Maria Emmerich is a wellness expert with over 23 years of experience helping people lose weight and improve their health. Her approach focuses on well-formulated ketogenic and carnivore diets, emphasizing nutrient-dense foods and personalized strategies. She helps people start a healthier lifestyle. Weight loss is often a side effect of helping treat any number of problems including diabetes, cholesterol issues, alopecia, hashimoto’s, autoimmune diseases and much more. This article compiles Maria Emmerich's key weight loss tips, drawing from her books, blog, and coaching experience, to provide a comprehensive guide for those seeking to achieve their health goals.
Understanding the Keto-Adapted Lifestyle
A Well-Formulated Ketogenic Diet is very specific. Emmerich stresses the importance of a well-formulated ketogenic diet, distinct from common misconceptions. Many people who claim to be "eating keto" are consuming foods that hinder their progress. A properly designed ketogenic diet should not cause the negative side effects often associated with initial low-carb attempts, such as fatigue, depression, or heavy legs.
The Initial Water Weight Loss and Electrolyte Balance
When you first start a low carb or ketogenic diet you lose a lot of water weight. Initially, a low-carb or ketogenic diet leads to rapid water weight loss due to improved insulin sensitivity. As insulin levels fall, the kidneys release fluid, leading to increased urination. This process, while beneficial for fat oxidation, can also deplete essential sodium and electrolytes, causing the "low carb flu" and hair loss.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Maria Emmerich identifies several common mistakes that can hinder weight loss on a ketogenic or carnivore diet.
1. Overconsumption of Nuts, Nut Flours, Seeds, and Psyllium
Using nuts, nut flours, seeds, psyllium for weight loss is not always beneficial. While these can be part of a healthy keto diet, excessive use can stall weight loss. Ketosis isn’t just for weight loss. I have many clients trying to gain weight, put on muscle or just eat healthy in maintenance. That is why I have recipes with nut flours. Also do not subtract fiber from vegetable carbohydrates. This is a common mistake of many low carb dieters. My meal plans only contain the highest nutrient veggies without the high total carbohydrate counts. Emmerich's meal plans prioritize nutrient-dense, low-carbohydrate vegetables.
Read also: Guide to Healthy Eateries in Santa Maria
2. Dairy Consumption
Cut out all dairy, even “low-carb,” high-fat dairy. Skip the butter, cream, whey protein, cheese, yogurt, cream cheese and whey protein powder. I find that helps so many clients get to their goal weight. Dairy, even low-carb varieties, can impede weight loss for some individuals. When you have a damaged and inflamed gut, there is a phenomenon called “atrophy of the villi.” that occurs You digest dairy at the end of the villi. So once you heal the intestinal wall with this anti-inflammatory, keto-adapted diet, you can incorporate those foods again (in smaller doses at first). I usually have people take L-glutamine and other things to heal the intestinal wall faster. This means no whey protein either. She recommends eliminating all dairy, including butter, cream, cheese, yogurt, and whey protein, to facilitate weight loss. Emmerich suggests that dairy can be reintroduced in smaller doses after the intestinal wall has healed through an anti-inflammatory, keto-adapted diet, often supplemented with L-glutamine.
3. Drinking Calories
Drinking calories! First off, butter is dairy. Second, if you do bulletproof coffee in order to “fast” until noon, you are no longer fasting. Third, drinking your calories do not signal the proper hormones such as leptin and ghrelin that give you the sense of satisfaction and signal that you are full. Chewing is a powerful tool. Use it. Consuming liquid calories, such as in bulletproof coffee, can hinder weight loss by not signaling proper satiety hormones like leptin and ghrelin. Chewing food is a powerful tool for signaling fullness.
4. Frequent Eating
When I read about how you need to eat every two to three hours in order to fuel your metabolism and muscles, I find it so ridiculous. Sure, if you are a sugar burner, you will need to eat that often, not only because you are “hangry,” but because eating a high-carbohydrate diet burns up amino acids so you need insulin to increase muscle. But if you eat a well-formulated keto-adapted diet, it spares protein from being oxidized and therefore preserves muscle. The saying that you need to eat breakfast within an hour of waking is not helping your waistline. The idea of eating every two to three hours to fuel metabolism is unnecessary on a well-formulated keto-adapted diet. A keto-adapted diet spares protein from being oxidized, preserving muscle mass. The reason behind intermittent fasting is based on the foundation that your body tends to burn glycogen from your liver, but there is only enough glycogen for six to eight hours. Once your glycogen stores are used up, what is left? Fat! Yahoo! That is what most people are trying to get rid of, right? Intermittent fasting can be beneficial, as it allows the body to deplete glycogen stores and burn fat for fuel.
