Q&A with the Spaths: Carnivore, Weight Loss, and Family.

aren't you thrilled to do this all right hi guys welcome back to my channel my name is laura and i am joined by my husband my willing husband chris who is excited to do this q a with me it's been a while since we had him on and since i just asked some questions in general so over on instagram i had asked you all for questions that you had for me or for us about our family and our weight loss and kind of our life as a carnivore family and what that looks like you all submitted a ton of questions we got a lot of great questions too many for one video so we're gonna maybe categorize them i'm gonna hit some of them today and then we will do some more in the future maybe this will end up being a video series my guess is chris doesn't want to do them all but either way he's here now and he's going to answer some questions with us if you are new here you can check out both of our weight loss journeys we have some intro videos i think i never remember which side i think it's that uh one of those sides and you can check out chris's entire weight loss journey how he lost 120 pounds all the things that he's healed and then myself as well from the intro video that's pinned on the front of my channel uh in general though we are going to review a little bit of the high levels of that and answer some of your questions today so the first question that we have is what got you started on carnivore and for that i'm gonna let chris just tell you what i'll say this we had heard about keto first and we both were maxed out i was 263 pounds um how much did you worry about 300. yeah chris was about 300 pounds so we both were really sick and really unhealthy and knew we needed to lose weight um we also knew because chris was diabetic that it had to involve no sugar and so we kind of found keto uh and then and i always hated vegetables so yeah uh i found carnivore pretty quick and drop the vegetables much to her dismay and would only occasionally eat a couple little broccoli florets if she was giving me the stink eye and then just stopped all together and those vegetables are supposed to be healthy right so i thought you have to force down vegetables we're eating healthy we got to eat a bunch of vegetables so that didn't last too long and then i just went full carnivore and started she started overhearing stuff i was listening to or stuff i was reading about and then yeah once i realized i could eat a bunch of steak instead of like a grilled chicken salad with my low-fat ranch it still wasn't as satisfying to me um plus both of us are pretty triggered by any kind of like keto treat um and we got hung up along the way a few times from any kind of treats or keto chocolates and all the stuff like that never went well for us so cutting out all of that and just sticking to a bunch of steaks was a lot easier for us on a carnivore yeah but all the people who share their story you know we originally heard about it from carnivore cast the podcast uh from sean baker and his story and everybody that that shared those types of things um the low carb md podcast places like that were really big for us so just really kind of binge listening to all those podcasts was what helped us um let's see oh yeah did one of you decide to do carnivore for the other or was it mutual so chris definitely it was the one who somehow convinced me not to use vegetables and i'll say you know he couldn't really convince me because i wouldn't believe it from him it wasn't until i tried it myself and realized how good i felt and then how bad i felt just eating a salad um that that's what ended up convincing me of it how long did it take for you to lose the weight and did you always do one meal a day so for me it took about nine months and i started with two meals a day and i quickly found that i always whenever i've eaten in the past i eat til i'm stuffed so if i sit down and eat i'm not hungry for a second meal for quite a while so i was forcing myself to do it and i figured well i'll just go to town on the one meal and then just go one meal so uh it probably was within about two months of when i started that i was down to one meal a day and with some other fast longer fasting in between yeah i was about the same and then we started learning more about fasting and really digging into that to help his diabetes and stuff that dr jason fung talks a lot about fasting which is where we picked up most of our kind of fasting techniques and so we started doing one meal a day and then incorporating a 48-hour fast once or twice a week and then i mean that's the shortest way to recap how do we both lose 120 pounds in less than a year one meal a day of steak and 48 hour fast once or twice a week and that's kind of the two sentence version of it but there's other videos that talk about it more in detail um in addition to carnivore oh i should have thought about this one before we filmed in addition to carnivore what would you say your top three best um lifestyle changes or health advantage or kind of lifestyle changes have been in general that's a really good question but we should have thought about that one top three uh for me uh some big things have been um exercise even if i've not been consistent with the gym i walk like four to five miles a day every day and i do it in the sun so number two would be like getting sun i consistently even through 120 degree weather here in arizona i'm out walking every day in the sun and i feel like that's been a real big plus for me i know i focused a lot on sleep we're very different with sleep um what's interesting is with carnivore both of us need less sleep but i have to make sleep a priority for me right if i get too little sleep i'm challenging but also it affects my health and i can stall out on weight loss i can really have start having some health issues so i have to make sleep a priority like good quality sleep uh and i definitely am somebody who needs eight hours when really in the past i was sleeping nine ten hours a night and still wasn't feeling rested and satisfied so we have made sleep a big priority um but we both sleep less like chris leaves