Episode 104: Intermittent Fasting, the Keto Diet and Athletic Training with Jamie Dant
Have you heard of Intermittent Fasting and wondered why it's supposedly good for you? Or how about why you often hear it associated with the Ketogenic Diet? Or have you heard how these things, and being a "fat-adapted" athlete can improve your athletic performance, but aren't quite sure how it works?
In this episode, I'm joined by Jamie Dant, a Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist & Board Certified Nutrition Specialist. For the past 13 years, Jamie has worked in the fitness industry as a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach & the owner and operator of her own gym.
Jamie specializes in helping female athletes nourish their minds and bodies without restrictive dieting or tons of cardio so they can achieve optimal health and performance.
You'll hear us discuss:
What is intermittent fasting, it's benefits & how to ease into it
The relationship between intermittent fasting, the Keto diet & Weight Loss
How nutrition impacts athletic training & performance
The role of mindset
And so much more.
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“You can lift heavier and you can run more and do all these things; but if your nutrition, your sleep, your stress, all of that isn’t supporting it, then your exercise is probably actually not going to improve and might get worse.”
Read the Episode Transcript...
Naomi Nakamura: One of the perks about being a 21-Day Sugar Detox coach and a Beautycounter consultant is that I am able to work with and have become friends with some pretty amazing women, many of whom have already been guests on this show. Today's guest is no different. While we have been 21DSD coaches and Beautycounter colleagues for a couple of years now, we finally were able to meet in person twice this year at various Beautycounter leadership trainings. If you have ever had the opportunity to meet an online friend in real life and then see that they are exactly the same person in both capacities, well, that's when you know you've met good people, and that's exactly who today's guest, Jamie Dant, is.
Jamie has worked in the fitness industry for 13 years in a variety of capacities, as a personal trainer, a strength and conditioning coach for a Division I university as well as her high school alma mater, and she also owned and operated a CrossFit gym of her own for five years. After realizing the importance of nutrition in changing one's health and body composition, Jamie went back to school to get her master's in nutrition and integrative health from the Maryland University of Integrative Health.
She's now a practicing licensed dietician nutritionist, and she is a board-certified nutrition specialist.
Jamie specializes in helping female athletes nourish their minds and their bodies without restrictive dieting or tons of cardio so they can achieve optimal health and performance.
While the primary focus of our discussion is on intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet and how it could help athletic performance, our conversation ventured into many different areas, including but not limited to weight loss, mindset, and a whole lot more.
Now, before I get to the show, I do have to apologize because for some odd reason there is a clicking sound throughout the episode, and I have no idea where it came from because we certainly didn't hear it while we were recording. I spent hours trying to fix it without very much success, so you're going to hear the clicking. It is tolerable, and please don't let it dissuade you from hearing this really, really insightful conversation with Jamie. So, without further ado, let's just get to the show.
Hello, my friend, and welcome to the show.
Jamie Dant: Hi, Naomi. Thank you so much for having me.
Naomi Nakamura: I am so glad this is finally happening. We tried for a long time to get on each other's schedules, and then this is our second try I'm recording because we had some technical issues, but we're here and we're making it happen.
Jamie Dant: Yes. I am so excited.
Naomi Nakamura: So, you are a fellow 21-Day Sugar Detox coach, b**ut I know you do so much more, so why don't you share and introduce yourself to the listeners and share who you are and what it is that you do?
Jamie Dant: All right. Sounds good. So, my name is Jamie Dant. My specialty as a licensed nutritionist is that I work with athletes, mainly female athletes, but I do work with men as well. My goal is to help them nourish their minds and bodies for optimal performance in this 90-day program I have called the Fit Female Formula without restrictive dieting or tons of cardio.
Naomi Nakamura: This is so appealing to me. Two episodes ago I had my personal trainer on, and the last episode I had my running coach on, who I've worked with since 2010. Yeah, speaking from personal experience as ... I don't even know if I consider myself an athlete these days, but as someone who at one time was very much into athletic training and training for endurance races, this is something that I did not realize until I went to nutrition school myself to become a health coach, that it's really important to get your health information from someone who has a really solid background in it. I know when I first started working with a personal trainer, at the time I took all of his information about anything related to health like that was my gospel. He's not someone that I work with now. I haven't worked with him for a long time. He was great at the time for what I needed, where I didn't know anything about being healthy, but I can see now that it was a lot of incomplete information. Then when I got into doing more serious things around my athletic training, like I said, doing marathons and half-marathons and all that, this whole idea of nutrition for athletes, I feel like for so many of us in my local, I guess, my local community, my own personal community, it was ... In hindsight, it was almost like the blind leading the blind.
So, I really want to get into this with you, but before we get into that, how did you fall into this line of work?
Jamie Dant: So, I am currently focusing on working with athletes because I was always an athlete myself. I grew up playing sports all my life, and then I majored in exercise science in college and became a personal trainer after that. So, I worked in the fitness industry for six years before I just realized that I enjoyed what I did and it was a lot of fun, but I realized that I wasn't able to help people as much as I really wanted to because they were only working with me maybe 30 to 60 minutes once a week or at a max maybe three times a week. That's three hours at a max out of 24 hours a ... Sorry, three hours a week out of 24 hours a day, however many hours a week that is, that I was able to help people. All those other hours throughout the day are really what's more important when it comes to anything, whether it's improving your health or improving performance in the gym. Yeah, you can lift heavier and you can run more and do all these things; but if your nutrition, your sleep, your stress, all of that isn't supporting it, then your exercise is probably actually not going to improve and might get worse, so-
Naomi Nakamura: And that's something that I did not connect the dots with at the time-
Jamie Dant: Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: ... because, you know-
Jamie Dant: Yeah. A lot of people don't-
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, because you're training and you're running dozens of miles every week, and then you think that that gives you the permission slip to eat everything you want, right?
Jamie Dant: I definitely-
Naomi Nakamura: And then on top of that-
Jamie Dant: I definitely experience that with runners.
