The #1 Shift for Energy, Weight Loss & Lifelong Brain Health with Kaitlin Borncamp, CPA, NTP

The #1 Shift for Energy, Weight Loss & Lifelong Brain Health with Kaitlin Borncamp, CPA, NTP

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to the energy MD podcast where we help you resolve your long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So really excited about today's episode because we're going to be talking about a lifestyle habit that probably doesn't get enough due in terms of its ability to really help to shift your energy. So we're going to get back to foundations and make sure that

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No stone is left unturned. So we're going to be talking with Caitlin Borncamp today. So let's learn a little bit about her. So she is a CPA turned high achiever health coach, speaker, and nutritional therapy practitioner who helps driven professionals reclaim energy, mental clarity, and consistency without losing career momentum. With over a decade in public accounting, she knows firsthand how high pressure careers drain health and focus.

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Known for her direct style and sharp humor, Caitlin takes a practical results driven approach that resonates with high performers who want real change, not perfection. Caitlin, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks Evan for having me on the show. Yeah, always a pleasure. So let's kind of dive in here around this lifestyle habit that that we're going to be talking about that can really help people with their energy. What is

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this big shift that people need to make sure that they're doing. Yeah, the number one thing people can do if they want to improve their energy, have better metabolic health and have optimal longevity would be to prioritize protein. And I really approach it from a perspective of we want to eat and we want to have our nutrition goals first and foremost to balance our blood sugar. I know that there's so many different ways that we can approach nutrition. There's so many.

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interesting and deep topics that are relevant, but ultimately I've seen what it comes down to for most people is that their blood sugar is out of balance and that has to be uh checked. It has to be put back in balance first. That's as the first order of operations. And how I like to do that with people is prioritizing protein. And what you will find is when you do a quick calculation of what your daily protein goal is, you quickly see one, how little protein you're eating and two,

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If you're not eating protein, what are you eating? Most oftentimes with our modern diet, most of us tend to overeat carbohydrates because it's just so easy. uh Most of the foods today are ultra processed and they're designed to be over consumed. They have excess carbohydrates in them. And so when we are prioritizing their protein, we are also at the same time using what I call the crowd out method, which means that instead of focusing on what not to eat, such as

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out carbs because there's no fun in that. We wanna really anchor in on what we should be eating which is prioritizing protein. Nice. So, let's talk about that calculation. for most of the people who are listening to this, they're probably a woman between the age of forty and seventy. So, you know, paramentaposal or post-menopausal. What should a woman in that age range be um consuming for protein or or do you need to

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um, niche it down even more into, you know, into something smaller. Yeah. So it's super simple, Evan. So I like to use the calculation of one to one. So your ideal protein goal would be one times in grams, your weight or your goal weight. So for example, if you were a woman who currently weighs, let's just call it 160, but your goal weight would be 140, then you would want to eat 140 grams of protein per day. Now that's

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sort of optimal, that's the goal line. We may not get there and we may also want to work up to that. So anywhere between 0.8 to one times your goal weight in grams of protein is the calculation that I like to use. Great. So that's, you know, what are people typically consuming? Usually about half of that, which is really interesting because the recommended daily allowance based on the kind of institution right now says that

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your daily protein should be one times your kilograms body weight, is coincidentally enough about half. However, I always like to remind people that some of these recommended daily allowances that we've heard from the last few years, from the last few decades even, are based on what humans require to survive, not to thrive. So oftentimes it's a pretty big awakening when people realize, wow, I'm only consuming 50, 60 grams of protein. And at the same time, they have the goal of

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How do I look better in my clothes? How do I feel better in front of my husband? How do I have more energy? And at the same time, I don't wanna be hungry. I don't want to be suffering from not eating the foods I like. And so I've really anchored in on when we eat enough protein, it helps us eat the foods that make us feel good, look good, and you don't feel so deprived as well. So are we talking about animal protein, plant protein,

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powder, protein, what do you like to see? Yeah, great question. All of the above count in terms of towards your daily protein goal. I'm a huge proponent of eating high quality animal based protein, but you can also get protein from plant sources as well. And even I like to kind of on the powdered protein subject, I know that we're busy people and we may not be able to physically chew or consume so much meat, for example.

