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how to gain weight with healthy keto
while maintaining muscle mass while the vast majority of people go into keto and
intermittent fasting because they want to lose weight there are also people who
are thin and yet have insulin resistance or diabetes or there are also those
people who would like to gain weight but they don't want to eat a bunch of sugar
and carbs and grains and junk food so if you have trouble gaining weight what do
you do that's today's topic and we're gonna cover all the angles you know
exactly how it works coming right up I'm doctor Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and
a former Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by
understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that
notification bell so that you don't miss anything
the vast majority of advice about keto and intermittent fasting is aimed at
people who are trying to lose weight reverse diabetes or insulin resistance
so just a quick recap that with those people the people who are overweight and
insulin resistance whether it's full-blown diabetes or not they are
trying to reduce insulin they're trying to reduce the stress hormone cortisol
they're trying to increase growth hormone they're trying to reduce
calories and they're trying to reduce carbs so that's the standard advice and
today we're going to talk about a couple of other cases where someone is either
under weight or they just don't want to lose any more but there's still insulin
resistant they still have diabetes or they need to reverse their insulin
levels and we also have people who are underweight but insulin sensitive they
eat no matter what they eat it seems like they just can't gain weight so if
they're underweight an insulin resistant the only change is that
they're gonna try to increase the calories okay all the other steps are
going to be identical you still want to reduce insulin you still want to reduce
cortisol you still want to increase growth hormone and you still want to cut
carbs and when we say increase calories and reduce calories the thing is that
with keto and intermittent fasting you're not trying to count calories or
reduce calories it just ends up that you eat less because you end up being full
as you're burning the fat off the body you'll get less hungry or satiated
longer you can go longer between meals and you eat less so that can be a
problem when someone's trying to gain weight because the mechanism is still
there that they're not as hungry so these people are gonna have to try to
eat more and we'll talk about that so that's really the only difference
someone who is underweight and insulin sensitive they're not trying to reduce
insulin resistance they're just not wanting to eat junk so that they develop
problems over time and raise insulin resistance so their insulin they're
trying to keep it about the same they don't want to increase it they don't
need to decrease it they still don't want to have more cortisol cortisol
should be kept at a at a minimum or normal what is appropriate for a normal
healthy balanced life so they don't want to start doing things to increase
cortisol just to become more insulin resistant cortisol is destructive and it
is muscle wasting it's protein wasting so all of these people we are assuming
that obviously they want to maintain their muscle they're either trying to
lose weight by losing fat or they're trying to gain weight by gaining muscle
maybe a little fat as well growth hormone everybody wants to increase
because that's how you build muscle growth hormone is the hormone that
builds muscle and these people also are going to have to want to increase their
calories as much as possible so these people can increase carbs or maybe stay
the same depending on where they are they don't want to start loading up on
carbs and especially they don't want to start eating a bunch of junk carbs like
processed carbs sugar grain etc they can eat some some beans and some starchy
vegetables like sweet potato potato various different tubers but they still
want to keep their carbs in check because even though they're very insulin
sensitive they don't want to become insulin resistance so they can tolerate
a good bit more carbs but you don't want to go overboard obviously before we go
further though I just want everyone to really take some time and reflect on why
are they trying to gain weight are you really too skinny or are people just
telling you that or are you comparing yourself to an impossible ideal what is
normal okay when I was competing in Decathlon I typically was about two
hundred to two hundred and five pounds my body fat was extremely low today my
body fat is probably around 10% when I was competing it was around three to
four percent and I am 6 foot 3 and today my comfortable body weight is 180 to 185
in pounds 4 kilograms you divide that by 2.2 but that's where I'm comfortable and
yet most people would probably tell me that I am too skinny or if they compare
themselves to me they say oh I wouldn't want to be that skinny well that's
normal for me that's what my body likes to be so don't compare yourself to
supermodels or bodybuilders or some contrived ideal really be honest and
figure out what is that normal place your body there are also some
circumstances where the body may just not be quite healthy enough to gain
weight because there's a lot of it's a lot of work for the body to build new
tissues maybe the body is really busy just repairing after a disease so people
who have had cancer or chemo they shouldn't be in a hurry to gain weight
they should still eat healthy but they should sort of go very very slow and
allow the body to do things at its own pace it's sort of like growing grass
that grass is going to grow at the rate that grass is supposed to grow you can't
you can't force it you got to be patient let's talk about calories again we don't
necessarily typically emphasize calories too much everyone else does but calories
is usually not where it's at however if you want to gain weight and you are
following a low-carb diet so that your hunger is reduced you want to start
counting calories and make sure that you get a lot of them because you have to be
at a calorie surplus and your body's setpoint is going to work against you in
this case just like overweight people they lose the weight and their body will
