with that. I had a house guest this past week and he stayed with us for three days and he said, “Dang, as I was thinking about coming to your house, I’m like …” He was eating sugar right before he came because he knew there wasn’t going to be at our house. And then I watched him, and just how the lull after two hours, he was looking … you could tell he was twitchy, and he’s my age. He’s … I’m like, I remember that. I remember getting done with a patient and thinking, if I don’t have a little something to snack on, I’m going to get irritable in this next visit and then I would [inaudible 00:23:54] carbs. I’m thinking, [inaudible 00:23:57] think about how much weight I had gained just by that simple habit. I would go back to myself and say, “Let me hack it.”
I mean there’s several things. I’m writing another book and again, it’s amazing how much I’ve learned as I go back and read the first book and say, “Here’s a chapter on something that I would teach differently. Here’s a chapter on something I would say, ‘How do I think about exercise’, or something with keto”, because I never even got close to those chapters. I was just like bare bones, how do you get through it, what’s the first step, don’t look around, quit reading all the blogs. Just focus, right?

Jennifer Marie: You had a serious focus with Grandma Rose, so that is for sure. Hey, hold on. I missed a comment. Oh Janet says, “I bought your cookbook Jennifer Marie, coming on the seventh.” Diana Sanders says, “What’s the name of your cookbook?” Here it is. It’s Keto Friendly Recipes: Easy Keto for Busy People. I’m so excited. I can’t wait for the book to come out. And there’s a link above. Thanks Jonathan for saying that. There’s a link in the description. But just thinking back … and that twitchy, your friend. I vividly remember those. I wouldn’t go hypoglycemic. You don’t go more than two hours without having something. It’s real. But you know, you forget … I think we forget, you with Grandma Rose getting through that major hump and then you are doing it with her because you want to support her.
Me, I was just trying to lose some weight and I’m just thinking to myself, okay, another diet. Is this one going to work? And knowing all the rest of them before that failed, or me thinking I failed because I didn’t do them. And it’s more than two years later, and just looking back, if somebody asked me today, I’d tell them, get through the two things. And just to know when you detox from sugar, it’s like three days of pure hell. It really is, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Just knowing there’s … and it’s really not even that long. Three days is really, that’s when the cravings for me started to diminish and I was super, super addicted to sugar. So, I tell people the first two things is ditch the sugar, ditch the carbs, focus on meats. I don’t even care the veggies. People are so strict about this veggie and that veggie and oh my god, don’t have a carrot. You know what? I don’t even focus …
If I have a best friend saying, “How do I do this?”, you know what? Take away carbs. Take away the grains. Take away the sugars. Get really good with your choices then and move forward, and take it in steps.

Dr. Boz: Right. I’ve had a few patients come to keto group because they were trying to talk their family member out of not doing keto. That it was somehow dangerous.

Jennifer Marie: Really?

