In August of last year, I heard @SecKennedy speak about Good Energy during a press conference. I ordered the book, dove in head first, and after 7 days, my daughter needed to come off her afternoon medication she was taking in attempt to manage bipolar disorder. This was the first improvement in 6 years! Then, one year ago today, we were watching the Nutrition Roundtable to see what more we could learn from @CaseyMeansMD on our family’s metabolic health journey. Little did we know, our lives were about to change forever. I think our whole world might have stopped for a minute when @ChrisPalmerMD spoke. We changed her diet to a ketogenic diet, and within days, she was an entirely new person in all of the best ways. This has been the best year of her life, and it’s been the best year for our family, too. She thanks me almost every single day, but today - it’s Dr. Palmer day in our house and she wanted to thank all of you herself! ❤️ So - we all thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

We had a fabulous time at the Carnivore Meat-Up in Calgary last night. Lutador made us all a delicious meat rodizio, with incredible cuts of roast, chuck, lamb, chicken, wings and more. Compliments to the chef and his team! A beautiful new restaurant filled with good food, good people, and good vibes! ❤️ Aside from the food, the company was spectacular. It was incredible to sit around a table in community with likeminded humans who just want to find their tribe and help others find their own path to hope, health, healing and recovery and help each other troubleshoot along the way. This is what it’s all about. Eating meat, finding relief, and questioning everything will change your entire life. There’s no going back, but the road ahead looks pretty spectacular when you’re surrounded with your own tribe of humans singing the same song and sharing the same steak. 🥩

I LOVE HARVEST SEASON. The food is nutrient-dense, beautiful, and full of color and flavor. They look and taste delicious! But plants don’t really want to be eaten and they can’t move, so they have chemical defence systems to protect themselves from predators. Oxalates, lectins, phytates, tannins, and nightshade compounds to name a few. For some people, plant compounds may contribute to symptoms we would never have thought to link back to healthy whole foods: Joint pain and stiffness Unexplained muscle aches and pains Muscle cramps and weakness Headaches and migraines Brain fog and poor concentration Fatigue and low energy Bloating, gas, and digestive discomfort Urinary tract issues Constipation or diarrhea Skin condition flare ups, rashes, or itching Sleep disturbances Anxiety and irritability Mood swings and low mood Difficulty regulating emotions Memory problems and mental fatigue I love plants, but they don’t love me back when I overdo it. More plants aren’t automatically better just because they’re healthy. I’ve learned which plants, and how much of them, are problematic for us, so we can enjoy harvest season without triggering symptoms or overdoing the oxalates this year. 🫣 And you know what doesn’t have plant defence chemicals? BEEF. 🥩 Harvest season is winding down, and our menu will shift back to animal meats, animal fats, fish, and ferments until next growing season. I’m not teaching people something new. I’m helping people remember how to eat in a way our species has biologically evolved to recognize and our modern food supply has made easy to forget.

Pumpkin pie has always been one of our favorite fall treats. Our traditional pumpkin pie got a metabolic makeover for Thanksgiving this year, and not just because I didn’t have a pie dish and made squares instead. 🍂 I ditched the refined grains and sugar and swapped in ground pecans, almond flour, coconut flour, real butter, and monk fruit to make the crust. No boxed crap. No refined flour. No sugar-loaded pie filling baked in an aluminum pie pan and wrapped in plastic from Costco. Just real ingredients, healthy fats, and a whole lot less sugar. We’re not giving up our favorite foods. We’re questioning why we ever accepted such garbage ingredients as normal in the first place and replacing them with something better. PECAN PUMPKIN PIE SQUARES Crust: 1 cup pecans 1 cup almond flour ½ cup coconut flour 1 egg, beaten ¼ cup melted butter Pinch of coarse sea salt Pumpkin Filling: 2 cups roasted pumpkin purée (I used half pumpkin and half butternut squash) ½ cup full-fat coconut cream 3 eggs ¼ cup granulated monk fruit sweetener or maple syrup 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice 1 tsp vanilla extract ½ tsp coarse sea salt Pecan Topping: 1 cup chopped pecans 1 tbsp coconut flour 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice 2 tbsp granulated monk fruit sweetener or maple syrup Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. 2. Pulse the pecans in a food processor until finely ground. Mix with the almond flour, coconut flour, and salt. 3. Add the beaten egg and melted butter. Mix until a dough forms. 4. Press half the dough into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie dish or baking pan. Save the remaining dough for another use. 5. Prick the crust with a fork and bake for 10 minutes. 6. Whisk the pumpkin purée, coconut cream, eggs, sweetener or maple syrup, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, and salt until smooth. 7. Pour the filling into the warm crust. 8. Mix the pecan topping ingredients and sprinkle over the filling. 9. Bake for 45–55 minutes, until the edges are set and the center has a slight jiggle. 10. Cool before slicing, or serve warm with coconut whipped cream or ice cream.