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I like to cap my powdered protein servings on one per day per client. So if that may be like if you have a protein smoothie in the morning, that counts as your processed protein. Because at the end of the day, the powder protein is still going to be somewhat processed. um But I also like to include kind of other benefits, like if somebody is weightlifting or has the goal to really tone down and kind of get lean, they want to incorporate resistance training, incorporating things like amino acids, which is a form of protein.

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or even creatine also has some additional benefits that do come in the powdered form. So there's some other supplementation I would suggest for that. But yeah, first and foremost, we really want most of our protein to be animal and or plant based protein for sure. Okay. And so the powdered protein, how much you said one dose. And so is that 20 grams? Is that 50 grams? It just depends on what the

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what the serving is on that specific thing. So for example, if a client is having a powdered whey protein, which is the most common supplement protein powder there is, usually that's about 20 to 25 grams of protein per serving. Alternatively, if you're having a serving of collagen powder, usually the collagen's anywhere from 12 to 15 grams of protein. So that's usually where I would recommend to kind of cap it as one per day. um

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Now if somebody were to be very nitpicky and say, Caitlin, but there's just no way I'm going to get in my protein goal unless I have these. And I would say, okay, you know, I'll meet you where you're at and let's, let's continue to use your supplemented protein powder, but let's work to increase more of that in the whole food form eventually. And do you have a favorite protein powder? mean, whey, collagen, creatine.

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Yeah, actually my favorite protein powder is a beef isolate protein powder, which is actually a powderized form of the muscle meat. And the reason why I like that is because it's not dairy. So if you have whey protein, that's going to be a dairy based protein coming from the milk or the cow's milk. em But the beef isolate is going to be from the actual muscle meat. So it has a different em protein panel and it also is dairy free, which has that benefit. And the best tasting

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brand I have found and the cleanest one is the brand Equip. So you can go to equip.com and they have a really good chocolate protein powder. Personally, I love to actually add about a half scoop of that into my coffee sometimes if I'm kind of jazzing up my coffee and believe it or not, it tastes like a hot chocolate. It's so good. That's awesome. so because and so equip is EQIP. Yes.

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And so because it's a beef isolate, does that mean that it's a more complete protein than some of these other ones? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So in compared to something like collagen, collagen is not a complete protein, but it does still have its benefits. The beef isolate would be a complete protein. Okay. Very cool. Yeah. And what do people know about like complete versus incomplete proteins? Yeah. I mean, this is where it kind of gets into that.

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Almost like the minutia of nutrition where I'm like, what what do we need to know versus what's gonna be helpful to us? And so To kind of lay it out. I mean it is helpful to know that certain foods are What would be called a complete protein which have all the forms of essential amino acids? So there's about nine essential amino acids that we need to consume from our diet meaning that our body can't produce or Create those internally from our own body. We have to consume those externally in our food

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So we do need to get those from our diet. But if you were to say that, you know, if you were to use that information and make the assessment that say collagen, because collagen is not a complete protein, I'm not going to consume collagen powder, that would be a disservice to you. So that's where I'm always like cautious of how are we going to use this information? We need to use it to benefit us, not to hinder us. But again, if there lies the answer, if we are going to prioritize protein through mostly whole food form, you know, 60, 70, ideally 80 percent,

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coming from animal and plants, you're gonna be getting your complete proteins in that form. Yeah, I know that, you know, for plants, oftentimes if you're gonna do beans, you have to do beans and rice or beans and wheat, which I don't recommend, or beans and corn or something like that, right? There's pinto beans, which I think are 100 % complete, but a lot of the other ones aren't. Is that accurate? I think so. I'm actually not an expert on plant-based protein.

