How the Keto Diet Can Help Shift Your Mindset | Suzanne Ryan on Health Theory

gosh isn't just a sacrifice to give up bread and cookies and candy and things like that I really focus on the fact that my biggest sacrifice was when I wasn't able to live my life and now not having those foods is not the second face the sacrifice was my life before I definitely think that it's more mindset now than I realized when I started everybody welcome to hell theory my name is Tom Bilyeu I'm the co-founder of quest nutrition and the co-founder of impact theory and I believe that to live a truly optimal life there are three things you need to focus on diet exercise and mindset today we're gonna be diving into the health side of the equation and we have an amazing guest with us she is an author and social influencer who lost over 120 pounds after switching to the ketogenic lifestyle and she documented her entire weight loss journey on her youtube channel which by the way is awesome she's super vulnerable super inspiring and full of useful information she's the author of simply Kido and the face behind at keto Karma please help me in welcoming Suzanne Ryan and you won the quest super fan award we initially met yes yeah very cool to have you here now on this set talking about your new book which is very impressive and what I love about the book is the way that it starts which is how I want to start here so you've obviously had this massive transformation which is absolutely incredible but to really understand that and to know how powerful it is we have to start back really when you were a kid walk us through as your parents go through the divorce like what's happening what your relationship with food was like yeah so basically our family was like pretty close in it and then once we moved to Florida I was probably in like the second or third grade and my parents got divorced and it was a really messy divorce there was just a lot of conflict the two didn't talk to each other we were kind of torn in the middle then we ended up moving in with my dad and we actually lived in some places that didn't even have kitchens like just kind of like really living in garages I mean we were just kind of barely getting by so my dad didn't really know a whole lot about nutrition or cooking and we grew up on fast food so we would drive through McDonald's and all these different things and we lived on processed food Pizza anything that was quick and cheap and easy so that kind of ended up being the thing that I grew up with it that that was the food that I loved because that's what I was used to I know that feeling well so growing up in a morbidly obese family for me it was that that's just how you ate like I didn't really think about it and I remember in your book you were saying oh we live for discount pizza night yeah and you know we had the same kind of rhythm and honestly like I didn't even think like did you think a lot about it in terms of what was happening with your weight at that time or was it only when you started to get reflections back at school yeah I would say not until I was more into middle school did I actually start to see like there was like an emotional component tied into like why I like to eat on top of just the taste of the food so it it really didn't seem to affect my weight a lot at first but then when I started getting into middle school it was really set me apart from everyone else and you talk in the book pretty eloquently about it but what was that time like in terms of being picked on and stuff like that um it was hard because I think during that time you're really trying to figure out who you are and what's important to you and what life is all about and there's just so many different things that you're going through and I think having so much negativity really made me second-guess who I was and my self-esteem really took a hit I just kind of felt like I didn't have that sense of belonging and I was trying so hard to get that and it just never really was there and it was just a really lonely time and I ended up kind of just turning to food even more because no matter what I was going through food was always a constant even my parents would say like oh you know that you've had a bad day like let's go get some ice cream you know it's they were trying to do whatever they could to help you know make things better for me as well and food was kind of one of their tools as well and what do you teach your kids about it now like how do you not let them get into that same kind of whether you're high or you're low turn to food to either celebrate or soothe yourself yeah so I feel like this is a trickiest part because I don't want my daughter to have issues with food I don't her to be fearing food but I want her to also be able to be a kid and go to a birthday parties and have like a cupcake if she wants but what I try to do is you kind of give her some guidance and let her know what some healthy options are and kind of let her make some choices and you don't give her like two options that are good choices and let her kind of figure it out herself but I'm not overly hard on her about it because I don't want her to have like a negative relationship with food and be fearful and constantly worried about it but I definitely think that there needs to be a foundation of what nutrition is which I didn't have at all it's interesting did you know that the food was tied to your weight gain or was that somewhat like it like for me as a kid I literally didn't equate oh my mom and my sister and my dad are all heavy because of what they eat so that this was a trickiest part for me because everyone in my family was thin except for me and we all everyone ate the same thing so there would be months or times where we wouldn't drink