Prevent Keto Flu – Best Tips To Succeed a Sugar Detox
Video Transcript Below:
Hey guys, Colin Stuckert here, Founder/CEO of Wild Foods Co.
Today, we’re going to talk about sugar detoxing and what’s also known as the keto flu, which can happen when you lower your carb intake. I’m going to give you some tips on how to avoid that.
We’re also going to talk about some of the reasons why this happens, and it’s going to hopefully empower you to bust through that plateau and let your body adapt so you get to the other end where the benefits are, which is when you’re eating less sugar and when you’re reducing your carb intake.
Both are useful for healthy human metabolism regardless of what you’ve been told. Both are useful and, I would even say, necessary for living a long, healthy, and optimized life.
The average American consumes 152 pounds of sugar yearly, 152 pounds of this toxic substance. We wonder why the number one killer is heart disease, why we have cancer, which sugar is said to be cancer’s favorite food, and why we have this whole modern matrix of debilitating Western diseases.
Where do we get most of that refined, processed white sucrose, which also contains fructose? We get it in sports drinks, sweetened coffee beverages, and generally in processed fake food, which comes with a whole other host of problems.
When you go keto or start eliminating sugar from your diet, you don’t feel so great or may not feel so great; some people feel great. I feel great when I don’t eat it, even when I eat it pretty often.
I had cravings for it, but I didn’t get keto flu or get a sugar detox, hangover, or any of the stuff you hear about. I don’t know; I’m lucky in that way. But that happens for most people because they are eating so much freaking sugar.
You would not believe the amount of sugar in the foods you buy from the grocery store.
Even the foods, when I walk around Whole Foods, which is right over there, I walk around. I pick up the label, the new drinks that come out, the new bars, the new packages, the frozen meals like, even when the stuff’s like organic and quality ingredients and blah blah blah, natural all these things, I flip it over. There’s cane sugar, organic coconut nectar, sucrose, or one of a thousand words you can use to describe sugar.
Because Americans are addicted to sugar, the palette of the average American craves sugar more than it does anything else, which is why all the new products that come out are trying to appeal to those masses.
Kombucha is a thing, or all the coffee drinks tend to have sugar in them, even the ones that, cold brew there’s, most of them aren’t straight cold brew, most of them are cold brew with like six to seven grams of sugar because you have to add some sweet to it right?
I won’t go too much into all the nonsense about the amount of sugar we eat in this country and all that stuff.
This is more about how to prevent keto flu, how to avoid a sugar hangover by reducing the sugar in your life or, let’s say you go cold turkey one day, what can you do to mitigate that feeling, the feeling of sluggishness, the feeling of being tired, maybe even headaches, perhaps even have some digestive issues?
Many things can happen, and I have some strategies to help combat them. Alright, so let’s get to it.
So real, quick, why does this happen? Sugar triggers, the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is the same pleasure reward center that is, occurs when we eat any food, have sex and another thing, and even gamble; I think it is triggered by dopamine, and what happens is the more we eat these foods, the more we eat sugar for example, meet these little dopamine spikes, the more that it down-regulates.
Our system down-regulates, meaning we have to eat more sugar or rewarding foods to get the same effect. This is why we tend to want to eat more when we eat sugar regularly.
It’s precisely what happens to drug addicts. It’s exactly what happens to drug addicts. And they’ve proven that sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine, yet it’s the most legal drug; it’s the most legal killer there is in the world. It kills more people than cigarettes probably ever did.
If you look at the numbers today, and how many people are dying daily, heart diseases and all these modern diseases of affluence are diseases mainly of the processed food revolution. You would see that cigarettes can’t hold a candle to what sugar has done and is doing to our country and the rest of the world.
As always, industrialized nations started getting the processed food revolution, big corporations are going in, like Coca-Cola and Kraft and whatever, and people are getting fat and sick because it’s the same freaking thing happening.
So, when you’re eating sugar all the time, you have to eat more to get the same reward center right; when you cut it out, you’ll have a detoxing effect. Your body will want it; it’s used to having it.