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because I am such an advocate for animal-based protein, mainly because our bodies are able to absorb it and digest it much more efficiently than plant-based protein. Now, don't get me wrong, I still eat, you know, seeds and nuts and beans and things like that, so I'm not against it. I just, I anchor in my own protein and my clients' protein around animal, animal protein for sure. Nice. So let's talk about the benefits of consuming more protein. So is it because you're not consuming the other things or is it

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because the, well, I guess, yeah, take me through the benefits. Yeah, there's so many. first and foremost, it's one of the main benefits is that you're going to be anchoring in on what to eat, which would be the protein and crowding out what you don't want to eat. So if we were to take a step back, we know that nine out of 10 people today are metabolically unhealthy. We also know that uh one in five children under the age of six have a chronic health disease. And largely this is because of inflammation.

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And a big portion of that is because of imbalanced blood sugar. Okay, so why am I saying that? I'm saying that because if we're not eating protein, the question is what are we eating? Like I said before, we're often overeating carbohydrates, which includes starches and sugars. That's a huge category, of course. And that is causing metabolic damage. So when we prioritize protein, not only are we eating what we need to eat, which I'll share more about how the benefit of the actual protein helps us, but we're also not eating as much of the things that wreak havoc on our metabolism, meaning

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it for you and your family at any age. The best part about this is that it's for every human, regardless male, female, adult, child, everyone will benefit from eating high quality protein in their diet. The other important thing to think about is if we're already gonna be making the effort of working out and getting our steps in and staying active and doing all those things we quote unquote know we should be doing, we want to have the best results from that. And oftentimes people are not getting

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the results that they seek because they're not eating the building blocks that their body needs in order to, for example, in that case of resistance training, build the muscle. So kind of getting into the benefits of what does actually eating the protein provide for us? mean, first and foremost, so many things, but uh a lot of people don't know this, but the structure of our cells is primarily made of proteins. And so what that means is protein is literally involved with everything in the body. I mean, when I say everything, I mean literally almost everything.

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all the processes that are happening and all the hormones and the enzymes and the muscle building and the muscle breakdown and all the cool stuff that's going on. So think about it this way, in order for your body to optimally function, it needs adequate inputs and protein is one of the most important ones. um And then when we get into, well, if we follow along and we're eating enough protein and we're eating majority of it from high quality animal and some plant-based, that's okay. Then we also know what comes along with that.

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This is sort of the third benefit, which is really cool, is that there's all these accompanying nutrients, meaning when you eat dark meat, such as beef, lamb, venison, anything like that, when you think of it and you think of it as like a dark red meat, that's going to have really high B vitamins. Now, you probably know and you've probably talked about in your podcast for people with fatigue, but a huge issue with fatigue is that you don't have adequate B vitamins or you're using and burning through them too quickly.

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So when we are eating high quality protein from animal sources, you're going to be getting those B vitamins. uh I mean, that's just one example of many of some of the additional nutrients that come along with the protein too. And I really think that nutrition is just beginning to understand that synergistic relationship of whole food. So when you're eating something in the whole food form, mean, nature built that for a purpose. There's a reason why all of those things exist together. And as humans,

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we're fortunate that we get to eat from the whole menu. We get to eat animals, we get to eat plants, as long as they're not toxic, obviously, but meaning that there's so many different options that we have. And when we eat the whole food form, we get so many other things right when we prioritize protein. So I weigh about 160 pounds and it's probably my ideal weight. And so I'm trying to think about

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how am I gonna get 160 grams of protein per day? So can you take me through kind of like an ideal protein day of consumption that would give me about that amount? Yeah, definitely. I always like to kind of meet people where they're at. So in terms of that, I would ask you, Evan, how many meals around each, about how many meals each day are you eating? I eat three meals and a snack. Okay, perfect. So if we eat three meals and a snack and we have, you know, maybe for simple math, we say your goal would be

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0.8 to 1.0 of your goal weight would be 150 grams of protein per day. Okay, so we're gonna kind of tame it down by about 90%. ah Break that up into three meals. You could eat three meals of 50 grams of protein. That would be a lot. We'd maybe be able to eat three meals of 40 grams of protein and then have your snack have 30 grams of protein. Or maybe you have two meals that are higher in protein. Your third meal is a little bit lighter.