water so it was like the main thing that we drank and I was the only one in my family that had a weight issue so I was like what is wrong with me you know and and it was kind of interesting because it's tied into um like not feeling good enough not feeling deserving and I'm like and I can't you know I can't even eat the same thing so very eating without having it affect me differently so I just felt completely out of the loop in every way it's really interesting you talked about that I can't remember if it was in your book or your blog but you talked about like I really thought I'm gonna lose this weight this is gonna be amazing I don't feel so good about myself yeah and then it didn't quite pan out that way right so what what's your and I don't know that you would call it a movement but one thing that I find interesting about where you're starting to go as an influencer is talking about not just a ketogenic diet but self-love and how you get yourself in the right headspace what's that process been like I think initially my focus was so much on keto because it changed my life so much but then I started really breaking down to the fact that I'm the one that changed my life that diet was a tool but ultimately I was really making myself a priority and putting myself first and investing in myself and seeing my own value and I think when I realized what a huge role that that actually played on my ability to stick to something and to invest in myself then I was like wait this is the thing that we're not talking about because a lot of people are struggling with their weight they don't want to talk about it because you feel shame you're embarrassed it's just a lot of things it's hard to talk about you know if people would ask me about my weight before I would not even tell people the size of my clothing let alone tell people the you know how awful I was feeling or how sad I was feeling so to be able to now just come out and be like hey I know how that feels and I can promise you that you can actually break through to it is the really main message because I think there's going to be so many different ways that people can eat that works for them like maybe keto will work for me but not for somebody else but the common theme is believing in yourself and really having that transformation take place because you're investing in yourself so walk me through so it's interesting that you because a lot of people get so religious about their way of eating and it's no longer about hey let's find something that works for you it's all about this work for me and I'm gonna make sure everybody knows about it so how do you like navigate those waters that work so well for you how do you knowing that you had tried so many other things that failed one what was that like going through those failures and internalizing that and then to how do you help people get on the other side of that especially if keto doesn't work for them I think the failure thing having that shift of instead of looking at failure as a bad thing looking at failure as a good thing is really what pushed me through because I started looking at it of instead of I failed I'm no good I'm like hey I failed and I know what doesn't work now so it's time to move on to the next thing so instead of letting it wipe me out I'm like awesome this didn't work and it's time to try something else so I totally redefined what failure looked like and I was actually kind of excited because I'm like alright it's time to move on to the next thing like it's time to pick up and move on because for far too long I just let it wipe me out and and I just was so defeated and ultimately I was learning what things I could do to get to where I wanted to go and I think the common theme is just never giving up you have to keep pushing forward and that's what I try to tell people is like no matter how down-and-out you feel you have to get back up and you have to keep going because something will click but if you stop then it will I was for someone to come save me and I remember saying gosh I can't wait until somebody makes uphill where I'll be able to lose weight and I was always putting it off on somebody else and then finally I was like oh my gosh it's like within me to change my life and and that's really when things changed I want to talk about that moment so I know that there was one thing going on in there which was your friend's son was diagnosed with the terminal disease what happened why did that hit you so hard what did that come to mean for you yeah so my friend's son was diagnosed with tay-sachs disease and he was about 1 years old at the time and when that diagnosis hit my daughter was around the same age as her son and immediately I just felt like a jerk because I was like gosh I was given this healthy body I don't have any terminal diseases and I'm totally taking my life for granted and I really wished at that moment that I could switch places with him because I felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life I wasn't showing up for myself and I just felt so bad knowing that there was this little boy who was never gonna have a chance to have a normal life and yet I was given the ability to do so and I was sitting on a sideline so in that moment I decided to start living for him you know and and sometimes I feel like it takes living or being inspired by somebody else to give you enough strength to really get there yourself but I first remember actually when he passed away and I was like I will not live my life the same way and anymore it's really incredible because here is sort of hearing these things a little bit out of order when you're talking about you know you got to keep going and it there is a click moment there will be something that will ultimately work for you