Episode 30 – Spreading Low Carb Keto Awareness to Asia & Beyond | Kelly Tan Peterson of KETO EAST

Episode 30 – Spreading Low Carb Keto Awareness to Asia & Beyond | Kelly Tan Peterson of KETO EAST

Tired of your everyday keto recipes?  Kelly Tan Peterson is lighting the low carb keto world on fire with her new book KETO EAST, co-written with her husband Dr. Dan Peterson. Kelly shares low carb keto Asian recipes that “turn Asian classics into ketogenic favorites,” as Maria Emmerich noted in the blurb of Kelly’s cookbook. Give your taste buds a kick in the pants with all the flavor that Kelly brings to the table with low carb keto Asian food recipes that are not just delicious, but healthy too!

Originally from Singapore, Kelly Tan Peterson moved to the United States after meeting her husband Dr. Dan Peterson. She began eating a keto diet after seeing how he ate. She watched her own metabolic and weight issues resolve, quickly rebalancing her body and maintaining it while eating keto. What she missed, though, was her traditional diet from back home.

Deciding that she did not have to choose one type of food over the other, she found a way to bring her Asian culture into the keto world. This was a challenge she wanted to take on, not only to be able to eat her favorite meals, but also to bring the benefits of ketogenic eating to her friends and family back in Singapore. This began her journey into low-carb advocacy in the spirit of love to inspire those metabolically damaged in Asia to improve their health eating familiar food they loved. 

What began as a blog and recipe sharing has become a series of books – KETO EAST (already published) and two more to follow: KETO BAKED and KETO WEST. Keep your eye out for Kelly Tan Peterson — she’s spreading low carb keto awareness and delicious recipes — to Asia and beyond!

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This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • How Kelly Tan Peterson struggled with cholesterol, acidic stomach, and blood glucose before meeting her husband [3:15]
  • Why Kelly wondered how her husband, a doctor, could be eating such a high fat and low carb diet, let alone recommending it to his patients [3:30]
  • As she began eating a LCHF diet along with her husband, she realized that just by changing the way she eats, her symptoms improved. Now she has no weight issues at all as long as she avoids starch and sugar [4:05]
  • Why certain foods in her culture were problematic for her and how awareness is slowly growing in Singapore [5:15]
  • How she used social media to post what she ate and her new lifestyle, drawing curiosity from her friends [6:45]
  • Why it’s easy to eat out in Singapore, even if you’re eating low carb keto Asian food, simply by making swaps for carbs/starches [7:45]
  • How food in the Asian culture, like roast duck, crispy pork belly, roast chicken and plenty of vegetables, can fit within a low carb keto diet, just watch for hidden carbs like a glaze on meat [9:30]
  • Why it’s not hard to eat anywhere in the world and find something that would qualify as low carb/high fat [11:00]
  • How after spending the last six weeks traveling throughout Asia she realized that there was much less obesity when she was a child. Now, on yearly visits to Singapore, her observation is that even children are getting bigger, requiring larger uniforms [11:30]
  • How food in Singapore is getting sweeter now, seeing with each visit, more fast food and western food chains in Asian countries [13:10]
  • Why eating all of the typical popular foods can hijack your brain, perpetuating the problem of cravings, leading to food addictions [14:20]
  • Kelly realizes now that the longer she is off of carbs and sweets, she tastes so much more flavor in natural foods, while friends who eat a Standard American Diet cannot taste [16:00]
  • Why even after 9 years of eating keto, if hidden carbs are eaten, she’ll notice cravings for snacks and other foods due to the brain changes that occur [16:45]
  • About Kelly’s approach to keto Asian recipes and her cookbooks which are written in both English and Mandarin [18:20]
  • Kelly talks about how she’s adapted the low carb keto diet to her ethnic diet of noodles and rice dishes with shirataki noodles or cauliflower rice but using the same traditional methods of cooking those dishes to retain their flavor and depth [19:30]
  • Kelly gives an example of how she adapts Young Chow fried rice to keto while keeping the flavor people don’t want to lose [22:20]
  • Her book contains her personal story of her cultural background and how she was able to bring that into keto and adapt it, rather than give up all the foods she loves [24:30]
  • How she tests all the recipes with her blood glucose to make sure it doesn’t spike [25:30]
  • Why Kelly still occasionally tests her ketones and glucose. She tested more frequently when she first began the keto diet. Now she does it so she could relate how she feels to what her glucose levels are (e.g., water retention in her ankles)  [26:15]
  • How KETO BAKED will be her next book to release, which was born from watching her mom go through cancer while navigating a culture that is rich in higher carbs and how socializing always involves sharing foods [28:10]
  • How Kelly hopes that if she can interest people with a keto baking book, they can cut their carbs in half while still eating tasty food/treats, making the transition easier later if they want to do keto [30:15]
  • How her third book will be called KETO WEST: bringing in American and French meals with a touch of Asian flavor [32:00]
  • About the response she’s getting in Asia by sharing her story of how she feeds herself and her family [33:40]