Naomi Nakamura: Yes, and then on top of that, because with endurance training, you know how much that affects your cortisol. Sometimes you just can't sleep well. I know this is true because when I was in it, I would be up in the middle of the night, and I would pick up my phone and get on Twitter. All my other running friends, whether they were internet friends or real life friends, they were all on Twitter at the same time too, so I knew that-
Jamie Dant: No one was sleeping.
Naomi Nakamura: ... none of us was sleeping. Right.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. That's really what I was experiencing with my clients, was they were coming in and seeing me every week and complaining that they weren't seeing the progress in weight loss. I was like, "Well, I'm not here as a personal trainer to help you lose weight." Yeah, that's what everyone wants, but working out alone doesn't help you lose weight. It helps you get more fit and faster and stronger and all of those things, but what you're eating is actually what can help more so with the weight loss. Not that it's just about weight loss, but, I mean, this was 10, 15 years ago, and that's kind of just what everyone was wanting to focus on.
Naomi Nakamura: Come on, let's be honest. It's still what everyone focuses on.
Jamie Dant: It's still ... Yeah. Yeah. I think there's definitely a little bit more ... There's a lot more areas that people are realizing that they can work on in their health and in their life now, but yeah. When it comes down to it, everyone still wants to lose weight.
But I really wanted to be able to help these people, so I thought, "You know what?" Well, actually what led me to realize how important nutrition actually was ... because it was like, "There's something missing here. What else can I do?" Then in 2008, I competed in a figure show, which is basically like bodybuilding. Most people seem to know what bodybuilding is, but less muscle, little more feminine. You wear high heels and really high heels and a teeny little bikini, and you get onstage and pose. It's very much an aesthetic competition, but I competed in one in 2008. A lot of people were telling me I should do one, so eventually I did. I was just really, really, really amazed at how much my body changed by just making some small tweaks in my diet.
Initially, when I started training for it, they were large tweaks, but then down the line they were small tweaks. I remember I did my own nutrition and exercise for the first four to five months, lost 15 pounds, and then kind of hit a plateau, so I hired a coach. I hired an IFBB ... no, an NPC, which is one of the divisions, an NPC pro. She wrote a nutrition plan for me. The most major changes that she gave me were cut out protein powder and cut out all spices and all sweeteners. I did that and I dropped four pounds in three days.
Naomi Nakamura: Wow.
Jamie Dant: Crazy, right?
Naomi Nakamura: Wow.
Jamie Dant: I'm not saying that those things are necessarily healthy, like cutting out spices. There's absolutely no need to do that, but it was just these little changes that I was like, "Holy crap. That was crazy," and to see the transformation that my body went through. Granted, yeah, I was exercising more and more hardcore, super dedicated to it, but I really feel that the nutrition was the biggest component.
So, actually, my thought process there was after I finished that competition, I thought, "I know that there's a lot of other women out there who would love to, whether it's get onstage or just get somewhere even relatively close to looking like this, but without feeling like they wanted to kill themselves every day," because it's so stressful. You are so mean to people because you're not eating any carbs or fat or anything tasty, and you're getting up at 5:00 AM to do fasted cardio, and all of these things that are really not that fun. I was like, "I want to be able to help people make change in their body without feeling miserable."
Naomi Nakamura: I feel like you just described my life from 2004 to 2008.
Jamie Dant: Oh, no.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, because back then, it was, for me, it was all about calories in, calories out. I was restricting myself to 1,200 a day, didn't pay attention to nutrient density at all, and I was hangry all the time.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh, yeah. So, that's actually really what inspired me to learn more about nutrition. So, I went back to school. I got my master's in nutrition. The program is actually called ... It's a master's in nutrition and integrative health, so it's a more holistic school. It's an accredited program, so we do all the science-y stuff, but there was definitely a more integrative approach as well, which I really liked because I wanted to learn more about how to help people in a more preventative type way and learn how to really just work with people, not just work with sick people. For example, the registered dietician route, they typically are working in hospital settings. Even if they don't work in a hospital setting, part of their rotations in clinic for getting their internship hours are working at a hospital. I knew right off the bat that that was not what I wanted to do, so that's why I went the licensed dietician route.
Naomi Nakamura: It's so interesting that you say that. This is actually a little bit of a rat hole because this is not what we're here to talk about, but it's interesting you say taking that preventative approach because here in the U.S., in our country, there's just so much debate and it's such a hot issue about healthcare because people are concerned about coverages not being met or prescriptions not being covered and all of these things, but yet there's so much that people can do for themselves so that they're not in that position to be so dependent, chronically dependent on those things all that time. I think there's a big billboard in San Francisco right when you get off the freeway and it says, "Healthcare is a right." I think I took a picture of it somewhere, but I always see that and I always think, "Healthcare is also a personal responsibility."
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.
Naomi Nakamura: So, I think that just lends so nicely to what you just said about wanting to take a preventative approach as opposed to a reactive approach.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. I'm not going to comment too much on that because you're right. We could totally go down a big rat hole on that one, so yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: I hear you on that. So, one of the ways that you specialize with your clients is with intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet. It is so fascinating for me because back in about ... I think it was 2011 or 2012, when I was really into the whole running lifestyle, of course I was reading every single magazine I could get my hands on, Runner's World, all these things, and they all talked about becoming fat adapted but me not knowing what even that meant. I didn't know, you know?
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Naomi Nakamura: I just thought, "Oh, if I just eat more fat, I'll get faster." You know, again, talking to my-
Jamie Dant: How long ago was this?
Naomi Nakamura: It's just like 2011, 2012, I think. Jamie Dant: I'm actually really surprised to hear that a runner's magazine was talking about being fat adapted in that time.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and there was not a lot of context about it. It might have been one really short article about it, but then not much. Then, of course, I remember sitting around with other running friends, talking about it. I don't remember any of us having a good approach about even how to do it, just all of us being confused about, "How can that be?" because we were always told that we need to load up on carbs. Before a big race, we're all eating our pasta and whatnot. So, can you explain to us ... Let's start with the intermittent fasting. What exactly is intermittent fasting?
