Transcript: EP 273 – Metabolic Flexibility: What You Need to Know with Rachel Gregory

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Dr. Taz: Hi everyone, and welcome to Superwoman Wellness. I’m Dr. Taz. I’ve made it my mission throughout my career in integrative medicine to support women in restoring their health, using a blend of Eastern medical wisdom with modern science.

Dr. Taz: In this show, I will guide you through different practices to find your power type and fully embody the healthiest and most passionate version of you.

Dr. Taz: I’m here for you and I can’t wait to get started.

Dr. Taz: Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Superwoman Wellness, where I am determined to bring you back to your superpower self.

Dr. Taz: Joining me today, on a topic I get so many questions about. And so… In fact, I think so many that sometimes I confuse myself, but we have an expert here to talk to us about metabolic flexibility and the keto diet.

Dr. Taz: I want to introduce you guys to Rachel Gregory. She’s a Board-Certified Nutritionist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist, Podcaster and Founder of Metflex Life. She’s also the author of the international bestselling book, the 21-Day Ketogenic Diet Weight Loss Challenge.

Dr. Taz: Currently in her day to day coaching business, Rachel advises her clients to become the best, most confident version of themselves. She has a passion for educating those, dedicated to optimizing their physical and mental wellbeing.

Dr. Taz: Her most popular course, Keto For Women has helped women across the world, learn how to ditch restrictive all or nothing mindsets associated with keto, and instead thrive through the power of metabolic flexibility.

Dr. Taz: Rachel by the way, is a Collegiate Triathlete and an Athletic Trainer with a specialty in Resistance Training and CrossFit. She’s worked with all kinds of athletes across the globe. I am so excited to bring you onto the show because we need you. So tell us what is going on.

Dr. Taz: First of all, with women in general I think, when it comes to resistance training and our beliefs about it, but then I want to get into this idea about metabolic flexibility, what is ketos’ role and all of that. So many questions, but I’ll let you jump in first with your story.

Rachel Gregory: Sure. So I… You kind of gave me that amazing intro. Thank you so much. So just to give you a little bit of a background in terms of where I’m coming from.

Rachel Gregory: So I did the first study looking at the ketogenic diet in non-elite CrossFit athletes back in 2016. And that’s when keto actually started to get really popular. And that’s actually brought me into the keto space initially.

Rachel Gregory: And well, that was 20, it was published in 2017, but the study was from 2014 to 2016. And so that’s what really got me down, the keto rabbit hole adopted it for myself, saw many benefits.

Rachel Gregory: A lot of the mental clarity benefits and the kind of less food focus, and some things that really resonated with me for a while and then I started to work with a lot of clients who were getting benefits as well.

Rachel Gregory: But then over time as I got through it, as I learned more, as I experimented more, I came to a place where I was actually very, ended up being very carbphobic, after a while.

Rachel Gregory: And then I started to work with a lot of clients who got really great benefits from keto initially and then they started to become more carbphobic. And so over time I realized this was no way to live. Right?

Rachel Gregory: People are fearing legitimate foods like sweet potatoes and fruit, which you should not be fearing. Right? Those are not bad foods. Right? And so that’s what kind of brought me to this metabolic flexibility side of things and really, trying to teach people what metabolic flexibility is, why it can be advantageous for a lot of people.

Rachel Gregory: And it’s really, just the ability I know we’ll dive in, this is just the ability of your body to be efficient at the certain fuel sources that it’s using, for the activity that you’re doing. So, if you’re sitting at your desk, just working throughout the day, you should really be relying on fat as your main fuel source because it’s a low, low intensity, no intensity activity.

Rachel Gregory: And so, obviously carbohydrates are important in some regards, but… And when it comes to metabolic flexibility, if your body’s metabolically flexible, you’re able to basically switch between fuel sources between our main fuel sources, carbs and fats, but do that in a way that is dependent on the type of activity you’re doing.

Rachel Gregory: Like I said, low intensity, at your desk all day, you should be relying on fat as fuel, to help with mental focus, things like that. Maybe even dipping into ketosis a little bit, if that’s your goal, doesn’t have to be.

