ADD - GEAR 5

     Enjoy, but try not to eat too many of those healthy nuts and seeds! A handful per day is good. Balance them out with the great omega 3's found in fatty fish like Alaskan salmon, and sardines!

     Substitute those “bad oils” from the “Eliminate” section with these better and healthier choices:

• Avocado Oil

• Walnut Oi

• Virgin Olive Oil

• Sesame Seed Oil

When you’re eating at a restaurant, use these ingredients on your salads:  

• Avocados

• Guacamole,

• Olive oil

• Lemon juice

• Vinegar

"Organic"

     In generations past, everything was organic, but today we must be looking for it!

     By now you are, most likely, not as hungry as you once where, because you are eating more “real" food with greater nutrients. We can now begin to buy even higher quality products, and not really spend any more money then we were !

Look for: 

• Grass fed and grass finished beef.

• Grass fed dairy products, such as butter, cheese, heavy cream.

• Nitrite and nitrate free bacon, or at least none added.

• Organic free pastured poultry, pastured only eggs.

• Wild caught fish

• Organic produce

• Organic raw nuts

Let’s start with grass-fed beef!

     Grass fed, and well treated animals are much healthier than traditional feedlot CAFO animals. They are happy and have less stress; they are not fed genetically modified foods; and they are free to eat grass, the normal diet for cattle. They are not given hormones to make them grow abnormally fast. They are not filled with antibiotics, since they are not usually sick. They have healthier milk as well, and their meat is not inflammatory like that of poorly raised animals. 

This is true for all humanely, naturally raised animals!

Let's look at Poultry and their eggs!

PASTURED is the only way to go! 

“Pastured" means that they are just that, free to eat what they choose and wander around as they choose.

"Cage free" does NOT mean the same thing. They could still be raised in overcrowded conditions and fed poor diets. It’s an important “technicality.”

Wild-caught Pacific fish is some of the best available! 

     You can look for salmon from the Pacific, Alaska, and British Columbia areas. It can be found in some of the better grocery stores. Fresh or frozen is fine, as long as it is wild caught.

     Click the logos below for links to other merchants we use, to find quality fish, such as herring, sardines, salmon, cod, and flounder.  By the way, the smaller, younger fish have fewer toxins accumulated in them, and have great omega-3 oils, which are healthy oils for you.

Click on the logo to the left to go to “Thrive Market.” Once there, search for “Wild Planet” products.

All right! Organic produce is easy to find these days!     

Almost any grocery store now has some degree of organic produce, and the larger stores usually have a nice selection.  Stay with the above ground veggies that we have talked about, but be adventurous! 

     The best thing to do is go to a local farmers market and get the organic products which are the freshest. If you don’t know how to cook them, look up a recipe or information, and create something new!  Diversity is wonderful! Try something you have not had for a while, or have never had before!  Broaden your horizons!

Nuts must be raw and organic...

     In order to get nuts that are not sprayed heavy with pesticides, they must be raw and organic. You can find the ones we like best on Dr. Korman’s GEARED2bewell Grocery List.  Also, use our recipe for dehydrating nuts by clicking here.

     You can have the occasional yummy treat, but keep it healthy and within limits!  

     You must remember that a treat is still a treat.  That does NOT make it a main course!  You have, hopefully, made a lot of positive changes in your lifestyle and have the proper respect for the fact that “treats" are allowable, but only with cautious restraint! 

 Now that you have been changing the fuel that your body and brain run on, we can begin to see that show up in testing!

      As we have discussed prior, we want our body to be efficient at using ketones, as well as glucose for energy. This is why we eat the good quality fats and eliminate the carbohydrates. This causes our liver to produce the ketones, or “the cleaner fuel"!  When we are adapted to use the ketones and we have even a slight reduction in our intake, like eating in a smaller time frame during the day (intermittent fasting), or skipping a meal (24 hour fast), our bodies then use the fat stores we have to get the energy we need.

     This is really where all the magic begins. It is awesome that we can now control the amount of stored fat we want to burn, and that’s what fat is there for!   When we were "Sugar Burners," or were constantly snacking, we were never able to do this.

Here are a few ways that you can measure the Ketones :

There are three Ketone types:

• Beta Hydroxybutyrate: is measurable in the blood

• Acetoacetate: is measurable in the urine

• Acetone: is measurable in the breath

1) Get some reagent urine strips (they are similar to PH strips) at your local pharmacy. They are helpful to see the spill off of the Acetoacetate ketone in the urine. They are very low priced, and easy to use. The downside is that they are not as accurate as the other testing, and become less useful as you become more adapted and are using the ketones more efficiently. They are great, though, during the beginning to see if you are showing any ketones.

2) There are tools to measure Acetoacetate breath ketone levels. They are somewhat new to the market, and the upfront cost ( $150 ) is more than the other testing. We are not big enthusiasts of this yet. Maybe in the near future.

3) The "GOLD" standard is the blood testing. This measures the Beta Hydroxybutyrate. It is far more accurate, simple to use, and, with the testing device that we recommend, you are able to measure your ketones and blood glucose at the same time using the same meter with different test strips. The downside is that you need to prick your finger for each test, and the strips for the ketones need to be purchased online. You can get the meter and the test strips for the glucose at some pharmacies. Learn about Keto Mojo, my personal favorite..

     Your ketones will be measured in Millimoles per Liter or (mmol/L) , and, in America, your glucose is usually measured in milligrams per deciliter or (mg/dL).  If we want to compare them, we can multiply the ketones by 18 or divide the glucose by 18. Don't ask why they don't measure them the same way!!  Only in America. 

     When you start to measure your levels, and you see that you have some ketones registering (any color change on the urine stick) or above .3 mmol/L  (blood test) then you are at the bottom end of therapeutic ketosis. Between 1.5 mm and 3.0 mm is a good range for general health and weight loss. You will go in and out of this range through the day and are usually at the highest just before you eat, as well as after exercise.

     If you are using this lifestyle for cognitive issues, or other more serious issues, then a range closer to (1X1) Ketones to Glucose Ratio may be more beneficial.  If your glucose  (blood sugar) is at 80 mg/dL, and your ketones are at 4.3 mmol/L . You would take the Ketones and multiply  4.3 X 18 = 77.4. That is very close to a 1-to-1 ratio and can be extremely therapeutic.