Jamie Dant: Sure. Actually, before I explain that, I do want to just give kind of a blanket statement as far as ... I do work with clients with intermittent fasting and low carb or ketogenic diets, but I have ... I guess my overall approach really is very personalized, and so I just want to kind of put it out there that, because I know there are coaches that, coaches and nutritionists that are ... They consider themselves keto coaches or fasting coaches or ... That's definitely not what I do. I will incorporate it if I feel helpful or necessary or the client wants to try it, but that's not the only thing I do.
Naomi Nakamura: I'm glad you pointed that out because I, myself, I guess I just naturally tend to naturally go towards a low carb diet myself as well, staying away from most grains most of the time and whatnot, and trying to eat more plant-based carbs. But, and again, this is another rat hole, but I recently found for myself just doing a little bit of experimentation that, oh, first of all, I did go back to counting calories for a little bit. In that, I found that I was not meeting anywhere close to what an adequate amount of protein should be for myself in a day, as well as carbs, which I find so fascinating because I feel like we can all get carbs really easily and really quickly. So, just making a conscious effort to add not a whole lot but just a little bit more carbs to my diet, I find myself sleeping better.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. We can talk about that too, but that makes a lot of sense.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, and I think that just lends to what you said about, yes, we can talk about these things and these things work fantastic for some people, and it may have worked fantastic for me or for you at a certain time; but depending on where you are right now and whatever things you might be trying to deal with or goals you're trying to meet, these things adjust.
Jamie Dant: Right. Yep. Exactly. Just a side note, I experienced the exact same thing after doing keto and then kind of just letting it more free-fall into low carb. It was really hard to get my carbs back up when I was trying to do that. I was like, "Where do you get a carb from?"
Naomi Nakamura: It's surprising when it just, a certain way of eating just comes ... is just more natural to you. Literally, I was actually ... Our mutual friend Katie Garcias was helping me with this. I was like, "Katie, how can I not be getting enough carbs in a day?"
Jamie Dant: Yeah. I think it's just-
Naomi Nakamura: It's like, "I don't even know who I am."
Jamie Dant: I think it just turns you off from those types of foods, like you don't crave them anymore. You don't feel like you have a need for them, so your mind just doesn't go right to a potato, a sweet potato, butternut squash. You're just like, "Oh, veggies."
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and they take longer to cook.
Jamie Dant: True. Oh, yup. I definitely have experienced that. I know you love your Balanced Bites Meals. A little plug there.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah.
Jamie Dant: Okay, so to get back to your question, what is intermittent fasting? So, intermittent fasting is really just going for any time period, any extended time period, without consuming calories. One of the most popular methods is called the 16:8, which is just 16 hours of fasting and then eight hours of a feeding window, so meaning you have eight hours in which you can eat food. But some people will even consider intermittent fasting as long as doing a 24 hour fast once a week or once a month or fasting for a couple days at a time. There's so many little nuances within this. There's protein during fasts and bone broth fasts and coffee fasts and all these different types of fasts, but really just intermittent fasting means going an intermittent period of time of fasting.
Naomi Nakamura: I just want to say if anyone has never tried this before who might be fascinated, just realize that this might be something you need to work up to. I've done 16:8 before, not for prolonged periods of time. I started a few months ago with doing, I think ... I use an app and they call it the circadian fast, where you go for 13 hours, and so I'm working my way up. I'm between 14 and 15 hours right now. I've never done a 24 hour fast or a three day fast, but I have friends who have. As odd as this sounds, they say that they feel so amazing doing one like that. I think one of our mutual friends, Holly, even said that she didn't want to break it because she just felt so good. I personally can't imagine that yet, but that's ... I haven't done it for myself. I do want to try it sometime. I don't know when I will. I don't have any immediate plans to, but I am curious.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. So, I think that's something else that's very individualized. Honestly, everything with nutrition is super individualized. It does make it really hard and really confusing for the general public because if you hear so many people talk about one strategy and how well it worked for them, it kind of gives off the impression that it's also going to work for you too. Then if you try it and it doesn't work so well, it can be really frustrating like, "Well, it worked for all these other people. Why isn't it working for me?" or "What am I doing wrong?" But I will say that ... So, I have a friend who is super into fasting. He actually kind of led me through my first true fast experience. I don't know if he still does this, but for a time period he was doing three day fasts once a month. I did some intermittent fasting. The longest complete fast I've done was a ... I think I was trying to do the three day with him, but I think I made it to 68 hours or something like that, so not quite the full 72, but I ... Are we allowed to cuss on here?
Naomi Nakamura: No, because I don't want to have to change the rating of the show.
Jamie Dant: Okay.
Naomi Nakamura: I have to have that conversation with every guest when they come on.
Jamie Dant: I felt like crap. The first day was okay. I just had some stomach rumbling and the urge to eat but I felt okay, but then day two and day three were pretty bad. Day two, I felt just really tired and really hungry. By day three, I was super cranky and kind of miserable and was like, "I just need some food." I have tried it a couple of times, and I have done a couple 24 hour fasts. When I do them, I usually will still do collagen in coffee. I'll do water. I might do some tea. I'm not really a big tea drinker, though, but just to get in some herbs.
Naomi Nakamura: Do you do the bone broth?
Jamie Dant: I've done it occasionally, but I just have never really had a good experience with fasting. I have-
Naomi Nakamura: Well-
Jamie Dant: ... experienced exactly what I said a minute ago about it's frustrating because you do hear all these people say all this mental clarity and sleeping better and more energy and all this stuff, and honestly I personally never experienced that from fasting.
Naomi Nakamura: For a multi-day fast or at least a 24 hour-
Jamie Dant: Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: ... and longer fast? Okay, so then getting back to the more 16:8 approach, who do you recommend it for, then? What is the profile of somebody who you would say, "You know what? This is what I'm seeing with your personal health. I think you might benefit from this"?
Jamie Dant:Yeah. So, for the most part, anyone can try some intermittent fasting if they wanted to because we're all getting in intermittent fasting every single day when we sleep. We don't eat. We don't drink. We don't put anything in our mouth while we're sleeping, and-
Naomi Nakamura: That's funny you say that because when I first told my integrative doctor, "Oh, I'm going to try intermittent fasting for 12 hours," he looked at me and was like, "Shouldn't you be doing that anyway just when you sleep?" I was like, "Point taken."