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but then also throughout the day you're supplementing with that serving of protein powder or that serving of collagen and or the amino acids that I was talking about before as another way to kind of supplement that additional protein. uh I also want to emphasize here that that's just an example. Every day can and will be different in our actual life. And so one big thing I see, especially with the people I work with of people who are really successful in pretty much every other area of their life.

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uh have frustration around their nutrition, but it's also partly because they're trying to approach nutrition with perfection. They're trying to say, what's the exact right way for me to hit my numbers every single day? And what's the breakdown? uh Which I gave you the breakdown as sort of a guideline. So we want to use these principles. I call it principles, not rules. So if we are going to anchor on prioritizing protein, we want to have an idea of how much we should eat per day. And we want to do our best to get there knowing that not every day is going to be perfect. Maybe there's a day where

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you were really busy in the morning and you just weren't hungry, so you only ate two meals a day. It'd be unlikely that you were gonna consume 75 grams of protein for the next two meals unless you really prioritized it and you were able to eat that much meat. That would probably be the only way physically you could eat that much protein in a serving. So I always like to just emphasize that it's flexible, it's dynamic, and you don't have to get it perfect in order to see results in your body.

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And so what would 40 grams of protein look like? How much of a particular animal protein would that be? Yeah, so that would be about six to eight ounces of chicken or beef. um And then you can also include things like, like, don't forget that even if you were to have a serving of, let's say, chicken thighs, I like dark meat instead of the chicken breast, let's say it's chicken thighs. You also had a side of broccoli.

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And you also had like a serving of rice. So let's just kind of break down a simple meal. The broccoli is also going to have a little bit of protein in it as well. Maybe three to six grams of protein in your broccoli. Rice, probably not so much, maybe two to three. So uh we also want to keep in mind that the other things we're eating on our plate can also have protein, not just the main source of protein. So that kind of helps, eases people's plates or eases people's mind when they think about how am going to eat 40 or 50 grams of protein? uh The other thing I like to

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kind of break is the misconception of breakfast. That's usually the biggest, the two biggest things I hear when I talk to clients about this is, wow, Caitlin, that's a lot of protein. Pretty much everyone says that. And then the second thing is how do I get that much protein at breakfast? That's usually the biggest missing gap is because, know, breakfast foods in our country are predominantly processed carbs, you know, in the form of cereals, toast. uh

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Bagels, oatmeal even, right? All very highly processed grains and very low in protein and low in nutrition. uh And so usually we have to break the myth of what could breakfast look like and really kind of evolving that, hey, know, a serving of two eggs is not a complete breakfast for anybody, let alone even like a 12 year old child who weighs 70 pounds. You know, that's 150 calories. So it's not, it's not enough. uh Just the other day I was talking to my client who was asking a similar question as this and

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He was really surprised to learn that you know when I'm eating eggs for breakfast I typically eat four eggs maybe even five depending on what else I'm having that day plus avocado Maybe plus some fruit or plus some nuts on the side and he was really surprised You know because he had thought his whole life that you eggs are bad and oh my goodness What do you do with the cholesterol and eggs and so? ah It it can be very Different for each person in terms of like what would a meal look like and that's that's the fun part for me is

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giving clients those resources to be able to choose what they want to eat instead of like a lot of traditional nutrition programs I see out there are so anchored in on strict rules and a regimented routine and a certain amount of time, like eat this exact meal plan for 30 days or 60 days. It's like, well then what are you gonna do on day 31? You're already planning mentally all the foods you're gonna eat because it was never really your plan.

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it was a diet program that you were just making yourself do. But what I like to help clients do is really learn how to feed themselves, to truly have optimal nutrition and to help look their best and feel their best. So four to five eggs per meal, is it like six grams of protein per egg? Yeah, yeah, usually it's about six grams per egg of protein. And so if you were to have four eggs, that'd be 24 grams. You'd want to have a little bit more in there.