but if you stop then it's you're never gonna get to that moment but you're so like the anti polished Instagram feed where you're super real and you're super honest the book is no exception and so you really have laid out like how much you struggled and how many times you thought this is the one I got it and then you know something would happen you'd fall off your diet and you would back out again what was that doing to your sense of self and then how did you get out of that like what was it about seeing somebody else who didn't have what you had that really flipped that switch for you well I think ultimately like having all those failures did leave me to give up on myself and and really just I kind of almost expected like even when I started Quito it was my January first plan and I failed the same day like I actually had to restart Quito so that's when I really started to see that even though kita was a great tool that there was a lot more to it and I feel like the mindset is so huge and anything that any changes that we're making in life if we're really gonna stick to them if we're really gonna chase our dreams and we're really gonna be passionate about life you really have to kind of wake up in the morning and like want to go for every single day and it's not something that just comes naturally I feel like I had to you know it's kind of like something I had to keep working on it's not like oh I get it one day it's like every day I wake up and sometimes I'm feeling it sometimes I'm not and when I'm not I have to get myself there again and so it's not something that I think you just learn for me it was just something that I have to keep working at and so what do you say I've got to imagine you get asked all the time like hey I started these diets I really want it but then I run out of energy and I just don't stick with it and they're looking at you with that hopeful expectation of how like if I'm always stopping on day two or three how do I make it today four and five well I think and this is where I think keto really helped me because I definitely had a food addiction so eating foods that are higher in sugar definitely cause that cycle of cravings and for me when I switched to keto my appetite went down I thought so much better and it kind of was able to help me put food in its proper place and I had a healthier relationship with food at that point because I wasn't constantly like a drug addict to food you know I was just able to eat and then be full and go about my day and think about other things where before food was all of my thoughts like I would be thinking about you know breakfast and and lunch and dinner all you know all day long and my whole even vacations were planned around what food places I would go so it ruled my life and when I switched to being PETA and I didn't have that feeling anymore then it really kind of freed me up to think about other things that's really interesting how much of this do you think is like Kido worked for me or was it that what was going on in your life with your friend's son and just how many times you failed and how frustrated you were like how much of it is the mindset and how much of it was okie to actually broken addiction and allowed me to neurochemical II get out of this yeah so I think in the beginning I thought that it was a lot higher like I would probably say like 70% keto and I first started but now I kind of look at it that it was like 70% mindset I think keto definitely is a great tool but ultimately if you aren't getting up every day and knowing that that is an investment in yourself I think it people can look at it as all of this is like a hard thing to stick to but the thing that I often talk about and say is when people are like gosh isms it's a sacrifice to give up bread and cookies and candy and things like that I really focus on the fact that my biggest sacrifice was when I wasn't able to live my life and now not having those foods is not the second physis sacrifice was my life before and not taking an active role and not you know just being in a really dark place I definitely think that it's more mindset now than I realized when I started I'm gonna guess that your for your community very much a poster child for the person who did it they made it and thusly become a beacon of hope for them what do you say to people who reach out and they they want it in that like vague way if somebody wants it but they're not really prepared to take action like how do you approach that when they're like I want it but I don't have the motivation so the thing that I always tell people is just to do baby steps so even for me the very first thing that I started doing before I even knew what kita was was I stopped drinking soda so I kind of think that sometimes people bite off a little bit too much at once so if you just start with one thing and then you're successful with sticking to that and then you can add on and then add on to that and add on to that and then eventually you've made a whole lot of changes little by little so it doesn't feel so overwhelming so why kita why tell us a little bit about the diet why did it work is it something that you recommend other people yeah so keto is a low carb high fat moderate protein lifestyle I kind of feel like there is not a one-size-fits-all with diets but for me the thing that I hear over and over is it's like the thing that really helps people who feel like they have tried everything else and nothing else has worked but ultimately I feel like that's the way that we were really meant to be eating to begin with I don't think that all of these processed foods and all the things that are so high in sugar was what we were supposed to be eating so now switching to this way of eating I feel so much better I actually