often try to get them back up to the setpoint
the same thing holds true for you if you're thin and you try to gain weight
your body is going to try to get back down to that setpoint so again make sure
that you really want to change your weight or need to change your weight
before you start forcing that setpoint away because it might be if you're
successful it might be harder to get back if you change your mind but you
need a calorie surplus you need to eat a lot of food and your body will
compensate by raising its metabolism so if you figure that you're burning 2,500
calories and you increase your ingestion your consumption to 3,000 your body
might just raise its basic metabolic rate to 3,000
and you have to go for 3,500 everyone's different figure out how it works for
you but realize you have to be eating more calories than your body burns it's
not enough to ingest the calories you also have to be able to digest and
absorb them and here again you can put the stuff into your body but if you
don't have the right balance between insulin and cortisol and growth hormone
then your body is not going to know what to do with it you need the growth
hormone to make new tissue you need some insulin to store the fuel to help the
fuel both insulin and growth hormone are anabolic hormone they're building
hormone cortisol is a catabolic it's a breakdown hormone so if you want to gain
weight you want to increase growth hormone you want to decrease cortisol
limit cortisol and it seems like you would want some more insulin but if you
are insulin resistant then obviously we're still in the process of reducing
insulin so therefore we have to kind of still manage insulin with a low carb
diet so if you have digestive issues or if you're stressed then your digestion
may not work the way it's supposed to and you may not be able to utilize all
of that fuel so sugar is very very easily absorbed that's why people even
when they're unhealthy they're still gonna absorb all the carbs but that's
not going to help us because we want to reduce insulin so when you eat fat and
protein your digestion has to be in tip-top shape it has to be functioning
at a high level in order for you to absorb these foods otherwise they'll
just go straight through you a lot of people are eating plenty of protein but
they're still protein deficient they're deficient in certain amino acids because
they don't break them down and absorb them properly so what you can do to help
you there are digestive enzymes there's a lot of them on the market talk to some
people who or who can counsel you in my office we
muscle test and we evaluate each case individually depending on on the person
but digestive enzymes can be very very helpful especially because after age 40
we reduce we lose the ability our production of digestive enzymes tend to
go down and the older we get the less enzymes we make we also need a
functioning gall bladder or a good liver output to digest fat so if you don't if
you have some gall bladder problems or if you have trouble digesting fats you
want to maybe supplement with some bile salts or some lecithin or some choline
you want to have some emulsifiers to break down that fat and almost all the
talk all the advice about how to handle these issues in nutrition circles are
about how many calories what macros what sort of nutrients what sort of foods but
hardly anybody ever talks about what is it in the body that is able to digest
and utilize that food so the nervous system your digestion does not function
without your nervous system so the healthier your brain is the better your
digestion works and vice versa because the gut also affects the brain but if
you have a healthy brain you can digest things a whole lot better a lot of
stress interferes with the brain's ability to digest food stress shuts off
the brain stress shuts off digestion so stress is the same as the sympathetic or
the fight/flight it produces cortisol and the parasympathetic is your feed
breed it's your relaxation response and your digestive system your ability to
produce digestive enzymes your ability to absorb food your ability to build
things out of food your anabolic function is
entirely 100% dependent on how well is that parasympathetic nervous system
working how well is that feed breed system working and if this one is taking
a backseat to this sympathetic to the fight flight then you are never going to
have a digestive system that fires on all cylinders stress reduction is
critical and we want to understand again everyone's talking about how the food
should be how the nutrients should be but if you don't absorb it if you don't
have a healthy brain if you don't have a healthy gut then it doesn't really
matter so much what you eat it's still important but we can't just look at one
side we want to remember that the body has chemical components chemical aspects
it has structural mechanical aspects and it has emotional aspects and holistic
health is about finding the balance on all of those so the first two have to do
with the chemical component these are more of the standard advice as far as
what to eat the macros etc first of all you have to eat more and like we said on
keto you're less hungry with intermittent fasting you're less hungry
so you have to make yourself eat you want to count the calories to make sure
that you're getting enough and that you're getting more than you think you
need and you don't want to increase carbs you don't want to increase protein
so that leaves fat correct fat is the type of food that's the macro that you
increase if you are insulin resistant then you want to keep your carbs very
very low your body has if your insulin resistance you have a very poor
carbohydrate tolerance and you probably want to keep them under 30 grams per day
under 30 grams of net carbs again if you want to be in ketosis you need to
measure the ketones so that you know if you're actually in if you are very
insulin sensitive if you're just skinny and you can't put on weight but you've
done the test your blood Sugar's low your a1c is low
your fasting insulin is low then you probably want to increase your carb some
you can probably get up to 50 to 70 grams a day maybe even up to a hundred
you probably don't need to be in ketosis all the time I think there's benefits to
being ketosis but I don't think you have to force yourself to be there constantly
I think you can go one week around 50 and another week maybe 70 to 80 or even