Dr. Boz: And it’s the best kind of glimpse into … You look at the folks that look at your channel, or my channel or read your book or read my book, and they are interested. They want to know. But to have that audience with people who are not keto, and that’s like this house guest. He’s not keto. He doesn’t have any interest in being keto. And as I look at him, I did that, the one little thing I’ve done with you a few times where we checked to see the swelling in his shin so I made him push with his thumb on his shin bone and I held it for 30 seconds and I made him do it to himself and then we pulled it up and my husband didn’t have an indent, and I didn’t have an indent. And he had this really big indent in his shin, and he’s like, “Is it fat?” Because he’s not that overweight.
I said, “No. That is inflammation. And this is just a glimpse of what the rest of your body looks like.” And Jennifer, I just couldn’t believe how much after that moment, much like what happened in these support groups, as soon as they can see that their own system, it isn’t about the weight loss that I really put all this energy into it, is about the unbelievable transformation in their health. That longevity. The aging of their system. That I get so overjoyed when they arrive. And here’s my friend who’s saying, “You know, I can never focus for more than about three hours. I can’t imagine writing as much as you’ve picked this up over the last few years. My brain just couldn’t do that. I am too old.” I’m like, “You are my age, dude.” And to say when they don’t have any interest in doing it.
The other thing I’ve learned in the world of keto over the last couple years, and in fairness, if these studies were out, I would have never done the search to look for them. So I didn’t know this but that research they’ve done in Alzheimer’s patients where they said, we didn’t lower a single carb in their body. They kept eating 150 carbs per day or whatever was on there. 300 carbs per day, and they just added exogenous ketones. And at first, three years ago, those were the enemy. I never supported those. I felt those were … like, oh you just need to make it naturally. And I still think that’s the best way, is to make it naturally, but I look at my friend and I look at my Alzheimer’s patient and there’s this … they can’t see the improvement that’s going to happen if they can get their body to use ketones before they even start. Why do we feel so [inaudible 00:29:10] when you transition out of that sugar craze? It’s because all of those mitochondria have been sleeping. And we wake them up really quickly, those first three days, and as soon as they are awake, then we start to feel better.
And so, instead of doing it that way, I’ve said just take that supplement every day for two weeks and then cut your carbs and you are going to be amazed at how easily they do that. And that’s what I’ve done with my Alzheimer’s patient. That’s what I’ve done with my Parkinson’s patients. Is that you are 65, you’re 72 years. I have one that’s over 80 saying, it’s going to be too hard. And if they have Alzheimer’s they don’t remember the rules. So I just say give them the supplement for two weeks and it has added life back to these patients. I am super excited to see what the research will unfold in the next decade. But I am not waiting for those patients to say, “Get yourself into a ketogenic state.” And if the first step you can do is supplements, I don’t care. You’ll get off of them eventually. They are not meant for a lifetime. That transition can be super helpful to not have that dip. I didn’t know that when we first started, and I didn’t use that trick and I actually lost patients from the group saying, “I just couldn’t make the transition.”
And so, that’s another thing I’d go back and teach myself if I could start over and say, “What have I learned?”

Jennifer Marie: I think they get a bad rap because there’s a lot of … I mean there’s a major MLM company out there, so they are trying to push it every day. The new flavor. I think that it’s hard. It’s hard when you have those. But yet there is some good research behind and it’s helping people.

Dr. Boz: Yeah. I mean, I totally think of it as like when I ask a patient to say, “If your blood pressure is high, we know it’s hurting your kidneys, your brain, your heart. I’m going to give you this medicine that’s going to lower your blood pressure, and then we’re going to stop the medicine when you get the weight off.” That’s exactly what is … it was never meant to be on blood pressure medicines from now till your grave. This was meant to be a bridge until your health improved. So I think of it as the same way is that here is a bridge. I don’t want you on this forever. Do I ever take a supplement? Sure. When I’ve had a bad day or I’ve cheated or I’ve had a glass of wine, in the next day I just feel that heaviness and over these three years, I have had much less cheat days, much less … I mean, what alcohol does to me now, is maybe it always did this, but I felt so lousy already that I didn’t notice that it made me feel so lousy the next day. And it’s not like a hangover.
It’s just that swelling. [inaudible 00:31:50] that slower brain. And now that I am used to my brain working at this level and the energy, I can’t … I’m not … I don’t get that much joy out of drinking a glass of wine anymore. But if I have a cheat. Oh.

Jennifer Marie: He’s snoring. He’s my little puppy and he’s snoring.

Dr. Boz: I wonder what that was!

Jennifer Marie: That’s not me snoring guys. That’s him. He follows me everywhere but he’s snoring. He’s so old. Poor guy. Sorry. But you know what, I mean, let’s talk about cheats a little bit. I very rarely cheat. I know what it does to my body, but over these last two weeks with all the stress happening around here, I had popcorn and I enjoyed it. And I own it. And I was like, I haven’t gotten on the scale. I’ve been good since, but I enjoyed popcorn. I cannot believe it. And I was like, oh my god. And you know what I did the next day? I did take some exogenous ketones, and that’s not like me to have that but I did … I was too afraid that I would want popcorn again, and again, and again. Because it’s so damn good.