grew up thinking that I had really bad stomach issues and had to get all kinds of testing because I was always feeling sick all the time and then when I switched to keto I was like it was totally gone so and then on top of that in just one year I had lost 100 pounds so it's like obviously the only thing that I changed with what it was what I was eating so to me that was kind of like all right like this we're going in the right direction where are you going with it now is it focusing on the cookbook angle what from keto lifestyle perspectives got you excited these days well I like they're having the recipes in there to give people an idea of what kinds of things they want to be cooking and I don't know I just think it's great to give people a start of different ideas but definitely for me the next thing that I really want to focus on is like the vulnerability aspect and just you know talking to people about the struggles and to have that be kind of more center stage because I think a lot of times we don't talk about that and even as I started getting more public about it a lot of my closest friends were like oh gosh like we had no idea that you were struggling so bad like why didn't you ever say anything but for me I was always super hard because none of my friends had really a weight issue so my friends would be talking to me about how they needed to lose 10 pounds and I was like oh like you're like I don't even want to hear about that you know like it was just really difficult so I I didn't really feel like I had a place where I could say like hey like I'm feeling really trapped in my body I'm feeling like completely hopeless like I am uncomfortable like I'm in my 20s and I'm getting out of bed and my knees are popping like I'm scared you know so to be able to actually say that to the people in my life was challenging like I just wasn't really at a place where I felt like I could talk about it and now it's like I want to talk about it because I know other people are going through it and I don't want them to be quiet anymore so if you could travel back in time and speak to yourself then but as an unrecognizable version of yourself because I just want to know like how would you and if you would how would you approach somebody who's at that phase were there they are shutting down inside it is not that they're they've just come to peace with their body like they're inside they've got a real problem and they are not in a good place how and would you approach somebody I think the best thing you can do for people in that place is to listen because I think a lot of times we don't understand what different people are going through there were so many people in my family who tried to have these like little powwow with me when I was trying to lose weight and I wasn't ready so I wasn't really that open to it and it kind of just made me feel even more to myself because I was like they don't understand what it's like they think it's so easy so I didn't really like that angle like when I was ready I you know I was kind of just at a certain place in my life where I knew I really wanted to change so I kind of feel like people do need to get to that point in their own time and I think listening is just the better thing to do I'm gonna ask you a really hard question what would you do if your daughter she's 13 school starts being really hard on her and she starts putting on weight and when you asked she says no I'm I'm not eating anything that you don't prepare for me but she is starting to get heavy ten pounds 15 pounds 20 pounds what would you do well at that point I think you know it's just so hard because it's like you don't want to make weight the focus of what people identify as like their self-worth so I would really try to make sure that I need like she knew how much I loved her and that she could tell me anything and I would try to just be like very supportive but I think what I would probably do is have more of like a family-style discussion so it was less about like focused on her and more about like you know talk of how we were doing things in the family but it's just so tough because it's like with food issues and kids it's like we do know that sometimes when parents are a little bit too crazy about the guidelines that kids end up sneaking food and things like that happened so I think I would probably just try to have it be more of like a family discussion I asked because I had a fan of my other show impact Theory had a little brother and his little brother was being bullied because of his weight and they brought it up to me and asked for my advice I'm like look I'm not the right person to give advice this I've never had to talk to somebody about that I don't have kids but I said I'll get on the phone with him so let's do like a Skype call so we did a Skype call and in like in an instant I realized every strategy I have works with adults and not at all with kids and it was like whoa what do I do because so my first question was just like hey look first of all live whatever life you want so if you internally like in your mind you are totally a piece of being heavy yeah rad like no worries whatsoever but if inside you're actually unhappy and you want the the bullying to stop you want to get in shape then one is that true and he just shrugged his shoulders and so it's like to me that's a yes that's like a huge yes right it's like it's here but I don't want to talk about it right and so I was like wow I'm gonna get off this call having been of absolutely no use and it's literally reason 462 I don't have children yeah because I think I'm incapable of helping but looking at what you're doing like so much of it is aimed at at really helping people and I can feel as your rhetoric shifts away from just the diet into