My keto/carnivore queen’s breakfast on the road this morning: 4 x 3 oz patties 🥩 2 eggs 🍳 3 strips of bacon 🥓 Mine: 2 x 5 oz patties 🥩 Plus the butter and salt that I never leave home without. 🧈 🧂 We don’t slack off on our metabolic therapies just because we aren’t home. We learned how to order off the menu in a way that keeps us in check. This morning we stopped at A&W for breakfast while en route to Edmonton and we’re off to the Carnivore Meat-Up in Calgary this evening!

Good morning!!

Say it louder, @thefoodbabe!! It’s not cold and flu season. It’s poison season. 🎃 🦃 🎅 🎉 💌 🐣

A new study of 8,783 Canadian adults has found another reason to look beyond what processed foods are doing to the number on the scale and asks what they’re doing to the brain. Researchers found that people consuming the most ultra-processed foods had 40% higher odds of vascular brain injury detected on MRI compared with those consuming the least. They also found they had higher body fat percentage and more visceral fat (the fat stored deep in the abdomen around our organs). Their findings show that these brain changes can happen before measurable cognitive problems show up. This raises important questions about what we’re feeding our bodies and how it impacts our brains. The brain doesn’t exist in isolation from the rest of our body or our metabolism. Food isn’t just about calories, weight, or whether our blood sugar falls within a certain range. It’s about the health of the entire system that keeps us healthy, happy, and full of life. Maybe it’s time we took a harder look at what we’re calling food and remember that Big Tobacco started buying their way into the food industry in the late 80s after our health authorities around the globe starting warning about the dangers of smoking. Big Tobacco diversified their business and shifted thousands of experts at making something cheap, addictive, and dangerous to our health into the industries who get rich keeping us eating their ultraprocessed food like products. More than 50% of the average Canadian’s calories every single day come from ultraprocessed foods with our children and teens consuming the most. Most of what we are feeding our families is not real food. Convenience is costing us our health.

Thanksgiving apple crisp got a metabolic makeover. I ditched the refined grains, the oats, the refined sugar, and margarine from the recipe I used to make for years and swapped in almond flour, coconut flour, pecans, real butter, and monk fruit. Same comfort food. Better ingredients. Less blood sugar chaos. Better brain energy. We don’t have to give up all the comfort food traditions of the holidays. We just have to swap out the ingredients that aren’t serving us. 🍎 Grain-Free Apple Crisp Recipe Ingredients Apple Filling: 2 lb apples, peeled, cored, and diced 1 tbsp coconut flour 1 tbsp maple syrup 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp coarse sea salt ¼ cup salted butter, cubed Crumble Topping 1½ cups almond flour ½ cup coconut flour 1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped ⅓ cup monk fruit sweetener 1 tsp cinnamon ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice ½ tsp coarse sea salt ½ cup softened butter Directions 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 2. Toss apples with coconut flour, maple syrup, cinnamon, and sea salt. Transfer to a baking dish and dot with ¼ cup cubed butter. 3. Bake apples for 25 minutes to soften. 4. Mix crumble ingredients with ½ cup softened butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over apples. 5. Bake another 20–25 minutes, until the crumble is golden brown. 6. Cool slightly before serving with coconut cream ice cream.