Dr. Boz: It’s exactly … and I’m always impressed that, oh, a little bit of ketones and especially when we’re as keto adapted as you and I are. Oh, if I just get them in the system, bam, my system, I feel back on my game. I can feel good. And it’s usually one dose once a week or once every other week depending. I don’t need it very often but when I need it, I am super impressed at how I … It’s like to say to my addiction patients, they have a drink, they fall off the wagon. They start to drink again. And the next drink leads to the next one, next one. And I’m like, no, no. I don’t want to do that. How do I push the chemistry back into my system and boy, exogenous ketones does it for me and I don’t need it very often but when I do, I am super thankful that it’s right there. Yes.

Jennifer Marie: We don’t really allow the talk of them in the group because that’s where all the selling people will come out of the woodwork, but I really do feel like if I was talking to my best friend and she’s like, “Jennifer, I am struggling. I have these cravings. I don’t know what to do.” I will totally tell her, “Get some exogenous ketones. You won’t need very many of them. Just use it as a crutch.” If that’s what’s going to get you over to being fat adapted and understanding how good this way of eating is for you, then I’ve been … and I was so against them. Just for the last two years.

Dr. Boz: Me too. I wrote … I can remember the chapter where I was telling the world that I … I was trying to get mom’s ratio, [inaudible 00:34:33] ratio down to less than 20 and we were struggling. She would go three days without food and she still wasn’t there yet. And I’m like, I’m killing you. This sounds awful. And so when we would add the exogenous ketones, she again, she didn’t feel as good but her numbers were great. And again, you can tell when I go back and read that chapter that I wrote, that I was hesitating. I didn’t just know how to process this. This was against what I wanted but boy, the literature has really been helpful to say, look how how quickly we can awaken the brain and again, not forever. Just until we can get that system off of constant carb burning in those mitochondria. Wake up the ketone burning side of things, and your body will flip on those ketone productions pretty lickety-split as soon as you cut the carbs. If you cut the carbs and while your system is trying to wake up the mitochondria to figure out how to burn them, that’s when the suffering happens. That’s when people say, “Forget it, you are way more disciplined than me. I can’t do it.”
I’m like, “Hang in there.”

Jennifer Marie: And let’s be honest, we want them to realize the full benefits of this way of eating. So if you need a little crutch, I don’t think you should feel bad about that. I don’t think you should worry about being judged. I feel like in a lot of these groups online, people are like, “That has a carrot!” Or, “You can’t … exogenous ketones are a waste of money. You are just going to pee them out. You are just going to do that.” You know what? I always say I am always an advocate for what you have to figure out what works for you. Because for the two years in my journey, [inaudible 00:36:05] ever did an exogenous ketone. Well you know what? I was damn determined. I was putting myself through-

Dr. Boz: I know. I’ve read. If everybody was as determined as Jennifer Marie, I would have no patients because they would all just be on their way, the shiny brick road.

Jennifer Marie: But if my best friend is going to not do keto because she can’t get through the cravings, I will gladly tell her to take a dose of exogenous ketones.

Dr. Boz: You know, [inaudible 00:36:36] the other things that has been in the journey too is that I have struggled to get my teenagers to stay on it. They know the meals are stable. And when I look at them, they are lean. They don’t really need to be as strict as what my patients do. They are not repairing a brain injury, yet. But there are so many other benefits to not carb cycling. And especially as soon as your teenagers get a little moody, I don’t know if yours ever do that, but my boys can get moody, and if they’ve had a bunch of sugar, boy, it’s hell. [inaudible 00:37:11] awful. Shh, go away, stop speaking. I don’t know what to do with you. But that’s the other place that I’ve said, I don’t need you to be great at this. But I know if I keep your body using ketones, that when you do lower your carbs, we don’t have to deal with this addiction, this transition. So that’s been the other trick that I didn’t appreciate, even … [inaudible 00:37:33] probably been in the last couple months where I’ve really said, here’s how I approach my teenagers now.
Again, those are the ones in my house. I’ve done a couple of little experiments with one of them saying, look at what happened to your acne.

Jennifer Marie: Yes, I saw that.

Dr. Boz: [crosstalk 00:37:50].

