THE TOP 9 KETO MISTAKES That Sabotage Your Results!!!

Hey guys, hello and welcome to Total Health with Dr. Nick. Today I want to speak to you about the top nine Keto mistakes that you may be making. And you guys know that the ketogenic diet is probably the hottest diet in the world right now. It's constantly in the news. It's all the rage right now. Maybe you want to burn fat. You want to get ripped. You hear that it's great for building muscle. Maybe you even have hormone problems and you've heard it's so good at helping you regulate your hormones. Well guys, there are nine common mistakes you may be making that is throwing you out of ketosis and probably sabotaging all your efforts. And I hear this every day in my practice. Someone will come in and say, Dr. Nick, I can't do the keto diet. It's either too difficult or it just doesn't work. Well guys, like I said, there's nine mistakes that you may be making that you're not even aware of that are completely sabotaging your efforts. So today in this video, I'm going to talk to you about those. So let's dive on in. Number one, I find that most people are not measuring their macros. You really aren't keeping aware that, you know, you've got to have a certain percentage of fats, a certain percentage of protein, a certain percentage of carbs. And I think a lot of you go right into it just saying, hey, you know what? I'm just going to eat fat. I'm going to eat cheese. I'm going to eat bacon. But you're not actually taking measurements. And if you're not measuring, you really don't know how you are. Well, like I said, ketogenic diet is about 70% fat. It's about 25% protein and about 5% carbs. And I know it flies in the face of all you've been taught that you should eat this much fat. It's not healthy for you. It's going to give you a heart disease. It's going to clog your arteries. But guys, it's not the truth, a myth that's been dispelled since the 1950s. So you can eat about 70% of your calories that you take in over the course of the day. In the form of fats. The other thing too is you have to be able to measure it. And this is a great app that I found online called MyPlate. And in MyPlate, all you do is you log in, you put in your information, and then you can start tracking your macros. And with this, what I like to do is you can just take a scan of a bar graph and see if the food that you're eating meets these criteria. What's the ratios? It's got a really cool wheel in there that actually looks like this. That you can track your macros to make sure you're getting the right amount of nutrients. And that's a huge, huge thing, guys. If you're not tracking that on a daily basis, you might have too many proteins or too much carbs and not even know it. Number two, you're not measuring your ketones. So many times I hear people say the ketogenic diet doesn't work. And I say, listen, are you even measuring your ketones? Are you in ketosis? Do you even know it? Because you may be changing your diet to where you're eating a lot more fat, but you never get into ketosis. The only way to know, guys, is to actually measure. And there's three different ways you can do it. Number one, you can check your urine. And in your urine, you're basically looking at acetoacetate. And acetoacetate is really something that your body excretes out through the urine in ketone form in about the first couple of weeks. So you can buy these strips just like this. And you know the routine. You pee on one of these. And what ends up happening is you then compare it to the colors on the back. And it lets you know how much into ketosis you are. The only problem with this, guys, is like I said, after a couple of weeks, you're not going to be excreting acetoacetone anymore. Another test that's good, too, is a breath test. And with that, you're just measuring acetone. That's that sweetness you taste on your breath. There's a problem with that, I find. One is that the ketonics breathing device is a little bit expensive. It's a little pricey. It's about $150. But the bigger problem I have with it is that you can't typically get the measurements the same. Sometimes you blow harder. Sometimes you're less. Sometimes it's more forceful. And you don't really get that nice, even breath distribution to be able to know if you're getting a good quantitative measurement or analysis with that. The one I like the best is actually doing a blood test. And I know you're thinking, well, I got to do a blood test? How am I going to do that? Do I have to go to a lab? No, guys. You could just do it right in the privacy of your own home. It's actually very simple. A company I like to use is called Keto-Mojo. And it's a great company. And when I first signed up with this company or got their product, they were selling the test strips at about $1 apiece. Now, that's about a third of what they normally are. They're usually about $3. Or maybe you can find them on Amazon for $2 and change. But they're about $1 with the Keto-Mojo. So it's very good. All you do is you take what we call the lancet. You put a little needle tip in there. You prick your finger. It doesn't hurt. It's very quick, very easy. And then you put the measurement of blood right on the tip here. And then you take your measurement. And it lets you know exactly what your ketone levels are. I find this to be the most accurate. That's why I like doing this one the most. Now, number three, you're not getting enough fat. Guys, this is a high-fat diet. This is copious amounts of fat. And I know you're thinking, once again, I can't eat that much fat. That's crazy. It's outrageous. I've been told to avoid fat. But I will tell you guys, you want to be on a high-fat diet. It's so, so healthy for your cell membranes. It's so healthy for the mitochondria in your body. And you want to look back at maybe one of my old videos