Rachel Gregory: And then when you’re doing high intensity activities or you’re lifting at the gym, carbohydrates are a fuel source that’s necessary for that. And when I say necessary, I mean optimal, it actually isn’t necessary.

Rachel Gregory: But if you want to get optimal results, probably beneficial, especially if you’re training very heavily to have some carbohydrates and so my goal, especially with women, is to help them kind of find some balance between getting some benefits from potentially going into periods of ketosis, but not necessarily having to stay there forever or feeling like they need to stay there forever.

Dr. Taz: Gotcha. So let’s talk about that just a little bit, because metabolic… So what are the things that really, because there’s all this research coming out now about eating at certain intervals and doing this and doing that.

Dr. Taz: If we want to keep our metabolism primed, what is the first principle of a healthy metabolism before we even start talking keto and stuff like that? What are one of the things that we all get wrong, when it comes to metabolism and maintaining a healthy metabolism?

Rachel Gregory: So this is probably going to be a little bit, not something that you would hear when we talk about metabolism. But for me, I think in general, this might not be solely specific to metabolism, but is it’s protein.

Rachel Gregory: So I think that protein to have just overall health and to function longevity, maintaining muscle mass like we talked about, overall health benefits. Everybody wants to look good in a bathing suit, lose body fat, things like that.

Rachel Gregory: I think protein is so underrated, when it comes to so many different aspects of just general health and body composition and having an appetite metabolism I think, from both sides of the spectrum, people who are really focused on maybe keto and then also those who maybe are opposite side, I think protein is the common factor that tends to be forgotten about.

Dr. Taz: Interesting. That’s so true because I think your vegans and vegetarians focus a lot on plant-based foods and plant-based living and there are so many advantages to that. And then you’ve got others that are heavy protein eaters and then you have the keto people that do full out fat.

Dr. Taz: So protein, and when you say protein, how much protein to maintain our metabolism? Is it, you need to get about 15, 20 grams, every three to four hours? What’s sort of the good rule or just, is it your total at the end of the day that you think makes a difference? What would you say to that?

Rachel Gregory: So I think just starting off in general, typically I recommend, and this is going to be a little bit higher than most people have probably heard before, but between 0.8 to one gram or even 1.2 grams per pound of body weight.

Rachel Gregory: In protein, if you are someone who has a lot of weight to lose. If you are overweight or obese, then you can think more so, okay. 0.8 to one gram per pound of ideal body weight. Per day. That’s a general standpoint and that’s probably the most important.

Rachel Gregory: And then as you get that rolling, and as you get consistent with that, then you can start to think about, okay, how can I optimize my protein feedings throughout the day? So how can I think about how much protein I should be eating in a certain meal. Right? To increase muscle protein synthesis, and also what are those protein sources too?

Rachel Gregory: Because we know that some protein sources are going to be more bioavailable than others. Some protein sources are going to have the full spectrum of amino acids that we need, and some aren’t.

Rachel Gregory: So that’s where the quality of the protein is also going to come into play. But in general, I always start with my clients, it’s always like all right let’s tackle the big thing first. Let’s tackle the daily protein intake and then we can start to trickle down to, okay once we have that in place, we’ve done that for a while. Then we can start to optimize different things within the day.

Dr. Taz: Okay. Okay. And real quickly, before we leave protein and move into the world of keto. What are your top five protein sources? People always ask me that. I’m curious to see what you’re going to say.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. Sure. So I am a huge fan of animal protein. So animal meats, steaks, and red meat. I love red meat. I think there’s so many nutritional benefits to red meat that have gotten kind of put down over the years and feared.

Rachel Gregory: But red meat has a lot of nutrients, a lot of iron, and a lot of beneficial things that a lot of people are missing out on. So I would say steak. I love chicken too. Chicken, any meat, I’ll put that in its own category, meats.

Rachel Gregory: Eggs, egg whites, one trick that I give a lot of my clients, when they’re trying to get more protein in their days, is combining whole eggs with egg whites, instead of just having four whole eggs. Yes. That is going to be super nutritious and you should be eating the yolks.

Rachel Gregory: But if, say, you’re trying to manage your calories and maybe you’re trying to up your protein a little bit. Okay. Maybe we do two whole eggs and the rest egg whites. So you’re getting all those healthy fats from the egg yolk, but you’re adding in some extra egg whites to bump that protein up even more, because one egg has about five grams of fat and six grams of protein. So if we can balance that out with a little bit more protein, that can be a great trick to just bump that up.

