Brianna sank into the sofa, and groaned as she leaned over to pull on her shoes. It was hard to reach them, and she grunted repeatedly as she reached down to tie her laces. Uggghhhhh. She just had to lose weight. She was too big around her waist to comfortably reach her feet anymore. How did this happen? When did this happen? Was it the pandemic? She hadn’t noticed, but she had been forced to buy larger clothes to be comfortable. She should have noticed that! Or…maybe she had…and didn’t care enough to do something about it. Everything had seemed so futile for a long time…and it had been harder and harder to care. For things like her weight to even matter at all. While she drank her coffee she browsed on her laptop. Ketogenic metabolic therapy (KMT) showed up in an email, so she opened it.
Ketogenic Metabolic Therapy is Food as Medicine
The email was sponsored by a nutrition organization that touted this month, March, as National Nutrition Month by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Hmmmm. Why was she receiving an email from them?
I mean, she thought, I try to eat from the 5 basic food groups, but it isn’t always that convenient. I do eat a lot of fast food too, and frozen prepared food. Whatever I can manage.
Bottom line, she didn’t think it mattered much.
But she wondered why she felt so draggy. Did she sleep enough last night? Her legs felt heavy, and it was a chore to get ready for work. She’d been noticing this for a few months, and wondered if she’d gained THAT much weight in her legs specifically? Were they just so so much heavier than they had been? If only she’d known about ketogenic metabolic therapy.
As she walked to the car, she tripped and nearly fell on her face. It startled her, and sent a sensation of panic jolting through her. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t catch her breath. It washed over her how awful it would have felt if she’d fallen hard on the concrete. She was only 25, but it would have hurt. Bad.
Absent-Mindedness Wasn’t A Joke
Once in the car, she couldn’t find her keys. She dug through her purse and didn’t find them. She went back in the house and looked everywhere! Where were they? Finally, she realized they were in her hand. She rolled her eyes. This happened... All. The. Time.
Even after she started the car and put it in gear, she was still shaking from that near fall. This had been happening more and more, where something unexpected struck her with a panicked feeling. Losing her keys hadn’t helped.
Why were her reactions so intense? For several months, she’d found herself making mountains out of molehills, mostly at work. But…at home too, now that she thought about it. She couldn’t seem to let things slide off her back. Everything was a big, bad event.
She felt raw…and volatile.
She determined she would look at that email that caught her attention after work. There was a lot to learn, and soon she would begin to learn about ketogenic metabolic therapy and how it can heal.
While she ate her dinner that evening, she scanned her emails to find the one about National Nutrition Month. It mentioned the concept of “farm-to-fork.” Farm to what? She followed links and kept reading.
Brianna learned about the nutrition found in foods grown on carefully managed farms, where soil was allowed to rest and restore nutrients, and how much that improved the nutrition of the vegetables grown there. She learned about grass fed beef, and grass finished beef. Now this was something she’d never heard of.
She knew grass fed beef provided more nutrition when you consume it. But grass finished? She dug deeper. And learned more.
Grass Fed Beef or Grass Finished Beef?
So it turned out that grass finished beef is very different from grass fed. “Grass fed” refers to cattle that were fed grass at some point in their lives… it might be that they started eating grass when they were young, then were fed other things, like grain. “Grass finished” beef refers to cattle fed nothing but grass their entire lives.
She learned that grass finished beef has a deeper red color than traditional beef because of its high vitamin E content from the grass the cow ate. Vitamin E is extremely beneficial in helping to balance cholesterol, reduce free radicals, improve vision…in fact, this said it seemed to lower risks of some types of cancer.
It also had nothing added, like hormones, and was rich in antioxidants vitamins like A, B6, B12, D and E. These improve skin health, strengthen immunity, and improve your memory and mood.
Hmmmm… my mood…and memory? This is surprising. I never thought much about nutrition before, and it sure never occurred to me that the food I eat can make my mood better or worse…or my memory, for heavens sake!
Brianna searched the internet for more articles about farm to fork… and nutrition… and mood. She saw articles about ketogenic diet and how it can help all sorts of medical problems. She ran across the term ketogenic metabolic therapy. Now this was brand new to her. The concept of using a ketogenic diet to treat metabolic illness.
Definitely not her wheelhouse.
But wait. The next article she scanned talked about metabolic syndrome, and metabolic conditions. And it described symptoms she actually had. Like weight gain, a spreading waistline, lack of energy, apathy, fatigue. People described feeling weighed down, emotionally and physically.
Brianna had to admit it to herself. This could be HER.
Then, she ran across a link to Metabolic Psychiatry so she clicked. It was informative, and described their program for helping people improve their outlook and mood, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and a host of other conditions by using light exercise and food as medicine. And she read about ketogenic metabolic therapy.
Wha…?
Food as medicine?
She learned that when a person has this “metabolic syndrome,” a most effective way to treat it is by drastically reducing carbohydrates, and eating a wide variety of farm grown foods that are first, low in carbohydrates, plus from all the color groups.
