In this episode, Genie Lauren shares the truth about keto flu – what it is, how to avoid it, and why the cause for it keeps getting swept under the rug.

Show Transcript:

The ketones?

The fasters?

The speedsters?

Speed demons. . . feed demons? No, that’s too. . . Gremlins.

*sigh* Anyway. . .

I’m Genie Lauren and this is my fast life.

[Theme song]

Okay. Let’s start off by clarifying what this show is not here to do.

First of all, I am not here to make any health or weight-loss promises. I am not your doctor, I do not know your life, and I will not promise that you will lose weight. A whole host of things could be going on with you — or nothing at all, really. I just have no way of knowing and I won’t pretend to. I also don’t have anybody’s license or certification to diagnose you with anything. I’m not interested in tricking or misleading anybody. This is the Fast Life, not the scam life. I am a strong supporter of you going to your own doctor to evaluate your health and using information from this podcast in a way that’s appropriate for you.

Second of all, I am not here to shame anyone about their food choices. We’re all adults, right? (I mean, I’m an adult. I’m assuming you’re also an adult. I don’t think kids care about keto podcasts, do they?) Anyway, at the end of the day, you have to be accountable to you. Not to me. So, I am not judging your situation or your choices. I do want to give you information so that you can make better choices, but how you live your life is up to you. I’m not a food nazi.

Lastly, I am not here to data-mine my listeners. I really dislike the way that advertising has taken over all of our media. TV shows, radio shows, podcasts, music — they all basically live and die on the strength of their ad support, whether they’re mainstream or independent, and I think that’s bull. I didn’t create a podcast so that I could sell you a mattress, or a website builder, or whatever. And, that’s no shade to anybody who does that to support their podcast — everything costs, and someone’s gotta pay. I’m just really invested in creating a more ethical, reasonable internet. What this means is that my website (genielauren.com) does not engage in non-consensual tracking — there are no ads on my site and no Google Analytics codes following you around the internet. Now, if you listen to my podcast through a third-party, I can’t make any guarantees, but as far as genielauren.com is concerned, there is no non-consensual tracking.

There are cookies, though. They aren’t keto-cookies, but they’re useful, browser cookies that help your browser load my site faster. So, we don’t have to hate on them like they’re oatmeal cookies or something. They’re good.

There may also be the occasional Amazon Affiliate link. If you hear me recommend a product on the show, the link to the product from my episode page will most likely be an Amazon Affiliate link. If you don’t like Amazon, trust me I completely understand, do not click the link. Or, just click the links that aren’t from Amazon. It’s really just another way to support the show without traditional advertising and non-consensual tracking.

Ultimately, what my site is here to do is to help you avoid the mistakes I made early on in my keto journey. And, that leads us to today’s topic: keto flu. But, before we jump right in, here’s a brief word on how you can support the show.

Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, so far, subscribe and rate it on Apple Podcasts. Leaving a review with your rating helps out even more, but all stars are appreciated (okay, I lied, anything over 3 stars is appreciated). Also, if you’d like to support the show you can go to Patreon.com/fastlife and become a patron. Tiers start as low as five dollars a month and you can get access to rewards like unique keto recipes and complete fridge makeovers to help you with your ketogenic lifestyle. Don’t pass up on the opportunity to request a topic. Become a patron. Okay, back to the show.

Now, before we get to keto flu, we should probably define some terms. So, bear with me, I’m going to try to make this as un-nerdy as possible.

Depending on the context, “keto” can either be short for ketosis or ketogenic, and all of this is centered around ketones. A ketone is a chemical that your liver creates by burning fat. Your body can turn around and use the ketone chemical for fuel. So, essentially, your body can be fueled by burning fat, instead of burning sugar. Still with me? I’ll reiterate — your body, most likely, is fueled by burning sugar. Ketosis is when you fuel your body using ketones instead. Got it? Okay.

Now, if you are eating a diet or living a lifestyle that causes your body to be in a state in which your liver is creating ketones, that’s what we would refer to as a ketogenic diet or a ketogenic lifestyle.

Depending on where you are in your ketogenic journey you’ve either never heard of keto flu, or you’ve had the misfortune of experiencing it, yourself, to varying degrees. I had a very painful experience with keto flu and, in hindsight, it pisses me off because it was entirely avoidable.

Picture it, New York City, August 2018. After struggle-cheating with my diet, I’d finally settled into intermittent fasting and keto diet in a way that was consistent. The training wheels were off. I was riding confidently. And, then I hit a curb. That curb was keto-adaptation. Roughly twelve weeks after doing a great job of sticking to my keto lifestyle my body realized that I really was giving up sugar for good and switching to fat as a fuel source. Once your body makes that realization, you go into keto-adaptation. For some people, this happens as quickly as 30 days, and for others, this might take several months. Either way, if you are consistent at eating no more than 20 – 50 grams of carbs a day, your body will eventually become keto-adapted.