Rachel Gregory: I love nonfat greek yogurt or lower fat greek yogurt, low fat cottage cheese that would probably be number three. An easy one is a high quality protein powder, and you can even add that to, I’ll add a scoop or half a scoop of protein powder to nonfat greek yogurt as an amazing snack. You’ll get 30 to 40 grams of protein just in a little serving of that. So yeah, I mean that would be, those would be my top one. Yeah.

Dr. Taz: The animal protein, low fat cottage cheese or dairy nonfat greek yogurt, protein powder added to anything. What was the last one?

Rachel Gregory: Eggs and egg whites. Yeah.

Dr. Taz: Okay. Awesome. All right. Let’s move on to keto because that’s really what everybody wants to talk about, to understand a little bit.

Dr. Taz: So keto, I’m not the biggest fan of keto. Let me be a hundred percent honest and just put that out there. I’m not a fan of it because I see the lipid levels go up. I see people justify eating foods that are very unhealthy because they’re “keto.” Right?

Dr. Taz: So what do we have right or wrong when it comes to keto and how, please tell me, can keto improve our metabolic rate?

Rachel Gregory: So I think you nailed that one with just foods being, “keto.”

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: Is missing the mark completely. So yes, you can go, you can technically be on a ketogenic diet and be eating McDonald’s burgers with cheese and not the bun or eating pounds of butter, in your coffee and things like that every morning and yeah, maybe you’re in ketosis.

Rachel Gregory: But the benefits of keto, in just over the years that I’ve noticed. It really comes down to the individual. First of all, where they’re at in their health journey and what their goals are. A lot of the women that I work with have had just a lot of food focus that they’ve been… It’s been hard for them to get away with because they have these sugar cravings or they have these cravings for higher carbohydrate foods that just can never dissipate.

Rachel Gregory: And then when they try keto, it helps to mitigate some of those cravings. It helps to regulate their blood sugar levels a little bit more throughout the day. And it’s not that carbs are bad, in the sense or anything that. It’s just kind of going back to, okay, what’s your goal? And, what have you been struggling with?

Rachel Gregory: And so when it comes to keto, I think the biggest thing again, that goes back to protein for a lot of people, we have to think about keto, it came about as a treatment for kids who had epilepsy. Right? It was literally a metabolic state that your body can go into, not just a diet. Right?

Rachel Gregory: It’s literally changing the way that your brain uses its fuel sources. Right? And that’s what it was founded on is to help kids, it actually helps kids reduce their seizures because they went from using and relying on glucose for fuel, to relying on ketones for fuel.

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: And so, that’s to treat a disease state. And so they had to have very high ketone levels to be able to do that. And so they had to bump their fats up really high and bring their carbs and their protein down very low to be able to do that. Right?

Rachel Gregory: But if we’re talking about kind of your average person and just looking to get some of the benefits of keto, whether that’s coming from blood sugar regulation, whether that’s coming from, going actually into a state of ketosis and using ketones for fuel to help with maybe focus throughout the day, have a mental clarity throughout the day.

Rachel Gregory: One of the biggest pieces that people, make a mistake on is, again, coming back to that protein, at least this is what I’ve seen in my practice over the last six plus years, is they reduce protein so low because they think that they need to skyrocket their ketones super, super high and have super, super high fat.

Rachel Gregory: And I think that’s where the issues are coming in, because being in a state of ketosis is literally reducing your carbs and or fasting. It’s a fast mimicking diet. And so you don’t need to bump your fats up to astronomical amounts to get into a state of ketosis.

Rachel Gregory: Yes. Increasing healthy fats can be great, but I think that’s a mistake that a lot of people make. They go way in on one end and they don’t think about the moderation of the protein side of things, and even a little bit higher protein too, so.

Dr. Taz: Gotcha.

Rachel Gregory: I’m a fan of protein if you couldn’t tell.

Dr. Taz: Yeah. I’m with you. So it’s interesting though, that you mentioned that fasting and keto-

Rachel Gregory: You’re right.