goes to that after i do and wakes up before i do he's i can't sleep more than six hours since i started a carnivore but before he was sleeping seven eight hours and then falling asleep on the couch watching tv every time and that's not something that happens anymore um so other videos talk about health specific health issues like chris used to have sleep apnea and uh and type two diabetes and doesn't anymore and so you know that's all that's changed the other advantages that we've had as far as lifestyle goes like i have had a lot of arthritis back and knee issues and all of that pain and inflammation has completely gone away cutting out all those inflammatory foods like steak is so healing and fat and just this makes me feel so good and kind of like almost like light in your body or the the weight on my knees um the previous back issues that i've had i really don't have those anymore um what are some non-scale victories that you think you had just feeling so much better no more aches and pains no more ibuprofen twice a day every day um sleeping solid through the night not having to sleep as much uh obviously the obvious ones like being able to not be nervous when you put the seatbelt on on an airplane or um shop in the normal sections of the store for clothing things like that um not break a patio do not break chairs or worry about breaking chairs when you sit in them uh that's a big one yeah those were good ones lots of good ones i just love being able to just i don't think i've ever my whole life just worn a t-shirt i've always had on tons of layers in the middle of the summer and it's arizona here i never just like put shorts and a t-shirt on and went out of the house and now i feel so much more comfortable just being able to do that i could have done it before but it was about me like i didn't feel comfortable doing that um i actually got a lot of questions people want to know we have a very non-traditional family and they want to know what do i do for work and how is it that things came about that chris is a stay-at-home dad uh and kind of how do we live this little backwards life so what do i do for work i'll be slightly vague and just say i work for a corporate a large corporate company and i am a manager in a sales and retention department for a call center so pretty basic intense corporate call center job a lot of metrics coaching you know agents like y'all probably talk to somebody on the phone that i work with on a regular basis uh and we actually met working at the same company for many many years ago and worked both worked there for a really long time together um we both had gotten promotions we both were traveling and it just came to the fact that like it wasn't working anymore i remember us meeting up in the common area of this large call center and saying like well one of the kids is sick at daycare who's going to watch him i can't leave i left last time he had meetings like it just was too much for us and on top of that with both of us traveling our kids were sick all the time in daycare and we had a second kid so the cost of daycare was almost the whole salary anyway so right we just made the decision and her kind of career progression was in a better spot than mine at the time and and i wasn't exactly as happy and fulfilled where i was at right we were in different departments and i had just uh also my arm yeah kind of at the same time um we had made that decision for our family like i was going to keep working financially we were going to work it out christo uber on the side for a lot of years um while we made ends meet so i would walk home come in from work uh he'd have the dinner on the table kids ready to go and he'd leave and then go drive uber for a few hours but right in the middle of that transition was when chris contracted the necrotizing fasciitis um the flesh-eating bacteria on his arm um we yeah this is all a big scar we talked about that more in another video and maybe we'll do like just a specific video on that that might be a good thing to do um so it really kind of a lot of things compounded where it just ended up that way um you know like i said we did a lot of other things over the years to to make ends meet with side jobs and chris driving uber and kind of just piecing things together and it's really worked out well and now over the last year we have been we've had the ability to like make decisions about where we want our kids to be in school and not have to deal with the the virtual school and the back and forth like a lot of families have had to do and that's been a huge blessing for us to be in this place where you know we um we've been able to kind of put our kids where we want to as far as school goes because we do have the the stay-at-home parent um which is definitely a luxury um but along the way we definitely have made a lot of sacrifices we skipped a lot of vacations and we did a lot of odd side jobs to make things work so that we were able to kind of make it to this to this point but it's definitely he's a much better stay-at-home parent than i am i could he does all like the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning and you know definitely takes care of all of us he's amazing how has your weight loss journey and way of eating affected your marriage well we always had fun eating together before it just was the wrong thing so replacing that with eating the right thing and that being a big part of our daily lives i think has been a really good thing and we feed off each other and we motivate each other that way so in that way it's been really good we used to always be the one kind of talking the other one into having a cheat day and now we're usually the one talking the other one out of it so you feel like you don't have to be strong all the time because you have somebody else who's kind of knows what you're going through and helping to keep you on track um but we definitely always had our like put the kids in bed and then eat a bunch of junk food at night so now it's been a good bonding for us to talk about meat and steak and kind of learn about all this stuff yeah this kind of thing together yeah he's i mean he's to