606: Kelly LeVeque on Blood Sugar Balance, the Fab Four, Protein, and Demystifying Health

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This episode is sponsored by Just Thrive Health. Thanks to our modern world, it’s impossible to cut out all stress. Ever feel tightness in your tummy sitting in rush hour traffic, or can’t sleep because of your never ending “to-do” list? That’s because your gut – not your brain – is responsible for your stress response. The solution, then, isn’t just to stop or avoid stress, but instead find effective ways to manage it. Just Calm, the brand new product from Just Thrive, represents a revolutionary new approach to uplifting your body, mind, and soul, naturally. Just Calm has been clinically proven in multiple studies to help: Reduce perceived stress, Balance cortisol, improve sleep quality and even encourage focus and flow.
And, for unbeatable stress management, I’ve been pairing Just Calm with Just Thrive spore-based Probiotic. Here’s why: We’ve all heard the term “gut instinct” or the gut-brain connection. But that connection is more powerful than you think. Your gut and brain “talk” to each other sending signals all day long. A healthy gut isn’t just crucial for immune and digestive health… It’s also one of the best ways to beat stress long term. By giving your gut the beneficial bacteria it needs to thrive, Just Thrive Probiotic not only supports your best gut health… It creates the perfect foundation for Just Calm to perform at maximum strength. And when your gut is happy and your stress is under control, you’ll be able to keep calm and win the day everyday. Don’t miss episode 539 to learn more about this groundbreaking company. Right now, you can get 15% off this dynamic duo when you go to justthrivehealth.com/wellnessmama and use code wellnessmama at checkout.

This episode is brought to you by Wellnesse. That’s wellness with an e on the end, my line of non-toxic, family focused personal care products including haircare, oral care and deodorant. At my house, kids toothbrushes and kids strawberry toothpaste are the favorites. The toothbrushes come in a 3-pack of fun colors, which makes it easy for my kids to know which brush is theirs. The strawberry toothpaste tastes great so there aren’t any fights about tooth brushing, and I love that it’s formulated around hydroxyapatite, a naturally occurring mineral found in tooth enamel. All of our toothpastes use only EWG verified safe ingredients, are free of toxins, and are packed with ingredients that naturally support the oral microbiome for stronger, healthier, whiter teeth naturally. Check out these and all of our products at wellnesse.com.

Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and I’m here today with a good friend, Kelly LeVeque, who is a certified clinical nutritionist, a wellness expert, celebrity health coach, and the best-selling author of “Body Love” and “Body Love Every Day.” And we get to go deep on so many topics today. I really loved this episode because she’s so good at explaining a lot of these more sciencey concepts in very understandable terms and then making them very practical and applicable. And we start by talking about why over 100 million people in the U.S. have diabetes or prediabetes and why this is largely preventable. And the reason we’re seeing a rise in this, even in children, we talk about macronutrients on a high level, why amino acids and essential fatty acids are so important, but we don’t necessarily have the same dietary need for carbohydrates, how the body can take protein and create what it needs through gluconeogenesis, why protein has a zero to minimal effect on blood sugar, and why protein is the most satisfying micronutrient, as well as how much protein we actually need and how to optimize this.
We talk about blood sugar quite a bit and how to know if yours is in a good range, how to improve that. She explains cellular carbohydrates versus acellular carbohydrates. We talk about how these needs change during pregnancy and breastfeeding and why carbs aren’t the enemy but why no carb isn’t good either, and a reason to avoid things like naked carbohydrates, how to use time-restricted feeding to our advantage, tips for fasting optimally as a woman and getting enough protein. And then she gives some really practical, implementable tips on when and how to eat for really big changes in your metabolic health. So, as always with Kelly, I learned so much. She’s always so good at explaining these things. I know you will learn a lot as well. So, let’s join Kelly. Kelly, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Kelly: Thanks, Katie. I’m excited to be here.
Katie: I’m always excited to chat with you, and I know we’re gonna get to talk about several very important topics, especially for women today. Before we jump in, I have a fun fact in my show notes that you not only surf and snowboard but that you drove a huge lifted truck through college, and I did not know this about you. So I wanna hear the story.
Kelly: Yeah. You know, it’s crazy. So my dad, he’s an entrepreneur. He owned a towing company and a storage facility. And when I was growing up, all I wanted was a big lifted truck. I grew up in Orange County. That was, like, the thing to drive. And so I worked at my dad’s tow yard, answering phone calls, dispatching drivers, running credit cards for storage, you know, monthly storage dings. My dad would say, “You gotta ding the credit cards this month,” and I would just sit there and plug in the numbers. And earned enough money to buy my first car, so I bought a silver F-150. And then through SAT scores and certain milestones that my dad thought were important, I’d earn a certain dollar amount, and I paid for 35-inch mud tires and a 12.5-inch lift. So I drove that my senior year of high school all the way through college. So this is kind of a funny fun fact.
Katie: That is so funny. I’m guessing not your mom car these days.
Kelly: No, not my mom car these days. I’ve had, like, the Volvo SUV, the Discovery. Like, I’m kinda just momming around with car seats at this point. And with a third on the way, I’m like, “I’m gonna have to do something like a Suburban or something even bigger,” which is crazy.
Katie: Well, congratulations on the third. I know, when I had my sixth, I was like, “Well, the only option pretty much is a Suburban now.” Oh, I love it. Well, today, you’re an expert in so many things, and it’s always so fun to chat with you. But the topics I’m really excited to learn from you and to delve into today are around things like metabolic health, and especially blood sugar balance for women, especially, and I think there’s so many different kind of sub-topics within this that we can go into. But I’d love to start at a high level and maybe just talk about the importance of understanding things like blood sugar balance and the whole physiology behind this. Because we know things, like, metabolic syndrome is massively on the rise, type 2 diabetes is on the rise, obesity is on the rise. And from the literature, these are things that are largely within our control, but I feel like we aren’t always given good tools on understanding and manipulating them to our advantage. So let’s start broad and walk us through why this is important.
Kelly: Definitely. Well, you hit the nail on the head. So there are 37 million people in the United States with diabetes, 96 million have prediabetes, and with only 332 million people in the United States, you know, that is over a third of our population, and it’s on the rise. And it’s on the rise with young children even. So what is scary is, it is a preventable disease. When working with functional MDs, I know, my job is to work with a client on their food choices. And whenever we have a patient who has prediabetes or diabetes and it’s not a variety that is autoimmune based, our goal is to get them off medication, lower inflammatory markers, lower A1C, which is a look at their 90-day blood sugar average, lower glucose, lower insulin, and really get them eating a whole food diet that supports blood sugar balance. And you know, it’s really disappointing for me that we didn’t learn blood sugar balance and health in high school or that it wasn’t a part of the college curriculum. Because when you look at it, what we learned in health class, if you took it in high school, was how to read a nutrition fact, which was, primarily, like, the low-hanging fruit for people was, “What’s the calories of this?” And you understood, under a nutrition fact, there were ingredients, and a lot of these are…we’re talking about foods that come in a package or a box.