Jamie Dant: Yeah, and it's true. A lot of people don't really realize it and they're like, "Oh, intermittent fasting? What is this cool, new thing? I should try it," but yeah, you're really ... We're doing intermittent fasting every day. It's just the dietary approach is a little more extended.
So, if you wanted to try it, what you could do is figure out how much time you're currently going without eating. Let's say you finish eating dinner by seven o'clock, and so seven o'clock is your end cut-off for the day, and then you normally eat breakfast at 7:00 AM. That would be 12 hours, so easy math there. 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. If you're normally getting in a 12 hour fast anyway, then maybe you start with 13, and so you wait and don't eat breakfast until 8:00 AM, and [crosstalk 00:22:38]-
Naomi Nakamura: Or eat dinner earlier.
Jamie Dant: Or eat dinner earlier, yeah. Honestly, the timeframe that you choose, some people will say that there's more of a benefit to one way or the other, making your cut-off time earlier or fasting longer for the first half of the day, but I just try to be really realistic when it comes to working with people because everyone's kind of stuck in their habits and in their ways. Making a change like this can be really difficult. I mean, when you think about it, it's pure restriction. You're literally not eating anything, and then you're expanding that timeframe. I usually just tell people whatever works for you with your schedule. Some people might have a really, really busy day at work and work late and not get an opportunity to eat in that latter half of the day. For some people, that might be perfect and they can start their fast late afternoon, maybe three o'clock. But for other people, they might be doing a workout after work, maybe four or five o'clock, and are starving afterwards and feel like they have to eat something or they're not going to feel well or sleep well or what have you, so they need to eat a little bit later and then they can push the time that they start eating the next day back a little bit later. So, it really kind of depends.
Naomi Nakamura: That's interesting that you say that about timing because ... So, we're recording this, if you're not listening to it at the time of publishing, we're recording this in November shortly after we had the time change. We're having longer nights now versus days. I don't know about you, but I find myself eating dinner earlier because it's dark at five o'clock. So, it might be a time where you're also ... just naturally gravitate towards intermittent fasting if you're someone who finds yourself eating earlier just because the natural circadian rhythms of our day.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and if that's the case, then I think that that would be awesome for you to incorporate because following that kind of natural circadian rhythm, it does help us with our sleep. Obviously, as you know, the better sleep we're getting, the better everything else is, more easily losing weight and decreasing inflammation and better mood, and just so many things that you can benefit from with that.
Naomi Nakamura: I would guess this would be great for the client or the person who maybe tends to do a lot of late-night snacking. I've certainly had clients who have that challenge, and I'm sure you have too.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think if I were to off the top of my head recommend that ... say who was the number one population you would recommend this for, it would be the person that does a lot of late-night snacking and is trying to lose weight or is struggling to maybe maintain their current weight, because that's extra calories. Those calories add up really, really fast. Well, honestly, whether you're someone that likes to count calories or not, or count macros or not, eating those late-night snacks, unless you build it into your plan in advance, you're probably going to go over in your calories. The thing about that is that I think a lot of people wonder why weight loss is so hard, and you really only need to eat 200 to 300 calories less a day than what you're expending in order to see weight loss. 200 to 300 calories is like a couple ounces of chocolate, or-
Naomi Nakamura: It's not much. It's not much.
Jamie Dant: ... an apple with two tablespoons of peanut butter. It's a snack. It's really, really easy to go overboard with that. So, yeah, cutting out that late-night snacking if you're a person that feels like you need a hard rule, a hard cut-off time in order to make yourself stop eating after dinner, then it can be super helpful.
Naomi Nakamura: So, then, are there any types of people who you think it would actually hurt or not be ideal for?
Jamie Dant: Yeah. That's always possible. Without putting any specifics on it, first I will say that anyone could not feel great from doing too long of an extended fast, so you just have to be aware of that and listen to your body. If you have any questions about it, definitely make sure that you're working with a professional that is experienced in that and can help you. But if we're talking about some specific populations, definitely anyone who's struggled with an eating disorder I don't recommend any kind of fasting for because, like I mentioned earlier, it is restriction. Any kind of restriction for someone who has struggled with an eating disorder typically isn't going to end well. I think when people hear eating disorder, a lot of times they think more anorexia, bulimia, but orthorexia is also a very prevalent eating disorder right now, or it has been for a while, that I think a lot of people aren't aware of. Not to go too much into that, but basic definition of orthorexia is being obsessive about eating healthy.
Any time that you're incorporating some kind of restriction, whether it's intermittent fasting or keto or carnivore or cutting out any complete food group ... Even paleo can be this for some people. It can kind of flip a switch in your brain, and you get really obsessive about sticking to this and only this. So, one thing I would suggest is really with any dietary approach that anyone tries, just remember to keep an open mind about it. If something doesn't feel right or you find yourself over-obsessing about it and like, "I can't do this because it's not within my eating window. I can't go out to dinner with friends because it's after my eating window, and so I won't be able to sit there and not eat, so I'm just not going to go out with my friend," that's affecting your life in, I think, a negative way. Just pay attention to how it's affecting your life.
So, that would be one population, and then the other one would be if you're someone who has to take certain medications at certain times of the day. If it's just once a day, that's probably easy to work around, but I know a lot of people that have to take certain medications in the morning and at night. If the timing isn't right and you have to take those meds with food, then a true intermittent fast might not work for you. It doesn't mean you can't still incorporate some aspect of it. But then the other one would be type 1 diabetics because they literally do not make any insulin, and so they need insulin to control their blood sugar. If their insulin drops too low, they need to eat something or they could die, so that's a really important population to be aware of with this.
Naomi Nakamura: So, we talked a lot about how intermittent fasting can help with habits with late-night snacking and can help with weight loss. What are some other benefits that maybe people may not be aware of, and then also maybe some risks other than what we talked about?