It’s going to want that dopamine reward center. That and the carb intake, which is you can have the keto flu by going lower carb, which can be independent of sugar; there are a lot of this similar effects that can happen when that happens.
But generally, what’s happening is your body is used to being a carb burner, and it’s used to getting the reward from sugar and the tips that you tend to get from carbohydrates because carbohydrates are in processed food, and they taste better.
So your body is used to getting that constant supply of glucose, and so, it burns that off quickly for fuel; I mean, you still get all the things like instant sensitivity and whatever massing that you eat sugar, and your body burns it off, it’s not how it works, but your metabolism is used to being fueled by a constant stream of sugar carb-dense foods.
And so when you reduce your carb intake or, let’s say, you go cold turkey, your body is not used to getting fuel from fat, which is what it’s designed to do.
That’s why people talk about keto; keto is ketosis. Generally, they are connected, I don’t think you have to bring ketosis all the time to get benefits from keto, but in general, the point of ketosis is that your body utilizes fat stores through ketosis and produces ketones.
Which is good for your brain, your body, whatever, and your body uses fat and ketones for fuel instead of carbohydrates instead of blood glucose.
So that’s an important distinction here. And when you start going lower carb and lower sugar, your body is like going out of whack because it doesn’t know how to use fat for fuel. It’s not used to using that.
Maybe your ketone production is at an all-time low, or you’ve never really been into deep ketosis. And so naturally, your body will be like, what the hell is going on here?
And that’s something that is kind of important for everyone to understand about their body like, when you do things that might be good for you in the long term, they’re not always going to feel great in the short time.
I hear this always, people say, “Oh yeah, I fasted one day all day, and I felt like crap.” And I’m thinking, okay, have you ever done that in your life? No!
Okay, so you’ve never gone 24 hours in your life without food, and then you do it one day, and you think you’re going to have miraculous results and feel great, you’re going to feel like a million bucks? Like obviously not!
Your body is responding to a changing environment; when it does that, it might have to hop over a couple of hurdles to get to the other end where it’s better off.
When you go to the gym, crush it, and you’re exhausted, you know you did something good for yourself, but do you feel great? A lot of times, no! A lot of times, lifting weights and exercising and doing things is tough. But you always feel good after when you’re recovering.
You might even be sore the next couple of days, and it hurts to walk, then a few days after that, you will be better and will be better and will be better, and then a week later, you feel like a million bucks, and you feel stronger.
So now that we have a brief understanding of sugar withdrawal, keto flu, and all these different things, what can we do to mitigate it? Now, these are my recommendations.
I’ve experienced varying levels of this in my life as I cut sugar; probably four months ago, I did a deep dive into figuring out how much sugar I was eating, and I was already a sugar-conscious individual; I was already reading labels, I was already doing a daily count of how much I was taking in, and you wouldn’t believe it, how it’s in everything.
I’ve flipped it around, where now most of my carbs are non-starchy green vegetables. If I ever cheat on meals, like once or twice a week tops, and typically when I cheat, I try to cheat on something like pizza.
I mean, although it does a balloon, it’s not necessarily the best, but I try to do that instead of cheating on ice cream because it has all the sugar. For me and my psychology, when I eat sugar, it’s kind of like a drug addict, I’m always a sugar addict, and when I eat it, I tend to wanna eat it more, so I have to stay away from it, and I almost have to abstain 100% like an alcoholic would have to.
And there’s a lot of similarities here, guys, and I know it might think, it might look like or sound like I’m exaggerating or, I’m making a bigger deal out of this, but I’m not. This is just biology.
If you can understand that you can get addicted to drugs, why can’t you get addicted to the drug called sugar? I mean, it’s a drug; a little goes in your body and creates a chemical reaction; that’s a drug, just like whether it was a pill, or you whether you smoked it, or whether you injected it. It’s still a drug.
So I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole; I want to, I want to run on it, but, instead, we’re going to talk about tangible strategies.
How can you avoid a sugar detox? Haw, can you avoid the keto flu? And how can you feel better? Let’s do it.