where I talked about the benefits of the ketogenic diet. But you want to get more fat. And it's got to be high-quality fat. You want the best kind of fats, your wild-caught salmon, your olives, your avocados, your nuts, your olive oils, your avocado oil. I like using a couple of things like, of course, MCT oil. So you can also check out my video on MCT oil. This is a fantastic product, whether it be this one or other ones. MCT oil gets your body into ketosis even faster. Another thing I like to use, and you probably heard me mention it before, is beef tallow. This is actually beef lard. And this company by Epic makes a really great grass-fed one. So you want to make sure that you're getting the right omega-6 to correct omega-3 ratio. And that's why you want to use grass-fed beef tallow. And this is great. This is just something you scoop out. It's basically lard. And you put it in your pan. And you can cook your eggs in it or do other things. Now, this is also a great product. And this is called ghee, G-H-E-E. And ghee is really clarified butter taken another step. So that way, you can use it at a higher heat. If you want to cook meat, you could put this on top of meat. It's basically, it's a clarified butter. But like I said, that next step took it to where it purified it even more and got it to where it's got a higher smoking point. So this is a great product. You could just use this as a spread. I like to use it on my coconut bread. I made some coconut bread this past weekend. And I just put it on it like as if it's just butter, basically. So it's a great way to get high-quality fats into your diet. But guys, remember, 70%, okay, to get into the keto-adaptive and keto-therapeutic stage, 70% of your daily calories need to be fat. So you need to make sure that the majority of what you're eating all day is in the form of fat. Number four, guys, you're eating too much protein. And I can tell you, I was guilty of this myself. You're thinking, if you're bodybuilders out there, you're going, I need to get ample amounts of protein. I don't want to have muscle wasting. But the great thing about the ketogenic diet is it's muscle-sparing. So you actually spare the muscle. And so you can use less protein than you normally use. And also, too, guys, if you're eating too much protein, it puts you into something called gluconeogenesis, which means you actually start to produce sugars. You actually produce glucose. So the protein that you take in can be converted to sugar, to glucose. So you don't want that because if you take in too much protein, it actually kicks you out of ketosis. So you want to avoid this. The second reason you want to limit your proteins is because even if it does come out to 20%, 25% of your calories, if you're taking in too much protein, you're going to take in a lot more extra calories in a day. So please be careful with that and lower your protein. Trust that it's going to work and get your protein levels lower. Number five, bad fats. I know you're probably thinking, well, wait a minute, isn't fat fat? No, there's really bad fats. And the problem with a lot of people going on the ketogenic diet is they just start throwing cheese and fat into their diets. And they're just eating bacon all day long. And so, guys, you have to be careful with this because not all fat is created equal. It has to be quality fats. And I've got a good video. Check out the one I did on the health benefits of saturated fats. And it'll give you an idea about the different types of fats, the saturated fats, the monounsaturated fats, the polyunsaturated fats, and really what they're about and how beneficial they are. But guys, you don't want to be living on bacon. It's not a great fat. Now, can you have it sometimes? Sure. I like the taste of bacon. But at the same time, I try to limit it to where I eat more healthier quality fats like I showed you on one of the previous slides. Also, too, stay away from these vegetable oils. Stay away from canola oil. They are really garbage oils. They're not good. They oxidize. They get rancid. And typically, they're higher in omega-6 fats, which means that they are bad for you. They're very, very bad in that they're highly inflammatory. So you want to watch these vegetable oils. I know you've been brainwashed on TV commercials that these oils are so good for you. But they are not. You want to stay away from these oils because they go rancid really quickly and they oxidize and are highly inflammatory. Number six, too much dairy. Guys, I see this all the time. And I was guilty of it myself. You're thinking, man, I want to get a little go-to snack. You get home and next thing you know, you're grabbing a piece of cheese. Well, the problem with dairy is that it's got a lot of health problems. It can cause inflammation. It can cause acne issues, allergies, skin conditions like eczema. And a lot of people, it's very embarrassing if you're walking around with skin conditions because it's something that's very obvious. People can see it very easily. It can cause congestion. You know that because you see times when you eat too much cheese, you start to get a lot of mucus production. It can cause asthma because you create that mucus in the lungs. Sinusitis. Most of you or many of you might experience this. You experience that post-nasal drip where you have that sinusitis all the time. There's always that mucus building up in the back of your throat where you're clearing your throat a lot. Irritable bowel, constipation, and weight gain. So guys, if you're going to have cheese, please at least make sure that it's grass-fed cheese and that it's raw. Those are going to be your best sources. But if not, you want to eliminate it. You want to keep it out of your diet because it causes too many other health problems. Number seven, too many carbs. This one's