the emotional side that these are the waters that you're gonna be navigating what advice do you have for our friend I think ultimately I think the best thing to do is just be true to yourself and and know that ultimately I had to get to a place where I stopped letting my value be defined by what everybody was thinking of me how did you do that work because I heard you when you posted that video I was like that's really impressive so let me what I actually heard was you stopped doing YouTube for like a day here I did and why did you stop so I stopped because basically like I was just getting all kinds of feedback that was a lot of really negative feedback and a lot of stuff that was really hurtful and I had spent so much of my life hearing things like that or people people were just saying awful things and there was a lot of good too but what I had realized in the process is I was letting both the good and the bad be kind of like the judge of like Oh am i alright today like am i helpful today or am i no good or am i you know not putting out anything valuable and I had to kind of get to that place where I was like wait a minute like all this noise what's happening it can't it can't be the thing that just defines how I am feeling about myself because then it's kind of back to like the ups and downs and I and I really needed to be at a more stable place and find that value within myself so I decided to take a break from YouTube and I just kind of worked on myself worked on the book thought about like what what really my passions were and what I was bringing to the table and finally I was really able to just get to a place where I was like all right like I'm ready now to put myself back out there and part of my struggle is allowing myself to be seen because I spent a good amount of my life hiding so now my new thing is you know don't say no to anything unless it's dangerous you know so everything out there that's scaring me I'm doing it because I am so tired of counting myself out of things and not showing up for myself that I feel like I'm kind of making up for lost time so I'm like alright saying what you need to say I'm gonna delete you and block you and I'm not gonna let it right now Maya prayed so I've just kind of learned to have a little bit of a thicker skin and know that what I'm doing is important I love that more than you can imagine so the whole notion of showing up for yourself I love that yeah what I want to know is there's a magic moment in there somewhere where something specific you said you were thinking about it but what conclusions did you come to that are hand off a bowl that allowed you to develop that thicker skin well honestly I feel like I found my straw through a lot of brené Brown books you know just listening to her talk about like the power of vulnerability and to really just kind of get to a place where I'm like I am valuable and the things that I'm talking about are important and reaching out and connecting with people and the passions that I have for really breaking through to the people who are in a place where I was and just like how much I genuinely wake up and you know want to work on that every single day I kind of thought my whole life that when I lost the weight that was gonna be the instant fix for me like that was the thing that was always out of reach and once I lost weight everything was going to be okay and that was a big epic lie that I told myself for a really long time and then I had blossom I'm like well great I'm still battling with feeling not good enough I'm still judging myself and picking myself apart and I'm still letting other people reign in on that as well so I think just kind of getting to a place where you're like I've had enough like I'm not going to let this cycle continue and knowing how detrimental that can be to your mental health so yeah I just kind of was reading a lot of different books I was actually reading a lot of books that you had recommended about mindset and I just kind of was like I'm not doing it anymore and little by little I just kind of was building up a new way of thinking that's amazing talk to me about Mick yeah seems like I love these bonuses yeah it you guys just seemed like teammates like through and through so but you guys got together when you were near your heaviest yeah so walk me through how were you able to open yourself up to being in a relationship when you were unhappy with yourself were there things that he did that sort of made you more open to that yeah honestly I think I actually remember even like when we started dating I actually specifically remember thinking like what does like why does he want to date me you know and I'm like God like I look back I know like that's so sad that I was feeling that way but there was really times where I was like what like is this a trick like what you know he was really the first person I had ever really dated but it's so cool because he had gone through similar struggles and actually before we met he had lost like almost 200 pounds yeah so like he had like we had a lot of very similar pain that we had been through and we could really relate on so many different levels but the man we started dating it's like two food addicts were in the room and like all the dating and restaurants and then we both ballooned up even more so when we got married we were both morbidly obese I had a heck of a time finding a wedding dress like it was just it kind of put a damper on the whole thing and a lot of times people will say like well why do you let your weight you know be something that really what could ruin of in a day like that but there's so many things that go on I mean even stuff like a close family member of mine was questioning why I would pay to have a photographer at my