And so what I like to teach my clients is to look outside the package or the box and really get into the whole foods and understand macronutrients on a whole. So we have protein, we have carbohydrates, and we have fat. Those are the three macronutrients that you can eat. Depending on the type of food, there may be a mix. Like, let’s say a nut, for example. That’s going to have fat, it’s going to have some protein, and it’s going to have some carbohydrates in the form mostly of fiber, but we can dive into that in a little bit. So sometimes a food is primarily something. Like, let’s say you had steak. That’s primarily protein. If you had avocado, that’s primarily fat. If you had an orange, that’s primarily a carbohydrate.
So for the most part, foods are broken down into those three macronutrients, and those macronutrients break down when you eat them into three different things. So when you have protein, it breaks down to amino acids. When you have fat, it breaks down to fatty acids. And when you have carbohydrates, it’s breaking down to glucose or fructose. And so what’s interesting is that you don’t actually have an essential carbohydrate, but we have to get essential amino acids from protein and essential fatty acids from fat.
So that might surprise people because they know there are three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. So they would assume, “Oh, well, I have to eat carbohydrates to support my body.” But actually, your body can take proteins and create carbohydrates through gluconeogenesis. That’s the creation of glucose from proteins. But what’s interesting is when we talk about your muscles, your cells, your hormones, your neurotransmitters, these are made from proteins. And what’s so cool is that when you eat something that is primarily protein and it breaks down to amino acids, it has a minimal to zero effect on your blood sugar. It’s simply broken down, and it’s broken down into those individual amino acids, and those are really satisfying.
So we have…you know, when I wrote my first book in 2017, I highlighted eight hunger hormones, and what’s interesting is we have hunger hormones screaming at us all day to eat, right? But protein is the most satisfying macronutrient when it comes to its ability to regulate over half of our hunger hormones. And so that means when you eat enough protein and an optimal amount, not only is it not having an effect on your blood sugar in the way that a carbohydrate would, it is satisfying you in a way that your body…there’s actually a protein satiety theory where if we’re not eating enough protein, we will continue to eat until we get the amino acids that our body is scavenging for, and they actually have found nerves that enervate our gut that are specifically looking for amino acids and specific fatty acids, like omega-3s. So it is pretty fascinating how important amino acids and protein are to not only our satiety but the recreation of cells in our body.
So then you go to fat, right? So we need omega-3s. You know, you’ve heard of all of your essential fatty acids, your omegas. We get a lot of omega-6 and -9 from our foods, but it’s really those omega-3s from wild seafood, from wild pasture-raised meats that are anti-inflammatory. When we talk about inflammation, we take it back to diabetes. Anytime we have a client with metabolic syndrome, anytime we have elevated blood sugar, when we’re dealing with obesity, when we have a chronic lifestyle disease like heart disease, we are seeing elevated inflammatory markers, like C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, homocysteine. A lot of these are markers of inflammation. When we have inflammation, we know that insulin resistance is more prevalent. And so we want to make sure that we’re getting enough of these essential fatty acids, like omega-3s, to support the balance of omegas from omega-3 to omega-6 and -9 to decrease inflammation and increase insulin sensitivity.
So you have your proteins, and then you have your fats. And fats, like proteins, fats have zero effect on blood sugar. So this is why, when you think about a ketogenic diet, when people are starting their day with a fatty coffee or they’re really leaning into fat as a primary source of fuel, protein second, low carb, nonstarchy vegetables third, what they find is they can get their body to a place where it’s preferring fat for fuel. And that’s a pretty special place, that metabolic flexibility, because you aren’t reliant on the…you have a lot of fat stores on your body, you’re not as reliant on the food outside of yourself. You can rely on stores of energy inside of yourself, and you’re not going to follow that spike and dip that you would have when you have carbohydrates that turn into glucose. So you have your proteins, you have your fats, and what you realize with proteins and fats is they’re not having a major effect on glucose, but they’re actually really satisfying, and they’re super essential for our vitality and vibrancy, for hormones, for inflammation, for muscle retention, for satiety, all of it.
So, then, let’s look at carbohydrates. What’s so cool about what I call nature’s food, which is all your veggies, all your fruits, nuts, and seeds, really, it’s whole foods in their whole form, is that the carbohydrates are wrapped in a fiber cell, and these carbohydrates are called cellular carbohydrates, in research, versus acellular carbohydrates, which are carbohydrates that have been taken out of their fiber cell. Acellular carbohydrates, an example would be flowers, sugars, juices. Anything, like, if you think about a whole grain or a whole nut or seed or a whole fruit, like a whole apple is a cellular carbohydrate. Apple juice is an acellular carbohydrate. When it’s been obliterated or pulled out of that fiber cell, it has the ability to have a massive effect on your glucose and your blood sugar levels. Because it’s pure glucose, a lot of times, it’s broken down carbohydrates, it’s fast-to-digest foods. Whereas when we’re eating, I would say, the way nature intended, where your sugars and your starches are wrapped up in a fiber cell, you actually have to chew or masticate through that food, then you digest through it with hydrochloric acid and enzymes, and then it’s going to need to make its way down into your gut, be fermented, and then be absorbed.
So fiber is this amazing component of a carbohydrate that helps you prevent a blood sugar roller coaster, because it’s wrapping everything up, and you have to break through it, to chew through it, and digest through it to really have that spike be exaggerated. Whereas if you were to have a glass of orange juice or apple juice, a soda, a sports drink, what you’re going to see is blood sugar numbers that maybe shoot up 30 to 40 to 50 milligrams per deciliter. And if someone, say, for example, is “considered in the healthy range by Western medicine,” which is under 100 milligrams per deciliter fasting, that is within one drink of orange juice first thing in the morning is a diabetic number, which is scary to think about.
Because those blood sugar excursions, when you are allowing or eating in a way that creates these massive spikes and crashes, these spikes and crashes not only surge your blood with sugar, you have a surge of insulin that stops lipolysis or the breakdown of fat in your body, and with that insulin comes a crash. So your body is taking the sugar in your bloodstream and trying to put it away as fast as possible. It’ll store some in your liver. It’ll store some in your muscles. If you were ever an athlete, this is carbo-loading. But because it’s been so quickly absorbed into your bloodstream, your pancreas is going to overreact with an excessive amount of insulin, and that can cause a hypoglycemic reaction where the crash is really hard and fast.
Now, that spike and crash actually can cause people to feel really irritable. They are going to have an increase in cravings, an inability to concentrate, the focus is very hard. We actually see in research that retention…when junior high-aged kids are told a story, kids who had a high glycemic meal prior to that story have less retention 30 minutes later than kids who have balanced blood sugar. So we know it’s affecting everything, from our cravings to our ability to break down fat, to our energy levels, and even our retention and mood. So blood sugar is really something we want to understand, and I think, for a lot of people, for a long time, it was, “I’ll have the apple. but I’ll add the almond butter,” when really we need to look at what are the things that don’t break down to blood sugar first, the proteins and the fats that go on our plate that really are essential to our body, our vitality, our hormones, our muscle mass, all of it, not to mention our mood and our skin health. It’s all affected by the quantity of healthy proteins and fats that are on our plate. And then we have to look at fiber and greens or the produce on our plate as a way to give ourselves a slow drip of glucose but, truly, to feed our microbiome and promote gut health, because that ultimately is what will fight inflammation, but it isn’t essential in the way that we thought it once was.