5. Alcohol Consumption
When people go on a diet, they often choose the “light” version of their favorite alcoholic beverages in order to save a few calories. However, that is only a small piece of the puzzle. Fat metabolism is reduced by as much as 73% after only two alcoholic beverages. Muscle Tip: Drinking alcohol is the most efficient way to slash your testosterone levels; women…we don’t want this to happen either. Alcohol consumption significantly reduces fat metabolism and lowers testosterone levels, hindering muscle building. If you are working out to build strong fat-burning muscles yet consuming alcohol, this actually breaks down muscle further and you end up with a slower metabolism. Alcohol in the body is converted into a substance called acetate. When your blood acetate levels increase, your body uses acetate instead of fat. To make matters worse, the more you drink the more you tend to eat; and unfortunately, drinking will make your liver work to convert the alcohol into acetate, which means that the foods you consume at this time will be converted into extra fat on your body. Alcohol is converted into acetate, which the body uses for fuel instead of fat. Alcohol also affects every organ of the body; it’s most dramatic impact is upon the liver. The liver cells normally prefer fatty acids as fuel, and package excess fatty acids as triglycerides, which they then route to other tissues of the body. However, when alcohol is present, the liver cells are forced to first metabolize the alcohol, letting the fatty acids accumulate in huge amounts. Alcohol stimulates appetite, decreases testosterone, increases estrogen, and dehydrates the body, further impeding fat metabolism.
Additional Tips for Weight Loss Success
Prioritize Sleep
Sleep is extremely underrated when it comes to the weight loss puzzle! Adequate sleep is crucial for weight loss. If you find yourself not being able to fall asleep, I suggest taking a cortisol test in the morning and at night to determine if cortisol isn’t falling like it should throughout the day. I also suggest getting a ferritin test to determine if iron isn’t getting into the cells properly. Low iron causes you to be extremely lethargic throughout the day, even though you might feel so anxious you can’t sleep. Emmerich recommends addressing sleep issues by testing cortisol and ferritin levels.
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Consume Adequate Protein
People fear something called gluconeogenesis where protein is turned into glucose. This results in eating too little protein and loss of lean mass over time. Not what you want. But gluconeogenesis is primarily a demand driven process. That means it produces glucose when glucose levels get too low. Make sure to get at least 0.8 times your lean mass in protein grams each day. For a 150 pound woman with 30% body fat that means they have 105 pounds lean mass. So the protein goal is (0.8*105) 84 grams of protein a day. Adequate protein intake is essential to prevent muscle loss. Emmerich recommends consuming at least 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean mass daily.
Optimize Liver Health
Get your liver as healthy as possible! Your liver is a “worker bee” that can even regenerate its own damaged cells! But our liver is not invincible. When it is abused and lacks essential nutrients, or when it is overwhelmed by toxins, it no longer performs as it should. Fat may build up in the liver and just under the skin, hormone imbalances can develop, and toxins increase and get into the bloodstream. A healthy liver is vital for metabolizing fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. The liver metabolizes not only fats, but also proteins and carbohydrates for fuel. It breaks down amino acids from proteins into various pieces to help build muscle, which directly impacts your calorie burn. Emmerich highlights the liver's role in converting T4 to T3, which is essential for feeling good.
Minimize Toxin Exposure
Everything you put on your skin gets absorbed into the bloodstream and is metabolized by the liver. I suggest re-thinking everything you put on your skin! Minimize exposure to toxins from skincare products, as they are absorbed into the bloodstream and metabolized by the liver.
Manage Stress
Decrease stress. If you hate your job, it is time to find a new one that will embrace this new lifestyle, too. I had one client quit his job to become a fitness instructor. Exercise is a stressor too. Do not plan on running a marathon in the middle of a divorce or if a death occurred in the family. You only have so much stress hormone produced each day. During a stressful time in your life, yoga is a better fit. The majority of my before/after photo testimonies from clients are doing this with diet alone! Manage stress levels through lifestyle changes, such as finding a less stressful job or incorporating stress-reducing activities like yoga. Decrease stressful eating situations. This is also why I hate it when clients have business lunch meetings. Evaluate relationships that are causing too much stress. Are some people in your life toxic and trying to demolish your health goals?