wedding oh yeah like and not even like nonchalantly saying it like straight up like why would you pay to have someone take your picture and it's like that kind of pain is heavy you know and so like on my wedding day like I didn't feel beautiful I didn't I wasn't enjoying the moment I was in like a white strapless dress and I was so self-conscious and you know I really wasn't able to really just be in the moment so on the list is definitely renewing our wedding vows going up but you know I think the best thing about Mick is that no matter what size I've been he is always pushed and and really made me feel like I was important and that you know even when I didn't believe it myself like he just he loved me through every size and believed in me through every size and he still to this day just looks at me exactly the same way he's just been such a constant and such a great support system and how did you guys navigate those waters of going through a process of trying to find yourself and become happy with yourself and it's it seems to me they could be pretty you guys have gone through such a transformation to have done it together somehow how did you make sure you were growing together I think it was just making sure that we really took the time to be invested in to like get into whatever the other person was doing so when we lived in Florida it was kind of like we were spinning our wheels a lot we didn't really have a whole lot of opportunity and Mick has kind of like a Cinderella story with his because he barely graduated from high school his family wasn't super involved in like his education and he just worked and worked and worked and now he's a senior software engineer in Silicon Valley so it's like he was a like he's just a go-getter and I think that mentality like really kind of rubbed off on me and it inspired me because I think a lot of times we think like oh well you have to have these steps to do something where really you're like no I can just do it if I work hard enough so having that mentality of just going for what we wanted and once we got to the point where we're like hey we can do whatever we want to do we're just standing in our own way I think we both just grew so much and luckily it was together as well so you just said something that I find it really intriguing that we were getting in our own way how how does one get out of their own way I think it comes down to the mindset it's instead of saying I can't do this I can't do that I feel that this I'm incapable of this I'm not good enough it's it's literally changing the thoughts like I would literally say to myself like stop saying this like I would must have looked like a crazy person like sometimes I go in the mirror and I would be like you can do this like it's gonna be okay it's don't let fear hold you back things can be scary and you can push through them you know I used to let fear just kind of be like the roadblock and now I'm like all right like what's so scary what's what's going on all right we can move past this all right let's let's do this so it's it's literally just retraining your thoughts to promote the ability to change that's really impressive I remember the first time that I was on national television I all bet had a panic attack like I had not quite mastered getting my anxiety into control at that point so seeing you do these TV appearances recently I was like man I am really impressed like how did you learn to deal with that kind of stuff where you know here's somebody that it hidden for so many years because she felt like she wasn't good enough wasn't worthy was afraid she was gonna say the wrong thing and now all of a sudden like three short years later you're on national television in one of the biggest spotlights you know I can imagine you did it like a champ I was terrified I was I was I mean absolutely I mean but see that that's a great thing is really being able to see that it's okay for things to be intimidating or to make you anxious but to not let it stop doing your tracks like before if someone was like hey do you want to go and be on the show I'd be like absolutely not like there is no way I mean even if I was invited to a party a small party I would be in the corner of the room trying to blend in so ultimately it was it's okay to still have things be scary and to be a new experience but then as you go through them you're like that really wasn't so bad and if I would have said no I would have just held myself back from something you know something else and so I think every time I stand up and I show up for myself and it really it wasn't as bad as what I maybe thought that it was going to be or I talked myself through it and got to the other side then I'm like all right like this is RA I can keep going forward to the next thing and then each thing that comes up isn't as scary because then you know that you've gone through stuff that you were afraid of and you got out on the other side alright so going back to Mick for a second what was his reaction when you guys went or when you went kedo he thought I was insane absolutely insane like he he I think a lot of times people have a really hard time wrapping their head around like a high fat diet and in his defense I had come home probably like every single year like usually around the year's resolution time with like this is it like this is gonna be the thing that we're gonna do and it's gonna change everything and you know we would stick to it for a couple weeks and then you know go right back to our old ways so he was very much used to me coming home with the you know diet of the week and actually when I started he did not start with me he was ordering pizzas while I was cooking keto in the kitchen and I was like I hate you but eventually I think it was you