a hundred again this is going to depend on your age your fitness level your
physical activity and your level of insulin sensitivity so monitor these
things so that you can see if anything changes you don't want to go in the
direction that you don't like number two intermittent fasting if you are insulin
resistant I suggest that you still keep about an 18-6
to a 16-8 feeding pattern meaning that if you do a 16-8 that you eat all your
meals during an eight-hour period which leaves you 16 hours of fasting why would
we do that because the most powerful factor in
reversing insulin resistance is the fasting period the time where you are
eating zero carbohydrates where you're not stimulating insulin at all because
you have to eat a lot you might want to go to an eight hour feeding window
because in eight hours you can easily put two meals you might even be able to
put three meals because if you need to eat a lot of calories then you're going
to need some time to do it if you're shorten that window too much where
people try to do oh man it is very very difficult to get enough food into that
one meal or that one feeding period if your insulin sensitive I still suggest
that you do a little bit of intermittent fasting in that you give your body a
rest between meals because it is very very healthy it allows for your
digestion to hover it allows for you to not become
insulin-resistant you might even on some days do like a 12:12 feeding pattern if
you want to try to get a lot of food in then go 18 6 16 8 or maybe even 12 12
someone whose insulin sensitive it the only reason that you would want to do Oh
mad one meal a day or a longer fast is to start try to get the benefits of a
toffee gee but you can't do that very often because if you go long without
food then your body is going to lose that weight for those who are insulin
resistant but trying to increase their calories if you have a hard time getting
enough calories getting enough fat in then feel free to still do a bulletproof
coffee in the morning feel free to have a few fat bombs or some keto snacks with
that bulletproof coffee even if that is outside of your feeding window if you
wake up in the morning and it's still not your feeding window you could still
have that bulletproof coffee because it has a minimal impact on insulin yes it
is breaking the fast but what we're talking about is reversing insulin and
pure fat has an almost zero impact on insulin next way to talk about the
structural mechanical aspect of this so yes exercise has a metabolic function it
still has a hormonal impact and a chemical impact but it also has a brain
impact and we want to have the exercise is going to help the brain get more
activated an activated brain is going to help inhibit the stress response which
is going to make your digestion and your sleep and your recovery and your healing
work better the specific type of exercise that you want to do is your not
exercising to burn calories obviously because you're trying to get more
calories you're trying to burn less that's the whole problem you want to
gain weight but you also want to give the
a reason to build some more muscle you have to load up the muscle you have to
challenge the muscles in order to give the body a reason to make more of them
so when you do weight and you probably want to do that two or three times a
week you want to do few reps and high weights why because you want to
challenge the muscles you want to if you load them up if you have heavy heavy
weights and you push the muscles to where they fail but you don't keep it up
very long you do just a few reps now you are spiking growth hormone you're
challenging the body you're telling it hey you know I put a lot of pressure on
you you'd better build some muscles so you
can handle this better next time because I'm gonna do this again and you better
be prepared so build some more muscles and for that reason you also want to
avoid any long-term strenuous exercise you don't want to do any anaerobic you
don't want to do any I heart rate activity for an extended period of time
because that will trigger cortisol which is muscle wasting it is virtually
impossible to build muscle while you are exercising and doing like long-distance
running just look at the bodies of long-distance runners how much bulk
muscle do they have not much that's a clue you do want to do some hit if
you're healthy enough to do it high intensity animal training will spike
growth hormone the duration is so short that even though it's a high cortisol
activity the duration is so short you only secrete a tiny little bit and
the secretion of growth hormone far outweighs the detriment from the
cortisol but you want to keep it to a few minutes you do a warm-up you get all
of your high-intensity stuff in in a 2 to 3 to 4 minute period you only do that
twice a week so the total hit for a week there's only a few minutes altogether
you can also do aerobic exercise but make sure that it is truly aerobic and
not anaerobic it's not wear you out you should not be fatigued afterwards so I
would basically say keep it to walking and don't try to power walk don't try to
walk fast just go for a stroll and yes you will burn some extra calories so you
have to eat even more to compensate for that and number four
that is the third side of the triangle the emotional part emotional stress can
be devastating it increases cortisol it interferes with digestion it interferes
with growth hormone it shuts down your parasympathetic nervous system so to
reduce stress we want to relax we want to do breathing exercises we want to do
meditation just try a few find one that you like and do it on a regular basis
it's like a muscle that you're building it's not just for the few minutes that
you're listening and relaxing it's a skill it's a pattern that you program
into your nervous system and the better you get at chillin the better you'll be
able to resist to handle stress in the future another technique is called
emotional freedom technique known as tapping that's a very powerful way to
interrupt a stress pattern it's a very very neurologically based mechanism
tapping is a pattern interrupt and if you combine that with retrieving
emotions then you can interrupt those you can develop new emotional habits if
you enjoyed this video I think you're going to love that one
thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time