the back end of all this social media stuff and kind of keeps everything running and smooth and talks me off the ledge whenever necessary and keeps me sane so uh that makes me able to do what i do you know we joke sometimes too we'll get done eating a meal and he's like okay go to work and then i'll uh take care of all the dishes so he'll sit and do all the dishes and then i just go sit on the couch and post about it but i couldn't keep up with all of this if i didn't have chris able to help um with everything else as well too so also physic being physically healthy kind of has its benefits as well right definitely it's been good nothing but good things um so along with that how do you maintain carnivore with the kids uh i do think we need a full video just on like the kids and the family and maybe let them talk to you guys about what they eat um i mean chris cooks three meals a day for them they're not exactly carnivore but it's easy for us i guess the question is how do we maintain carnival right while feeding the kids they eat pretty much like paleo-ish but so nothing that i'm making for them is tempting we're not that desperate over their sweet potatoes or their broccoli or their zucchini uh things that they eat like that if we you know we don't keep food in the house that's gonna be tempting for us they don't eat snacks you know they're not eating um two o'clock in the afternoon carb snacks and so that makes it a lot easier for us when they're eating protein for three meals a day they're not really hungry for snacks and that's just not really an option so we don't keep things in the house that are gonna be tempting for them if we go out somewhere they might have something different and that's a treat and that's fun with their friends but it helps us a lot in those week moments when it's late at night or you had a stressful day or you're just having a rough time and having some cravings like there's not that food in the house that's tempting for us so it's a huge reason why we changed the kids diet in the first place because we didn't want to have to deal with the temptations which is probably bad because you know it's like their health but selfishly i needed it out of the house um do you ever let your kids hear you talk about weight loss that is something that we talked a lot about early on and made a big focus for us like you know we never talked about how mommy that used to be fat or tried not to use terms like that we really have focused the most on mommy and daddy you see too much sugar and that's what made us unhealthy and if you ask them now like what happens if you too much sugar they say you get sick like a little bit of sugar for them is okay um but too much sugar is what made us sick sometimes they'll say now like just eat one bite like why can't you eat one bite of sugar and so we try to remind them that like we had a lot of sugar before and if i have one bite of sugar then i want to have a lot of sugar sometimes it just makes you crazy and you want sugar and so that's why i can't have any now um because i used to be sick and it would make me sick again so we kind of relate chris's diabetes to that a lot um but we really don't talk about like i lost two pounds i'm skinny or not or we don't they do know what fasting means so and like if they're full at their meal nathaniel sometimes is like i'm done with this i want to fasting it till tomorrow so that's what he thinks leftovers are just i'm full i'm not hungry right now means fasting which i think it's a healthy attitude for them to have they don't have to finish their meal if they're not hungry um have you guys thought about doing a blog with all of your favorite products um i had the idea that she should do a video and just kind of show everything that we use every day because there's a lot of cool things that uh i wish i would have had before that we use almost all the time that can make a big difference and right quality cook not just like some nice grill or something but like little tools in the kitchen that are really cheap so like a cookie sheet and a cooling rack is something we use every single day and who would have thought like with meat that's your number one most commonly thing so i do think that a video idea like that would be coming um do we eat organ meats we're always pretty open about the fact that it doesn't sound very appealing to us i know there's a lot of information about nutrients behind it um it's just not that appealing to us uh somebody sent us some recently and so maybe we'll try it we'll see same thing goes for coffee neither one of us have been a coffee fan we don't even own a coffee maker we have no interest in drinking coffee so that is not really something that's in there for us um who cooks a better steak it depends on the type of steak and the method that's true her sometimes me sometimes me most of the time her sometimes if it's like a big variety of meat or anything on the actual like weber grill you know like he's cooking for a crowd okay he's very good at that but if it's like one singular steak a rib eye on the auto wild i have that mastered because i do it so often uh there is no comparison on that so it kind of depends but we both i have learned a lot i've come the farthest most improved right i've definitely come the farthest over the last few years does chris do lower fat than you i would say yes right uh i we don't really pay attention or track it but he does eat leaner cuts than me mainly because you eat more right i do i kind of leverage fat so i need a certain quantity of food that i need to feel full so i will eat at a leaner cuts that are lower in fat so that i can eat that much without overeating on energy so i'm a big fan of dr ted name and the protein to energy so where i may have new york strip which is less fat and she may have ribeye um which is higher fat i'll eat twice as much as her right so it kind of equals out in some ways but um and if i really want to lean down i'll go down to like ground beef and chicken breast and stuff like that and that really will drive that weight loss so i i can eat about two pounds a day one and a half to two pounds so that's