The Importance of Dietary Fat
There are many keto and carnivore promoters (and some doctors) that promote adding tons of fat and eating the fattiest cuts of meat when weight loss is the goal. I follow the science and biology of how our bodies work for the best results in weight loss and healing. The fat we eat can really only go two places in the digestive tract. You can either absorb it into the bloodstream, or pass it straight through you into the stool. Some keto and carnivore advocates will say that it goes right through you. This just doesn’t make any sense from a biology or evolutionary perspective. Calories were precious back in our hunter gatherer days. If our body just dumped fat when you were eating a lot of it in the summer from all the animals you hunted, you would never make it through the lean winter months without stored fat. And if you flushed fat through your colon in larger amounts (over 10g a day) you would be living on the toilet. Studies also don’t support this idea. In THIS study there was no change in fecal output of fat when the dietary fat was 62 grams a day or 152 grams a day. Almost all the fat in your diet ends up in your bloodstream. From there almost all of it is either used as fuel, or stored in our fat cells. Unless you are in the middle of running a marathon, the vast majority of it will be stored in your fat cells. That is just how the body works! Almost all fat that comes in through the diet ends up in the bloodstream as chylomicrons (see above chart Lipid Exchange). At this stage they have two places they can go, either be used as fuel in the muscle and other tissues or be stored in our adipocytes (fat cells). Studies have shown that most of the fat first goes to our fat storage before later coming out of fat storage and used as fuel (as free fatty acids bound to albumin and burned directly in muscle and tissues). The mobilization of fat from your fat stores to be used as fuel is called lipolysis (more on that HERE). So what puts fat into storage? There are a couple mechanisms. The main and primary mechanism is insulin. Yes, fat does raise insulin levels, not as much as protein or carbs, but it does raise insulin a bit. Insulin does two things. It helps store fuels (fat and glucose) into the tissues. Either muscle (glycogen) or adipocytes (fat). It also acts as a net to hold back fat or glucose from being released from the fat cells or muscle. I would call this role of insulin, the holding back the flood gates for fuel in the blood stream from your storage (fat cells), the primary role and most important role of insulin. Many will say it is to store fuels, but holding back fuels is even more important and requires more insulin throughout the day than any transient spike from eating. This is what would kill type 1 diabetics before we had exogenous insulin. If weight loss is your goal, storing a bunch of fat into your fat cells is not what you want to do. You want a negative fat flux (more fat coming out of adipocytes than going back in, we explain fat flux in detail in our book “Keto.” HERE). In addition to these issues, you are not getting enough protein so you are losing precious lean mass over time. Not what we want as we age or for our BMR levels. Almost all the fat you eat ends up in your fat cells. That is how your body works. So if losing body fat is the goal, the more fat you add to the diet the less is burned off the body. A common misconception in the keto and carnivore communities is the emphasis on high fat intake. Maria Emmerich stresses that excess dietary fat can hinder weight loss. The fat we eat can really only go two places in the digestive tract. You can either absorb it into the bloodstream, or pass it straight through you into the stool. Maria follows the science and biology of how our bodies work for the best results in weight loss and healing. In THIS study there was no change in fecal output of fat when the dietary fat was 62 grams a day or 152 grams a day. Almost all the fat in your diet ends up in your bloodstream. From there almost all of it is either used as fuel, or stored in our fat cells. Unless you are in the middle of running a marathon, the vast majority of it will be stored in your fat cells. Unless you are in the middle of running a marathon, the vast majority of it will be stored in your fat cells. Maria emphasizes that most dietary fat ends up being stored in fat cells, and insulin, even when stimulated by fat, promotes fat storage.
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Personal Fat Threshold
Most importantly, if you are close to your personal fat threshold, adding a lot of fat will make you metabolically even more damaged. Just this week I had a client come to me that was following that bad advice but he was a lean type 2 diabetic and this close to his personal fat threshold. So the all the fat he was adding in the diet had no place to go. His fasting glucose kept rising up to 200, triglycerides went way up too. All while eating carnivore (no carbs). Maria follows biology and science to get the best results and what is the healthiest long term too. Many advocates will also state that “you need high fat for the nutrients to heal.” Fat is almost entirely just energy, and has very little micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). As the above chart shows, if healing is what you what, you what more protein, not fat. The fat (butter, tallow, etc.) has a little vitamin A and that is about it. It has only trace amounts of any other micronutrients. There is no magic that suddenly appears at 80% dietary fat or some elevated blood ketone level. If you are being told this, you need to unfollow that person as there is zero evidence or science supporting those claims. Again, all of the testimonies HERE (and tens of thousands of others I have received) were done without measuring ketones and without 80% dietary fat. Maria emphasizes that fat is primarily energy and contains few micronutrients.
Leaner Meats and Nutrient Density
So if weight loss is your goal, dial the dietary fat down a bit. If healing is the goal, increase the nutrient dense foods (animal protein being the most nutrient dense). To lower body fat and reverse insulin resistance quickly, focus on shrinking fat cells and maintaining or growing lean mass. To do this with the diet, the diet just needs to reflect what you want the body to look like. Eat leaner meats and less dietary fat and your body will become leaner with more muscle and less body fat. It really is that simple. More protein in the diet drives satiety and ensures you maintain or build muscle. Emmerich suggests eating leaner meats and reducing dietary fat to promote fat loss and muscle growth.
