LEPTIN RESISTANCE 

This is not a diet, it is a lifestyle. By eating this way, you will begin to heal your cells (less sugar means less glycation; more on glycation is in chapter on fructose). You will keep transforming into the happy and healthy person you want to be. It took me years to heal my cells: it wasn’t something that happened in a month, but with time, my leptin resistance went away. Leptin resistance is an issue I see with almost every client. After years of eating a low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diet, our cells become resistant to the hormone leptin. This explains why when you eat large amounts of food, you never get the sense of feeling full, a state you might experience when you first adopt a well-formulated keto-adapted diet.

With time, however, this diet will heal your leptin receptors, and soon enough you will be full and satisfied for very long periods of time. I never thought that two meals a day would ever be enough for me. But when you eat a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet, your insulin level s stay nice and even. Hunger happens when your blood sugar dips too low. By never letting it get too high, you avoid the big insulin spike that makes your blood sugar go too low. To find out what you may have been doing wrong on your “low carb” diet, check out Keto-Adapted.

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HERBS vs FRUITS

A lot of American’s are ingrained with the idea that they should be eating an apple a day so they pick a big red Golden Delicious feeling like they are doing a “body good.”

Not necessarily; many times we focus on taste, or should I say sugar content, to stimulate sales. In the book, Eating on the Wild Side, Jo Robinson’s reviews a 2009 study that refers to 46 overweight men with high cholesterol and triglycerides who agreed to participate in an eating experiment. Half of the men stayed on their regular diets, serving as a control group. The other 23 added an apple to their fare. The goal was to determine if eating an apple a day would reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. At the end of the study, the men who ate the apple a day had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol than before the study began. The conclusion is that the apples used were too low in phytonutrients to lower the men’s bad cholesterol, and too high in sugar causing an increase in their triglycerides.

For example, most animals have learned how to become fat and how to become thin. They do it in a tightly regulated way… Hibernating mammals will double their weight and fat in the fall in preparation for winter… I realized that I can learn by reading the studies about these animals. As I read them, I had another insight, which had not been appreciated before; these animals develop all the features of metabolic syndrome that we do. They get fat. They’re visceral fat goes up. They get fatty liver. The triglycerides go up in their blood. They get insulin-resistant… It’s a normal process.

Millions of years ago, our ancestors consumed fructose from natural fruits rather than the massive doses of high fructose corn syrup like we do today, but they still experienced this fat-gaining phenomenon. During the summer, they would consume large amounts of fruit and would put on weight in order to survive the famine during the colder months when fruits were unavailable. This led to a genetic mutation that resulted in a greater uric acid response to fructose. The more sugar we eat, the more uric acid our bodies produce, which increases our liver and intestines’ ability to absorb sugar, which is a bad thing! Obese people absorb fructose effortlessly, where skinny people don’t absorb it as well.

It is a detrimental snowball effect for my obese clients; the more sugar they eat, the more uric acid you make; which leads to the sensitivity to fructose absorption. Once you head down that path, it is almost impossible to stop. This is why I have to get so extreme with clients and cut out fruit too. If you start soon enough and cut out all foods that are creating the fat-creating snowball, you can recover, but if you don’t, you will lose the fat-burning, energy-producing mitochondria and you can’t restore them. At this point, you reset your fat cells at higher set point and our bodies want to stay at that set point for homeostasis.

You can try and try to lose weight, but our fat cells have memory. They are cozy in your body and think they are protecting you. This causes the hormone leptin to be misfiring too. Leptin and ghrelin are very important hormones that work like “checks and balances” that manage hunger and fullness. Ghrelin, produced in the stomach, increases appetite, while leptin, produced in fat cells, sends a message to our brain when we are full. This imbalance causes us to intensely crave food and never feel full. The worst part is that we don’t crave broccoli, we crave high-calorie sweets and starchy foods. Over time, this imbalance can easily lead to long-term weight gain. Since insulin, ghrelin and leptin, function as significant indicators to the central nervous system in the long-term regulation of energy balance, decreases of circulating insulin and leptin and increased ghrelin concentrations, studies prove that it leads to increased caloric intake and eventually contribute to increased fat cells during high consumption of fructose.

HEALTH TIP: A damaged liver causes low moods and can lead to serious depression. Are you depressed? Get your liver checked and eliminate all foods that bog down your liver.

NO FRUIT? How will I get nutrients? When I am asked if I eat fruits, I jokingly say of course! I eat avocado, olives and tomatoes! But most people think I am a bit extreme when I limit most vegetable consumption for my clients too. To get keto adapted, even some low-starch vegetables may keep someone with a damaged metabolism out of ketosis. Which is why my Accelerated 30 day meal plans are so detailed with what low-starch vegetables are allowed to get into ketosis fast.

We need to update the recommendation of eating 9 servings of fruits and vegetables for maximum health. This suggestion has a few issues with it. A few years ago, I read that most kids actually do get the recommended servings for fruits and vegetables. Are you shocked to read this? Yep, they eat French fries, onion rings and ketchup. Sad, but it does fit the guidelines. Will you reap the benefits of eating 7-9 servings of these foods? Absolutely not.

So even if you aren’t even eating French fries or ketchup, eating 3 bananas a day isn’t a good idea. Studies prove that the current state of the produce we consume is relatively low in phytonutrients, and much higher in sugar than it was in our Paleo days. All of the fruits and vegetables displayed in our supermarkets have much less nutrients than what you would find in the wild. Consumers want fruit that tastes sweet. This is why we now have “Cotton Candy Grapes!” Traditional grapes weren’t sweet enough, so we modified them to satisfy our kid’s desire for sweets in order for them to eat fruit. The sad part is, we think it is a good thing when our kids eat massive amounts of fruits. The more palatable our produce has become, the less beneficial they are for our health. The most beneficial phytonutrients have a bitter, sour or astringent taste.

Sure many high sugar fruits have healthy antioxidants such as Vitamin A, C and E. Antioxidants protect cells against the effects of free radicals. Free radicals are molecules produced when your body breaks down food BUT you produce little to no free radicals if you stay in a keto-adapted state. And what is interesting is an orange that is high in vitamin C also has a lot of sugar. Glucose and vitamin C have similar chemical structures, so what happens when the sugar levels go up? They compete for one another when entering the cells. And the thing that mediates the entry of glucose into the cells is the same thing that mediates the entry of vitamin C into the cells. If there is more glucose around, there is going to be less vitamin C allowed into the cell. It doesn’t take much: a blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%. So when you eat sugar, think of your immune system slowing down to a crawl. Instead, try parsley or bell peppers!

Fresh herbs like parsley, rosemary, oregano and basil are the most nutritious plants you can consume. For example, everyone things spinach is the perfect food, but fresh oregano has eight times the amount of antioxidants! Sure, we don’t eat a cup of oregano like we would spinach, but it does go to show that a little bit provides a huge benefit. Instead of consuming fruits and starchy veggies that have fructose and raise blood sugar quickly, I suggest using herbs, vanilla beans and spices more often in your cooking preparations.

Caramel Apple Flan

Maria Emmerich

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 50 minutes mins

Servings 6

Calories

Ingredients

  

0.25x0.5x1x2x3x

• ▢ 2 cups organic cream or canned coconut milk if dairy sensitive
• ▢ 1 cup Natural Sweetener plus 1 tsp stevia glycerite for best sweetness
• ▢ 5 large eggs
• ▢ 2 tsp apple extract
• ▢ 3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract or one vanilla bean scraped clean
• ▢ 1/2 tsp pure almond extract
• ▢ 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ▢ 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• ▢ CARAMEL SWIRL: omit if dairy sensitive
• ▢ 6 tbsp butter
• ▢ 1 cup Natural Sweetener
• ▢ 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• ▢ GARNISH with bacon crumbles if desired!

Instructions

 

• Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325°F.
• In a large bowl, place the cream or coconut milk, natural sweeteners, eggs, extracts, cinnamon and nutmeg.
• Divide evenly among 8 ramekins.
• Place ramekins to a large roasting pan and add enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Loosely cover the pan with foil and bake until the custard has barely set (a knife inserted halfway between the edge and the center should come out clean), 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool in the water bath, then refrigerate to chill thoroughly. DO AHEAD: The flans can be made ahead and stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Serve cold. Drizzle with caramel before serving.
• To make caramel: Before you begin, make sure you have everything ready to go – the cream and the butter next to the pan, ready to put in. Work fast or the sweetener will burn. Heat butter on high heat in a heavy-bottomed 2-quart (2 L) or 3-quart (3 L) saucepan. As soon as it comes to a boil, watch for specks of brown (this is brown butter….so good on veggies!). Immediately add the Swerve Confectioners and the cream to the pan. Whisk until caramel sauce is smooth. Let cool in the pan for a couple minutes, and then pour into a glass mason jar and let sit to cool to room temperature. Store in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks.

Notes

NUTRITIONAL COMPARISON (per serving)
Traditional Flan = 566 calories, 31.6g fat, 6.4g protein, 69g carbs
"Healthified" Flan = 251 calories, 23.9 g fat, 6.2g protein, 3.6g carbs
"Healthified" Coconut Milk Flan (no sauce) = 247 calories, 23.3g fat, 7.1g protein, 5.2g carbs

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