Katie: So many important things in what you just said, and I even think of your initial comment about, you know, “They didn’t teach this in high school.” And I think of this in so many different areas, like, how much different would adult life be if they taught metabolic health in high school, and if they thought financial management, and if they taught mindset, you know, there’s so many examples there. But I love the focus on protein. I feel like this is a really important topic, especially for women, and we can talk about, especially, even during pregnancy and breastfeeding, how there’s a higher demand for this. But like you mentioned, it is essential for the body, which means we need to consume these things to support our basic bodily functions. But also, from my understanding, there’s something called the thermic effect of food, and protein is especially great for this. Like, it actually requires resources to break down into amino acids, and so it almost, in some ways, has kind of a neutral…like, it will be very difficult, for instance, to gain weight from eating too much protein because of the way it’s handled in the body.
But I think that brings up the question, for women, especially, what is the optimal range that we’re aiming for? How do we know if we’re there? I feel like, from the numbers I’m seeing, a lot of women are probably undereating protein by quite a bit.
Kelly: Oh, yeah, it’s pretty staggering, especially, when I sit down with clients, and I don’t think there’s even a realization until they write down what they’ve been eating throughout the day and start to track how far they are from an optimal range. With most of my clients, I’m looking for 1 gram per pound of body mass, and with pregnant women and breastfeeding women, 1.25 to 1.5 grams per pound of body mass. And that might be surprising to pregnant women. It might be surprising to breastfeeding women. But when we look at the nutrient density present, ounce for ounce, in protein versus other foods, it’s staggering. I mean, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, choline, omegas, minerals like selenium, zinc, magnesium, critical minerals for nerve health, for thyroid health, iron. I mean, when we think about iron, iron is the delivery mechanism for oxygen and all the nutrients to every cell in our body. So when we think about everything from apoptosis or programmed cell death and then the rebuilding of these cells, we need those nutrients in the right places to really be the strongest, like I said, most vibrant version of ourselves.
And, I mean, I’ll give myself as an example, second pregnancy, postpartum, I finally, you know, had two boys back-to-back. I breastfed both of them, 18 months and 2 years. I finally did my full functional MD blood panel, and my iron…I was anemic and ferritin was low. I had to have two 750-milligram iron infusions, which I will say, if anyone has a history of being anemic and/or their blood test…they’ve had postnatal depletion, their blood tests show that they are anemic, it would be my recommendation to consider an iron IV. Because you’re not going to have the side effects of constipation. And when it comes to iron bioavailability from supplements, it’s quite low, and it takes sometimes six months to a year to bring iron levels back up, even in meat eaters.
And I will say, what might be a surprise to the listeners is I eat Ancestral Blend from Force of Nature, which is a blend of organ meats and muscle meat, twice a week. Like, I am not undereating protein, by any means, but when we look at the protein needs to create a human and sustain them throughout breastfeeding, we can look at choline levels, for example, which is really only coming from animal protein or egg yolks. And this is, like, grass-fed beef-style animal protein. Those choline levels stay high in breastfeeding up to the second year.
So it is…when we look at breastfeeding nutrients, there’s actually Lactation Lab in Los Angeles if you’re ever curious what your nutrient levels are. You can pump breastmilk into vials, send it to that lab, and they’ll tell you what your calories per ounce is. It should be 20 calories per ounce. It’ll also tell you the mix of macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, in your breastmilk. And then what’s even more critical are those critical nutrients like iron, choline, omega-3s. And it gives you insight into whether you’re eating the proper and appropriate amounts of protein and what you should be including to really make the most nutrient dense food for your child. That’s super cool and something I would suggest. But if you’re, in any way, feeling like you have postpartum depletion, it sort of feels like low thyroid, fatigue, definitely get a blood draw postpartum because low thyroid is pretty chronic in postpartum for women, and so is anemia. And being on top of your protein intake can really prevent that in the future. And you know, I would say, I took it really seriously during my pregnancies and then not as seriously as I should have during breastfeeding, and that is a full-time job.
Katie: Absolutely. And to reiterate what you said, I feel like protein is not something we’re going to eat too much of by accident, especially as women. Like, if we start tracking, I know, that was eye-opening for me. I thought I was eating plenty of protein, and when I actually tracked it, I was like, “Oh, I’m not even at, like, basic replacement level of what I need to function, much less to feed babies right now.” And I noticed in myself when I focused on my metabolic health and improved that, ate more protein, and actually started just eating more volume of food to get the calories I needed, my basal temperature rose, and my thyroid problems were solved through that, and a lot of other inner work that I did. And I think that’s not talked about enough connection.
And especially to your point in that pregnancy and breastfeeding time of life, I read once that I think it’s like 2.5 times our normal basal metabolic rate is about the most demand the human body can handle in a day, which is, like, your super elite athletes, but pregnancy is over 2, and so we’re essentially in, even at rest, an intense athletic event at all times. And so I think if we shift our mindset to that and even if we’re not pregnant or breastfeeding but we have been in the past, I felt like shifting into that athletic mindset of, like, “I need to refuel and rebuild and recover,” was really, really, really helpful.
And then I love your tips on iron and choline. Choline, for me, was life-changing. I realized from breastfeeding six babies, I was chronically deficient in choline, and getting my levels in range was, like, you know, like a breath of fresh air in my mind. My brain felt so much better.
And I also love the importance of how you explained, like, the cellular versus acellular carbohydrates, because I think, often, when we hear this conversation about carbohydrates, everything gets…like, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water, and people avoid even plant-based foods that are sources of carbohydrates. And so I think your perspective is so important on, these aren’t bad, it’s the form that they are in and that we need diversity, for the sake of our guts, of these foods but from the right sources so that our body is getting the most benefit.
I also wanna go deeper on the glucose side, because we now have the ability to test this at home. There are monitors we can use. We actually have this data at our fingertips. So I’m curious what kind of ranges, if we have this data, should we be aiming for? Like, as an example, myself, my fasting glucose every single morning is 73, without variation, and it’s back, and it’s back under 100 within an hour after eating. And it took me years to get metabolically healthy enough that that’s true. But what kind of numbers are you looking for when you’re working with people?
Kelly: First of all, I’ve always known that you’ve dialed your food in, Katie, and I want to applaud those metabolic numbers. Because what’s interesting is, a few years ago, they used to say that the average and the healthy range for adults was 80 milligrams per deciliter to 120 milligrams per deciliter. Now that we have continuous glucose monitors available to the healthy population, not just patients with diabetes, we’re able to really look at athletes, people with and who care very much about metabolic health, and they’ve lowered the range. It’s now 70 milligrams to 110 milligrams per deciliter. So a 10-point drop there. And now, when we look at that range, depending on what you eat and the density of the carbohydrates that you’re eating, the properties of those carbohydrates, whether they’re acellular and fast digesting foods versus cellular, that would determine how high and how fast that spike would go.
