Practical Tips For Beginners
In this post I would like to go over some beginning tips for achieving a delicious low carb lifestyle. It will contain practical tips for starting the Keto Diet. In future posts I will definitely be expanding on these suggestions. With all these foods of course, the more organic and free from additives the better, with little to no processing. It is best to use as much whole (unprocessed) food as possible. This actually tends to be cheaper but can be a huge change unless combined with more time making things from scratch.
Fantastic Fatty Meats
Meats of all kinds are fine. The fattier they are, the longer they will keep you satiated. This is better, at least to begin with, and fine long term for most people. If you like bacon, dark meat poultry, or 80/20 hamburger meat because of its juiciness or flavor, consider this encouragement to indulge. My husband often craves ribs with keto bbq sauce or dry rub. Sometimes he even puts them in a salad. Wild caught seafood also provides important nutrients. Eggs are extremely good for you as well, and I highly recommend you eating them daily.
Veggies Add Vitamins
Combine these meats with vegetables of all kinds (except corn) for a healthy meal. Often this is done well in a decadent salad with all the fixings such as hardboiled eggs, full fat/no sugar dressings, (I’ll link Primal Kitchen’s high quality ones below,) and anything else you like aside from croutons. (We’ve even had hamburger salad, including everything you would put on a hamburger except the bun.) Most fruits, if eaten should be considered an occasional dessert. Berries, however, have relatively little carbohydrates and are generally good.
Other Meal Ideas
Other ideas to explore are shrimp cocktails, (a favorite of my husband), ‘crackslaw’ which generally combines cabbage as a healthy noodle substitute and hamburger meat with either a Mexican or Asian flair, and chicken wings or ribs with a keto bbq sauce. Even spaghettie with zucchinni noodles makes a great meal.
Best Oils and Fats for Keto
Use fats such as butter, avocado oil, lard, ghee, bacon grease, olive oil, beef tallow, duck fat, and coconut oil, while avoiding other oils like margarine, vegetable, soy, and canola. These latter oils tend to cause inflammation and have other issues. MCT oil is especially good uncooked in small amounts because it produces ketones directly. Be careful to not have more than a teaspoon at a time until your body builds the ability to digest it easier. If you like avocados, consider this diet an excuse to eat as many of them as possible. They provide healthy fat and potassium that is often lacking, especially when starting keto.
How to Sweeten Without Sugar
Stay away from all sugars and unhealthy sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose. Maltodextrin, dextrose, and fructose are also not good. Try to substitute with plant extracts and sugar alcohols such as erythritol, monk fruit, stevia, xylitol, or allulose. One brand name often used is Swerve but there are plenty of others, often with a combination of sweetener types. They can be substituted in most any recipe successfully. Many are sweeter than sugar so beware that it won’t always be a 1:1 substitution.
Keto Friendly Drinks & Dairy
My husband really likes Zero Sugar Vitamin Water which is one of the few reasonably priced and easily found drinks sweetened with erythritol instead of sucralose. Drinks with electrolytes can be especially helpful when starting out. There are others out there just be sure to check labels. Zevia is a good brand of soda sweetened with stevia. Tea is another good drink option as long as it is appropriately sweetened. Bulletproof coffee is a favorite of many keto diet fans and there are many recipes to be found online. Basically, it is coffee with heavy cream and/or butter and/or sweetener. Sometimes other healthy things are added that you may enjoy such as cinnamon or coco powder. We use unsweetened nut milks for drinking and cooking in place of milk which has too much sugar. Also, it’s good to remember that water never hurt anyone and it’s cheap!
If you don’t struggle with allergies to dairy, then cheeses and creams with higher fat contents are good. These can be tasty and filling. You will find many recipes using cream cheese and mozzarella. Other cheeses and sour cream are also delicious. But do beware, many people have a sensitivity to dairy and don’t even realize it.
Keto Carb Substitutes
At first, my husband and I didn’t use much in the way of substitutes. Later we began making or finding some we could use and enjoy. I personally think they tasted better at that point because we had gone so long without the real thing. A couple of examples of this include bread and potatoes.
I found a bread recipe that I liked that could be used in a bread machine or oven. I will link it below. It does use gluten which is inflammatory for some people. Then we found some Artesian Multi Grain Keto bread at a Costco we liked and now use it regularly for sandwiches. It also has gluten and other ingredients that don’t make it perfect, but for us it works as a compromise we were willing to make. You can find other recipes for gluten free keto bread online such as for fathead dough, cloud bread, and others.