Quality of Meat
One more note about fat. I have always told my clients to buy the best quality meats you can afford. Organic, grass fed, etc. is always best. But it can be very expensive and out of reach for many people. So I tell them to buy the best quality they can afford, even it if is regular store bought meat. But the thing is, the issue with non-grass fed, non-organic meats is primarily due to what is stored in the fats. Toxins are stored in your fat cells (see THIS article for more on Environmental Toxins). So an animal that isn’t organic, exposed to pesticides, antibiotics, etc., will store those toxins in its fat cells. Also, the beneficial omega-3’s and less omega-6 that you get from grass fed is also in the fat, not the protein part of animal proteins. The protein part in non-organic cows is largely the same as the organic options. Similar nutrients and amino acids. The fat part is where the issues lie. So if you are not able to buy the grass fed options and are eating high fat meats, you are getting even more toxins than if you ate the leaner cuts. Not good for healing either. Emmerich recommends buying the best quality meats you can afford, prioritizing grass-fed and organic options to minimize toxin exposure.
Maria Emmerich's Resources and Services
Want to do keto the RIGHT way? Our new Keto Courses are perfect for losing weight and healing fast. Being on a diet can make anyone miserable. But this book changes everything. Secret Weight Loss Recipes has the best ideas for enjoying your favorite foods from pizza to chocolate éclairs without the extra guilt. Maria's diet and recipe secrets have been featured on multiple TV shows, radio programs, and magazine articles. Maria Emmerich offers a range of resources and services to support individuals on their weight loss journey.
Books and Recipes
Maria Emmerich is a wellness expert that has lost a large amount of weight herself by adapting her favorite foods to healthier options. Find out how to lower calories and carbohydrates and still indulge in decadent foods like macaroni and cheese. You will learn the newest cutting-edge information and a wealth of secrets that will shift your weight loss out of idle and into high gear. Discover why a breakfast of cereal and skim milk is stalling your weight loss goals. Deprivation diets are not the key to weight loss; we need to balance our biochemistry with specific food to optimize our metabolism. Maria's Secret Weight Loss Recipes provides ideas for enjoying favorite foods while lowering calories and carbohydrates. Her books, including "Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism" and "Keto-Adapted," offer cutting-edge information and recipes for optimizing metabolism and achieving weight loss goals.
Coaching and Certifications
I have helped people lose weight and get healthy for over 23 years. I have a passion for helping others realize how good they can feel! My services offer Private and Group Coaching memberships, coaching certifications, nutrition packages, ebooks, supplements, and more. Complete program with three certifications for one price! Great for growing your own health coaching business. Get private coaching directly from Maria and Craig. Recipes, meal plans and shopping lists to help you find food that works for you. And using our meal planner tool you can customize everything to your tastes and needs. Learn more then just how to cook. Maria Emmerich offers private and group coaching memberships, coaching certifications, nutrition packages, ebooks, and supplements. Her services include personalized meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists.
Weight Loss Challenges
The average person gains 15 pounds over the holidays. So if you are finally ready to lose the weight, I have the ULTIMATE weight loss challenge for you! I will provide the meal plans for you, the recipes for you, weekly meetings to guide you along the way and all the tools to help you succeed like my clients! Join my challenge so you can have success right away and skip the frustration of guessing what to do! The Keto and Carnivore Weight Loss Challenge is the Ultimate challenge because I give you perfected meal plans so you do not have to track macros or stress out about counting. We even included 3 sets of meal plans for 2 different height ranges. Not only is the meal plan packed with tasty meals (you do not have to live off of steak!), you will be encouraged throughout your journey! Keto Meal Plans OR Carnivore Meal Plans (both with PSMF days) with amazing innovative recipes! 3 Categories of Prizes! Maria Emmerich's Keto and Carnivore Weight Loss Challenge provides meal plans, recipes, weekly meetings, and tools for success. The challenge includes keto and carnivore meal plans with innovative recipes.
Success Stories
“I went from 406 pounds to 156 pounds. “NO medications, no more diabetes, no more hypertension, self esteem maxed out , sleeping and happier Keto changed my life. “A “happy” to start your week…a friend posted this memory on FB this morning. “Morbidly obese from the age of 8, I was put on every diet imaginable. “Starting A1C 13.8. Now 5.7. Maria Emmerich has helped numerous individuals achieve significant weight loss and health improvements. Several testimonials highlight the transformative effects of her approach, including weight loss, improved blood sugar levels, and enhanced overall well-being.