Now, when we look at real health, I think what gets exciting for people is they go, well, if…it’s kinda like that idea, if low carb is good, no carb is best. You know, if I’m tracking my blood sugar, then a flat line is best. And I want to correct that. It is absolutely 100% normal to have glucose excursions. What we want is a tighter range. Optimal would be somewhere between 20 and 30 milligrams per deciliter in change. Now, there are meals that I have that only raise my blood sugar 5 to 10 milligrams per deciliter. Fab 4 smoothie is a good example of that. If I’m having steak, side salad, maybe some nonstarchy vegetables like cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, things of that nature where I’m not having…sweet potato, yams, or anything like what I would consider more moderate starches, even though they’re cellular, you might just see a smaller spike in crash. But what’s most important is that elongation. It’s, how long that you feel full and satisfied?
So the goal would be that a meal would last in your body somewhere between four and six hours. Now, you’re never gonna get there without optimal levels of protein, because the protein is the slowest to digest. You talked about, like, the thermogenic effect of eating protein. It takes your body so much energy to break down that protein. It also lasts longer in your body. And I think there was a subculture of people that wanted to eat a very raw, vegan, enzyme-rich diet that would move through their body very, very quickly. But what you’re looking at there is meals that aren’t sustaining you for what you need to do throughout the day, whether that’s, you know, your workday, raising your children, working out, making sure your brain is functioning.
So when you look at your glucose, let’s say you were to get something like a Levels CGM, you throw it on the back of your arm, it’s tracking your blood sugar. Like you said, every morning, you wake up, you’re at 73 milligrams per deciliter, super healthy. From there, if you were to go up that 30 milligrams per deciliter, like, the highest point of, like, what I would consider a healthy spike, that crash is going to make you crave more carbohydrates versus if you were to go up 10 milligrams per deciliter and flatten back off. The ability for your body to bring your blood sugar back down under 100 milligrams per deciliter an hour within a meal is amazing. That is so healthy because we want to keep you in that…if you look at that 30-milligram range you have, it’s a little less. It’s, you know, 27 milligrams, 73 to 100 right there. We know right there that you’re not only fueling your body and getting enough protein, but you’re not ever getting to this place where you’re prediabetic.
When I track clients who have never understood blood sugar and they get a CGM, what we see over time is, a lot of times, that first meal of the day is so critical in how the rest of their day will go. So let’s say, for example, they sit down, and they go, “I’m gonna have some avocado toast, and I’ll put one egg on it.” Six grams of protein, very little protein in an avocado toast and an egg. Mostly toast, right? The egg and the avocado is going to slow down that meal because fat and protein always slow down the digestion of carbohydrates. So we never want to eat negative carbohydrates. It’s like … would jack up that blood sugar 40 milligrams, easy, on its own. It would crash down 90 minutes later. You would be craving more carbohydrates. You’d be looking for a sugary yogurt. You’d be looking for an apple. You’d be looking for the next best carbohydrate in your pantry within two hours of just having toast, right? So the avocado and the egg is going to slow that down. It’s not probably going to sustain you for six hours because that six grams of protein is not enough to get you there. I really like people aiming for 30 grams of protein per meal, including breakfast, and breakfast actually being the most important time.
So if you think about that blood sugar excursion, first thing in the morning, if you were to go up 40 milligrams per deciliter or even that 30 and start to drop down, you’re not going to come all the way back down to that 73. You’re going to feel hungry before then, and you’re going to want to snack. And so what we see over time is that blood sugar doesn’t go up and come down, all the way down to the healthy range. What it does is it goes up, and then it actually works its way up over the course of the day. And in the afternoon time, around 3:00 or 4:00, we have major cravings for caffeine and sugar. That’s that cookie, brownie, coffee.
And then what happens post-dinner is more cravings for sugar and carbohydrates, obsessive thoughts about food, late-night eating. And unfortunately, that is the most detrimental to blood sugar over time because that 73 that is always there for you every single morning, when someone is not focused on blood sugar, over time, we see the fasting numbers go to 80, 90, and even 100. Like I said, it’s considered healthy from a traditional Western medicine doctor. But we know that 100 milligrams per deciliter for women, specifically, doubles your chances of having type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome by the time you hit menopause. It doubles your chances of Alzheimer’s later in life. So fasting blood sugar is truly a marker for chronic lifestyle diseases and health later in life. And it’s preventable, and we’re able to keep those blood sugar markers in a healthy range when we’re eating whole foods and when we’re focused on the right mix of macronutrients on our plate.
Katie: Yeah. And I feel like these little shifts make a huge difference, especially getting enough protein. Even if someone doesn’t change anything else in the short term and they just start fueling there, they’ll notice energy differences, sleep differences, because they’re replenishing these basic functions in the body. I also think it’s fascinating, having worn a monitor quite a bit, to see the exercise spikes and things from, like, exercise and sauna. And I love that Levels differentiates these because I think when they first started, they didn’t, and they would just count them as food spikes. And I’ll often get a bigger spike from intense exercise than from food. And so I’d love for you to explain, like, why those are actually beneficial spikes. We don’t want to, like, avoid exercise if it’s causing a spike.
Kelly: Right. So what we’re talking about is a spike from your liver. And so remember when I talked about how glucose, whenever you eat carbohydrates, it stores in your liver, and then it stores in your muscles. And then, if there’s no space left, you might have elevated blood sugar. It might be sent to your liver to be converted to a triglyceride. But when you think about just that first step, you eat some carbohydrate source, it stores in your liver. Well, what happens when you need to work out or you’re in a sauna and your body is requiring energy to work out or to bring your temperature down? Your liver releases stored…it breaks down glycogen. So your sugar, your glucose is stored as glycogen in your liver. And then glucagon is released, and that’s a hormone that says, “Hey, Katie needs some energy right now. She needs some fast fuel.”
And so your liver breaks down that glycogen back into glucose and dumps it in your bloodstream so you have energy. But it isn’t an excessive amount, it just happens really fast, and so your blood sugar spikes up. But what you are so primed to do when you are working out or when you are in a sauna is to use that glucose as fuel quickly and burn it off. So it’s very different from new glucose excursions from food, because it’s previously stored glucose that you are now burning. It’s being shuffled into your bloodstream to end up fueling the muscles that you’re using during your workout or bringing your temperature down. And so we want to look at those excursions as a form of hormesis or cellular stress where you are getting stronger, it’s improving insulin resistance, and decreasing inflammation over time. And so that is completely different than food-based carbohydrate excursions or glucose spikes.
Now, I will say, there are a few other times when your blood sugar will spike, and it is not based on food, and that would be excessive amounts of caffeine or excessive stress. And so these I would categorize as different than your workout or sauna blood sugar excursions, because they’re not necessarily hormetic and supportive of health over time. We know that excessive and chronic stress, over time, increases inflammation and is really hard on our adrenals.
And the same with caffeine. So if you have coffee, like I’ve had clients track their glucose with Levels, have a cup of coffee, they’re fine with the first cup of coffee. On the second cup of coffee, they’ve had no food, and we’re seeing a surge in glucose and a crash that then has them craving carbohydrates, feeling a little bit frenetic and unsatisfied. So I would say, if you’re sensitive to caffeine, one cup of coffee is fine. If you’re going to have a second, please have a protein-based break-the-fast, whenever that is, preferably before noon or 1:00 in the afternoon with that coffee and with a protein-based meal so that it isn’t as hard on your body like a stressful event.