My number one favorite thing is to use sweet potatoes, skin, and all. Now sweet potato does have a bit of natural sugar in them. It also has complex carbohydrates that are slow digesting, fiber, minerals, and all these things.
Sweet potatoes are good for you. Even if you’re on a keto diet, which I see a lot in a keto diet, people become carb-phobic, but I don’t think that’s accurate at all, and there are things we should do.
You could have a corner of a sweet potato with a bit of carb, a gram or two of sugar, and it’s not the end of the world. And it can still fit within the confines of being ketosis, it can still fit within the confines of having like 40 grams of carbs a day, and it could provide benefits.
And so, start with a quarter sweet potato, half sweet potato, and eat that with every meal and see if that makes your detox and your carb cravings go away.
And what I’ve noticed, and what Allison has also seen, is that she tends to do better in the gym when she has sweet potatoes. I tend to do better with recovery when I have sweet potatoes.
And so, when I was detoxing off sugar, and when I was going lower carb, and I was experimenting with ketosis, I added sweet potatoes.
I would cook up a bunch in a crock pot which is just, you’re going to add a little bit of vinegar water if you want and add some salt, and then you take it out, and it’s ready to go, and then I would slice them up and put them in a container.
And so I would pull out like a quarter-inch sliver, and then I would throw that, either reheat it or eat it cold.
And reheating sweet potatoes, like frying in the pan with some butter, is so good, so I highly recommend that, so that’s number one. Use sweet potatoes strategically to prevent the symptoms of keto flu and sugar detox.
So number two is something that you’re going to wanna be doing if you’re moving to more of a ketogenic, more of a low carb diet anyways because you need to get those calories in the right.
It would help if you ate more fat, and this is something that most of us have grown up with this fat phobia. We don’t even know what that looks like or don’t have the habit of doing that.
And so what I like to do is I use grass-fed butter very liberally, or we can use ghee, or you could use MCT oil or avocado oil or other things like that. Damn, that was building up.
I use butter liberally, and then I also use olive oil unheated. I’ll use MCT oil for low-heat cooking. I’ll use things like bison tallow; I have an epic buffalo fat in there; there’s avocado oil I use for high-heat cooking, and coconut oil obviously for everything, regardless of what the media is trying to tell you.
The rigged, biased media that’s being paid by the big food companies to disparage coconut oil. The topic for another day could be adding more when you’re cooking and more fat when you’re cooking. It could be drizzling it over.
Do a little dash of Wild Pink Salt and a bit of Wild MCT oil, get fat, get the salt, and finish the dish. It could be grabbing a piece of butter and eating it.
Sometimes, I’ll take a liberal chunk, dash it with pink salt, and eat it. It’s almost like a chip, or some like horderves, just pure fat, and it’s fantastic. I love it.
So there are a lot of ways to add fat to your diet. I’m not going to go too much into the examples of how to do that; add some nuts and seeds every meal; you can do many different things, but adding more fat will do many things.
It will help your body get into the habit of burning fat for fuel, retrain your metabolism and digestion, and ultimately help you switch from carb-based to fat-based eating.
The shameless plug, number three, is to take a lot of fish oil, particularly Wild Fish Oil. It’s something that I take daily; yes, I’m biased, but it is one of the only Friends of the Sea certified and one of the only wild-caught fish oils in the world, processed and caught in US waters in the United States.
Whereas most fish oil comes from somewhere else, and a lot of the fish that comes from other places is over-fished, there are many issues with being rancid and quality control and sustainability.
Get your bottle at WildFoods.co, use code WILDCEO for 12% off, and take that with every meal.
I take 10 to 15 caps a day; in fact, I’m going to be recording a video soon about mega-dosing with it and taking like 15 grams a day, like almost 40 to 50 caps a day, and testing my omega levels and seeing how I feel, seeing how my appetite does. Still, I’ve seen a lot of good evidence in my life as I take more of it, my inflammation is lower, my desire is more regulated, and I don’t have those sugar cravings.
I also have a friend who did a high-dose experiment for 30 days where he was taking 15 grams a day, and he was, said he had mental clarity.