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For example, what I like to do for breakfast sometimes is, this could be for any meal, but usually for breakfast, it's pretty easy, is have actually a bed of dark leafy greens. I throw my scrambled eggs on top, and then I also serve it with maybe like a tablespoon of olive oil to get some added healthy fat, and even a couple tablespoons of hemp seeds or other nuts that I'm eating. And so that oftentimes will give me an additional anywhere from five to 15 grams of protein, depending on the quantity of those. So you don't have to get it all from the animal protein. That's really nice to know.

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So for, if somebody can't tolerate eggs for breakfast, what are other good protein options that are relatively quick? Yeah, so many good options for breakfast. Breakfast meat such as high quality beef patties, breakfast sausage patties would be a good one. um You can also do ground turkey and kind of bake that into little muffin tins with maybe some bell peppers, kind of like a little, uh you know, meatball if you want, like a breakfast meatball. um

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You can also have leftovers. I mean, this is the cool thing is that we can start to deconstruct our old beliefs about mealtime and just do what will work for us. So if you already have leftovers from last night, for example, there's been plenty of times where I had my leftover Chipotle bowl that I had double meat on when I got it at Chipotle and it was too much for me to eat in one sitting. So in the morning, I simply just took the rice, beans and meat and heated it up and sauteed it in some butter. And I put that over a bed of leafy greens for my breakfast.

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um You can also do things like if you are consuming dairy, I know dairy is kind of hit or miss for some people dependent. You could do like a high quality organic cottage cheese with a scoop of protein powder topped with some nut butter. That would be easy because you don't have to cook it. If you're at home, you could do a nice smoothie. If you are going to do a smoothie, I have two caveats. One is that you must, must, must add protein that would be in the form of a protein powder and you need to be adding a form of high quality fat.

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whether that's avocado, nuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds, even olive oil you could add into your morning smoothie in order to blunt that blood sugar spike. Nice. And so I know you work with busy professionals and we've kind of talked a little bit about kind of like some ideas. oh Any other tips or tricks that are really helpful for busy people?

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Yeah, I would say starting to lean into how you feel on a daily basis. when is, what is your energy like in the morning? Are you relying on caffeine to wake up? Do you have an energy crash in the evening or in the afternoon? Those are all cues. uh Another thing I like to think about is how soon are you hungry after you ate the last meal? So if you're hungry within one to two hours, that's a sign that you're not eating enough protein and or enough fat with that meal.

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um It's also a sign potentially that your blood sugar could have spiked too high from that last meal and then now you're experiencing that subsequent dip which makes you feel so Just kind of to level set with everyone when we're talking about balancing blood sugar our body's natural response to carbohydrates is to raise blood sugar and So that's normal when we eat carbs It's not a bad thing, but we want to really manage it because that's one of the biggest things that gets out of control for for us modern humans today and so um

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I say that because another tip would be to recognize if you're experiencing low blood sugar symptoms that were caused by eating too many carbs the meal before. So things like shakiness, lightheadedness, anxiousness, cravings, like hangers. So if you're somebody who can't go between meals without feeling like that really intense, like I'm gonna, you know, I need a Snickers kind of a feeling. uh Those are all signs that your blood sugar is imbalanced.

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and that would be kind of a sign to do something about it. Besides that, other tools that I really like are using continuous glucose monitors, because that's gonna give each person their own data, and it is really going to shed light on how what you're eating specifically impacts you, and maybe some areas of opportunity that you didn't know existed to optimize your nutrition and your blood sugar.

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Can you talk a little bit more about the practicality um or the practical application or actually how to use a continuous glucose monitor? Because people have kind of like heard that before, but they may not. They're like, is that an injection or what does that look like? Yeah, it's a super simple device that you apply to the back of your arm typically. And then it connects to an app on your phone. And so it gives you 24 seven real time blood sugar data.

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And so how it works is that it's a very kind of tiny little pinprick where it's reading the levels of your blood sugar subcutaneously, which means just right below the skin. um clients really enjoy having that data. And when you're in one of my coaching programs, you are able to share the data with me if you'd like. And so I'm able to go into my clients' dashboards and really see, hey, you know, how did your breakfast impact you? You nailed it, you know, and it's so...

