The Wellness Show kicks off with guest who built a banting empire

As a qualified nutritionist, Giselle has followed a banting or ketogenic lifestyle for a number of years and has inspired many others to do the same.

The banting or ketogenic lifestyle focuses on low-carb consumption and tracking carb intake. While some banting programs call for a low carb, high fat meal plan, Giselle says their meals have a moderate amount of fat.

“We don’t actually use a lot of fat, we keep it to moderate fat because we want you to use the fat on your body first and rather look at fat as being the additional energy source in case you are very low on energy but not to actually over consume fat because that’s calories,” she said.

“For a lot of women that's why banting didn't work because they thought they could just eat butter the tablespoon and it's not the case. It’s not eating pounds of bacon and blocks of butter, you still have to keep that in moderation.”

Giselle started her business by baking gluten free bread for her brother who started on the banting journey.

In 2019, after a few years of selling her breads in markets, she began selling keto-diet meals online. She has since built a community of “warriors” who share their banting journeys and motivate one another.

“We get so many beautiful and heart-wrenching messages from the public everyday who have, especially after lockdown, completely lost themselves. Especially women that no longer want to leave their house, isolation has become their friend and they need to find their way back. That’s when we started the warrior challenge,” she said.

The main objective in the banting or ketogenic lifestyle is to get to the point of ketosis which is when you use your own body fat as energy.

“With the keto diet your appetite disappears, that's why we do fasting because your fasting helps you to reach ketosis a lot quicker and also reach an incredible process called autophagy which is where your skin cells start to renew, we call it the keto glow.”

“We don’t offer a diet, we offer community support with the meals already made and we also offer the emotional support that they need," she said.

Banting Baker Gigi has full franchises in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal and has stores in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Newcastle in KZN.

* This article was published first by Magic 828. See original article here.