a real easy one to go over because remember, from one of the previous slides, I said your carbs should be about 5%. You know how easy it is to ramp up your carbs if you're saying, you know what? But a piece of fruit's okay. It's healthy. God made it. It's got its own little wrapper. It's not processed. There's no label on it. Well, guys, fruits are too high. Your berries are your better source for that. Remember, your vegetables are going to have carbohydrates in them too. But the good thing about a vegetable carb is that it's got a lot of fiber with it. So the net carb load on your body is lower. So you want to stay away from some of the starch in your vegetables. Well, squash is good. I can have squash. But the problem is a lot of these other vegetables, these more pulpy ones that have a thicker skin or a thicker pulp, I should say, they have a lot of starch in them. And you might not even see it because you're thinking, hey, it's vegetables. I can eat vegetables. You can, but you want to really reduce or eliminate your starchy vegetables and stick to your non-starchy vegetables such as your broccoli, your kale, your Brussels sprouts, your cabbage, things like that. It's a lot better for you and it's much lower in starch. Number eight, and guys, this is something we forget about all the time. We forget about our gut health. And this is a big one because so much of your immune system is housed inside your gut. So here's the problem. You start to eliminate your vegetables. You start to think, well, it's basically cheese and it's fat and I'll just take a tablespoon of butter and I'll have a slice of cheese and I'll have some bacon. And next thing you know, yeah, you've got a lot of fat in your diet, but you're not taking care of the microbiome that's inside of your gut. So the microbiome needs these high fiber vegetables like your kale, your broccoli, your cauliflower, your Swiss chard, things like that. You want to have a lot of good vegetables in your diet. I love to put things like kimchi in. And if kimchi is something that you've never heard about, check out a video I did on that too on how to make kimchi. Kimchi is basically fermented vegetables. So you're getting the probiotic from the bacteria. But the great thing is you're also getting the prebiotic, which is what the bacteria wants. And how many of you guys have ever heard about prebiotics? The prebiotic is the food, the cabbage, the bok choy, whatever the fermented vegetable is, that's what the bacteria is eating. So it needs that pre and probiotic to really get the best benefit. So you want to also add in bone broth. That's a great one too. People don't get enough bone broth in their diets. And bone broth is taken from either chicken or beef. And you basically are simmering and boiling those bones for a good 48 hours. And you get a lot of the marrow out and a lot of the bone broth. So it's a little different than chicken stock or bone stock because it's thicker. It's got a lot more of the collagen in it because you've let the marrow come out. So you can make it yourself, guys. Or you could just buy it. You could buy it in any health food store. You could even get it at Costco, things like that. You can get it at whatever supermarket is in your area. Just get bone broth, not bone stock. And the great thing about bone broth is it's very gut friendly. It's very good for your gut because a lot of people today are suffering with leaky gut syndrome where the actual cells and the bacterial wall are separating. You're getting these junctions where these tight junctions are developing gaps to where the bacteria and toxins from the foods that we eat and so on actually can go through the intestinal wall. And when it does, it gets right into your bloodstream and it creates this incredible inflammatory response. So good bone broth, taking care of your gut during a ketogenic diet is going to be a really big thing for you. And number nine, the final one, is you're not getting enough water. And guys, I see this a lot. You go on the ketogenic diet and next thing you know, you're starting to feel constipated. You're like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. I'm getting just bound up here because you're not getting enough water. Carbohydrates. For every gram of carbs, your body holds four grams of water. So because you've now lowered your carbs, you're going to start lowering how much water your body holds. So in some cases, that's a good thing because your body will let go of some of the excess water that it's been holding. But the problem is you're also losing some of the water your body needs. So you can increase the salt in your diet. And I know you're thinking, oh wait a minute, salt's going to give me high blood pressure. Guys, just use the Himalayan salt. Use the Celtic sea salt. Use just sea salt in general. Those are all good salts to do. Stay away from the sodium chloride white stuff on your table. That's what you don't want. But the other salts have a high mineral count, which will also help with your gut. And you want to add more water into your diet. So make sure you're drinking a lot of water. You know, that old adage about eight 8-ounce cups a day or glasses a day. Whatever works for you. But you want to start adding more water in because many of you are not getting enough water and it's creating a constipation for you. So guys, I hope you liked the video. If you do, please like, share, comment, and subscribe. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you like about the video. Let me know of other videos you'd like for me to maybe do. So guys, I hope this is good information for you. Ask me any questions you want. I always respond to my questions online. And guys, have a blessed day. Go keto. Keep up the good work. And you're going to do great. Have a blessed day. Bye-bye.