Well, right now I'm day three of segueing into ketosis. And we're always producing ketones, but I'm probably just because I've done this a lot, I'm probably at right now like 1.2 millimolar in terms of blood concentration of beta-hydroxybutyrate after ketosis.
I love how it feels in terms of mental acuity. I also because I have neurodegenerative diseases in my family and metabolic dysfunction see doing let's just call it four to six weeks of nutritional ketosis once or twice a year to appear to be very cheap insurance.
What's your APOE profile?
Yeah. 3/4. There are other risk factors. I also have relatives who are 3/3 but nonetheless developed early Alzheimer's. So, I'm like, yeah, you know what? I like how I feel. I need less sleep when I'm in ketosis. I naturally wake up very, very alert, which is unusual for me. I wanted to mention that first just to set the stage in a way.
So, I for decades did minimum 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. I still think that is a great option for me now for a host of reasons that I could get into, but I'll keep it simple. I almost always do intermittent fasting where I am fasting until 2 or 3 p.m. in the afternoon, but when I wake up, like this morning, I woke up at 7:30 and I was preparing for this conversation. So, I wanted to block out a few hours to do that, but woke up, had, now this is mildly stimulating, but I wanted to have a little bit because I'm also jet-lagged and arrived at around midnight last night. Had some cacao with a little bit of cacao butter mixed in.
Just enough under three grams of net carbs.
Because you're keeping your net carbs to 30 a day probably, right?
I'm keeping my net carbs to, for me personally right now, under 10 grams.
Under 10. That'll get you into ketosis fast.
Under 10. Yeah. Especially if I am already adapted to intermittent fasting so that I'm doing 16 to 18 hours of fasting with a short six to eight hour window of eating. Once you get to 16 to 18 hours, especially if you're doing some exercise, let's just say in the morning or any other point, you're depleting your liver glycogen and you're going to get into the habit. Your metabolic machinery will develop the habit and the capability of producing ketones even when you are eating carbohydrates in that limited window of eating.
And you don't take exogenous ketones.
I will occasionally on a day like today because I know that I'm on effectively let's call it day two and a half of segueing into ketosis. I think my natural production is roughly where I mentioned my natural production right now is probably around 0.9.
Let me just back up. So I wake up at 7:30. I have the cacao plus some cacao butter. Then I sit in and I have a hot tub. This is like one of my indulgences. It's not actually that expensive, but I sit in a hot tub and I meditated for 10 minutes with an app, the Waking Up app. Henry Shukman is my spirit animal. Amazing mindfulness/zen focused practice. Did that 10 minutes, that's it.
Got out. It is pretty chilly right now in Austin.
Gets down to, I think last night it was 37 low. Got into my pool for a few minutes and got out, cold shower, came back in and then sat down and this was my kind of deep work prep, right? No interruptions.
There's non-trivial similarity to what I'm trying to do neurocognitively.
Yeah, exactly. And then on the way here, about 15 minutes prior to arriving, knowing my start time, there were a few other bells and whistles that I threw in nutritionally in terms of supplements and so on earlier in the morning, but had one nitro cold brew from Starbucks and about 15 milliliters of exogenous ketones.
In this case, it's BHB bonded to 1,3-butanediol, which I do have some reservations about. Long-term chronic use, I think could be liver toxic, but I'm doing it very intermittently. And so, for the let's just call it four days of segue into nutritional ketosis, I will use exogenous ketones sometimes as a boost.
And that's it. That was the.
And it's working great for you. Here's a big takeaway. I think you got to that through experimentation. You didn't get that by getting it off the internet. You learned a lot about these different variety of protocols.
And you tailored it and tried it and over a number of years came upon what worked best for you. And it's exactly what I've done too. And everybody watching needs to treat their life like a lab.
Experimentation is king. The precursor to good experimentation is information. Is scientific information. And then it's getting experience through the experimentation and figuring out what your own protocol actually is.
Because as they say in the ads, your results may differ.
Yeah. Right. Exactly. And so for me, if I'm weight training, I will typically weight train late afternoon. That's just always been my preference.
But if we had not had this podcast today, I would have done zone 2 training.
Right. Exactly. After the meditation.
Especially when I'm trying to get into ketosis or intermittent fasting because it'll help me deplete the stored glycogen at a faster rate. If it is too high, just for people who may be interested in intermittent fasting or ketosis, if the exertion level is too high or if it is resistance training, sometimes it will spike glucose in such a way that makes it a little counterproductive if you're trying to get into ketosis. So the zone.