Dr. Taz: … we never think of those as going together, but fasting indirectly is putting you into a little bit of a ketotic state. Right? So-

Rachel Gregory: Absolutely.

Dr. Taz: So. Okay. So before we jump into fasting, which is yet another piece. So when you are doing, a modified keto for improved metabolic rate, you were saying, when you’re sitting and not burning a lot of energy actively having more fat during that time frame is helpful.

Dr. Taz: What should people be doing? Do we want to give grams out of the number of fat grams they should be having at a given serving?

Dr. Taz: Maybe some examples of foods that will do that. That are dense in terms of not being high calorie, but at the same time providing those grams. How do we go about doing that?

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. So typically, it’s all going to kind of come back to the individual. And I like to talk, I like to kind of look at. First of all, if the goal is to get into a state of ketosis like I mentioned, you can do that by simply reducing your carbohydrates to a certain amount.

Rachel Gregory: Typically, for most people, they can get into a state of ketosis by having around 50 grams of total carbohydrates or less, per day. So if that’s the main goal, and you want to test out your body’s ability to get into ketosis and how you function through that.

Rachel Gregory: Reducing your carbohydrates to about a total of 50 grams per day. Setting your protein around 0.8 to one gram per pound of body weight, and not being afraid of protein, is probably the second thing that I would do. And then basically filling in the rest of your calories with fats.

Rachel Gregory: And that will depend on what your main goal is. Is your main goal to maintain your weight? Is your main goal to lose body fats? Because we know that we have to be in a calorie deficit in order to do that. Are you looking to gain body fat?

Rachel Gregory: So it’s really setting those carbohydrates kind of talk around that 50 grams to start. Some people can, are more metabolically healthy than others and they are more active than others.

Rachel Gregory: So they can actually have upwards of maybe 75 to a hundred grams of carbs, even more depending on how active they are and still actually maintain that state of ketosis, if that’s the goal. But in general, about 50 grams, total carbs, setting your protein and then filling the rest in with fats. And again, it comes down to-

Dr. Taz: How many fat grams? Do you get that specific about fat grams or not really? About lowering the carbs?

Rachel Gregory: It’s mostly about lowering the carbs, because if we think about it, your body has the ability to use its own body fat source.

Dr. Taz: That’s the biggest misconception. Everyone’s walking around being like, I need to get 50 grams of, or a hundred grams of fat per day, but you’re saying no, it’s more about lowering the carbs down to 50 grams and then eating, choosing foods around that allow that carbohydrate reduction, which is ultimately the issue. Am I translating this correctly?

Rachel Gregory: No. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And obviously you both know fats are important. Right? We… Fats are important for hormones, especially healthy fats. Right? Not like the McDonald’s cheeseburgers without the bun. Right?

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: Maybe that’s a once in a while thing for you, but an everyday thing is probably not going to be great for overall health.

Rachel Gregory: So exactly what you said, focusing on the carbohydrates, and even implementing potentially some fasting, that in itself can help get you into that state of ketosis.

Rachel Gregory: The fats are really there to help, with nourishing all the different processes that fats are important for, hormones, things like that. But we can use… If we have a lot of fat on our bodies, we can use that body fat for fuel that turns into ketones through the process of ketogenesis.

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Dr. Taz: So foods that help you get all the way down to 50 grams of carbs a day, what would you recommend for those? Maybe give us five of those.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah, so I would mostly focus on, and this is what I recommend focusing on those non-starchy vegetables as kind of the main priority, the main components of your meals.

Rachel Gregory: So picking a good protein source, if that protein source is already high in fat, you might not need to add any fat to that. And then having a nice non starchy vegetable to go along with that. So any of your non starchy vegetables think greens, cauliflower, broccoli, those types of things have good amounts of nutrients and fiber as well because that’s going to keep you full.

Rachel Gregory: And then I… Some people say you can’t have fruits on keto. And I think that saying you can’t have a fruit is just a little bit too extreme.

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: Focusing on the fruits that are a little bit lower in sugar. So berries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries. Those are great options. Avocado. Avocados are actually fruits, not vegetables.

Rachel Gregory: Those are great options. So those would be kind of the carbs that I would say make up, the majority of your day is going to be more of the non-starchy ones and then small amounts of fruits, especially the lower sugar fruits.