References

KETO EAST Cookbook by Kelly Tan Peterson

Kelly Tan Peterson website: Cooking Inspired By Love

Kelly Tan Peterson YouTube Channel

Keto East West Facebook group

Keto BAKED Facebook group

Keto MARKET Facebook group

Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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Episode 29 – More Than a Calorie Counter: How Cronometer is Transforming Health

Episode 29 – More Than a Calorie Counter: How Cronometer is Transforming Health

If you’re trying to accomplish anything significant with your diet, using a nutrient tracker app is definitely helpful. But what’s the point of doing all that tracking if you’re not even sure if the info is accurate? Aaron Davidson, founder of Cronometer, the best nutrient tracker app out there for accuracy, has taken a part-time hobby and turned it into a full-time business. Now he’s transforming the health of those using his app, regardless of what diet they’re following. Not only does this nutrient tracker app track macros, but it also tracks micronutrients — all of those trace nutrients that can set you up for illness if not met long term!

Tracking with Cronometer can help you meet your dietary goals. Whether you’re a new keto dieter trying to make sure your carbs are low enough, or a vegetarian wanting to prove to your family that you’re getting enough protein in your diet.

What makes Cronometer stand out as a nutrient tracker app from all the others is that Aaron Davidson and his team spend a lot of time, money and effort on making sure their database is accurate. They do this by having professionals enter data to check for accuracy rather than relying on users to populate data. They also enter all of the data for the micronutrients for those of you on a therapeutic diet needing more specific details like zinc, vitamin B12, selenium, and more.

Listen in iTunes!

This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health!

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • That the trick to caloric restriction over the long term, while still getting good nutrients, is to track what you’re eating with a nutrient tracker app [6:20]
  • How what Aaron Davidson started as an offline standalone product (built in a weekend out of personal necessity, and initially given away for years) turned into the Cronometer so many love and use today [7:00]
  • Where the name Cronometer came from. (CRONometer = Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition + meter to indicate nutrient density in your diet!)  [8:10]
  • More on the origin of Cronometer and Aaron Davidson’s story from Ireland to Canada. When the free use version of Cronometer started feeling like a job (people were emailing daily with questions), Aaron turned it into a full-time business, making his nutrient tracker app web-based and mobile [8:30]
  • The parallels between Dave Korsunksy’s story of building Heads Up Health and Aaron Davidson’s build of Cronometer [10:15]
  • How Dave had a difficult time getting his ketones above 0.5 mmol/L without tracking his data, and the reasons why he built Heads Up Health for others to track their health — to see what inputs made a difference for them [12:15]
  • If you want to build something for a unique audience like Dave and Aaron have done with their health apps, DO IT!  There are other weirdos out there like you that will want it too! (Find your weirdos!) [12:55]
  • Though Cronometer has grown a lot in the last couple of years, initially Aaron still had to take another day job [15:30]
  • In 2016 Aaron hired his first employees; by 2017 he went full time himself. Now he has about 17 employees and 11 in the office (who have chair lift meetings in their ski town of Revelstoke!) [17:30]
  • Why Cronometer is considered a best nutrient tracker app above others. Their high standards and commitment to making sure their nutrient database is the best, keeping up on the nutrition data, having larger amounts of micronutrients than any other nutrient tracker app. [19:50]
  • How the Cronometer database is put together by experts, not entered by users. (This means it may get entered a little slower, but it’s going to be more accurate and reliable. In fact, there’s a whole team around data curation staying on top of the database.) [20:40]
  • A little about micronutrients and reasons why you would want to track them to transform your health: [23:00]
    • You’re taking supplements and want to know if you’re getting enough in your diet. Or maybe you don’t need a supplement anymore?
    • You’re a cancer patient (or caring for one) wanting to know you’re getting what you need at therapeutic levels
    • Mental health
    • Keto dieters tracking electrolytes
    • Vegans making sure they’re getting their protein
    • Vegetarians making sure they’re getting their B12
    • Genetic mutations that cause you to not absorb typical micronutrients and you need to take in more
    • And many more reasons…
  • How Cronometer and Heads Up Health have integrated and now synchronize between the two apps [26:00]
  • Learn how a two-way sync with blood sugar and ketones may be in the future between Heads Up Health and Cronometer! [26:50]
  • How you can input blood test info in Cronometer, which is useful to see how your nutrient intake is affecting your lab values over time [27:30]
  • Why even though the biggest users of Cronometer are those following a keto, vegan, or raw food diet, as well those using it for weight loss, any dietary approach works with this nutrient tracker app  [30:00]
  • How researchers are utilizing Cronometer for diet research [31:10]
  • Why Dr. Mercola prefers Cronometer as a nutrient tracker app and how the Cronometer team customized it for him [32:45]

References

Cronometer

The Methuselah Foundation

Our Partners:

Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL.

You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura.

Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo.

All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health.

They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways.

Thank you to our partners!

About Heads Up Health

Heads Up Health is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health. Instantly centralize your medical records, connect your favorite devices and apps (e.g., Oura, MyFitnessPal, Keto-Mojo, FitBit, Apple Health, MyMacros+, Withings and many more) and use your data to optimize your health.

Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!

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