Fueling Success Part Two: Upgrading Your Fuel Toolbox

By Valerie Driscoll, Lead Coach and Coaching Program Developer for Apollo Health

As stated last month, you cannot be successful at The Bredesen Protocol without measuring your glucose or ketones; it is simply impossible. The importance of understanding and mastering glucose and ketone measurement is a vital step in the KetoFLEX 12/3 nutrition plan and lifestyle.

Part One included some of the basics of fuel measuring, and this month I want to explore more tips to fine-tune your skills. Fueling mastery will increase your metabolic flexibility, which not only means you are creating a healthier body and brain; it will also make your protocol experience much more enjoyable, as you are able to expand your choices and enjoy a wider variety of food!

Here in Part Two, I want to help you to add more tools to your fuel box. Here we go:

It is only data – Remind yourself daily that your glucose/ketone readings are not deciding whether you are good or bad, but they are telling you how much success you are having in becoming metabolically flexible, and adjustments that may need to be made.

You are an N of 1 – the when, why, and how of ketosis will be your own puzzle to solve and optimize. For example, some have their lowest ketone numbers upon waking, some before their first meal, and others before dinner. If you are having trouble hitting your goal, you may be measuring at the wrong time. Keep track of your glucose readings throughout the day for several days so you can see where your glucose is naturally the lowest; this will likely be the best time to measure ketones. When you discover your optimal time, you may want to do more exploring into why this might be; keeping a short-term journal of sleep, stress, exercise, and general activities can be very helpful.

Can I eat this? – Deb Sobel and I are consistently asked this by our Mastering Nutrition for Cognition participants, and sometimes the answer is easy: Is it one of the NOPE Foods? Then NO! If it’s a caution (glycemic index: 36-50) or beware food (glycemic index: 51-75) on our subscriber Grocery Guide, then maybe, but you will not know unless you test your glucose. Closely related:

The dose is the poison – I have come to prefer to think of food as doses rather than portions, and with almost every food your dosage matters, even some green foods in the grocery guide. A great example is chia seeds: a small dose (2 Tbs) to make a pudding could be fine, but 5 Tbs probably not. How do you know? You need to test.

Few and far between – As Apollo knows that we all sometimes have to bend to convenience, we offer some packaged food options on the Grocery Guide; these come with the above warning as well as a reference back to the two previous topics: can I and in what dosage? Testing your glucose is the only way to get your answer. This answer will often be at a dosage lower than that recommended on the package.

Recipes for disaster – Our 200+ Apollo Health recipes are fabulous (*chef’s kiss), but because we’re an N-of-one, not every recipe is for everyone at every time, so trying any new recipe requires testing your glucose. I need to give a shout out for a recipe from last month: Lemony Palm Pasta with Mackerel, which was delicious, and I would gladly serve it to my non-KetoFLEX 12/3 friends!

Master your hacks – Hacking the system is a major tool in your fuel box, and you can experiment in various ways to see how you react. Optimizing exercise, sleep, and stress are huge hacks toward metabolic flexibility, but here are others:

• Combining foods – roasted chickpeas alone? Disaster. Roasted chickpeas on a bed of greens, with a smattering of goat cheese walnuts; paired with our Lemon Anchovy Vinaigrette recipe for subscribers? Divine.
• Light exercise after eating, a little more fill-in-the-blank than you planned for in your meal? Go take a walk, ride a bike (with your helmet on), do a few sets of squats or the jitterbug. Moving our big muscles gobbles up glucose like you won’t believe!
• Timing matters – experiment with meal size and content at different times of the day. The largest meal at midday works best for most, but not everyone, so test to see what works for you.

As you begin to truly fine-tune your KF 12/3 lifestyle toward metabolic flexibility and ketosis, you can see where utilizing a continuous glucose monitor can prove to be strategic for your success, as it allows you to collect many more data points than a finger stick, but as you discover more about your own uniqueness in this process, an occasional finger stick will suffice. The most important thing is to know that this process will soon become second nature, and your body will become increasingly resilient to fluctuations in glucose and better at producing ketones as the Bredesen Protocol helps your body to heal.