Jennifer Marie: If you guys have not seen that video, go search Dr. Boz on YouTube. Don’t tell them about it. They have to go search it because it is the cutest video with your son and he’s adorable. Hey, hi Grandma Rose! She’s watching.

Dr. Boz: Oh yay! Hi mom!

Jennifer Marie: Hey, so sorry. Let me answer some questions in here. So they are asking how to get the pre-order bonuses. You go to lowcarbinspirations.com/preorder. Use your receipt and just plug in that number and it will automatically send you all of those bonuses directly to your e-mail. Book comes out May the seventh, so just one week away. I am so excited.

Dr. Boz: That’s so cool.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. But yeah. So I mean … so let me ask you something personal. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this. How often do you cheat? Or do you cheat? Or does it happen accident or do you just plan it once a week? Or are you pretty strict?

Dr. Boz: So here’s the things … I’ll tell you the things I do well, and the things I don’t do well. I am really good about my weekly fasts. I wasn’t … that was not something I was planning on. It kind of started with this patient experiment and has really migrated to just this rhythm that feels … It really fits with my life. The places that I fall off, our family’s big stress reliever when we’re going through tough times is to go to a movie. This is a great place to just quietly sit together without any kind of obstacle. And there’s nothing like popcorn and movie.

Jennifer Marie: That’s how-

Dr. Boz: So my big cheat is actually popcorn.

Jennifer Marie: Yes. That’s what I cheat with. Oh my god. Yeah. Wow.

Dr. Boz: I’ve made it through a few movies with my rock salt in my pocket. So if I really prepare, I could do it but the goods news is, is that I’ve learned I’m really keto adapted. The fasting has just made it super easy for my system to go back into a ketogenic state, and I don’t have that heavy hangover effect when I do the popcorn cheat, so maybe I haven’t had to pay the price, if you would. So those are the cheats. I am not … my favorite food in the world used to be apples and apple pie and there’s just been something about kind of staving off fruit and not doing it that three years later, I expected that to always be my weakness. And it really isn’t. So that’s … the other cheat that I do is probably about twice a month, I’ll have a glass of wine. And if I go back to before I did keto, it probably would have been a Saturday night thing. We’d go out. We’d have a glass of wine. So it would be once a week.
It’s just that natural consequences of feeling really good and then not feeling good after I had just one glass of wine. It’s not a lot, but I don’t know if it’s just that the alcohol affects me so much more now that I am keto. Or what? I don’t know. But I don’t like the feeling the next day. And I am such a geek that my mental production … So Saturday night is when we would usually have a glass of wine, and Sunday is, it’s a big day for our family in that we do a board game together. So it’s my one time a week that there’s nobody infiltrates that time. And then we all do homework or I go prepare for the shows. The one that I do, and the one that you and I do together. And so my mental performance was so much harder to do when I would do that. And so I’ve really backed away from even having that glass. Those are my big cheats. There’s been plenty of stress in the last few weeks that I actually now understand why people serve liquor at a funeral. I didn’t have any but I do understand the stress is like, oh my goodness. So yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Marie: I’m being corrected because they are telling me to say it’s a treat, not a cheat. You know what’s weird-

Dr. Boz: Oh yes. Actually I saw that too.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. You know what’s funny is that normally I am okay. So my cheat, my treats, the things that I really treat with, I love pinto beans. We live here in Texas and barbecue with your pinto beans is like a thing. I love it. So if I do a treat, I purposely say, I am just going to do that. The other thing is peas or snap peas. I really like peas. So I am not one to go for cake. I mean I make some amazing keto cakes. So I don’t really go for those things, but the reason why I am calling last week a cheat, I think was because I was so stressed and I didn’t put thought into it. I didn’t say, I didn’t make the conscious decision that yes, I was going to do this, and yes, I am going to enjoy it. It was more like a stress.
I didn’t even go to the movies. My family went to the movies. They brought home the extra bucket of popcorn.

Dr. Boz: No way!

