#70 Emanuela Palmares – Ended PCOS with Keto

Meet Emanuela:

Twenty pounds over weight and dealing with health issues, one of them being severe Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, Emanuela embarked on a journey to eat her way to better health. That is when she fell in love with the ketogenic diet.  With it, she learned to appreciate flavors, be free from her sugar cravings, re-frame the purpose of food in her life, and simplify the process of making fresh delicious meals for her family!

When Emanuela is not performing her daily duties as the editor of Tribuna, a multilingual Newspaper in her hometown – Danbury, CT, managing her family foundation (TNADF), or as an elected official in the local Board of Education, she is in her kitchen testing keto recipes she finds on the web and everywhere, or developing her own to share with her family and the world. 

She is also working on attaining a health coach certification and will be able to work together one-on-one in the future to help others reach their wellness goals. 

But her favorite position of all is being a mom to her son Caio, who has autism spectrum disorder and lights up their world, and a partner in life to her husband JP. 

Her and her husband have lost a combined 50lbs and a lot gained more energy and passion for life.

Show Notes:

ABOUT EMANUELA

• I am the woman behind ketomanu on Instagram
• For the past year, I have been posting what I eat as I begin my journey in using Keto
• Not as a diet, but as a lifestyle
• It’s been amazing
• I got my family to join me
• I have a 6-year-old son who has autism, I have a husband who is amazing and has also gotten great results from us changing our outlook on food and nutrition
• I have an amazing mom who is my best friend and business partner
• She’s also derived great health benefits by changing her diet
• It all started with my mom
• My mom had cancer and I was there for her throughout the treatment
• She has battled chronic diseases her whole life
• My mom is adopted, so we have gone as far as trying to get DNA testing to figure out what’s coming down the pipeline because she never met her biological parents
• She has diabetes, heart issues, blood pressure, blood clotting disorders, cancer
• She’s always been going to the doctor and finally last year, one of her doctors told her that she needs to see a nutritionist
• Because she is in a maximum dose of most of the drugs that she’s on
• That’s when we were recommend by a nutritionist to explore the Keto diet because her diabetes is out of control
• The nutritionist told us that there is a really good documentary that came out, and maybe we should watch it and see
• So, they told me about “The Magic Pill” and I watched it
• I am a huge nerd and I love documentaries
• And I loved The Magic Pill and I told my mom that we are going to do it and my mom just gave me the biggest eye roll
• I told my mom that I will cook the food and she will just eat it, and we will just try it for 15 days and if she doesn’t like it, then we are done
• I make food for me, my mom and my husband
• Needless to say, here we are
• She’s still on Keto, we are Keto and it has been amazing for the 3 of us
• It is actually 4 of us if I count my 6-year old son who occasionally ketos
• I am very lucky that I get to share it with thousands of people on my account now
  
  
• I do make Keto cookies
• Sugar addiction was my biggest problem
• Until, I started my Keto detox and I was the worst for 7 days
• I was not nice when I was coming off sugar
• Afterwards, the food tastes better
• That’s what inspired me to find different dishes
• What I ended up doing was, let me just work on the presentation, took a picture on it, sent it to my husband and my husband told me to post it because it looks really good
• That’s how I really started posting food on Instagram
• I have to eat with my eyes
• I am a very visual person and I started planning the food differently
• I love cooking
• Cooking certain recipes in Keto is very empowering for people even if they are not culinary inclined because I work for a newspaper
• My mother started here in our town a trilingual newspaper in English, Portuguese and Spanish, 20 years ago
• I am the editor. So, I speak English, Portuguese and Spanish
• I’ve always felt that there are so many different things attached to our health
• Really looking at the being holistically and understanding that your relationships, career, spiritually, it’s all interconnected and making you into a healthy being
• I needed to make a big shift in my life, invest and becoming a holistic health coach and get certified
• It’s a process, but I am excited
• I feel like I need a shift, and this just feels right
• It’s such a big lesson about what it truly means to be open
• The program doesn’t really subscribe to specific diet or method
• But at the same time, there’s a way to do that with love, balance and empowerment because it is what’s right for me
• My body likes this way that I am nurturing it right now
• My body feels love
• I have a complete understanding when it comes to what my body needs
• I was 205 lbs when I gave birth to my son, and then hit held it to about 180 lbs up until he was 4 years old
• I have a weird relationship with fat, because I use that word to describe myself, to associate negative body image
• The very last thing in the world that I would say that would be good for me is fat
  