Jamie Dant: Sure. The main benefit of intermittent fasting outside of the weight loss component, and I will say that there are some people that think that intermittent fasting in and of itself ... If you were to eat 1,500 calories every single day and then you start doing intermittent fasting and you're still eating 1,500 calories a day, there are some people that feel that that will help beat up weight loss. For me, I think it's individualized. I don't think that everyone that does that will see more weight loss, but maybe some people will if they're holding onto more inflammation or something like that. I'll kind of get into why next, but when I say a benefit is weight loss, I'm talking more for the people that are able to better control their calories by doing the intermittent fasting, so like we talked about earlier with not doing the late-night snacking.
But the big benefit, I think, there for intermittent fasting is autophagy. When I said decreasing inflammation, autophagy definitely helps with decreasing inflammation. It basically is a natural process that our body goes through already that it's like natural cell death. We have cells in our body pretty much at all times that can be toxic, cells that are maybe beginning the stages of going through some kind of mutation, or they're just not really providing us with anything optimal anymore. Our body knows what to do and recycles them and gets rid of them. That's the process of autophagy.
We have autophagy happening, most of us do, many times throughout the day; but a true fast, meaning literally not putting any calories in your body, will speed up the process of autophagy. That can, for people who are in a disease state, can help them get better from that disease because if you think of it in the terms ... This is really simplistic, but if you think of it in terms as a disease in your body and you have diseased cells, then those diseased cells are going to get recycled much more quickly with autophagy, so you'll feel better. If you have inflammation in your body, those inflamed cells are going to get recycled faster. Any kind of thing that's wrong or not feeling right with your body, autophagy can help with.
The longer fasts, a lot of studies say that you need to do at least a three day fast in order to truly see a difference in autophagy. Maybe someone who has cancer and it's safe for them to do a fast like that, that it's recommended that they might do a three day fast or longer because they have some really major changes that they're trying to make in their body. It's so personalized as far as how far you want to take it. If someone can safely do a three day fast or a five day fast and they want to try it out and see how they feel ... What you were talking earlier about friends that you have that say almost like that runner's high, right?
Naomi Nakamura: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jamie Dant: You just feel like an amazingly different person. A lot of people do get that. I, personally, didn't, but a lot of people do. A lot of where that comes from is autophagy.
Naomi Nakamura: I feel like I need to make this disclaimer. The friends that we reference, they are nutritionists and practitioners, so they're very experienced; but if this is something that you're thinking about trying on your own, please work with a professional before trying it on your own.
Jamie Dant: Yes. Yes, definitely. I mean, it sounds easy like, "Oh, I just don't eat," but you don't want to force yourself to continue and keep going if you're not feeling well.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and if your body has never done anything like that before either, it might just be too much all at once.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, yeah. I would never ... Yeah. We kind of started talking about this earlier, but I don't think we really went into too much detail. I would definitely ease yourself into that. If you've never even done intermittent fasting past the time when you're sleeping, I would start with an intermittent fast and gradually work your way up to a 24 hour fast over probably a month's time. Then if you wanted to try a longer fast from there, you could. I would never recommend someone just do a 24 hour or longer fast without any kind of training leading up to that.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. Like I said, I've done 16 hours, not consistently. I can do it. I feel like I would need to work myself up to be able to do that on a more regular basis. If I've done anything longer, it hasn't been intentional. So, even for my-
Jamie Dant: Yeah, and [crosstalk 00:33:52] sometimes too.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. So, even for myself, it's something that I'm trying to work myself up to.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and I do find that it's easier if you're busy. If you've got stuff to do, then it keeps your mind off of eating, but if you're just sitting around at home doing ... not even doing nothing. If you're working from home, which I know both of us do, it's so easy to just-
Naomi Nakamura: Wander into the kitchen and-
Jamie Dant: ... get up and go see what's in the kitchen, yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, and I think that's why for a couple of people I know who have done multi-day fasts, they purposely did it during the work week so that they're out of their homes, at the office, and they're not ... It's less time in the home.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. Definitely. I do want to mention a couple other benefits that I think can happen with intermittent fasting, is when you are paying more close attention to the timing of your food, you're probably also more likely to pay attention to the quality of your food, where it's coming from. It also creates more of an awareness in your body about when you're actually hungry or not. Again, that can go back to the late-night snacking, but it also can go to any time of the day when if you feel like you constantly need something sweet after every meal, or you need a snack in between breakfast and lunch, and you need another snack in between lunch and dinner. Sometimes that's just habit for people. I've worked with a lot of people who don't know the difference between habit and hunger, or boredom and hunger, and so I do-
Naomi Nakamura: Oh, I feel like that could be a whole 'nother episode.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, yeah, it probably could be. But I feel like a lot of people that try intermittent fasting, and definitely people that try ketosis or even just a lower carb, higher fat diet, because the more fat keeps you more satiated, and so you're not as hungry in the middle of those ... in between those meals. I think it really allows people to learn more about ... increase their awareness of their hunger signals and learn more about if they're actually hungry or if they're just craving something.
Naomi Nakamura: That's a good segue into the ketogenic diet, but I do want to say that's exactly what happened to me, because when I'm home making a home-cooked meal or heating up some Balanced Bites Meals, I'm eating pretty early, whether it's the summertime or the fall and winter. But if I'm out with friends, I'm naturally eating later because usually dinner reservations aren't until seven or so.
Jamie Dant: Seven or eight, yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Right, which then, if I am fasting, that's going to push back the time that I eat breakfast. I realize that I would have a little bit of anxiety because I'd be like, "Oh, it's 6:30 or 7:00. This is when I usually eat breakfast." Then I actually paused and I was like, "I'm actually not hungry. Why was this giving me anxiety? Yes, this is the time I usually eat, but I'm actually not hungry right now, so I'm fine eating a later breakfast or even just waiting until lunch."
Jamie Dant: Actually, a little tip I'll give you with that is if you're in a situation like that where you're eating later than the time you want to stop eating because you're trying to do intermittent fasting, instead of worrying about time is breakfast the next day, to do exactly what you experienced and just say, "I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to listen to my body and see when I feel hungry in the morning. If I feel hungry" ... Let's say you're going for a 16 hour fast. "If I feel hungry at 14 hours and I feel like I really need to eat something, then I'm going to eat. But if I feel like I can go to the 16, then I'll go to the 16." You just start over the next day because this isn't something where ... Well, intermittent fasting, it definitely is something that it builds upon time, but if you don't do it exactly the same amount of hours for one day, it's not like you're going to lose everything.