Jennifer Marie: It was cold. And I sat and I binged my favorite show, Criminal Minds and I ate the rest … I think there was like this much left in one of those big buckets. I ate the rest of it. And I was like, that was so good but it wasn’t planned and it really was … it really wasn’t. It wasn’t what I considered a treat, because I didn’t want to eat it. You are just in that mindset where I am a stress eater. I was stressing, and that was there. I don’t have anything else in the house and they brought it home, those cheaters.

Dr. Boz: Right. Dang it. So much for your support system.

Jennifer Marie: Seriously. I took a picture of all of them too. See, see what you guys did to me? But you know what, you get back to it the next day.

Dr. Boz: Yeah, I was going to say how quickly did your numbers go back into a good range though?

Jennifer Marie: I don’t know. I haven’t tested them in two weeks. I guess …

Dr. Boz: Okay. All right.

Jennifer Marie: It’s been two weeks of pure drama where you are just helping your kids and you don’t care about your numbers. You don’t care. My pants still fit the same. I am still eating right, I’m just not eating at the right times. I know what I am supposed to be doing. It’s just … it went out the window. You know?

Dr. Boz: Right. Well, you know what, it is one of those … when I look at the advice I give to patients, it doesn’t come without self-reflection and there’s one of the standard questions as you come into my practice is, here’s a list of coping skills when life is hard. Which ones do you use? And there’s things from sex, drugs, rock and roll. Going for a walk, reading a book, going to a movie, eating. And you look at that and you say, “All right, which of the things that I still have on my list if I get into these years of maturity”, and you say, “It would be great to not have that on my list anymore.” And I don’t think that it’s a one day thing. You don’t snap your fingers and say, “Suddenly I stopped using that as a coping skill.” The stress was a little bit and I didn’t need it. The stress was a little bit and I didn’t need it. The stress was moderate and then it didn’t go away and that just made it go higher, and higher, and higher in my life and finally I reached for that old coping skill that I really like because it makes me feel better.
And you’re like, oh, look at that. I did have … I was better. And so I look at that in my own journey too [inaudible 00:45:29] saying, you know what, there’s seasons where my son and I go to crossfit and we are really in a good rhythm and then there’s seasons like the last few months where it hasn’t been what … he goes, but I’m just like, I’m tapping out buddy. I don’t want to right now. And then I look at how I deal with stress when I’ve stopped the working out. Oh, I do a better job when that’s part of my routine.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah.

Dr. Boz: So it does make you say, “Okay. So if popcorn made it back on the option list after two years of it not being on your option list”, [inaudible 00:46:05], “Okay. So what are the skills that I really like and that I’ve been using, because clearly they had to show up.” It’s not like people wake up and say that habit of shooting up heroin was zero, and then one day I did it and I did it forever. It was, okay, that bad habit comes back into your circle of thoughts and you think about it, and you think about it, and then one day the stress was high enough that you actually did the popcorn. The less than ideal.
And the good thing is, that’s just such an easy thing to fail on. Like, oh yeah, okay. Have lots of forgiveness and then go back and say, “What was I doing that made me feel better that was safe?”

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Well along with the whole cheat-treat-popcorn episode, I did join a gym this week too. So …

Dr. Boz: Ah.

Jennifer Marie: I know. The gym doesn’t open for another two weeks. It’s a gym right down the street. Actually, 18 more days is when it opens, but I signed up. So I am like going to be committed right when it opens.

Dr. Boz: Great. Well, that’s something else I’ve had several folks ask me on is, “What do you think about exercise? You talk all about the diet, why don’t you talk more about exercise?” And boy, if I look at the impact that weight loss has with chemistry shifting and lowering your insulin, you get 5% effort for exercise. It has so much impact that you have on lowering somebody’s weight by manipulating their chemistry, just like I talk about in the book. Here are the steps. If you follow these, what you are going to get is 95% of the benefit. Now, it’s not that exercise is bad. It’s wonderful. But what I’ve seen my patients hypnotized into is you have to exercise. You have to exercise. You have to exercise. And they are 300 pounds and they are pounding on their little knees and wondering why they hurt all the time and I’m like, “You got to fix the chemistry.” And you got to practice that skill of being like what you and I are. These skills of coping that are better and they really do have a shift in how you feel. And then if you want to add exercise once you are stable, once you are in a zone of doing well, now we can talk about what that will do next. Because it is important.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. And I think that’s where I am at. I think I am [crosstalk 00:48:22].