Dr. Taz: Gotcha. Okay. Now bring muscle science into this. So how does muscle science work? So we’ve talked a lot about food and protein and fat and carbs and all this other stuff. Bring the muscle component to this when it comes to our metabolism and metabolic flexibility. Talk to us about that.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah, sure. So muscle mass is super, super important I think, this is something that… It’s been more normal these days versus 30 years ago for women. lifting weights is so beneficial for so many different aspects of health and longevity especially, and having a muscle mass.

Rachel Gregory: Muscle is the most metabolic tissue. So if you have a good amount of muscle mass on your body, you’ll be able to basically maintain your weight and eat more really. Because muscle is very metabolically taxing to your body so you need energy to maintain that muscle mass.

Rachel Gregory: It’s also going to create that look that everybody wants. Right? That toned look. Toning and looking tone and having a nice butt or whatever you want, that comes from having muscle. It doesn’t come from spending hours on the treadmill. Right?

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: So that’s something that a lot of, one of the messages that I try to preach to a lot of women is that, you want to have that toned look, it’s not just about putting yourself into a restrictive calorie deficit forever.

Rachel Gregory: That’s not going to build the glutes in the butt that everybody wants. That’s not going to build the nice arms, the toned arms. You have to lift weights, you have to build muscle, so that when you do reduce the body fat, underneath that is, the muscle is the toned look that you’re looking for.

Rachel Gregory: So that’s obviously from a body composition standpoint. But for longevity, for overall just health, we have to… What the, one of the most common causes of deaths is falling and when you’re older. Right? Because you fall, you break a bone and then that kind of deteriorates your quality of life.

Rachel Gregory: If you have more muscle mass, if you’re able to squat down and get off the toilet, which is a literal squat. If you had muscles in your legs to do that, you’re probably going to have a lot less and there’s studies that show this a lot less, you’re going to be a lot less likely to fall.

Rachel Gregory: And also if you do fall, you recover faster from that. So there’s so many benefits to muscle. I mean, those are just a few.

Dr. Taz: I love that. So what’s the best way, for women of all ages. So we have, young women in their twenties and then we have moms and then we have women that are premenopausal and menopausal.

Dr. Taz: Again, just trying to give them some structure, what do you recommend in terms of building muscle mass? What are the most effective ways? Women are busy nowadays, we can’t go in there and power lift for hours. So what would you recommend, is a really effective way to build muscle over a period of time?

Rachel Gregory: Absolutely. So I think that, and this is a mistake that I made for years, is thinking that we have to do so much, we have to work out six days a week to get results. It’s not the case. And usually that’s actually, doing you more disservice if you put your body under stress like that. Six days a week or seven days a week.

Rachel Gregory: Honestly, the best results that I get and that I see my clients get, is lifting three times a week, four times a week maybe, even just two times a week. Doing a full body session two times a week or really, the first thing I would say is finding something that you can do that you enjoy that includes weights. Right? That’s going to be the first thing, because if you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to stick to it. Right? You’re not going to be able to do it long term.

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: The other thing is realizing that sometimes, we mistake lifting lighter weights and doing circuit style training and thinking that is the best option. When mostly that’s just kind of cardio actually, especially if the weights are lighter and you’re chasing that sweat.

Rachel Gregory: So I think a lot of the mistakes that I’ve made in the past and not a lot of my clients have made in the past is feeling like we have to do so much. And feeling like in your session that you should be sweating and you should be huffing and puffing, really building muscle.

Rachel Gregory: You might not even… Sometimes I go into the gym and I’m training, I’m lifting weights and sometimes I don’t even break a sweat. But it’s, that’s not… Because the goal is to train your muscles. The goal is to adapt to that stimulus. The goal is not to be sweating and get your heart rate up so high all the time.

Dr. Taz: I know.. I’ll do my sprints training sessions and sometimes, I mean, some, there are days I only do 20 minutes, but that’s okay. Correct? The goal is to load heavier though. It’ll be like a heavy 20 minutes.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Taz: Other days it’s 40, 45, but I never sweat. I’ll do the hot yoga and I’m dripping. Right? I’ll go for a run and I’m super soaked, but I never sweat. And I always think did it work out, hard enough? Did I do the right things? What would you say to that?