And to eat foods high in fat. So it might include avocados, and cheeses, coconut or olive oil (avoiding seed oils), grass fed butter, fatty fish like salmon, tuna, and trout, grass finished beef, and heritage pigs that are allowed to forage in grass.
She learned that ultra processed foods like frozen pizza, lunchmeat, potato and corn chips (her weakness), donuts !!Oh NO!!, and artificial sweeteners, were all contributing to her metabolic problems.
It had never, EVER, occurred to her that her snacks and fast food – and frozen dinners with diet drinks – were all contributing to how bad she felt.
So, Brianna found a program on this website that offered support, a dietitian to help her with planning her diet, and group conversations along with walks in nature, to help her reset her life.
She called for an appointment.
Learning… To Improve Her Life
It was time to get serious, and learn.
She was able to get an appointment to learn about the program on Friday.
Brianna found out she was depressed and had moderate anxiety, as well as brain fog. No wonder she’d been so down. She also learned she was pre diabetic. Who knew? She should have, if she’d been paying attention.
But that was ok. She was paying attention now. And she was going to find out what to do to fix her mind and her body.
Brianna joined the Touchpoints 180™ program and got to work. She knew this was going to be challenging. But she wanted to improve her life. So she set herself up to start reading all she could.
The first thing she did when she got home was to throw away all the frozen pizza, burritos, TV dinners, ice cream, cookies, bread, rice, and potatoes. She knew this would surely be a learning experience, but those foods were glaringly obvious offenders.
LOW CARB. That was the ticket.
Then, a quick trip to the grocery store to load up on salmon, trout, scallops, grass fed beef. (They’d told her at the Metabolic Psychiatry office that they had sources for grass finished beef, so she’d find out about that this week.) She bought avocados, olive oil, coconut oil, kale, broccoli, eggs — good whole food, not powders, processed or commercial “keto”.
Once home, she prepared her first meal. “Wow! This is delicious!!” It was scallops sautéed in garlic and grass fed butter with a caprese salad of cherry tomatoes, thick mozzarella slices, and fresh basil leaves. It was a symphony of flavor! East. And night and day better and more delicious than fast food.
She hadn’t realized what she was missing!
Weeks passed. Her transition to therapeutic nutritional ketosis the first week wasn’t unpleasant, though she heard that it was for some people. It’s not to say that she never missed the junk food she’d lived on all her life. Sometimes French fries sounded appealing, but she would just eat a few avocado slices and the desire dissipated.
She was so focused on buying food, attending the nature walks, preparing meals to take to work as well as to eat at home, she forgot to weigh herself. So after 4 1/2 weeks she stepped on the scale before her shower.
Brianna’s jaw dropped.
She’d lost 18 lbs!! No wonder her clothes felt so frumpy.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she smiled a big, bright smile. She hadn’t noticed, but she could see it now. She was slimmer. What a reward!
She decided she would go shopping on Saturday, and get some clothes that fit better. Maybe only a couple outfits, because she knew she would lose more.
After 5 1/2 months, she had lost 35 lbs, and was still losing. She had dropped 3 dress sizes so far.
But more important, the fatigue, anxiety, and depression were gone. She had energy, hope, and anticipation about the future. Her thinking was more clear and sharp than it had been in many years…well, since she was a child.
And she was feeling so much calmer, she was coping with life better, and enjoyed a wonderful feeling of wellbeing.
Plus, an important and added benefit revealed itself at her next doctor visit. Her A1C had dropped and was low enough she was no longer considered pre-diabetic. She’d dodged that freight train, too!
And this was all about the food she ate!
The term ketogenic metabolic therapy (KMT) had meaning for her now that she had experienced such improved health, and freedom from symptoms, as a result of the way she was now eating and her involvement in the Touchpoints 180™ program.
She knew this was not a fad. This was a whole new way of life that was solving her problems and removing her obstacles. And it was sustainable. She decided to maintain a low carb lifestyle and a ketogenic diet.
Her instincts told her if she went back to eating like she used to, she’d end up diabetic, sick, and depressed again. She wanted no part of that.
This wasn’t an experiment. This was a new and better way to live. And she was going to keep living it.
With joy.
What About You?
Do you struggle with symptoms of metabolic dysfunction, like erratic blood sugars, weight gain around the waist plus everywhere else? Depression, anxiety, brain fog? Maybe PTSD, OCD, or bipolar disorder?
Perhaps you haven’t realized that these conditions are metabolic, just as diabetes is. If not, you may not realize your symptoms can lift with a personalized, consistent, ketogenic diet that brings you into therapeutic nutritional ketosis.
Well, it can.
If you have symptoms like Brianna, and you hadn’t connected the dots to realize you can experience relief with ketogenic metabolic therapy, call us.
We’ve set up a way to help you get the relief you need through Metabolic Psychiatry, including therapeutic carbohydrate restriction with a personalized, whole foods ketogenic diet.
Let us help you achieve a whole new level of health and wellbeing. That’s what we’re here for.
To the restoration of your best self,