As a substitute for potatoes, I’ve used jicama successfully, especially in soups and eggy potato salad. I recently tried an almond flour French fry recipe that was pretty good. Many people use cauliflower as a substitute for mashed potatoes and even macaroni and cheese. It’s relatively easy to find frozen or packaged riced cauliflower these days.
Of course I’ve used zucchini noodles for spaghetti. Some like spaghetti squash for this. I make my own sauce because most sauces have sugar. They also make specialty keto pasta. My husband really likes Hearts of Palm by Natural Heaven. I’ll link it below. Another brand I’ve found is Miracle Noodles which are from the root of the konjac plant. They also make rice. You just need to rinse very well before cooking to eliminate any fishy odor some people notice. I never noticed any smell and they were quick and easy to cook. I’ll leave a link below.
There are tortilla recipes out there, but I like easy and I still haven’t found an easy tortilla recipe. Thankfully, there are low carb tortillas available at stores. La Tortilla’s seem to be healthiest. I’ll link some below. We either leave the tortilla out or substitute one of those. My husband has been known to order an enchilada without the tortilla at a taqueria so I know it is possible. Just be brave.
Mug Cakes & Fat Bombs for Dessert
Not a Snack
There are many recipes for keto mug cakes and fat bombs that can be found online. Each of these make great easy desserts which I suggest eating right after a main meal instead of using as a snack.
You want to limit your eating to two or three times a day without snacking in between and in as short a time window as possible. The more fat you have in your dinner, the longer you will last before getting really hungry again. This limiting of the amount of time you are eating during the day, limits the amount of time your insulin production is stimulated and increases the amount of time your body has to process and use the food and carbohydrates you eat. It also adds to the amount of time your body can be in autophagy. This is a process in which your body recycles old, worn out and broken cells, using them to make new useful ones. I will be getting into this more in a future post as well.
Extra Nutrients That May Be Needed
You may need a bit more salt (Himalayan salt is usually best) with this diet for reasons we will discuss in a later post. Just know that it is providing important nutrients and won’t hurt you. Unless you are getting enough vegetables, added potassium and B vitamins (non-fortified nutritional yeast being a great source that can be put on salads or eggs and more), might also be helpful in the transition and beyond. I will link nutritional yeast below. I will link a greens supplement below that I sell and recommend if you aren’t getting the vegetables you need.
Realize that your initial cravings and the bad feelings you may first experience with this diet generally result from sugar withdrawals. Sugar is definitely a drug that many have become addicted to without even realizing it. In looking diligently at labels when buying food, pay attention to it in its many forms along with the carbohydrate count. As an important side note, the net carbohydrate count is what can be used for this. It is actually the total grams of carbs minus the grams of fiber (which carries some carbs out of the body without needing insulin.) The good news is that as you eat less carbohydrates, you will be less hungry and have significantly reduced cravings.
Let’s Help Each Other
Please comment with any recipes or food you know that would work well with this diet. It would be great to help each other as a community reach optimal health and share successes as well as struggles. I hope to soon post videos and special recipes of my own that I would love to share with you.
Resources
Seacret Products and Link
Click here to access my Seacret Store for these Greens and Green Caps
Amazon Links
As an Amazon Associate I earn commission from things purchased through these links at no additional cost to you.
Click here for Hearts of Palm
Click here for Miracle Noodle products
Click here for link to MCT oils
Click here for Keto friendly sweeteners
Click here for Primal Kitchen Salad Dressings with avocado oil, no sugar
Click here for La Tortilla low carb tortillas
Click here for non-fortified Nutritional Yeast options
You Tube Video Links
Keto Focus always does a great job of giving simple and useful keto recipe ideas.
Keto Connect makes a lot of great videos that are fun to listen to and helpful when on a Keto diet. They also do numerous videos with easy recipes, (including for fat bombs,) and product reviews.
Cooking Keto with Kristie demonstrates recipes that always turn out great. This is crackslaw, but I have also made her great stuffing for Thanksgiving.
This is the bread machine bread recipe I have used. There is a link in the description to the original creator’s recipe with the oven version as well.
These are bulletproof coffee recipes by Joe Duff who is good at producing easy recipes. I especially notice his desserts.
Pinche Nancy makes a lot of great Keto Mexican recipes