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. And I think that is such a big mistake that a lot of, especially females think that they need to be sweating and they’re like I used to do CrossFit a lot. And CrossFit was fun. I loved the atmosphere, but I would say my best results from a body composition standpoint from a health standpoint, came from doing more strength based sessions, more hypertrophy based sessions where I wasn’t dead on the floor sweating afterwards.

Dr. Taz: Yeah.

Rachel Gregory: But that’s a mistake that a lot of people make because they think that, if they don’t sweat, if they don’t feel sore, that they didn’t get a good workout.

Dr. Taz: Right.

Rachel Gregory: But that’s not the reality. The reality is that, if your goal is to build muscle, if your goal is to build as much muscle as possible, that might not be happening.

Rachel Gregory: As long as you’re working hard, as long as you’re, you have enough intensity, you’re lifting heavy enough weights to get close to muscular failure. That is what’s going to move the mark in terms of those adaptations that are going to occur over time, with building muscle mass, so.

Dr. Taz: Is it three sessions, three 20 minute sessions a week and try to get heavier and heavier or do more reps or but, what’s… You hear all this stuff, what’s the right plan?

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. So it, again, depends on the person, but I would say that, in general three to… And if you’re just starting off, if you’ve never lifted before, you could absolutely start off at two days a week.

Rachel Gregory: I would say 30 to 45 minutes. If you’re doing two days a week, focusing on progressive overload, which just means doing a little bit more each week. Right? It could be coming from maybe you do one more rep or you do five more pounds or you do one more set.

Rachel Gregory: Those are all forms of progressive overload. So as long as you’re progressing week to week, and you can just think about it, am I tracking my workouts? Did I do a little bit more this week than I did last week from that standpoint? And if you continue to do that, you will continue to progress over time.

Rachel Gregory: So typically most people don’t need to do more than four days a week. I don’t train more than four days a week. And in terms of lifting, I would say mostly, only the elite athletes need to train maybe five plus days a week if they have a specific performance goal.

Rachel Gregory: But yeah, I mean, there’s… It’s also thinking about quality over quantity. Right? Doing better, versus doing more, that’s something that a lot of people don’t think about.

Rachel Gregory: It’s like going into your session and really, really focusing about how hard you can work and how much quality you can do at, with those movements, with that weight, versus how much more you have to do. Right?

Dr. Taz: Gotcha. Well, I love that. Any other sort of fat loss tips, that you would make sure that we know when we’re headed into the gym or in general with eating, I’m curious. What you’re seeing there, what you’re thinking there?

Rachel Gregory: Well, protein again, protein is just the most important nutrient in my eyes. There’s so many benefits to it, especially from a fat loss standpoint, make sure you’re getting your protein in.

Rachel Gregory: I actually have a free Protein Hunger Hacks ebook that everybody can download if they want. And I can give that to you at the end, if you like. That’s going to be the number one thing, because that’s the thing that a lot of people are just not paying attention to, is protein.

Dr. Taz: Wow. Yeah.

Rachel Gregory: And then movement. Just general movement throughout the day. Paying attention to your steps throughout the day, paying attention to how much you’re moving.

Rachel Gregory: I think that’s one of the most underrated fat loss tips, that people talk about is just you don’t have to go spend hours on the treadmill or you don’t have to do a thousand burpees and be dying of sweat to “burn calories” or to get more energy expenditure.

Rachel Gregory: Just going out for a 20 to 30 minute walk and building on that and doing lower intensity, can be so beneficial from not just a fat loss standpoint, but also to help promote recovery and get you into more of a parasympathetic rest and digest mode versus a high stress out mode.

Rachel Gregory: Because, and I’ll just, I know I’m rambling a little bit, but something that people don’t realize is that when they do go into a fat loss phase, they’re going into a calorie deficit. Right? To lose body fat.

Rachel Gregory: That in itself is a stress. Right? Literally putting yourself into a deficit, is a stress on your body. And so if you’re adding all of these other stressors on top of it, like these high intensity workouts, the stress that you’re getting from work, you’re not sleeping.