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validating for people to see that immediate response. We don't have to wait three or four months to get their blood work back or to do the symptom assessment. They get these real-time insights on a daily basis and they can start to see exactly how what they're eating and what they're doing in terms of stress and working out is impacting their body too. That's awesome and you don't need a prescription for that, correct? So there's kind of two ways that you can get a CGM today.

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This is evolving and so it's becoming more available to us as consumers, which is great. But yes, there are some devices that you don't need a prescription for. However, they aren't as, em I don't want to say as reputable because they still work, but they don't provide the same level of quality data as the prescription grade CGM. So actually what I'm able to do with my clients is I partner with a company and through that process, the client is actually matched with a provider who then provides the prescription. oh

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within a matter of a few days. And so they're able to get the Libre, the leading Libre device, which is the Libre 3 right now, where the decks come and those prescription grade CGMs are what my clients are using. And to be honest, they love it. It's a very seamless experience. They have great customer service for any questions or any issues that happen. But yeah, from my perspective, I've really seen dramatic change happen and quick change happen when people are able to see their own.

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their glucose data because I'll tell you what I mean. It's one thing. I think it's great. I love podcasts. Everybody's listening to podcasts and consuming information, but it's one thing to hear this information and say, hey, if I have cereal and a bagel or oatmeal for breakfast, that's going to spike my blood sugar. It's entirely different to be wearing a CGM and to see how what you just ate spiked your blood sugar and to really compare that to how you're feeling. And then when you can apply that to your longer term goals of having more energy and of

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having natural weight loss, the lights really start to turn on in terms of people become much more empowered of knowing, I know how this food is gonna impact me. And the decision, what I always like to come back to is that when you feel empowered about your nutrition, the decisions are much easier, meaning you'll stop grappling with, oh man, my colleague just brought in a box of donuts, like, should I have one, should I not have one? And then you eat it then you feel bad about it, right? Like we've all gone through that cycle.

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when you have this personalized data from something like a CGM, you will know either, no, I'm not going to eat the donut because that's going to spike my blood sugar. Or maybe the answer is still yes, I'm going to eat it. And I know exactly how it spikes my blood sugar. You know, the answer could still be that you choose to the donut in that example, but you're much more empowered and you're not going to be surprised by how you feel or look afterwards. Nice. Education is definitely empowering. So in terms of, so I know that

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You're not talking about any particular diet. um You know, by by talking by focusing on protein, you're kind of avoiding um paleo ketogenic carnivore. Do you feel like like those labels or those kinds of diets are really detrimental, not supportive, just better to focus on protein? So my answer to this has evolved over the years because I started in nutrition actually when my

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I started learning about nutrition at a time when my relationship with food was very unhealthy. I was actually experiencing um disordered eating and an eating disorder pattern. And so I'm very sensitive to the word diet and to the connotation of diets because I know what it's like to live in such an extreme and I know how it negatively impacted me and my mental health and my physical health as well. um So I'm always very cautious of diets. That being said, I do think that

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for each on our own journey. think that health is the biggest personal development journey that there is. And so if you feel called to do the carnivore diet or to do the Mediterranean diet, do it and do it and see how it feels for you. I know for myself, I've kind of done that twice over the years. One was years ago when I did the whole 30 diet, which is, you you cut everything out for 30 days. And I've talked about this on my podcast too, but I learned a lot.

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I learned so much about how whole foods actually give me energy. And at the same time, I also had a new appreciation for how much processed food is in the world. So that was actually very beneficial to me. I think where people get in trouble is when they're looking for the diet to be their whole thing. going on this diet for two months or four months or six months is gonna save me. It's gonna give me everything I want. It's gonna help me lose the weight. It's gonna help me give better energy. And it's like, well,

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Are you actually learning about why your body is changing in that diet program? ah How does that coach or that program's live, like sit with your life? Are you able to actually do them once the program end date ends? Or like I said before, are you just gonna go back to what you ate previously? So I'm really of the mindset that health requires lasting change and in order to do that, we need to approach things from a sustainable perspective. so,

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I would say, I would just caution anybody to go on a diet. I wouldn't even use those words personally. So never say I'm on a diet. Say I'm choosing to eat food that serves my goals or I'm choosing to eat more nutritious foods, you know, more often. just, when we have that connotation mentally of being on a diet, I think that that gets us into more trouble than the actual diet itself. Yeah, smart. And what about meal spacing?