Naomi Nakamura: It's okay.
Jamie Dant: Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: So, getting back to the relationship between intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet, can you get more into that? Because I know in a lot of the health world, the nutrition world, those two things are talked about together very often.
Jamie Dant: I think that probably the reason for that, I wouldn't necessarily always give a recommendation of those two. I don't think that they have to go together, but they do go well together because of the ketogenic diet being such a high fat diet. Like I mentioned earlier, fat keeps you satiated for a long longer than carbs and protein do, and so you don't feel hungry as often. You can go longer between meals, and so that lends itself to the intermittent fasting where you probably can eat breakfast later in the morning and you probably can stop eating dinner earlier in the day and feel fine going to bed without eating just an hour or two before you went to bed. So, I think that's one of the real main reasons why you often see people doing the two together.
But from a benefit, another benefit standpoint, a true ketogenic diet that is 25 grams of net carbs or maybe potentially up to 50 grams of total carbs a day as a max, and getting in about 70% to 80% of fat in your diet does actually promote autophagy as well. So, if you are doing a ketogenic diet and you're intermittent fasting, then you're just kind of going to get more bang for your buck with that, and so a lot of people will experience decreased overall inflammation. Honestly, I think if it's a strategy that works for you, you're probably going to feel really, really good.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. I think that's why you see people who have some really dramatic and significant results, especially with weight loss. But then also like you said, so much of it is tied to our daily habits as well, and that might be why some people don't.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they all go together. I've seen people mention a lot lately, people that are looked up to in the health and nutrition world posting stuff on social media and saying things about how a certain diet, the reason that it works is because when you're following this type of diet, and this meaning it could be any type of diet, basically you're putting out an extra effort to work on your health. So, if you're doing that with your food, then you're also probably more likely to be doing it in other areas of your life. The more things you're incorporating in that way, the more successful you're going to be.
Naomi Nakamura: So, speaking of other things we're incorporating, you specialize with athletes, so I really want to get into how being fat adapted can really be beneficial for athletes versus the traditional approach that we've always had, especially for endurance athletes, of carb-loading.
Jamie Dant: So, it definitely depends on the athlete. It's funny. If you ask any nutritionist or dietician a question, a nutrition question, and whether it's generalized or for yourself as an individual, the most common answer you're going to get is, "It depends."
Naomi Nakamura: Funny you should say that because I am part of the ... I've studied at the Functional Nutrition Alliance under Andrea Nakayama. It's a bunch of people and including doctors, acupuncturists, chiropractors, nutritionists, health coaches. We're all studying there. Every time somebody asks a question, her first answer is always, "Well, it depends."
Jamie Dant: Yeah. It's kind of like an inside joke, but ... Okay, so it does depend on the type of athlete. We just talked about how it depends on the individual, whether they're an athlete or not. So, throwing an athlete into the mix, that means that you now have someone who is very likely expending a whole lot more calories every day than someone who's sedentary, which means that they need to eat more. Their goal is probably not weight loss, or while maybe wanting to lose a little bit of weight, they also do not want their performance to suffer, which means that they also need to eat more calories and be more aware of the food that they're taking in.
It really definitely depends on the type of athlete that you have. I find that ketogenic or low carb diets actually work really well with endurance athletes because, well, for a couple of reasons. So, the first reason is something that we've already talked about, which is the fact that if you're eating less carbs, in order to still get in the calories that you need, your fat is very likely going to be pretty high. I do also recommend that athletes trying to do a ketogenic diet do not follow the medical prescription keto diet like for someone who ... where keto originated from a doctor who was actually trying to help his patients with epilepsy and brain issues. That's what I mean when I say a medical keto diet.
Naomi Nakamura: A more prescriptive approach.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, prescriptive. Yeah. With that, protein is kept at a moderation or a minimum as well. But for an athlete, they should not be keeping their protein too low because they're probably then going to end up having too much fat, and then that can cause digestive issues or gastrointestinal issues; but also there's more chance, more risk, for muscle loss. Low carb, moderate to high protein, and high fat is probably the way I would go for an athlete.
Naomi Nakamura: But what about those who are still thinking that, "Well, the carbs are going to give me the fuel and the energy I need to get through this event that I'm doing"?
Jamie Dant: Right. So, once you actually become fat adapted, you enter ketosis. Your body basically learns how to use the ketones instead of sugar or glucose for fuel as the main source. Then you will start to notice some of those benefits of having the energy to perform your sport. The reason that I think that it works really well with endurance athletes is because, like I said earlier about how fat keeps you satiated for longer, well, that fat, because it stays in your system for longer and it's not a fast energy source, so it can fuel you over a longer period of time. For an endurance athlete who needs fuel over a longer period of time, it works really well internally. Then also from a planning perspective, if you're, say, training for a marathon or a triathlon or something like that where you're out in nature and don't have access to a bunch of food, it's so much easier than figuring out, "Okay, how many gel packs do I need? Where am I going to get my carbs from?"
Naomi Nakamura: Well, "How am I going to store all of these gel packs on my body?"
Jamie Dant: Yep.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. I've been there.
Jamie Dant:Yeah, and so I think that that's why a fat adapted athlete with endurance sports can work really, really well. Then, the other component to that is GI health. A lot of endurance athletes do typically go towards carbs for fuel. We've been taught for so long that we need simple carbs for fuel. Simple carbs typically end up being more processed foods because who's going to put an apple or some blueberries in their back pocket when they go out for a run? So, it typically ends up being things like bagels and pretzels, and you mentioned pasta earlier. I actually ran cross-country one year in high school, and I remember we had a pasta party every Friday before our cross-country meets.