And when you think about stressful events, that might be presenting on television, that might be presenting to your team, even stress with couples. So we’ve seen that intermarital fighting and stress between a boss and someone who works for a company can actually have a chronic effect on their blood glucose over time. So you mentioned healing outside of optimal protein intake as being really supportive for you. I’ve seen it across the board, kinda like clearing out the things in your life or working through the things in your life that are causing chronic low-grade stress is critical for overall health and longevity, especially for metabolic health.
Katie: And another topic within this realm that we talked about before we started recording that I think is super helpful because it can have such dramatic effect without a lot of effort is the topic of time-restricted eating or time-restricted feeding or intermittent fasting, it’s called a lot of different things, and there are slight differences in what we’re talking about, depending on the term, but the main concept being eating maybe even the same amount of food or the same types of food but in a shorter window. And I know there have been some fascinating studies, and one, in particular, that you mentioned that really looked at this as far as for long-term metabolic health markers, and I know there’s also some caveats for women of just, if low carb is good, no carb is not better, restricted feeding is good, eating in a two-hour window is not better. So there are some caveats here, but I would love for you to walk us through how to use time-restricted eating, as a woman, to our advantage metabolically.
Kelly: Yeah. So I was really impressed with this study that came out in Cell, and it was a randomized trial. It’s called time-restricted eating with or without low-carbohydrate diet reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome. And it was just…actually, it just came out last month. And I was really impressed with it, because what it did is it looked at time-restricted eating, it looked at an eight-hour feeding window, and it looked at a low-carbohydrate, whole-food diet, and then it looked at a combination of both. And you know, we have just talked about how much I love whole foods because they’re cellular carbohydrates, they’re a slow release of glucose.
But when you look at this study, if you were just to look at the low-carbohydrate diet, what you found was a reduction in overall body fat and a reduction in subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat on top of organs, on top of your hips, your booty, maybe, you know, a little bit of cellulite-style fat. But when you look at time-restricted eating, there were more benefits, actually, in the reduction of visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds your organs, adds more inflammatory fat. It’s a predictor of chronic lifestyle diseases later in life, including heart disease and diabetes.
But the combination of both was the most powerful in its ability not only to lower body fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat, but secondary markers like reducing lipids in the blood, these are triglyceride levels, reducing uric acid, and if you’ve had Dr. Perlmutter on and you read the book, “Drop Acid,” really, it’s this stealth marker of inflammation and a predictor of major chronic lifestyle diseases, including Alzheimer’s. We saw a reduction in A1C. We saw a reduction in glucose, reduction of metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers.
So I think, you know, we see something like this, and we get super, super excited. We say, “Great. I’m going to have no carbs, and I’m going to eat two hours a day.” And that’s not what the study is saying. But what we really need to recognize is that our body does need a break to do the deep work. It needs a break to break down the visceral fat that’s surrounding our organs. It needs a break to clear uric acid and to decrease inflammation so that we are insulin sensitive.
And so, you know, in my coaching group, I do a monthly coaching group, I presented this study, and it’s mostly women, and that was my big, like, throw-your-foot-on-the-brake moment with these women, was it’s looking at an eight-hour feeding window. And I think what we can all agree is that, looking at some studies that came out in the last few years, even a 10-hour time-restricted eating window has benefit for A1C, glucose, insulin levels, inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein. So we don’t need to be so aggressive, but what we do need to do is get consistent over time so that our body has the ability to do this deep cleansing.
And so when it comes to time-restrictive eating for women and for my clients, I really look at the circadian rhythm style fasting where we’re breaking the fast, depending on when you wake up two to three hours after waking or if you do a fasted workout, that’s fine, but let’s fuel up right after. So I love, like, a 9:00 to 5:00, an 8:00 to 6:00 feeding window, because, truly, I get the best metabolic results, whether it’s diagnostic blood markers, you know, hip-to-waist ratio, weight loss for clients who are preparing for roles, for time-restricted eating, we are focused on the back end. Because that is truly the time in which we are going to get the most fat burning, we’re going to get the most cleansing, and that’s when we’re sleeping. So how can you finish dinner at an early hour and be done eating for the rest of the day? Even if you wake up, like I do, to a, you know, 4:45, 5 a.m. toddler wake-up and I need food by 7:00, I’m still shutting it down with my boys at, you know, 6 p.m. latest for dinner and not eating after that. And that has an amazing ability to maintain weight for people and to really see that deep cleansing if you can push that breakfast time back just a few hours.
Katie: Yeah. I think that alone is such an important tip. There was a trend for a while of people intermittent fasting but not eating till, like, 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. and then eating later into the night. And I noticed, for me at least, watching all these metrics, if I shift to that, the earlier I shift to that, the better, which we know, the longer before you go to sleep that you stop eating, the better your deep sleep. And I see that play out in my Oura Ring over and over again. But I think that alone, especially for women, there seems to be a really beneficial effect of, like you said, protein in the morning to start that whole process, and I would also add morning sunlight, because that starts your cortisol rhythms correctly and also has a big influence on your hormones. And then, if we can stop eating, I like to think of, like, when the sun goes down, if we can eat when the sun is up and not eat when the sun is down, it tends to really, really improve sleep.
And you also mentioned waist-to-hip ratio, which I think is another one, even if you’re not going to do extensive lab testing, this is something we can all do at home for free. And that measurement alone, it’s really drastic, to me, how much of a correlation it has to longevity, which makes sense because, while it’s an external measurement, it’s looking at your visceral fat and where the fat is depositing in your body. So that’s what I love to have people just kinda keep an eye on and see where you’re going with that because you might not even change weight very much. Like, I’ve noticed this lately for me is the more muscle I put on, my weight isn’t changing, but my size is changing. So my waist size is getting smaller, hip size…that ratio has improved.
You also mentioned, a few minutes ago, the Fab 4, which is…I love this concept. Can you explain what that is? I think this is just a helpful thing to keep in mind for women, especially.
Kelly: Yeah. So for me, growing up in love with health and nutrition, loving diet books, you know, “Shape,” “Women’s Health,” all of the magazine subscriptions to my house, and reading all of those diet books at a very young age, speaking of visceral, I have a pretty visceral reaction to a PDF, like, Eat, Do not Eat Less, I feel really restricted under those circumstances. And what I came to realize was a lot of these books were saying the same thing, that, you know, a certain amount of protein and healthy fats and nonstarchy vegetables and low-glycemic fruits were really supportive to weight loss, to feeling your best, to energy levels, to hormone balance. And then I took this course at USC, Nature of Human Health and Disease, where my final project was on diabetes, and I learned all about blood sugar. So I’m so thankful that I took that course because that was my first deep dive, and it was a full deep dive into blood sugar.
And so what I realized was that we don’t need these long, extensive lists to balance our blood sugar to feel our best. We need a short checklist that we can put on our plate every single day to know that that’s going to support our blood sugar balance, get us those essential nutrients that I talked about earlier in the show, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, to get the fiber, the leafy greens, the color that our gut microbiome needs to produce all of those postbiotics, like, short chain fatty acids, the bioavailable antioxidants from, say, for example, the polyphenols that we eat.