know a couple weeks in like I had lost like 21 pounds and he was like alright it's time for me to do keto - because you're serious this time like I know you when you get your mind set on something and like I see that this is really working like I know that I need to hop on board because I want to do this with you it's really impressive yeah so what was your favorite part about doing the book I think I really liked just being able to break things down in an approachable way for people so the beginning talks about my story so that people understand that I've been there I think that it's really important to see that you know when someone's like talking about changing your life it's one thing if you know they have all these great ideas but if they haven't been through the struggle themselves it's a little bit harder to get on the same page of like really understanding what it's like to be morbidly obese and how to overcome that and how difficult it really is so I just wanted to let people know that I had failed a hundred times too and and get people on the same page with that and then to break down the diet in a way that people could really understand it easily and have it not be intimidating was my main goal because I feel like a lot of times things can just get super overwhelming and I feel like having just a clean foundation of very simple explanations and then if people want to kind of take from there and learn and grow they could do that but I just wanted to give like a really positive and encouraging place for people to start so other than that it's a high fat moderate protein low to no carbohydrate diet what are what some of that clean foundation that you try to make sure people get well I mean basically I just break down like what foods people are going to be eating what foods you're going to be avoiding and why you're gonna be avoiding the certain foods and then I talk about like testing if people do want to test their ketones and just kind of like breaking down I went through and kind of answered all the emails that I get asked most frequently in there there's so many different ways that people do keto and there's so many different opinions and I just kind of went through step by step of like here's an approach and here's an approach what are some of the most frequently asked questions that you get asked so I get a lot of questions about like can you do this while you're traveling like or like when you're eating out like is it hard to stick to you know that's kind of like one of the things that I hear the most of people are trying to figure out like is this realistic is this long-term and what's your advice to that so I personally think that keto is very realistic to do and it's great for if you even if you're traveling even while I've been out on the book tour it's just been very easy it's so easy to modify things and I think in a restaurant yeah like any time when you're going out to eat you can just do very simple modifications to make things keto friendly so what I really like about it is you're not trying to like put food in containers or you're trying to put it like a point system like you're learning about the actual food that you're eating and then you're learning what ratios to eat the food into better fuel your body and what are so I'll give you a couple of mine my sort of keto friendly travel tips are I take a massive amount of macadamia nuts so those are like my go-to when I just need like a little snack or something yeah I get hamburgers at the restaurant no bun no sauce yeah and I can live between macadamia nuts and burgers like I could literally live forever yeah but then I also will take things like there's a company called keto cookie when Quest was doing keto products I literally stockpiled and froze them so what are some things that you do when you're traveling you know I don't really do a whole lot of like bringing stuff with me I just print it pretty much like when I go out I do exactly what you do like the bunless burgers like any sandwich you can imagine if you just get it without the bun I do bring like some like quest stuff with me when I go out but I really I feel like the best thing about keto is that you don't have to overthink it you can just live your normal life how you would before you don't have to be constantly thinking about your diet and that's like that's like the ultimate thing to me is to not have to be obsessing about it it's just it's my new normal it's just my lifestyle and I don't really obsess over it do you still check your blood levels every once in a while but not like on a daily basis mostly if I'm like testing out new foods or new macros I don't really track very closely anymore I did the first year but now it's pretty like I can feel when I'm in ketosis like I just feel so much better but sometimes I do test just out of curiosity and I have the kid at home so the blood work and stuff gets really interesting so we had Mark Sisson on the show and he was going really hardcore on the science of like what's happening and talking about how depending on how you utilize the ketones will determine your blood reading so it's like you have to be a little bit careful and obviously the urines change because when you first kick off into ketosis it appears in your urine but then as your body gets more efficient at using it it stops and many people think oh am I not in ketosis anymore right actually in a better place so that that stuff's pretty interesting what are some of the other questions that people ask you so a lot of times people ask about like having kids and being keto like if that's an option like how how do I do this while having you know people at home who aren't supportive or who aren't on a diet that's a group yeah and I think a lot of times too