All of those processed carbs, and number-wise, quantity-wise, depends, of course, on your height, your weight, your actual activity level; but a lot of times, these athletes are typically eating upwards of 300 to 600 grams of carbohydrates a day. That amount, especially coming from processes sources, is going to literally wreak havoc on your digestive track. Every single runner that I have ever worked with is dealing with bloating, gas, acid reflux, maybe even has had stomach ulcers, is concerned about, "On my long run, I always am worried I'm going to have to stop and use the bathroom," and-
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. You basically just described my life from 2008 to about 2013, '14. Literally, this is why I used to do all of my long runs in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. One, because the weather is cooler. Two, because there are some moderate hills. But, three, I knew-
Jamie Dant: There's a bathroom?
Naomi Nakamura: I knew where every single bathroom and every single water fountain was, and even the restaurants that would allow me to run in and use their bathroom, because what you're saying-
Jamie Dant: Nice.
Naomi Nakamura: ... every single endurance athlete listening should be nodding their head because I know they've experienced this. I don't know anyone who hasn't.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and this is kind of a quick aside, but I do find it really challenging as a nutritionist to work with endurance athletes because-
Naomi Nakamura: Because we're type A.
Jamie Dant: ... you're type A, and you're usually so focused on wanting to accomplish not just one thing, but all of these things. The thing is, with athletes, they have to understand that you can't improve your performance, lose body fat, and fix your GI issues all at the same time. I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's tricky, and especially for an endurance athlete because, like I said before, endurance athletes, they're burning off so many extra calories. They need that extra fuel. If you're training for a marathon, losing weight is the last thing you should be concerned about, but it's really, really difficult, I think, to kind of get that through to some people.
Naomi Nakamura: And it's stressful. Literally, you're describing my entire story. I mean, I can get into many stories here, but ... The whole process is really stressful too because you're putting in all this work, you're doing this, you're probably somebody who really takes pride in achievement. If you find yourself continually falling short, it messes with your head.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, yeah. Totally.
Naomi Nakamura: So, okay. Say someone is listening to this and this is kind of blowing their mind because they are still ... haven't heard this before. Maybe they have and haven't quite heard it explained in this way and they're still doing the whole carb-loading and all of that. How does one then start transitioning to becoming more fat adapted?
Jamie Dant:Give me a call.
Naomi Nakamura: You talked about the timing, about how you can't do all these things at once. Would you recommend somebody do this in an off-season where they're not training for a race or-
Jamie Dant: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Naomi Nakamura: ... at the start of a training cycle? What do you recommend?
Jamie Dant: Well, actually, yeah. Either of those two that you just said, either off-season or in the beginning of a training cycle, because if you're just starting a training cycle, then you can slowly make those changes in your nutrition habits at the same time and see how it goes. But I definitely, as far as timing, I definitely would not make a major change to your diet ... depends on the athlete, but I would say generally anywhere within a month probably of the date of the competition or whatever it is. Then aside from that, you definitely need to ease yourself into it because going through the change of going from a high carb or probably what we would consider standard American diet to not even keto but a low carb can be extremely miserable. Something that I like to point out is that that doesn't mean that it's bad for you. Just because something doesn't feel great at first doesn't mean that it's bad for you. It just means that your body is so used to doing one thing, and making this huge change, your body has to learn to adapt to that. So, the slower you go, the better you'll feel.
When I first tried doing keto, I thought I was easing myself into it but did not go slow enough for what my body needed, and I literally felt hungover, the worst hangover you've ever had, for two weeks. Finally, I was like, "All right. I've had enough of this. I literally can't focus. I can't do anything. I need to eat some more carbs." So, you may experience that. You may experience headaches. You may experience extreme fatigue. You may experience cold and flu-like symptoms. Honestly, the side effects are actually pretty great. Pretty wide, I should say.
Naomi Nakamura: It's almost like going through a detox.
Jamie Dant: It's going through a carb detox. It's a carb-tox. Yeah, so you just want to go slow. In order to go slow, you also have to be really aware of what your current diet looks like. If you just eat whatever you want to eat and whatever you feel like eating every day and you're not really paying attention to what or how much quantity you're currently eating, it's going to be hard to make a small change because you won't really know what that small change is. If someone's really serious about doing this, I might even start ... It could be a simple food journal where you're just writing down everything that you're eating, or to the point where maybe you use an app, like ... I really like using MyFitnessPal. You plug in everything that you're eating for the day, and it automatically adds up all your calories and your macros.
Maybe you start by just looking at carbs. If you're trying to lower your carb intake and see if you can be more fat adapted, focus on your carbs. This is not a scientific approach or anything. I'm just kind of making this up as I go or throwing a number out there, but I would probably suggest somewhere around maybe like a 25 to 50 gram of carb decrease each week. For a whole week, you focus on 25 to 50 grams of carbs less, and that way your body kind of adapts. Then the next week, you drop it down another 25 to 50 grams. Now, keep in mind I'm saying 25 to 50 grams thinking of someone who's currently eating 300 to 600 grams, not someone who's eating 150 grams.
Naomi Nakamura: That is such great advice there. I think you'll agree with me too is that when you're going through something, an exercise like this where maybe you're trying something new, I think it's also going to naturally bring up a lot of other, more deeper thoughts about recognizing your habits, like what you talked about, and then also how you make decisions, and just a lot more inner work around those things.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. You're talking about around food?
Naomi Nakamura: Around food, yeah. Exactly.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I recommend that all my clients keep a food journal, at least in the beginning, at least just a basic one. I love MyFitnessPal for anyone, but I actually have an app that I use with just my clients that allows them to take pictures of their food and send it to me. For some people that don't want to deal with the tracking or it gives them anxiety looking at the numbers, it's super helpful to just take take a picture and upload it and send it to me, and then we can together go back and look and say, "All right. Well, here's your plate. On your plate, here's your protein. Here's your carb. Here's your fat," or "You're missing this," and so it just brings about that awareness. For anyone trying to make a change in their diet, regardless of what that change is, just being aware of what you're taking in, I think, is the most important place to start. So, yeah, that's an excellent point.