Dr. Boz: Yeah. I actually do … I know when we first met, this is like back in November or October, November, and you said, “Well I could start a gym”, and I’m like, “No. Don’t do that. Don’t do that yet.” Because it is something that’s important but when we start stretching the skill of fasting, of putting that zero through your lips, you have to develop coping skills. They have to come and hopefully you are enhancing ones you already know about. But the added layer of saying, “You know what? I am going to start fasting and I am going to do this other thing I haven’t been doing a really good job of. I’m going to add exercise.” I’m like, too much change at once. You are going to fall. Just start with one thing. Perfect it. Stretch it a little further. Stretch it a little further. Bam. Your numbers are doing great. Now if you exercise, you are going to get so much more benefit from that activity than you ever would have, had you had numbers of glycogen being too high, and sugars being high, all that stuff.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. So I am smiling-

Dr. Boz: So I think that the timing is perfect.

Jennifer Marie: I am smiling because you can’t see your mom’s comment but Grandma Rose says, “I am excited for my recipe book to arrive. Our church is having a salad supper tonight and I really could have used it.”

Dr. Boz: Good job! Yes.

Jennifer Marie: So Grandma Rose scroll back on this page and you will see an amazing recipe for big mac cheeseburger salad. It is actually trending right now. I think it’s on the verge of going viral. It is one of my favorite, favorite salad recipes. I could eat that all day, every day for a year. And I don’t really eat up a lot of vegetables, but that’s one salad recipe. The sauce, the dressing for that, it’s hearty. It’s got a lot of beef in it. Make that one. You’ll be happy. Oh, sorry-

Dr. Boz: Yeah. Grandma’s actually …

Jennifer Marie: Oh go ahead. Go ahead.

Dr. Boz: I said Grandma Rose actually is the MC tonight at her [inaudible 00:50:27] luncheon. She was saying, “Got to work on my speech a little.” I’m like, “You go girl.”

Jennifer Marie: So cute! She is so cute.

Dr. Boz: I’m telling you she is the unofficial mayor of that city. When she shows up, she organizes things. She leads the way.

Jennifer Marie: I love it.

Dr. Boz: She decides that this needs to be done. Yeah. [inaudible 00:50:45].

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Pamela says, “Grandma Rose was so cute out with the boys at the farm.” Okay, so Vicky is saying, “Remind me how we get our freebies for pre-ordering?” Okay so to get your freebies, go to lowcarbinspirations.com/preorder, and just enter your receipt number and I will shoot you an e-mail with all those downloads. Yeah. Grandma Rose is adorable. She said, “Okay. I’ll check it out.” I love that she’s watching. That’s [inaudible 00:51:18].

Dr. Boz: You know, in fact, I think one of the things I learned about South Dakota is it is one of the most connected Facebook states in the country. I totally think it’s because we have awful winters and lots of distance between people. So this is the way to create your own community.

Jennifer Marie: I think so.

Dr. Boz: So, I’m like yeah. Yeah. My mom and all of her friends, they know it. They are … She could have probably pushed the right button and been on Facebook Live faster than I could have.

Jennifer Marie: Right? She could have.

Dr. Boz: Oh, your dog is sleeping under the ceiling in my video, so I’m like.

Jennifer Marie: He’s still snoring. It’s not heavy. He follows me everywhere. Hold on. I just saw a comment. Okay so Terese says that she has been doing your suggestion … remember when you did a live with me the other couple weeks ago about the one minute jump rope? So she’s been doing that.

Dr. Boz: Oh, yeah!

Jennifer Marie: That’s a really good one. [crosstalk 00:52:18].

Dr. Boz: Ask her to say what’s your one minute number.

Jennifer Marie: Terese, what’s your one minute number? How many can you do in one minute? Oh she said, “I just-”

Dr. Boz: I’ll tell you a story about that.

Jennifer Marie: She said she just received her jump rope in the mail. So I don’t know if she’s actually started it. So Ken [inaudible 00:52:38] says, “Hello Annette.”