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is such a good question. So meal spacing refers to how frequently we're eating meals and how much time is between those meals. Now, when I first started in nutrition, I didn't know too much about this other than, okay, well, you know, at the time you should eat three to five meals a day, but you just pick, you just get to eat whenever you want and see how it fits your lifestyle. And now what I've learned, I'm uh much bigger on the idea of intermittent fasting.

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and spacing out to have adequate timing between meals. And I see this, I see this in my own blood sugar data, I see this in client blood sugar data. So first and foremost for optimal meal spacing, we wanna start with the easiest place to start is how much time is it between when you finish dinner and when you eat breakfast? Ideally, that window should be a minimum of 12 hours. Now, if you're somebody who has, you know, pre-diabetes or diabetes and it's unmanaged, you might not be able to go that time. So just use that caveat that if...

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Your blood sugar is very imbalanced. You may need to eat more frequently in order to maintain your balanced blood sugar. em But what we want to do is give our body a chance to actually digest the food we've already eaten. And what I didn't realize all those years ago when I first found intermittent fasting em is that you're actually giving your bodies when you're not eating, you're giving the body a chance to tap into existing energy storage. So when...

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clients come to me and they feel like they're eating well or they feel like they're doing mostly things right, like they're working out five times a week and they just don't know why they stalled on their weight loss or they're not seeing any weight loss or it's very inconsistent. Oftentimes when we incorporate uh more intentional meal spacing in the form of fasting, so moving up that window between dinner and breakfast to 16, 18 hours, maybe even implementing a couple of other things throughout the week, then they're able to...

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eat the same foods but actually see weight loss, which is so interesting because it's changing your body's underlying response to the food, your insulin sensitivity, your hormone balance. And at the same time, another reason why I really love it is because when we are able to have adequate meal spacing regularly, our body is able to kind of restore and replenish itself through this process called autophagy, right? So your body goes in and actually cleans out the old dead cells.

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and replenishes it and grows new healthy cells. But when we're eating five to six times a day or more, you know, because food is so abundant and because the colleagues are bringing in the cookies and we have this snack bowl around and, I have to have an afternoon soda and insert whatever you consume that has calories, that's pausing those processes in the body. It's pausing the repairing process. It's pausing your body's ability to tap into the energy stores and it's pausing weight loss too.

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And so then in terms of, I guess it's gonna be different for everybody, breakfast at 7 a.m., lunch at noon, dinner at five or six, doesn't necessarily work for everybody. Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. And I think what's really interesting is this is where it's customizable to what somebody's daily schedule is and what their longer term goals are. So you could be somebody who thrives eating at 7 a.m.

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and then 5 p.m. That could be totally fine and you could do that every day for your life and be fine. um It just depends on what is your starting point and what are your goals and how fast you want to get there. Gotcha. So if somebody wants to lose weight, what would be their meal uh timing? I would say if you are new to meal timing, start with the 12 hours between dinner and breakfast. We want to

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end eating dinner earlier. em We also want to finish eating dinner around three hours or more before bed. So that would be the first place I would start is when are we finishing dinner? Because that's going to help making sure you're done digesting dinner before bed, your blood sugar is balanced before bed, you can get optimal sleep, and then we can optimize from there. em What we'd want to do next is, okay, we've kind of got that down, we feel good. We'd want to increase the time

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on several days between dinner and breakfast. So maybe not every day, but maybe twice a week, we'd increase that time to 14 hours. How do we feel? We feel good? Okay, let's increase that to 16 hours twice a week. How do we feel? We feel good? Okay. Then we can start to incorporate some longer fasts, even up to 16 or 24 hours, depending on again, how you feel and what your goals are. And what that's gonna be doing is allowing, again, I'm saying it, but allowing your body to tap into your energy reserves because

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What that means is that you're going to be tapping into stored fat. So I find that when people understand what the body that the body is capable of, you know, producing its own energy, even without food, it's a very eye opening experience. ah I have clients who tell me, wow, I didn't know I didn't know my body could do that. I thought I had to eat every day in order to survive. Right. But the reality is, is that you'll die from sleep.

