Attending Keto Salt Lake - Videos Online
April 15-16, I attended the Keto Salt Lake Conference. Thanks to sponsors, especially Keto Chow, the conference fee was just $99. Plus not providing conference meals kept costs down.
Thanks to metabolic flexibility,* many attendees—me included—didn’t need meals (though I did enjoy some Keto and low carb snacks offered by vendors, plus a Keto Chow shake on Friday evening).
I greatly enjoyed the presentations and you can too. They are all posted online both by session and individual speaker. Also the overheads from most presentation are online.
Some speakers are academic researchers, others are doctors and nurses with successful weight-loss and other practices, and some are YouTube entrepreneurs. All had success stories to share from their own lives, from their research, and often from patients.
Many inspiring success stories were shared of everyday people surprised that just dietary changes could help them regain their health and reverse chronic health problems. Highly recommended!
* Metabolic flexibility means, not surprisingly, to have a flexible metabolism. The Mayo Clinic defines metabolism as:
Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. During this complex process, calories in food and beverages are combined with oxygen to release the energy your body needs to function.
But this is just part of the metabolism story. (And I would argue the Mayo Clinic article unfortunately promotes the calories in; calories out energy balance theory of obesity (discussed in post here, and here, study pdf here). The Mayo Clinic article claims:
To lose weight, you need to create an energy deficit by eating fewer calories or increasing the number of calories you burn through physical activity or both.
No! The number of calories we eat matters, but what matters most are the calories our body metabolizes (converts from food to energy or body fat, or protein).
When people consume excess carbohydrates (especially overly processed carbs), blood glucose levels surge (since carbs are quickly converted to glucose), and then insulin levels surge to manage excess blood glucose).
Consuming more healthy fat and less carbs keeps metabolic rates steady longer. Excess carbs are pushed into fat cells as fat. Consuming more fat (and less carbs) allows us to feel full longer.
People who gain weight and have trouble losing excess weight, usually have a problem metabolizing carbohydrates. Having lots of muscles helps us store more glycogen from glucose. And getting lots of exercise burns these carbohydrates, but even athletes can get type 2 diabetes from over-consuming carbohydrates.
To learn more about the science of all this, and the success of low-carb and keto nutritional therapy for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic conditions, I recommend the presentations at Keto Salt Lake (2022 presentations and earlier years).
Metabolic flexibility is the ability to shift from burning glucose from food we eat to converting our body fat into ketones, and burning those for energy instead. Our heart and brain work fine on ketones, better even. We achieve a state of ketosis, as all our ancestors did often through human history.
Over the last fifty years or so American’s food culture shifted to one where most eat early and often and usually meals and snacks higher in carbohydrates. The federal dietary guidelines invented and promote low-fat, high-carb nutrition. More on this in every other Normal Nutrition post…