Dr. Boz: Oh, he’s great. He’s my buddy from Pine Ridge. He totally helped me conquer the brains of addiction. I made him jump rope. Does he remember that?

Jennifer Marie: That’s awesome. Oh Pamela says, “Talk about the left handed circles.” Remember how you were saying …

Dr. Boz: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jennifer Marie: Yeah.

Dr. Boz: Yeah, so [inaudible 00:53:02] just give everybody a little background that I am an internal medicine physician but brains, I get to help people fix broken brains. It’s not an accident that I talk about addiction because that’s a very good way to break your brain. But sleep, that’s another big part of my practice. Mood disorders that rise and fall. Parkinson’s. Alzheimer’s. These are brains that aren’t working well. And so when you look at some of the ways to rewire a brain, there are some hacks that are really cheap. One of them is you have to be sleeping well. And we’ve gone through that in a few of them. But there’s some other ways when your brain has got scrambled. When it’s just noisy and you can’t get the thoughts to slow down. You’ll look at the experts, and the people who do functional MRIs and they study patients. They say, “You should meditate.” And you’re like, “Uh-huh.” Have you met the patient? There’s no chance he’s going to meditate. You can’t get him to sit still and far. He’s going to do that on the fly too. I mean, nothing is slow.
But, you can give them a task that distracts one side of their brain while slowing down those thoughts in the other side of their brain. And so the left handed loop is called left hand because if you are right handed, I want you using your left hand the right way. So they take that left hand, and they make the letter L. So up and they do it all the way across the piece of paper. So they start … all the way across the piece of paper. And it’s a lined paper that they do over and over and over again. That’s right. And it’s amazing. When I do this in a group, I’ve done it at some of the youth refugees here. I’ve done it in jail. I’ve done it at workshops to say … I present all the ways you can break your brain and they are all stress because everybody’s like I’ve got a broken brain.

Jennifer Marie: Aww.

Dr. Boz: I’m like, here’s a great way to calm down and we do this meditation together. And the rules are, you cannot make any noise. No burping, farting, nothing. Zero. And you do this left handed loop all the way across the paper, over and over and over again for three minutes. And when they’ve done this in groups, larger times, about that third, fourth and fifth minute, you can see their heart rate get a little lesser, a little lesser, a little lesser. You can see their breathing rate go less each minute. And it is a sense that your right brain is talking to your left side of your brain and your left brain is talking to your right side of your brain and then there’s the rhythm that happens in these Ls that really just starts to be … it’s not so much about the L, it’s not so much about the cursive. It’s about the rhythm. It’s fascinating.

Jennifer Marie: Oh, interesting.

Dr. Boz: When I have a teenager that’s being irritable with me, and I mean my own, they get two options. Well, I’ve had three that I’ve entered in there, but the two options are, all right, we’re each going to do jump rope for a minute, and that will make me not yell at you. But we’ll also both get a little bit of energy out. Or we both do left handed loops. Especially if they are like … if the emotions are high. The left handed loops … I do it with them, so it slows my brain down. It slows their brain down. It’s a timeout. Nobody speaks. Just quiet.

Jennifer Marie: Nice. Nice.

Dr. Boz: And it really does … that’s a great pattern for I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep. Like just get a notebook, put it next to your bed, left handed loops. Just do them. Whenever you feel that need that oh, I got to turn on the television, I got to get distracted. I’m like, left handed loops. Just do them.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah.

Dr. Boz: It’s a good trick.

Jennifer Marie: Hey, so Terese just commented back and she said, 100 jumps.

Dr. Boz: That’s awesome! That’s awesome.

Jennifer Marie: Wow. 100. That’s like amazing isn’t it?

Dr. Boz: It is. That’s a really good number. Yep. I have … that’s one of the vital signs I do for patients when they come to see me is they get their heart rate, their blood pressure, their weight, their waistline, their respiratory, their temperature. And their one minute jump rope. And they’ll say, “But doc, I haven’t done it in 20 years, 40 years, 30 years.” I’m like, “I don’t care. You get one minute. You’re on my time [inaudible 00:57:13].”