• Self-love came in a process that I have to eat what I hated in order to let go of it
• I have to eat healthy, fatty things to let go of the fat that I felt was dragging me down
• I have to eat what I hated in myself to love myself
• I have to accept and own it
• For us women, it is extremely difficult to deal with body image issues today
• If you think that female body image issues are an issue here in the states, in Brazil it’s the second highest rate of plastic surgery for women in the world
• Everything is about looks and how beautiful you are and how big your assets are
• It is such a culture of the female body being perfect
• So, there’s a lot of pressure, even in the Brazilian immigrant community
• For me, it was holding me down and I was really sick
• After I had my son, my heart enlarged, I had postpartum preeclampsia, blood pressure problem
• I labored for 36 hours, it was a very difficult delivery and pregnancy
• And my son was very sick for the first 2 and half years of his life and he was diagnosed with autism at 2 and a half years old
• I focused on him getting well and I did not put my oxygen mask on, I only put on his
• And it was only a certain point when I stopped breathing and I started to feel a lack of energy, felt really depressed and I was not feeling really good about myself
• It’s difficult seeing your body change
• I celebrate every part of life because I became a much stronger person by going through those challenges
• You make time for what you value
• I put a lot of time into my mornings to make sure I have a good breakfast
• And I always make sure to make dinner because it is also a time for my husband and I to come together
• You have to continuously work with all the things you value the most
• With Keto, I lost 20 pounds
• It was a bunch of yo-yo dieting until I found Keto
• Everything I worked for in 4 years, I shed in 3 months with Keto
• This is really the right thing for my body
• I started off last year in size 12, and now I am 4 or 6

BENEFITS

• I think the clarity of mind
• My productivity at work has changed
• I like managing things, but sometimes I would get lost, irritated and overwhelmed
• With Keto, I feel like my brain is sharper
• The other added benefit is that, it really helped me with my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
• I have battled multiple ovarian cysts and I had surgery last year to remove a large cyst from my ovaries
• My son is on the spectrum
• It’s not strict Keto for him, but we have introduced more fruits and vegetables for him that are within the Keto diet
• I have completely reduced him off of processed sugar and for the whole family
• My husband was pre-diabetic and had different possible health issues going on and the doctors told him to keep doing what he is doing
• Ultimately, my mom. She went from 13 units of insulin a day to 10
• Her cholesterol has never been better
• We are looking now to reduce other medicines for her
• My plan for 2019 for her is to knock off some blood pressure medicines 
• We are seeing a lot of big change
• I think the biggest benefit is the reeducation of our relationship with food
• When you look at the science and when you realize the functions of some organs and what they are made to do
• And also, when you take a deep honest look in the sugar industry and how policy affect our diets and how the government says this is what we should eat
• When you look a little bit behind the curtain and you understand that, if you don’t go out there and try to find information for yourself and try to find what works for you, you are going to do yo-yo diet forever
• You need to go out there and empower your own body and find what works for you
• My relationship with food before was a punishment or a reward
• I was not making the connection of accepting the fact that my body is a very complex machine
• It made me wake up and realized that I have been putting so much emotional weight on my nutrition

TYPICAL DAY OF YOUR DIET

• For instance, today at breakfast, I made 90 second Keto biscuits
• I fried some eggs, bacon and I put a nice slice of cheese on top of the egg
• I made bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches
• For lunch, I had some cottage cheese, unsweetened coconut flakes and flax seeds
• I had some macadamia nuts
• For dinner, it’s chicken breast with cream cheese and Korean pickled peppers
• If I bake the chicken, I use mayonnaise instead of egg wash
• I slice the chicken, I make stuff it with my favorite stuffing, tie it up, and pan sear it
• After that, I brush some mayonnaise on it and throw in some parmesan cheese
• Bake it for 35 minutes
• I made a side of Kale with mushrooms and garlic
• I make sure I eat 3 meals a day
• I avoid eating out
• I don’t do intermittent fasting and I am not macro obsessed
• I keep my carbs low throughout the day

WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU

• Blog: ketomanu.com
• Instagram: ketomanu

CHECK OUT EMANUELA’S OWN AND FAVORITE RECIPES HERE

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