And so the Fab 4 is protein, fat, fiber, and leafy greens. I use it for my kids. I use it when I’m pregnant. I use it when I’m not pregnant, when I’m breastfeeding, you name it. I look at my plate, and I go, “Okay, do I have a source of protein? Did I use a healthy fat to cook this food? Is there avocado on my plate? Do I have a side of olives? Okay, where is the veggies? Do I have the fiber and the leafy greens on this plate?” We know that a cup of leafy greens every single day, when we look at brain scans and we do cognitive testing, that for people that consume leafy greens a cup a day have brains that perform, on average, 11 years younger. So these are just amazing benefits of the plant-based foods that really has to do with the way that they interact with our microbes and the byproducts that those microbes produce.
And so let’s say, for example, you know, I’m throwing together a meal, and I might go, “Okay, I feel like a burger.” So the burger is the protein. I’m gonna throw some avocado on that protein for fat, or I’m going to use a more fatty cut of beef. And then fiber and greens. All right, I’m going to lettuce wrap. I throw some tomatoes, some onions. I’m always looking to create diversity and color differences on the plate. And then I’ll maybe throw some cauliflower and broccoli in the oven and roast that up, or I’ll do some carrot, parsnip, and sweet potato fries. Really it’s just, how am I getting the color and the fiber on my plate from plant-based foods? And then it’s not like you can’t ever have a bun, or you can’t ever have a dessert, or you know, something else on the plate, but it truly is the north star of check, check, check, check.
Okay, I know that, together, the protein, the fat, and the fiber, when you eat that combination of foods, not only do you slow down the digestion of that meal, you elongate your blood sugar curve, you blunt your glucose response so it’s not going as high, and that’s when satiety is hit. So I’m setting myself up for success, and I do it at restaurants. I think there’s this fear for people when they start to eat healthy that they can’t eat out or grab meals out, and I always tell people, you know, “The stress that you’re creating around not enjoying a meal out with your family or friends is worse for you than whatever it is that you’re worried about in the food.”
So let’s say that you go out for a restaurant or out to dinner, I’ll use the example in L.A., I like Jon & Vinny’s, super Italian place, it’s pasta and pizza, and there’s, like, a few things on there where you can get protein. I love their chicken paillard. It’s delicious. But I’ll look at the menu and go, “Okay, get the arugula salad for the table. Get the charred broccoli for the table. How can we add the warm olives to the table?” I’m constantly looking, even if I’m cherry-picking off the menu from sides and appetizers, carpaccio, to get some protein, to get some veggies, to get some fat on the plate, on the table, and to consume that first, because I know that it blunts that glucose response. It’s going to create that satiety faster. And then, if it’s a bite of the famous, you know, cacio e pepe or, like, a bit of Chris’s Carnivora pizza, I’m like, “Okay, I don’t have to feel guilty about this. I don’t have to feel bad.”
But I’m not foregoing the things that are going to balance my blood sugar and really up my metabolic rate and make me feel my best for, like, throwing the baby out with the bath water and deciding, “Forget it. It’s a wash. I’ll start over tomorrow.” I think a lot of people do that where it’s this mindset of on or off. And so the Fab 4 is the checklist for everything for me, even in creating lunchboxes. So I might roll up some salami or put some tuna or salmon salad in Sebastian’s lunch. And then it’s, like, chop-chop cucumbers and olives and a beef stick. And I’m like, “How can I shove more protein in here?” More nonstarchy, crunchy vegetables that I know he’s going to eat, like red pepper, or whatever.
So it’s my north star, and I created it just to simplify blood sugar for my clients that didn’t really want to understand the science of it. But it’s really been an amazing tool for me as a mom and just kind of that way to high-five myself and be like, “Hey, no worries about that, you know, cookie snack at that juice shop. You had the protein, fat, and fiber first. Your body can totally metabolize it. And moving on.” It really gets you off that diet mentality of on the wagon, off the wagon, and really it becomes the flow of supporting blood sugar balance every day.
Katie: Yeah. And I think that mindset shift is huge because human psychology is if we restrict something, we, by nature, often, want it because we can’t have it, even if we don’t actually want it. And I feel like this freedom too instead of this “thou shall not” is so important. And so having a positive metric to focus on rather than a “don’t do this,” I think that little shift alone is absolutely life-changing. And with kids, if they’re getting enough protein, I know I see this in my kids over and over, they sleep better, they have more stable moods. Like, all these things we want as moms happen more easily when our kids are properly fueled, which, if we model, is also easier to accomplish in our children.
And I also think that whole craving cycle can work to our advantage when we really make this shift and start getting enough protein and getting enough diversity of brightly colored foods. Our bodies very quickly start craving those things. So while it can be difficult at first to shift from more of these processed foods we’ve talked about, because our body is used to them as a fuel source, when we start incorporating all these brightly colored foods, I know, now, I’ll crave something blue, like blue algae, or I’ll crave beets, or you know, berries. It’s like my body knows, intuitively, what it needs, and it knows the right thing to ask for now that I’m paying attention to it.

This episode is sponsored by Just Thrive Health. Thanks to our modern world, it’s impossible to cut out all stress. Ever feel tightness in your tummy sitting in rush hour traffic, or can’t sleep because of your never ending “to-do” list? That’s because your gut – not your brain – is responsible for your stress response. The solution, then, isn’t just to stop or avoid stress, but instead find effective ways to manage it. Just Calm, the brand new product from Just Thrive, represents a revolutionary new approach to uplifting your body, mind, and soul, naturally. Just Calm has been clinically proven in multiple studies to help: Reduce perceived stress, Balance cortisol, improve sleep quality and even encourage focus and flow.
And, for unbeatable stress management, I’ve been pairing Just Calm with Just Thrive spore-based Probiotic. Here’s why: We’ve all heard the term “gut instinct” or the gut-brain connection. But that connection is more powerful than you think. Your gut and brain “talk” to each other sending signals all day long. A healthy gut isn’t just crucial for immune and digestive health… It’s also one of the best ways to beat stress long term. By giving your gut the beneficial bacteria it needs to thrive, Just Thrive Probiotic not only supports your best gut health… It creates the perfect foundation for Just Calm to perform at maximum strength. And when your gut is happy and your stress is under control, you’ll be able to keep calm and win the day everyday. Don’t miss episode 539 to learn more about this groundbreaking company. Right now, you can get 15% off this dynamic duo when you go to justthrivehealth.com/wellnessmama and use code wellnessmama at checkout

This episode is brought to you by Wellnesse. That’s wellness with an e on the end, my line of non-toxic, family focused personal care products including haircare, oral care and deodorant. At my house, kids toothbrushes and kids strawberry toothpaste are the favorites. The toothbrushes come in a 3-pack of fun colors, which makes it easy for my kids to know which brush is theirs. The strawberry toothpaste tastes great so there aren’t any fights about tooth brushing, and I love that it’s formulated around hydroxyapatite, a naturally occurring mineral found in tooth enamel. All of our toothpastes use only EWG verified safe ingredients, are free of toxins, and are packed with ingredients that naturally support the oral microbiome for stronger, healthier, whiter teeth naturally. Check out these and all of our products at wellnesse.com.

