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Ally Houston

Posted:

07/2025

Recovered from

ADHD, seasonal depression, and anxiety

Started Journey

03/2016

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“You know, life was very difficult before I discovered ketogenic metabolic therapies. I had suicidal ideation. And the gratitude I feel for having the gift of my physical and mental health back is sometimes overwhelming; it's a sort of sense of wonder about how life can be and how life, I think, should be. It'll be 10 years next year, and I'm just going to keep going.”

My THINK + SMART Profile

Key Symptoms Addressed

Choosing where my focus goes, chronic anxiety, and suicidal ideation

My Top Three Strategies

Keto diet (mainly carnivore foods), meditation, and yoga

T H

Therapeutic

I find that what happened to me is that I'd done a lot of talk therapy in the past and sometimes felt like it was super helpful and cathartic, and other times felt like I was, in a way, opening the same old wounds again and just re-exposing them. And when I changed my diet, if something came up for me that was, you know, difficult emotionally, and I went to talk therapy, then it was like a knot was untied.

I

Integration

I still take supplements sometimes. I realized that, periodically, I would sometimes have symptoms that were consistent with being short on B6 and zinc. I think that was because I was having coffee and tea. I periodically take a methylated-B multivitamin, a separate B6 addition in the P5P form, which is more bioavailable, and some zinc, and that just prevents those symptoms from coming on. L-theanine is very commonly used for sleep, and I've used that to improve my sleep.

N

Nutritional

I eat a variety of foods, mainly carnivore, or carnivore adjacent. So, my favorite staples are ground beef and beef tallow, usually with some kind of herb, spice, or flavoring, but I'm increasingly trying to minimize the amount of spices I use for my gut and autoimmune health. And meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, beef, lamb fat, and non-dairy. These are my staples. And sometimes I'll have some vegetables. Sometimes I'll maybe even have some low-carb fruit, but that's pretty rare. I've just found that over time, I've felt better and better being closer and closer to non-dairy carnivore. And I've tried different iterations of this.

K

Ketosis

I've tested blood ketone meters like Keto Mojo, which I think is brilliant. It's really the gold standard and Ace Track, which is not currently available, but is one of the breath meters, which is really good. And there are all sorts of different ways that I've found to measure different biomarkers to help me either with accountability and adherence or actually optimizing for those numbers.

S

Sleep

  • I'm wearing an Oura ring so it measures sleep quality and duration based on how long you were in bed, how long you were asleep, and then breaks it down into deep sleep, which happens mostly at the start of your sleep cycle and you might expect to get one to three hours in a healthy pattern.

  • I always use blue light blocker apps on my phone and computer.

  • If I am using blue light past 7:00 or 8:00 PM, I use the maximum blocker setting so that the screen goes orange.

M

Move

  • Walking, yin yoga, and lifting heavy weights are my favorite forms of exercise. One thing that I've incorporated in the last year is high-intensity interval training. So I started doing that once a week, and I noticed that there were remarkable benefits.

  • You can get huge benefits from high-intensity stuff, even less than doing an hour's high-intensity interval training. But I just really like that because it works a variety of muscles and really pushes you, your cardiovascular system.

A

Avoid

  • With alcohol, sometimes I drink and sometimes I don't, but I just know how bad it is for my body and how bad I feel afterwards. I usually only drink maybe two or four times a year.

  • No sugar, I've actually begun to completely avoid sweeteners.

  • I've gone on and off avoiding caffeine. I've got a no-coffee rule because it's a bit like sugar for me.

R

Rebuild

I've become much stronger and more resilient, and have more emotional capacity to deal with these negative things as they come up from my past to bubble up. I'm also much more aware now of how people and situations make me feel, and I'm more confident in acting on that. And so I avoid people who give me emotional sirens, and I'm much more attuned to that now.

T

Track

  • The Oura ring helps you to just reflect on what you might be doing right and wrong. Looking at night time HRV, sleep duration, and quality of activity. And, you know, the great feature on Oura is readiness. So if it suspects that something is not quite right, you know, you're maybe running a bit of a temperature or you know your sleep wasn't great, then it sort of gives you permission to take the day off or take it at a lower gear and recover.

  • ​​In the beginning, I was using ketones as a proxy measurement, so I used the pee strip,s and for the first sort of two to three weeks, that's a pretty good guide.

  • Tracking fat-to-protein ratio seems to be helpful for me and a lot of other people. I think the most important thing I've ever tracked is specific foods, because I think one of the great things about ketogenic metabolic therapy is that it's quite easy to understand the basics.