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Okay so Jamie just said she got an e-mail notification from Amazon this morning that her cookbook is arriving early. Wow! I didn’t know that.

Dr. Boz: Ooh.

Jennifer Marie: “Do you have macros with all of your recipes in the book?” Absolutely. They are in total carbs, not net carbs.

Dr. Boz: Good job.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. “Why are morning sugars higher on my spouse when he does not eat at night, yet if he eats sweets, it’s lower. So I can’t get him on keto.” Oh man, can we talk about family members getting them on keto. If they don’t want to …

Dr. Boz: Well, but that gal, if she goes to the YouTube and looks on … just type in Dr. Boz and glycogen. G-L-Y, glycogen. Glycogen is why it’s higher, and it’s because her husband is probably insulin resistant and if they do know … if they have lots of stored glucose, they’ve been overweight for many years, and now they’ve lowered their carbs, as you look at what happens in the evening hours, their sugar has got lower. Their blood glucose got lower. And then the morning, puff of cortisol that comes out of the brain, goes down to your liver, is going to release a bunch of sugar. And that’s okay. We want to empty out that glycogen. It’s been there too long. It’s getting your … I think of it as really hard, crystally, brown sugar that’s kind of hanging out in their liver. And every time he lowers the sugar enough to give that cortisol boost, out comes the sugar. When you look at somebody who had sweets the night before, they probably spent a lot of the night with their sugar high.
And even though the sugar over time, it lowered and lowered and lowered, and lowered, it did not allow them to produce much of that glycogen stimulated sugar. The glycogen will make it’s little puff from your brain down to your liver based on a lower sugar. So his sugar got lower and that allowed the surge of this cortisol to come from his brain to his liver. The cortisol told the liver, “Hey, give me some of that stored sugar.” And boom, there comes that sugar. You say, “But when I eat sugar, it’s lower.” And the truth is, is if you had a continuous glucose monitor on, you can see throughout the night their sugars never got low. Never got low enough for the cortisol burst that they should have gotten. Their sleep therefore was not as deep as it should have been and we like hormones that burst in valley. We don’t like them to hummer. We like them to do what they are supposed to be. Peak and then come down.
And with sugar at night, it just kept the blood sugars too high because of his constant insulin production. And you’ll know, he has a tummy to prove it. He has red cheeks to prove it. He has high blood pressure to do it. If you do that, push on the thumb on the shin, the shin bone right there above your ankle, and you push for 30 seconds, it should not leave an indent and if it leaves an indent, it means he is inflamed. That’s another sign of insulin resistance. So all of those are signs that yeah, lowering those carbs would be a good idea.

Jennifer Marie: So Violetta is asking, “Jennifer, do you eat one meal a day now? Or do you eat three times a day?” It has forever since I’ve had three times a day meals. I can’t … For me, it’s one or two meals. And it’s probably two small meals that equal one meal. Honestly. I don’t eat a whole lot in one sitting, so I tend to have a small breakfast and then later a small later lunch. That’s like my normal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? It’s already 4:10.

Dr. Boz: Oh really. I got [inaudible 01:01:03] school. I did not know I was that late.

Jennifer Marie: Yeah. Well we tried to get this set up for so long and it took a little longer. I don’t know if we’re going to do this every Wednesday but I know that we got to get going. I know I got to go, you got to go, so thanks for tuning in with us guys. I don’t know if we’re going to do this every Wednesday. We’ll try and pop in when we can, because we like these casual conversations where we’re just having interesting conversation [inaudible 01:01:28].

Dr. Boz: You bet.

Jennifer Marie: About our starting days. You guys have a great time. We’ll see you later.

Did you know that Dr. Boz created her own blend of exogenous ketones that include magnesium? SHE DID!

You can purchase the Dr. Boz Exogenous Ketones here on Amazon.

Dr. Annette Bosworth is also the author of Anyway You Can! It’s an amazing story of how she helped her mom battle cancer but it’s also a wonderful learning tool that explains the science behind the keto diet. It will help you understand how the Keto diet can help you too!