Naomi Nakamura: That is great. There's also another app I want to call out that I use with my clients too, specifically for those who might be trying to ... might have some specific symptoms or things that they're trying to overcome, is it's actually called mySymptoms. You're not only just logging your food, but when you're logging food, it's not tracking grams or calories like that. I could not do that for a long time because it was such a triggering thing for me, but yet it was still important to track those things for the exact reasons you said, but I'm also tracking my sleep. I'm also tracking my medication and supplements. I'm tracking my moods. I'm tracking my poop. I mean, because all this stuff-
Jamie Dant: Yeah. That's awesome.
Naomi Nakamura: ... is connected. The nice thing is, because I know you'll appreciate this, is that my clients can just press a button, it pops out a PDF, and they send it to me.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. It's super easy.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. All these tools are out there, and they can be used in so many different ways.
This has been such a fantastic conversation. I've learned so much. You've validated a lot of the things that I went through over the years. Where were you in 2013? But for those who do want to give you a call and want to reach out to you and connect with you and learn more, how can they do so?
Jamie Dant: I'm on Instagram and Facebook, @JamieDantLDN. Then the program that I mentioned earlier, the Fit Female Formula, you can find out more information about that at www.jamiedant.com/fitfemaleformula. If you go to that page, I have a bunch of links on there where you can schedule a free call with me to just talk about what your goals are and your health history and what it is that you're looking to achieve and see if my program is the right fit for you.
Naomi Nakamura: So, we didn't get into the details of your program. Why don't you tell us more about it? By the way, I will have links to all of these in the show notes as well.
Jamie Dant:It's a 90-day one-on-one online coaching program, so I can work with you from anywhere in the world as long as time permits, time zones and everything, but it's one-on-one. It's not a group thing, so everything that we do is personalized. I have five phases in the program. We work through each one kind of at your own pace.
So, those five phases are going over gut health, which we just talked a bunch about. Gut health would include nutrition, meaning foods that you might need to take out or foods that you might need to add more of in your diet to support your gut health as well as potentially supplements for healing. We talk about fat burning nutrition because, as we discussed, everyone wants to decrease the amount of body fat in their diet. I mean, body fat in their diet. Body fat. That doesn't always necessarily mean losing weight, but focusing on losing fat and identifying what are the best foods for you pre- and post-workout, how to build your plate with appropriate macronutrient balances. We also cover in the third phase creating a positive mindset. I think that it's super important to, one, just be in the right mindset when you're going into making changes in your health, but also addressing the things like if you do struggle with not seeing results right away, focusing on the what I call non-scale victories, so focusing on those little changes that are still happening every day that you might not be seeing on the scale.
Naomi Nakamura: For some people, that might be the most important aspect of the whole program.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Actually, initially when I started writing this program, I had, the creating a positive mindset, I had that as the first phase. I was starting everyone off with setting smart goals and figuring out what are three new habits you're going to work on this week. It didn't go over so well because everyone's like, "I don't want to work on my mindset. I want to change my diet. I need to lose weight." So, it is super important, but I think what I discovered is that for someone coming to me as a nutritionist, they don't always realize that I'm going to cover those things and they don't realize the importance of it right off the bat. Working it in a little bit later, usually they end up really, really appreciating it when it comes to the time that they're ready to incorporate those strategies, if that makes sense.
Naomi Nakamura: No, 100%. Yes. I found the same thing with some of my clients where I worked with them for four weeks and then I said, "Okay, we're going to take a two-week break, and you're going to be on your own for two weeks. Let's see how you do, and then we'll reconvene and see what you learned or where you're at." They've all come back and said that that was the turning point for them.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, realizing that, "Oh, maybe I don't know how to do all this on my own."
Naomi Nakamura: Or like, "Oh, wait. Why am I eating this?" or "Why do I feel like I can't give this up?" or whatever it is, but it's all tied to mindset.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, very much so. Then the last two phases are fitness, and I title that phase Making Fitness Fit Your Life because while I work and ... By the way, I want to define athlete. You said something in the beginning of our call about you're not sure you would consider yourself an athlete now, but you used to do all this running training and everything. When I say athlete, you could be a former college athlete, you could be a current athlete playing a professional sport, or you could be a current athlete, meaning that you go to the gym three to five times a week and work out and whether you're lifting weights or running or what have you, because I consider athlete to be more of a generic term, not just a competitive athlete but someone who is taking the time and putting in the effort to work on improving their body through fitness. That's what I mean when I say athlete.
So, the phase about fitness is really just figuring out what kind of fitness routine is going to work best for you at that time in your life, because that's another really important thing to note, is that what we do for our workouts at one point in time in our life is not always going to be the best thing for us for the rest of our lives, so kind of figuring out what works for you there. Then, I think you'll like this. The last component of my Fit Female Formula is actually working on reducing your toxic load. I go into teaching people how to reduce toxic ingredients in their household cleaners and personal skincare items and teach them about EWG.org and all that good stuff.
Naomi Nakamura: Honestly, if your goal is to lose weight or become healthier, that cannot be underestimated.
Jamie Dant: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. It's definitely a challenging sell, if you will, because most people, as you know, aren't aware of how important of an issue this is, but it's really, really cool and really satisfying when people do start making those changes and start noticing how much more quickly they are feeling better and having more energy and sleeping better because they don't have all these toxins surrounding them in their environment anymore.
Naomi Nakamura: I always say that, like you said, whatever exercise you're doing now or however way you're eating may change in different times or seasons of your life, but when you make a change like switching to a non-toxic cleaning product or a safer personal care product or cooking utensils, all of that, that is a one-time switch that you don't have to worry about or deal with anymore. It is the easiest switch to make, and it's one that's not going to take a whole lot of your time or your energy.
Jamie Dant: Yeah. Initially, it might take time just doing the research and trying to figure out what's best, but you're right. Once you figure it out, as long as that product never goes out of stock, then you're good to go. You can just keep repurchasing the same thing.
Naomi Nakamura: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining. I'm glad we were finally able to make this happen, and I really enjoyed our chat. Just thank you so much for making this happen.
Jamie Dant: Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. This has officially been my first ever podcast, so thank you for asking me to be on. It was awesome. I really enjoyed it.
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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