Rachel Gregory: All of those things are going to pile on and make it so much harder to adhere to your goals. Right? So you need to think about the things that you can do to help de-stress, while still helping you work towards your goals.

Rachel Gregory: So, making sure you’re sleeping, walking, literally just walking is such a huge piece of it. Protein obviously, and tracking things. I think that would be one of the biggest things too, is you can manage what you measure. Right?

Rachel Gregory: If you have no idea what you’re consuming, if you have no idea how much you’re moving throughout the day, then how do you make changes? Right? How do you modify what you’re doing to continue to see results? So.

Dr. Taz: Gotcha. Oh my gosh. I can talk about it all day long. Yeah. I want to ask you one more question. I know we’re two more minutes on this.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah.

Dr. Taz: Fasting. All right. 14 hours, 16 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours. What improves our metabolism and doesn’t tinker with it? There’s all this research showing that this whole metabolic stacking. Right? We eat less and our resting metabolic rate goes down. Even less our resting metabolic rate goes down and we end up crashing it all these before our fasting. What do you have to say to that?

Rachel Gregory: I think that this is going to go back to what I mentioned about the stress piece of things. I think especially with women, we do have to be very careful when we are implementing fasting.

Rachel Gregory: I think fasting can be beneficial, for certain people, but if you are already super stressed out, in your life and you’ve, you’re not used to fasting and you’re just trying to go all in. That might not be the best idea.

Rachel Gregory: I think fasting is one of those things that, again, we don’t realize that it is a stress on our body as well. Right? Especially with females, we have more sensitive hormones, we react more sensitively to these certain stressors.

Rachel Gregory: So we have to be very careful. That’s a mistake that I made for years, trying to think that more was better. Right? If I fasted for 14 hours, oh I should do 16 or 18 or 24 hours and that’s better. Right?

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. Maybe you can do that, a few times a year do a 24 hour fast to maybe help with whatever, maybe help reset your kind of gut microbiome a little bit if you’re struggling with digestive issues, things like that.

Rachel Gregory: But I think, a mistake that a lot of people that, do is they get caught up in all of that research that you were talking about, all those kind of click baby things that you see online and things like that and they’re not really focused on the big movers that really will make the difference over the long term.

Rachel Gregory: So I think fasting can be beneficial, but it all comes down to that individual. And I think the stress component is the biggest thing to think about, when you are thinking about fasting.

Rachel Gregory: It’s like how much stress you have and is this fasting going to benefit me? Am I… or do I have less stressors going on right now that I could get away with fasting a little bit more? Or am I already dealing with so many other stressors that maybe fasting is probably not a good time right now. So.

Dr. Taz: Gotcha. Well such great tips. I love it. And I know that you have a course and a program. Tell us a little bit about that if somebody wanted to jump into that, what would they expect and all that other good stuff.

Rachel Gregory: Yeah. Sure. So I did mention this before. So if you’re listening to this and you want to go to metflexlife.com/protein, you can download that free protein, it’s a Hunger Hacks Protein ebook.

Rachel Gregory: So it’s all just recipes that are high protein, lower calorie, high volume. So that’s definitely a resource that I think would be super beneficial.

Rachel Gregory: And then I do have other programs on my website related to nutrition. I do one-on-one coaching. I have exercise programs, Keto For Women, which is all about teaching you to become more metabolically flexible. And then I also have a membership called The Flex Fam, which is kind of all of that combined into one.

Dr. Taz: I love it, all this information. I love that you tackle it all because I feel people are in a keto camp, a protein camp, a fasting camp, but the camps can’t get along or a-

Rachel Gregory: Oh yeah.

Dr. Taz: Simply not true. So thank you so much for taking time out to clarify some of that. And where can people reach out to you? You said you’ve got a couple of different handles. Is it @metflexlife? Is that the best one or…

Rachel Gregory: So at… On Instagram is probably where I’m most active @rachelgregory.cns on Instagram. And then you can go to my website like I said, metflexlife.com/protein to download that free ebook and that will get you to all the other places that you can find me as well, through the website.

Dr. Taz: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for taking your time today. I appreciate it. And everybody else listening, thank you again for watching and listening to this episode of Superwoman Wellness. And if you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to rate and review it and share it with your friends. I will see you guys next time.