Emie Before & After

How We managed to fend off Cancer from returning, lose 17 pounds, and transform her into the best shape of her life.
all by food and exercise

Food is medicine 

The photo below was taken approx 14 days after Emies MCT Cancer surgery on July 21st in 2017. She had been kibble fed for 5 yrs on some of the most expensive “premium kibble” money could buy. I’ve learned a lot since those days now knowing that “premium kibble” is an oxymoron.  I had just started her on a standard Raw diet just 2 weeks before her surgery. We had just been cleared by our vet to go on longer walks, so this was the first day back at her favorite forest preserve. Now keep in mind she had always been exercised and ran with me on the bike several times a week. And she was never overfed on kibble, all of her meals on kibble were portioned properly by calories, she always got 918-1,224 daily calories deepening on her activity level. On Days she didn’t run she was fed less. And mind you, if I would have fed her to the Kibble manufacturer’s recommendation she would have been WAY overfed. so it’s always important to feed by calories and calories per pound (cpp). Even some of the best kibble brands are 35%+ carbs, and many are 40-50%!
please checkout the “why kibble is krap” section of this site!

An Excerpt from Dr. Richard Patton’s book Ruined By Excess Perfected by Lack-the paradox of pet nutrition-dogs naturally publishing-2017, pg. 62 goes onto to talk about excess carbohydrates and starches found in kibble, and how insulin is constantly spiked in a dog fed this type of diet.
“following every meal of dry kibble there is a blood glucose spike, leading to an insulin surge, and insulin performing its tireless duty. The thing is, insulin was not intended to be called upon SEVERAL times per day. Insulins function is not just to move blood sugar (glucose) into the cells. It’s second and equally powerful role is to promote the conversion of blood sugar into fat and save it in body fat reserves, while simultaneously stopping break-down and mobilization of storage fat. (this is crucial to understand. please read the last sentence again.)
For this reason , it is not belaboring the obvious to say a fat individual is fat because they can’t lose weight. if the diet is constantly spiking insulin , weight loss will be a struggle even with restricted intake”
Now, even some raw fed dogs have issues with weight. And these are the cases where we have to take a step back and carefully investigate exactly WHAT is being fed? Some raw “recipes” may contain carbs, and they may contain more carbs than some people may think. Or maybe a dog is on an all meat 80/10/10 diet for example and we know there aren’t any hidden carbs, but if we audit a typical 80/10/10 diet we will quickly see that most, if not all of these types of diets come in severely nutrient deficient. And if the diet isn’t right nutritionally then how can we expect the body to function properly. Or maybe the dog is simply being overfed on a home prepared raw diet, trying to feed a dog based on 2 or 3% of their body weight is a very inaccurate way to feed a dog.

2020 VET Report revealing 51% of the 1.9 million adult dogs seen at Banfield’s more than 1,000 hospitals nationwide in 2018 were overweight. Regardless of their age, less than 10% of those pets successfully lose weight following diagnosis, and of those that do, roughly 40% resume their overweight status within 12 months.

My dog also had yeasty ear issues the entire first 5 years of her life no matter what type of kibble we tried we could never get her ears issues to stop. The vet we saw back then never offered any solution to the problem other than using ear drops and routinely cleaning her ears, we found ourselves constantly going to the vet battling this issue. 1month after starting Raw her ear issues cleared up 100%.  Fast forward 4 years later and not one single flare up with any sort of ear issues!

Why aren’t our vets taught about food? 5 years of ear issues were completely solved simply by feeding her REAL FOOD . Go figure.

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AFter

Now the photo above was 6 weeks after starting a Raw ketogenic diet. She dropped a lot of weight fast from the diet being very calorie restricted, virtually ZERO carbs, and absolutely ZERO additional treats. 2 meals a day and nothing more. Combined with a rigorous running schedule, swimming, and your basic walks around the block. And keep in mind that the calories she is being fed on keto now are almost the same as what she was fed on Kibble. So this just goes to show you how all of those carbohydrates affect the body! it turns to sugar and then stored as fat in their bodies.

It’s important to note that the popular “basic” keto diet as I like to call it, consisting of nothing more than hamburger,coconut oil and a single veggie IS NOT a complete diet that is sufficient for a canine. The body can only do as well as the food it is fed. We wouldn’t expect a high end exotic sports car to run at it’s peak performance on cheap fuel, nor should we expect our dogs to thrive if the diet isn’t to the best of it’s potential.

To learn more about what the “basic” ketogenic diets are lacking, click HERE

Below are more recent pictures of her taken the summer of 2019 a little over 2 years since starting keto. She’s maintained rock solid weight the entire time and has been given a new lease on life so to speak all through the power of fresh, Raw food.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates
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When prior to this transformation she was still always an active dog, she got more exercise than any other dog that I knew out of my circle of friends. She would go with me running but was only able to do a few miles before being exhausted. She swam regularly, I am an outdoor person so She was always out and about with me doing something. Back then I simply never even noticed that she was overweight as that is just the way I was used to seeing her and I didn’t know a thing about canine nutrition back then let alone what a body condition score was to asses if a dog even was overweight. And the vet we saw back then never advised she even had any issue with weight.

But after we switched from kibble to fresh Raw ketogenic meals, and she lost 17 lbs and everything changed. We increased her exercise routines and she kept excelling. Me being an avid cyclist/mountain bike rider, I’ve always had a competitive side. so we started setting goals each month with how many miles she was able to run. at first it was amazing to see her run 6 miles, then 8, then 10, fast forward to the present and shes up to doing 20 mile runs with me. October 2019 she passed 300 miles in a single month. And mind you, these are all miles running with me on a bike, so her average speeds are much faster than your standard dog going running with a person jogging, we’ll hit 25 mph on sprints lasting 1/2 – 1 mile during our sessions out running.  She has transformed into a canine athlete. If we were able to do this, anyone can do this with dedication and some knowledge of a program to follow!

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Bottom pic kibble fed Top pic Raw Keto Fed

Update as of Feb 2021!

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Here she is 4 years later. Not a single day strayed from a Raw Ketogenic Diet and her weight has remained rock solid this entire time. It hasn’t been easy feeding this way, but seeing how healthy she has remained has made it all worth it. She’s healthier and in better shape at over 8 yrs old than she was at 4 yrs old. And we’re happy to report no return of her MCT cancer. And despite all the nonsense you may hear floating around that fat will cause pancreatitis, we have not had any issues with that. In fact, in over 4 years with over 5,000 members in the Ketogenic Dog Group on Facebook, we have not had 1 single reported case from Raw High Fat Ketogenic Diets. Fat is not the enemy.

I shudder to think how her health would be today if I had not changed the way we were feeding back then.

UPDATE 2022

We are approaching 5 years that Emie has been on a very strict, nutritionally balanced Raw Ketogenic diet. In those 5 years her weight has remained ROCK SOLID as you can see in the photo below.

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Custom Ketogenic Diet Consultations available here

goodpic of my meal