a big difference between two pounds of ribeye or two pounds of ground beef as far as how much energy you're in taking on that and i think we both leverage it where he might eat rolling for a week if he's trying to hit a specific weight loss goal or break through a stall when i just might fast like he does some fast with me i think we're actually going to do it's been a while we're going to do a 72 hour fast starting um tomorrow we're gonna go to fogo for lunch so we'll do a 72 hour fast after tomorrow um but i would probably do more fast more regularly when chris would rather just maybe lean out lean cuts for a few days instead so it really depends um i think that's where it's hard for us to give specific advice to people because they want to know exact like fact protein ratios that we use or exact calories that we have and really you know it's just not sustainable for us to pay attention to those things i can't track calories every day it's just not fun for me i'm not gonna enjoy it i'm not gonna do it i'm not gonna worry about my fat protein ratio i have to eat the meat that i enjoy because pizza sounds really good most of the time and if i'm not like really enjoying what i'm eating then i'm just gonna give up and go back to something else and that's why we don't eat stuff like liver very often because i would all i can think of in that moment is like this is torture and i'd rather go eat carbs and so the way that this is sustainable for us is just to eat the stuff that's like really amazing tasting for us and then you know leverage other things over time that's how it's been sustainable i think i said the word sustainable 40 times but did you ever consider cutting out cheese permanently for weight loss and it literally goes to what i just said of like that sounds miserable so i have had you guys know i can't eat cheese slices for snacks i can't just like graze on cheese but to just say like i'm never eating cheese again to stay thin like i don't need to be thin that much like by the way i haven't eaten cheese in about six weeks and really i've lost about 15 pounds don't tell me this i can't do it okay i have cut out all of my cheese snacks but i still well like i had some feta with my steak today um i did a cheese wrap you had a bite of my cheese wrap the other day one bite but stuff like that i i'm i'm keeping it to a small amount within my meal but both of us got like real in the cheese addict snacking problem over the last year um and so we're doing a lot better without that so at this point this is good enough right and he's never he's not saying you're never gonna eat it again right no i just i just recognize that it was a problem that it's a problem and right i don't miss it unless it's that good stuff yeah what have you discovered is the best method for converting people to a carnivore diet don't convert don't try to convert that's like trying to change somebody's mind about anything these days it's a pointless conversation to have you just do you and they see your results if they really care enough they'll ask and then if they are open to it they'll do it but you're not going to really be able to convert somebody right i i'm a big believer and obviously because that's what i do is just share your story and you never know who's watching i mean i didn't even hardly mention it we just we recently bought a house and then a few months after we bought our house uh the mortgage broker that we worked with messaged me and said oh by the way my wife and i have both been carnivore we both lost 35 pounds like i didn't try to convince him to be carnivore he just kind of heard about it through working with us and then started watching on social media and just kind of saw us live our lives and saw the results and was intrigued enough to try it for himself so you kind of just have to let people figure it out for themselves because nobody's going to be convinced of anything how do you combat negative stigma from family and friends about eating only meat i mean it kind of goes back to the same thing we don't really talk about it if we go somewhere and visit family i offer to cook and bring the food so that it's not an issue for them we happily cook for other people when they come to our house but we i think we're lucky that we don't really have anybody that has a problem with it in our family i don't think anybody no i mean we've had some i've had some co-workers and stuff over the years but i think that a lot of that kind of stems from jealousy of or just not understanding it um but for the most part it's not like it's different now because of social media but we really didn't go around announcing it we lost all of our weight before really we told anybody what we were doing uh and and the same thing with trying to convince other people and trying to convince our family members that this is healthy for us like we just kind of did our thing and let the results speak for themselves when you see us before and you see us now you can't deny that we're obviously in a healthier place right now and so anybody who was questioning if this is working for us or not those things have kind of faded since the sustainability of our health has happened i think i am going to break here for now i do have so many more good questions that i'm going to try to categorize and do later a lot of questions about food specifically some questions about like more specific medical conditions cholesterol everybody's asking about and then also a lot more questions about fasting and weight loss and and our family and kind of how we deal with cravings we will make a series or i will make a series we'll see how much chris wants to be involved feel free to put some comments down below and make sure to add those to our list for future videos and don't forget to subscribe so that when we put more videos out you can make sure you check them out thanks guys

Channel: Laura Spath

Views: 48,027

Keywords: carnivore, carnivore diet, carnivore weight loss, keto weight loss, carnivore Q&A, carnivore questions, laura spath, keto diet

Id: Laei4beGj_g

Length: 24min 40sec (1480 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021