with that is like what do I also do with my doctor is not supportive which is exactly the same thing that I was in so I definitely had like friends who didn't understand and my doctor was like I don't really know how I feel about this and I'm like we'll listen like it's I literally feel like I'm at the point now where I'm either gonna get weight-loss surgery because I feel like I tried it all or I'm gonna do this and I've done some research and I don't think that eating healthy fats is bad for us so I'm like give me a year I'll come back you can do my blood work we can get into all that and when I came back like 100 pounds later she like didn't even recognize me and she did my blood work and she's like holy moly like this is like everything is great like your levels are perfectly healthy and now every year I go back and I'm like hey you gonna do some blood work just for fun like I don't know you know and so now she actually recommends keto to her own patients which has been really cool to like have a doctor who would even just be open-minded and not to say like hey this isn't what I was taught in school but like I'm watching I'm looking at your blood results and I'm being open-minded and to see that change in her was really cool gave me a lot of hope for the health community to wrap their head around things yeah let's get a little hopeless for a second so you were just on the Today Show yeah remember where they had their president nutritional expert basically heckle the ketogenic diet yeah so that was pretty interesting yeah what's your take on that with her whole sense of well there's no longitudinal studies on what the effects of this are going to be long-term my biggest approach with keto is like when people don't agree or don't understand like I don't make it my job to prove like I'm I don't feel like I'm here to argue it with anybody I just like to lead by example and if someone wants to have a thoughtful discussion of it or if they're like hey can you send me your research or what like can do you want to talk about it and I'm happy to talk about it but I just kind of feel like she has her way of doing things and I had tried that way of doing things and it wasn't working for me so what I try to challenge people to do is I'm not saying kudos for everyone but I'm saying it needs to be an option we need to have multiple options of different life styles that people can live because we don't all fit in one box so that's what I really try to promote yeah I get that for sure yeah all right well what do you hoping comes out of all of this I didn't start this really with a direct intention of doing anything it all kind of like popped up and I was like wow there's you know what am I going to do now that I have this passion because this is really the last thing that I ever expected to a be passionate about and B to be doing in general so I think when I really think about what I'm the most passionate about is helping others and connecting with others and just getting everything out there that we need to be talking about because I feel like we have the highlight reels of like all these great things that people are doing and all these happy things and you know with social media it's like everything can look so curated and I want to bring to the table like real life like the struggles like the UPS the Downs everything in between and let people know that it's that's what real people are going through and to know that you should just never give up and you always have to keep going and I really just want to connect with those people who are at the place where I was yeah all right before I ask my final question working these guys find you online so on Instagram it's keto Karma pretty much on all social media it's keto Karma and then my blog is keto Karma calm and then the book is simply keto and that's on Amazon Barnes & Noble the mean bookstores alright last thing for anybody watching what's the one thing that they could change or do to have the biggest impact on their health I think the biggest change you can do is just really make yourself an investment and you know when you wake up in the morning make sure that the things that you're doing are are supporting your goals and supporting things that you really want out of life and to really stop settling because if you really want to do something you have the power to do so you just have to get up and you have to work for it and you can't just expect and wait for someone to come save you you have to get up and save yourself that is amazing guys legitimately I'm not sure that I could have said it any better than that no one is coming to save you this is really on you and what I love about Suzanne's method what's in the book on her blogs in everything that she puts out there is this sense of you've got to put you first you've got to find self-love you've got to understand that losing all the weight is not gonna solve the problems that it really is something that you have to do from a mindset perspective to really understand your self-worth to understand that you're worth all of this effort but to understand that you have to put in all of that effort but if you do that and if you take the failures as she said as a learning experience rather than as some indictment into who you are you learn from that even if it's just what doesn't work for you then you can try something new and as she said there will finally be this click moment but if you stop you're never gonna find it so boys and girls keep going let her be an inspiration join her follow her I'm telling you it will be one of the most encouraging amazing things you will ever do she is a bright light on the on the internet doing amazing things all right if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential