Eggplant Parmesan

Testimony of the Day

“Dear Maria, It has been a miraculous month full of wonders and discoveries since I started with our phone consult! Here is the list of what me, my husband and – believe it or not, lol! – 3 our cats achieved during this month:

1. Bowel improvement – regularity, pain, itching, blood, bloating, free. One of my cats used to get terrible constipations that would require physical assistance and medications and result in bleeding and other things which are completely gone now.

2. Candida clear – no more white tongue, runny/stuffed nose or itchy “downstairs”

3. Weight-loss (including our 3 cats who for some reasons now started preferring our food – coconut cream as well btw! – to the high-carb cat food thing which they used to go crazy about because of the valerian root ingredient that has no more dramatic effect on them anymore). One of my clients I started working with recently told me yesterday, “I want to have a body like yours – looks so athletic, muscly, healthy!” And the last pair of jeans I got was size 0! Don’t worry, though, about me being too lean – I’m really short, 5 feet even))

4. No more teeth sensitivity

5. Skin improvement – hyper-pigmentation after oral contraceptives (which btw I’ve had from 2008 and couldn’t remove even with chemical peeling procedure – terrible thing, really! they would give me acid burn every 2 weeks from October till the middle of December! – or liver cleansing pills) is almost gone! Considerable acne and blackhead reduction – I still get some acne right before my period), no more excess grease. Noticeable skin turgor – it’s not as loose as it used to be, even my parents mentioned that!

6. Body temperature and blood pressure normalization – I used to be always cold, my normal body temperature was lower than normal people are supposed to have (35.1 instead of 36.6 C), same with blood pressure – 80/50 or even 80/- on a bad day sometimes which made me pale, dizzy, inactive, lazy…. Now I’m always hot, my lips are red and even my cheeks pretty often get rosy!

7. Joint pain and cracking free – my husband’s joints have been a trouble for years and mine started killing me after the last surgery and antibiotics.

8. Muscle pain free – in fact, much more flexible and responsive than ever!

9. Energy level is just fantastic! To be honest, I only felt this way on Prozac – happy and too energized. But it’s much better, because I’m not on meds, because there is no side effects like insomnia, hand shaking and stomach issues. I sometimes get so much energy, I’m actually scared of myself, lol! My husband calls me Turbo-broom 😀 I wake up and fall asleep easily and get those precious 8 hours! I feel fantastic both physically and emotionally! I can say the same thing about my cats who become much more playful and energetic lately! My husband just offered to go on the last bike ride this year – and it’s only 39 degrees F today!

10. Clear mind – my mind has been foggy for years now, my memory was terrible and not only would I forget events or people from some years ago but even some simple words, like everyday things, used to have troubles with grammar while speaking – it feels completely different now! Memory is sharp, attention is focused, even the abilities to taste and smell things increased, and all the other things one needs to feel great!

11. Great economy! First at got expensive – meat/fish/seafood is more expensive than grains, fruit and veggies. But now that the consumption of food has reduced drastically – I only need coffee with coconut cream and oil in the morning and one (rarely two) meal/s a day. The meal size is smaller too – don’t need that much anymore. Same with cats! And I don’t need that huge cup of coffee, just a small cup, about 4-5 sips.

11. My cooking skills improved, even though I’ve always loved cooking but it’s gotten to a brand new level with your helpful tips, advice and detailed instructions! All the things I cooked according to your recipes we just loved!

Thank you for teaching me this way – a real godsend way for me and all my family! And you’ve made it so easy and understandable! You are making difference in a great way! God bless you and your wonderful family!

Meanwhile, have a Happy Thanksgiving and take those huge thanks from our family!” Irena

To start on your path to health and healing, click HERE.

KETO DURING PREGNANCY

I get a ton of emails a few months after these consults telling me that they are ecstatic and are now pregnant but are wondering on what to eat now. As if this diet of REAL food would be harmful to a fetus. There are many reasons why to not add in certain foods like gluten and dairy. Many times when cravings get the best of pregnant clients and they consume these foods, the auto-immune response results in a miscarriage. But even if the clients are committed about staying away from gluten and dairy, they often worry that too low of carbs is bad for the fetus. You will never find evidence of this, but you will read it all over the web. The information that clients read have a few flaws:

1. A huge mistake is when people and doctors compare benign dietary ketosis to diabetic ketoacidosis. You can produce ketones in a starvation state. So instead of using a well-formulated low carb diet, they starved pregnant rats to get them into ketosis. The flaw in that evidence should be obvious.

2. The last form of this “evidence” is when they sliced up the brains of rat fetuses and saturated them in ketones. What happened was that the brain cells lived but it stopped producing new brain cells. This is thought to be evidence that ketosis causes retardation.

Now let’s dive into the facts. The lean human body is 74% fat and 26% protein by calories. Fats are a structural part of every human cell and the preferred fuel source of the mitochondria, the energy-burning units of each cell. A fetus naturally uses ketones before and immediately after birth. Many studies done on pregnant pigs that are placed on ketogenic diets have fetuses with “increased fetal brain weight, cell size and protein content. In the early stages of pregnancy there is an upsurge in body fat accumulation, which is connected to hyperphagia and increased lipogenesis.

In the later stages of pregnancy there is an accelerated breakdown of fat depots, which plays an important role in fetal development. The fetus uses transported placental fatty acids as well as two other products: glycerol and ketone bodies. Even though glycerol crosses the placenta in slight proportions, it is a superior substrate for “maternal gluconeogenesis” (remember earlier, I discuss regular gluconeogenesis where we make glucose from protein when needed which is the preferred way of making glucose), and maternal glucose is the main substrate crossing the placenta. Heightened ketogenesis in fasting conditions or with the addition of MCT oils, create an easy transference of ketones to the fetus which allows maternal ketone bodies to reach the fetus, where the ketones can be used as fuels for oxidative metabolism as well as lipogenic substrates.

During pregnancy, women become even more sensitive to carbohydrates due to an evolutionary adaption in which they become slightly insulin resistant to allow a positive flow of nutrients to the developing fetus through the placenta. If the mom was more insulin sensitive than the fetus we could end up in a nutrient shortage situation. Biology fixes this problem by making mom a little insulin resistant, effectively “pushing” nutrients to the fetus. This rationalizes just how important feeding you and your fetus a nutrient dense ketogenic diet is.

Breast-milk is naturally very high in fat as compared to baby formula which is high in carbohydrates and sugar; causing babies to be addicted to sugar early in life. If a newborn is breastfed, it spends a lot of time in ketosis, and therefore keto-adapted. Keto-adapted babies can efficiently turn ketone bodies into acetyl-coA and into myelin. Ketosis helps babies develop and build their brains. I love it when my clients continue to consume those “fat bombs” they ate to get pregnant because the coconut oil helps with the baby because coconut oil has anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties which keep the mother and baby healthy. The extra coconut oil also helps with lactation, but more importantly the coconut oil increases lauric acid in the breast milk. Lauric acid is a rare medium-chain fatty acid found in human breast milk that supports healthy metabolism. Read more about this in my new book Keto-Adapted.

Click HERE to get a limited edition of the Hard Cover.

Click HERE to get a soft cover.

Thank you all for your love and support!