The Ketogenic Girl, Vanessa Spina, wasn’t always on a high-protein carnivore diet.
She actually spent most of her life as a vegetarian.
So what changed for her?
After struggling with weight gain, low energy, and just feeling generally unwell, she decided to cut both gluten and sugar from her diet and added in fish and eggs.
She immediately started to feel better and wondered what else she could do to optimize her health.
This led her to try intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet from a pescatarian approach.
But, despite eating what she thought was a clean keto diet, she gained over 20 lbs when her initial goal was to lose weight.
It didn’t take long for her to realize she was making two common keto mistakes and, once she fixed them, she started to feel better and her weight moved in the opposite direction.
There’s something that happens as you start to eat more real foods, and so it becomes this gradual thing that becomes easier and easier to do. Click To TweetFast forward even further and now Vanessa’s on a high-protein carnivore diet and has never felt better.
That’s why, in this podcast episode, she shares her journey from vegetarian to carnivore and everything she’s learned in between, including the biggest areas she’s struggled with.
Vanessa also puts the protein myth to rest and shows you how an increase in protein really affects ketosis and what it did for her.
As a best selling keto cookbook author who has over 300k Facebook and 100k Instagram followers, Vanessa’s made it her mission to help other people use the ketogenic diet as a way to heal their bodies and turn on the switch to burn fat for fuel.
To help you do just that, Vanessa and I chatted about these topics:
- Why she went from being vegetarian for most of her life to trying the ketogenic and carnivore diet
- Where she first started to make changes in her diet
- The biggest differences she noticed since switching back to eating meat
- Where Vanessa struggled in the early phases of keto
- The one food group that caused her to gain 20+ pounds on keto despite having a goal of weight loss
- Why Vanessa believes that blood sugar testing is a better marker than ketones
- 3 things to ask yourself when testing your blood glucose levels
- What Vanessa focuses her attention on now (hint: it’s not all about ketones)
- How having high ketones does not mean you’re burning fat
- How to switch from fat storage mode to burning fat
- Why carb replacement foods can be helpful for the transition but should not be used as a long term strategy
- The one thing she recommends cutting out if weight loss is your goal on keto
- Her #1 tip for eating keto while out at a restaurant or traveling
- How her blood sugar has changed since going from keto to carnivore
- What your focus really should be on keto if you want to reap the benefits of nutritional ketosis
- What happened when she increased her protein intake to 172g per day
- Why eating more protein didn’t cause her blood sugar to increase and what did instead
- What helped her finally reach the other side of food addiction
- How Vanessa was able to correct her appetite
- Who she believes might benefit from a carnivore diet approach
- How protein may raise blood sugar levels in people with this condition and how to combat this
- Why you should pay more attention to your food quality
- What Vanessa supplements with on a carnivore diet
- The one nutrient that’s not found in meat and why you may not need as much of it on carnivore
- Why low fiber veggies may be a better option for some people than cruciferous ones
- My nutrient-dense, low-fiber, go-to veggies
- Why some people would benefit from shifting away from increasing your fiber intake
- Vanessa’s philosophy when it comes to eating meat as someone who’s been on a vegetarian diet and on the carnivore diet
- Where she recommends buying your meat
- Why it’s okay to have low ketone numbers
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Mentioned in This Episode
- Vanessa Spina’s website
- Vanessa Spina’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter
- 28 Day Keto Challenge
- Keto Essentials Cookbook
- Fast Keto podcast
- Keto Reset
- Dr. Ted Naiman: Ketosis and a diet rich in protein
More Resources
- The Glucose Ketone Index: The Ketone Levels Chart to Optimize Your Health
- The Carnivore Diet: Can Eating Only Meat Supercharge Your Health?
- Is Too Much Protein Bad for Ketosis?
- How to Order Low Carb Restaurant Food On A Ketogenic Diet
- Episode 23: Nora Gedgaudas – Getting The Right Nutrients To Thrive, Increasing Food Quality, and How We Evolved To Eat
- Fast Keto Podcast Episode 41: Perfecting Ketones, Carnivore & Protein with Dr. Anthony Gustin