Now, being the person that I am, I’d read extensively about keto flu long before I’d ever cooked my first meal of brussels sprouts sauteed in bacon. I was prepared, right? Or, so I thought. All the blogs said that keto flu could lead to fatigue and muscle aches for a short time, none of them ever mentioned perpetual migraines.

At first, they came on as short pangs behind my eyes and at my temples. I figured I could pop a couple of Tylenol, take some CBD oil, and go about my day. But, they persisted. A day later I was tired, weak, and walking around in a headache haze. I’m thinking this has to be how zombies feel. Day three, I decided to stay home, sleep, and drink lots of water. That should’ve helped right, but the problem was, the water just made me nauseous and the headache persisted. By day four, this headache wasn’t playing. It was no longer a short pang. It was waves of unbelievably sharp, stabbing sensations in my brain. I was in agony. I went to the E.R.

Of course, the doctors and nurses in the E.R. had no idea what I was talking about. They didn’t seem particularly familiar with the keto diet, and while they were good at treating my symptoms they didn’t have much insight about the underlying causes, and how I wound up in the hospital in the first place.

It wasn’t until I got to see my doctor, the next day, that I found out what I was suffering from was an electrolyte imbalance brought on by my keto-adaptation. One of the main things to happen when you start decreasing the amount of carbs you eat is that you start to lose water weight, and with that water weight, you also lose electrolytes.

In other words, keto flu is not a “flu” it’s an electrolyte imbalance. There’s no virus involved, you don’t just wait it out and get over it. You need to increase the micronutrients you’re eating to replenish what you’ve just lost (those would be your potassium, magnesium, calcium, and sodium).

There wasn’t a single blog or YouTube video about keto that made that bit of information clear, for me, in 2018. Everyone went on and on about macronutrients (fat, protein, and carbs), but nobody talked about micros in spite of the fact that they’re just as important for your body to function. Even today, you’re way more likely to see influencers in the keto community talk about macros than micros, but you need sufficient micros to live. Potassium is what helps your heart pump blood through your body, guys. You need it.

To add to that frustration, none of the food tracker apps that I came across really had accurate data about micronutrients. I know a lot of people are fans of a certain fitness pal, but some of the data that I found on that site was wildly inaccurate — they said salmon has carbs. Salmon does not have carbs. There was no way I could rely on that. So, in an effort to do a better job tracking my macros AND micros, I created my own meal calculator in an Excel spreadsheet populated with data from the USDA food composition database. You can find this meal calculator on my site, under the Resources page, plug your own numbers in, and plan the meals that will help you reach your macro AND micro targets.

This is going to be even more important if you’re black in America because reportedly, black Americans have less serum potassium than our white counterparts⁸. That means, in general, there’s already less potassium in our blood. Again, potassium helps our heart pump blood, and black people have less of it in our blood. All our lives we gotta fight, and this is just one more battle.

Now, if you’re thinking, “Genie, this sounds like a lot of work.” I understand that. Keto is a lot of work because it is an alternative lifestyle. Period. Every single thing about the way we consume food in the United States promotes the consumption of sugar (we’ll dive into that in another episode). And, a ketogenic lifestyle challenges you to divest from sugar. It’s not going to be easy because our food industry and our government and our culture make it hard. But, you know what’s going to be harder? Living life with metabolic syndrome.

In 2018, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health found that only 1 in 8 Americans are achieving optimal metabolic health. That means 7 out of 8 Americans are either at risk or already suffering from metabolic syndrome.

Here’s a shortlist of the diseases linked to metabolic syndrome:

Type II diabetes

Heart disease

Stroke

Depression

and, it’s good friend Anxiety

If you’ve suffered from any of those things, you know just how hard it impacts your day-to-day life. Is keto hard? Sure. But, a heart attack is definitely harder. Just saying.

I don’t want to scare anyone, but I do think we need to be real about what we’re doing to our bodies — whatever that is. Whether it’s a keto diet or a standard American diet, people should know what they’re doing to themselves with the food they eat.

Your body doesn’t know what a “fad diet” is. Your body doesn’t know that you plan to water-fast for two days in the hopes of losing ten pounds. Your body only knows whether or not it has what it needs to function properly every day.

Do you?

That’s how you avoid keto flu.

Genie Lauren’s Fast Life was produced, written, recorded, and edited by me — Genie Lauren, for Rocque More Media. This episode’s artwork was also created by me — Genie Lauren, for Rocque More Media. The podcast logo was created by Huny, and the theme song was created by Tonemassif.

Thanks for listening.