I’d also love to briefly talk about protein powder, because I feel like this is an easy way to increase protein, but there are definitely some nasty ones out there that are essentially in the processed food category. But I think, for me at least, a good high-quality protein powder is such a useful tool, especially if mornings are hectic. Like today, podcast day, and I’m on the run, I can get protein powder even if I can’t make a full breakfast. But what’s your take on protein powder? And what do you recommend within the different categories to make sure we’re getting a high-quality one? I know you have one as well.
Kelly: Yeah. And I will talk about that because I wasn’t planning to come out with my own protein powder. I think probably much like you with wellness. You’re like, “Here are the recipes. Make them at home. You guys can do it. Here’s how you source the good stuff.” And then you’re like, “Let me just make this a lot easier.” But for 10 years, I used something what I call the Fab 4 smoothie, which is 20 to 30 grams of protein powder, a tablespoon to 2 tablespoons of healthy fat, so that might be a quarter of an avocado, a tablespoon of almond butter, a small handful of walnuts, you know, a little bit of coconut cream, something like that, 1 to 2 tablespoons of fiber, chia, flax, psyllium husk, acacia fiber, you know, apple pectin, whatever your fiber of choice is to feed that microbiome, and then a handful of leafy greens or vegetables deep in color. That might be cauliflower for you. It might be putting cucumber or zucchini in your smoothie.
But I created this Fab 4 smoothie. It became an amazing tool for clients, like you said, because people would be really busy. They’d be undereating protein, and I would teach them how to make the smoothie and say, “No excuses. Throw it in the YETI. I don’t care if you’re hungry when you leave for the office. By 9 a.m. or 10 a.m., I want you to drink this 20 to 30 grams of protein because it’s going to make it easier and eat healthier at lunch. You’re going to crave more protein. You’re not going to crave sugar. And the same goes around that, you know, 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, you’re going to cruise right through that and make better choices.” And across the board, we have the protein intake. Metabolism increases. Cravings decrease. They start eating the way that they really, ultimately, wanted to eat but didn’t think they could follow through with.
And so protein powder has been actually an amazing tool for me in the Fab 4 smoothie, and I used to and I still do recommend, you know, a grass-fed whey protein powder. But the tricky part is when you get into the hyper-processed versions, like hydrolyzed whey, for example. We know in studies that hydrolyzed whey actually has an insulin response. It’s a protein powder, but it’s so broken down that our body mistakes it for sugar. And we have an increase in insulin because it’s so broken down. That is an exaggerated increase in insulin. You might have an insulin response to protein, but it’s not going to be as exaggerated as if you pick something like a hydrolyzed whey.
And then when you jump into vegan-based proteins, a lot of them are broken down via the chemical hexane. So when you think about plant-based proteins, these are coming from plants, and they are grown in the ground, and so their ability to sequester heavy metals from the ground is really high. And so a lot of plant-based proteins are going to have things like lead, arsenic, cadmium. I mean, it’s unfortunate, but it’s the nature of the beast. I don’t want people to be scared of it. Your squash that you put on your family’s kitchen table actually has some trace levels of heavy metals as well. It’s just totally natural that plant-based foods do that. Beans are just really good at it, and so that’s, like, you know, beans and peas and rice and grains. So rice-based proteins, pea-based proteins, things of that nature, they are extracted from the ground, and then they use chemical solvents to break them down and remove the protein from them.
And then a lot of protein powders are adding things like prebiotics, probiotics, vitamins, minerals, and unfortunately, they’re not always the highest quality. There may be unmethylated B vitamins. They may be using alcohol sugars that don’t have a great reaction in the gut. And so I was always looking for just the basics. Like, is there a raw or a plain grass-fed beef whey protein? Is there just a plain, like, one-, two-, three-ingredient protein powder for pea protein?
And so what I did about six years ago is I bought a pallet of pea protein that I really liked, and then I got pregnant. And I didn’t take it to market because I wasn’t willing to drink pea protein pregnant or breastfeeding due to the heavy metal levels, and then I knew that it wasn’t in alignment with me. And ultimately, I shelved it, shelved the loss, and waited.
And I came out with a grass-fed beef isolate protein, which is a complete protein. It contains 23 to 24, depending on if you get vanilla or chocolate, grams of protein, with 16 naturally occurring collagen amino acids. So 16 grams of it is naturally occurring collagen. So it’s a good blend, and it’s a complete protein. So really simple in the way that you make it is we have fleshy bones, and we stew them down in hot water. And it’s just like making bone broth, but because we use fleshy bones, we are a complete protein versus a bone broth protein, which is an incomplete protein. We skim the fat, we dehydrate the water, and there’s my protein powder. So what I love is that it is heat and water only, extracted.
And then, when you look at animal-based proteins, you know, some people are allergic to dairy, and they don’t want to do dairy product. So whey is out the window. And a collagen protein powder, on its own, is awesome for you, but it doesn’t replace your need for, you know, complete proteins and those amino acids that come from complete proteins to really meet your protein needs. And so it was kind of like the perfect blend because it was great for people without a dairy allergy. It was a chemical-free extraction. Animals act as a filter for heavy metals and chemicals and toxins. They have their own detoxifying organs. So what we’re left with are these amazing, naturally occurring collagen amino acids, a complete protein amino acid profile, a high amount of protein, and then I just add organic vanilla bean and organic monk fruit or organic cacao and organic monk fruit, or you could just get the unflavored, which is just the grass-fed beef isolate. People use that in soups and dips if you wanna up your protein intake for your kids.
And then, depending on when this comes out, I am coming out a chocho bean protein. I wasn’t gonna do a plant-based protein. Like I said, I needed to feel comfortable that, one, it was a complete protein. And I think people think pea is a complete protein, but if you look at…the only brand who’s being transparent about this is Ritual. So if you know Ritual, the supplement company, they didn’t come out with a pea protein, but they add L-methionine to it. Because for it truly to be a complete protein and for them to market it to pregnant women and breastfeeding women as, like, a complete meal replacement, they’ve added L-methionine because they know pea protein amino acid profiles are low in methionine. And if you’re really looking for someone to replace their amino acids, to feel good, to increase their energy, to retain their muscle mass, you have to add that.
And so what I’m actually coming out with is a chocho bean protein. So if you’ve ever eaten a lupini bean, a lupini bean is going to be the Mediterranean variety. It’s also what you find in Australia. If you are plant-based or someone in your family is having a hard time with animal protein, the lupini beans, you can get these snacks called BRAMI, and they’re marinated lupini beans. They do, like, salt and vinegar. It’s what I recommend. Like, before we started the show, I already Katie, “It’s what I recommend for my plant-based clients who need a protein bar.” Because, in the way that, like, a hardboiled egg or beef stick is great for people who eat animal protein, this is my replacement if you’re plant-based. It’s a complete protein. It’s a white bean. It’s kinda nutty.