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and lack of sleep and lack of water much sooner than you'll die from lack of food because that's how our bodies are designed. And so when we think about it from that perspective, I'm in no way suggesting that we do multiple day fast here. That would be a little bit more extreme and you should be working with a coach if you choose to do that. But em what I'm just identifying is that our bodies are wired and created in a way such that we are metabolically flexible and that we can incorporate fasting.

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and still feel high energy. And in fact, you might actually have more energy. You might be surprised that you feel more energetic eating in a shorter window period each day. Yeah. In some ways it's, it's hormetic, you know, where it's a little bit stressful on the body to be fasting, but it's really important to, to have that stressor. Now for people who have long COVID chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic fatigue, might be too stressful for them to fast. like you said, everybody has to

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really tailor it to themselves. So this has been really wonderful. Is there anything else that you want to share? Well, actually tell us how you work with people. Yeah. So I work with people in two ways. So I have a three week, a three month group coaching program called the A1C, an energy reset program. And then I also have an executive one-on-one coaching program. And within both of those, we're really tailoring it to using the CGM data, optimizing,

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your blood work markers, including your A1C, your insulin, and some inflammation markers. But more than that, what we're teaching and what the clients are learning is how to feel empowered around their nutrition, their exercise, their stress, resilience, and sleep. Those are the four main pillars that I really anchor in on. em And I'm a pretty direct person. So my coaching style is always with a bit of humor, always with the...

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a right amount level of directness in order for clients to achieve their goals, but still approach it from empathy. Because I know from my own personal health journey that when I was able to reframe my relationship with food, I now have developed such an appreciation and such a, you know, gratitude towards everything that my body does. And I really seek to help each client develop that for themselves too. Because I believe that when we understand and when we have more appreciation for our body,

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then it makes all of these other decisions easier. It makes all the nutrition choices easier. It makes the health habits easier. And that's required. And why is that required? Because the number one thing that busy professionals tell me is it's hard to take care of myself because of so many competing priorities. So your health and your health habits are up against a lot. There's so many things vying for your attention. There's so many things, people needing stuff from you, right? ah Or if you're like me, I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist, but...

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If you're a perfectionist, you're going to strive to do your work or whatever task that hands better. And what may come at the cost of that is your health, right? I call that trading your health for your wealth. And so fundamentally what I help people do is I help high achievers stop trading their health for their wealth so that they can die younger as late in life as possible. Die younger as late in life. Great. So like be really energetic and strong until the day you die. Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome.

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Yeah, and know, and everything that you're doing is such a foundation for, you know, any kind of disease state that you have, you know, for the people in our community with long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome, you have to start with the foundations, you know? And so if you are struggling with that, reach out to Caitlin, work with her, get those established before you even move on to replacing deficiencies, before you start removing the toxic vibe, like I talk about a lot. So really important to have those foundations in place.

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So we're going to drop the links to your website below, can you speak it so that people can hear it as well? Yes, definitely. Yeah. So you can learn more about my services at feelgreatwithkate.com. Kate is spelled K-A-I-T. And then you can also check out an offer that I have for you called the No Time Nutrition Blueprint. So if you or somebody you know is that person I mentioned where it's hard to take care of yourself because of competing priorities and you feel like your calendar dictates your nutrition,

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then you need the no time nutrition blueprint and you can check that out at store.feelgreatwithkate.com. And we'll drop both of those links below. Perfect. Caitlin, thank you so much for joining me today. This was wonderful. Great seeing you. Evan, thank you so much. So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass where I go deep into our four step process.

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that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally. After you watch that video, if you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right. Thanks so much. I'll see you over there.