His appetite almost went away, like he had to force himself to eat at times practically, and his recovery was better, and it was a cool, successful experiment, so I’m going to be trying that soon as well. But either way, taking regular doses of quality fish oil can help suppress those keto-like sugar-detoxing symptoms.
Another tip here is to make sure you give yourself time. If you need to cut your sugar intake by 50% for a couple of weeks, get going, and then 25%, that’s fine if that’s what you need to do.
Don’t let anyone tell you nutritional dogma about what you have to do or what’s right or what’s not right. If something gets you to a better place, that will suit you.
So what I like to do, is, like I said, use those sweet potatoes, and you might have a higher carb intake even though you may be going for keto and you’re not reaching your target goal every day, but so what? If you’re easing into it and getting better results, that’s awesome.
Always take all this, even this, this video, and advice like this with a grain of salt, ideally with a grain of Wild Pink Salt, and make sure that you find out what works for you and listen to your body at the same time.
Now, with that being said, I have to disclaim this because I think a lot of the Whole, like listen to your body and be patient, ease into, I think a lot of that is just nonsense advice that people use to slack off and not stick to what they’re trying to do, and I call BS on that so don’t do that.
But give yourself a break at the same time. No one’s expecting you to be perfect, and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be perfect.
So ease into it, and they say it takes about ten days to detox from sugar. And I would assume that’s ten days like the kind of without any of it, like, to go ten days without any sugar whatsoever, or like without any refined sugar or processed sugar, that’s a big undertaking, I don’t think I’ve ever done that ever in my life maybe you know. And I think it’s probably a great thing I should do.
So again, give yourself time; aim for, like, let’s say, one week to two weeks at a time. Segments where you reduce your intake and use lots of veggies and sweet potatoes and stuff like that to ease into it, and then make progress no matter what you do. When you start feeling better, you can optimize for even lower carbs, and you go into ketosis or just be content with eating 10 or 15 grams of sugar a day, which is your max.
Like have a bar of dark chocolate or a little bit of this there, whatever you know; again, it’s personal, but we should all aim to eat less sugar because it is poison.
So it’s personal, do what works for you, but still try not to eat it if you can.
And then, so the last and final tip for this video is, don’t drink sweetened beverages. If you’re going to make cold brew coffee, do black. Even if you’re going to do a latte, do a not-sweetened latte with just the milk. Or do you like an almond milk latte, macadamia-nut milk latte, or something?
Don’t eat the food bars that people market to you to convince you that it’s good for you when it’s like seven or 10 grams of sugar in these little things.
I hope that this video was helpful; I wonder if you have any strategies that worked for you that we could share with the audience and that we could share with other people to help them in their sugar detox and their prevention of keto flu and just generally going lower carb in general.
This video wasn’t really about why you should want to do that, but I’ll give you a quick kind of benefit list of why you should want to cut sugar and lower your carb intake, and they’re going to go like this.
Lose fat, gain muscle, perform better in the gym, have better sex, sleep better, feel better, think better, look better, everything better. Every single thing in the human body can be better.
If you eliminate sugar, mainly sucrose and fructose, fructose is 50% of a gram of sucrose, so you’re also trying to get rid of fructose. Even with fruit, a lot of the fruit that gets in the grocery store is hybridized; even if it’s not GMO, it’s been manipulated over the years where it is a far cry from its wild counterparts and, as a result, has two to three to four times the amount of sugar and even more fructose than the wild fruit that it evolved from.
Keep that in mind; it’s fantastic to cut sugar; it’s incredible to lower your carb intake; everyone could use it, and let’s be awesome. Let’s live great, be the best version of ourselves, and pass on a legacy to the next generation.
Speaking of the next generation, stop feeding kids sugar and processed foods. It is not a natural food for children. It’s not, and it never will be. They should be eating the same foods as you and me. Low carb, low to no sugar, moderate protein, and a lot of clean and pure fat.
Thanks for watching.
Colin Stuckert,
Founder/CEO, Wild Foods