But the way that we make this protein powder, because the protein powder I’m coming out with is the chocho bean, which is a variety of the lupini bean from South America. So we harvest these chocho beans, and we crush them, and we soak them. So it’s a bean, complete protein bean, lectin-free, which is really amazing for a bean because it’s low in lectin. It’s also a ketogenic bean. There’s only two carbs, naturally, in it. So this protein powder is just soaked beans that have been…after they’re soaked, they’re dried and ground. And so it’s bean powder. You can make breads out of it. You can make smoothies out of it. You can make any kind of baked goods or cookies or whatever. It’s traditional food in South America and different places across the world, as the lupini bean or the chocho bean. But chocho is awesome because it is so low carb naturally. So high protein, like I said, lectin-free, chemical-free extraction. Again, all we’re using is water and heat. And because it’s soaked, we’re getting rid of anti-nutrients present in the beans and making it super easy to digest.
So I’m so excited. It’s been a year and a half of trying to source to really get to a good source, and I’m so, so happy about it. So that is…it’s kind of interesting because I never thought I’d ever launch a plant-based protein that I would drink as much as my grass-fed beef isolate, but I have it my kitchen and just use it for different applications. And I love it.
Katie: That’s awesome. I’ll make sure I link to those both as well in the show notes for you guys listening at wellessmama.fm. I feel like that’s awesome because there has not been a great vegan protein out there, and for people who eat that way for whatever reason, like, that has been a struggle. So I’m excited that there’s one that’s great sourcing and that is actually a complete protein. I think that’s going to help so many people, especially pregnant women. And it’s just a versatile protein source even if you’re not plant-based. Like you said, add into stuff.
Well, like I expected, our time flew by because you were so much fun to talk to. But a couple last questions I love to ask, the first being, if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life, and if so, what they are and why.
Kelly: Yeah. I would say Cal Newport’s work has really massively impacted me. His book, “Deep Work,” so it really is about getting rid of distractions and how…I mean, it’s about doing the deep work. So if you want to write a book, if you want to write a course, if you want to create a company, like, it requires deep work and getting rid of distractions. And there’s tools to do that. But talking about the process of doing that and just reading his books, in general, all of them, really, you know, it’s hard because my job does require me to be on social media. But you know, his philosophy is that we should be doing deeper work. We should be present with our families. We should be present with ourselves. We should be doing the things that light us up inside. And you know, for you, that may be, like, lifting, pole vaulting, whatever you and your family are doing, but to get outside, and to be in nature, and to cook your own meals. Like, those are the things that light me up inside.
And so it truly…for example, like, you Slack with my team, and I had all of these different ways that people could get a hold of me at any given time, whether they were texting me, calling me, DM-ing me, Slacking me, emailing me, tagging me in a Google Doc, tagging me in a Google Sheet, and I was just like, “Oh, I clearly am allowing this to happen, and I’m not able to do the deep work because I am a squirrel distracted by all of these different inboxes.”
And so we really cleaned it up and narrowed it down to where, you know, I use a Google Doc with my sister, who runs finance and ops, and she’s a mom, and she works part-time, and we are super-efficient. Every Monday, we have our call, we share that Google Doc, we tag each other, and if I have something to remind her of, I don’t shoot her an email, I jump in that doc, and I add it to our agenda for the next Monday. And it just makes life so much cleaner and easier.
And I think people think adding the Airtable or the work project, unless it makes sense for your team because you’re running such a big team, it can sometimes actually just cause more clutter. And so if you feel like a little bit distracted by all of the inboxes, I think taking a minute over the holiday break or spending a weekend or two thinking about how and what workflow would work the best for you to do deep work is critical and can be a total game changer. Just, like, it changed everything for me. And you know, we use Zendesk. I think you probably use Zendesk or some version of that at Wellnesse, but just even using Zendesk for a number of our inboxes, and we’re just gearing up to use it in my DMs, because I wanted to be the one in control of my DMs, but the reality is just, like, I can’t answer everyone’s questions and be spending a lot of time there.
So finding ways. If technology consolidates something for you and makes it easier, do that. If it’s actually creating more problem, clear it out. So that was probably one of the most profound books for me in running my business and just realizing how my business affects my overall mood and ability to feel productive. And I love “Deep Work.” Like, I love creating a course. I love creating a product. I love doing that, like, tangible stuff. And there are times when you get really distracted, you can’t do that stuff.
Katie: I will link to that in the show notes as well. And lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to something we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated.
Kelly: Yeah. You know, it doesn’t really matter when this comes out, whether it’s, like, in the New Year or not. I think people get really excited about being super aggressive when it comes to food and lifestyle. And I think if you could write down in a notebook a few things that would really change your life and then cross each off when they become a habit. The things that I would say that you should write down in that notebook would be optimal protein intake. So we talked about that a lot on the show. Specifically, breaking your fast, that breakfast, first meal of the day, being 30 grams of protein. Like, aim for that and then hit your daily requirements and see how you feel. Next would be, like you said, that morning light. Like, getting outside and moving your body. Even if it’s, like, a 20-minute walk or having your coffee outside and writing your to-do list, like, get outside.
Focus on sleep. If you need support to do that, I do actually love my Oura Ring. You know, there’s a lot of health tech out there, from WHOOP to Levels, to Eight Sleep. I mean, there’s all these things coming out all the time. I would say the two things that have made the biggest impact in my life when it comes to health tech would be an Oura Ring and a Levels CGM. And I don’t always use a Levels CGM, but it’s an alternative for me when I need kinda like a kick in the pants where I’m coming out of this first trimester of feeling blah and having those times when I just needed a piece of toast with avocado or something a little more bland and I’ve been a little bit low on my protein intake or I’ve been a little bit weird with my eating. Feeling better again, I’m excited. I’m like, throw the Levels on, let’s do it. So find a health tech that motivates you to change.
And it’s funny you said, you know, pregnancy ups your metabolic rate. I wish that Oura Ring would let me put that I’m pregnant, because it keeps being like, “Your heart rate is elevated. Your heart rate is elevated.” I’m like, “My heart rate is elevated and I’m out of breath because I am literally making a human in my body right now.” So kind of funny, but. So dialing sleep and finding a way to dial sleep is gonna be critically important for overall metabolic health.
But add to that list the intermittent fast that focuses on night eating, really ending at dinner. Like, if you can lock in 30 grams of protein for breakfast and finish dinner at 5:00 or 6:00 at night and not eat after that, you’re going to see so many massive improvements in your metabolic health and how you feel and the energy that you have. I mean, I think that is the most motivating. I’m sure you can feel the same way, Katie. When you just take a minute to take those couple of things seriously, it is a drastic difference in your energy levels and your life.
Katie: Absolutely. And you are so great at explaining all these things. I took so many notes that will all be in the show notes for you guys listening, as well as links to all of Kelly’s work and her protein powders and so you can keep learning from her. Highly recommend that you follow her. Kelly, thank you so much for being here today. You are always such a joy to talk to, and I loved this conversation.
Kelly: It was really fun for me too, Katie. I threw the site that I referenced in our chat, so you can throw that in the show notes. And just thank you for everything and for always being a support. I’m always here for you, and I’d love to have you back on the show too, so maybe 2023.
Katie: Awesome. I’m in for it. Sounds great. And thanks, as always, to all of you, for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.