Questions that dominate ketogenic forums for beginners: Do you have a sample keto menu? What do meals look like? What do you eat? Newbies are rifling through contradictory info, dire warnings, food police who holler that keto is not 21 carbs/day, it’s only 20 (grrr!), fear, desperation, doctors who are unfamiliar with it, family members who’ve heard erroneous horror stories, and through it all, they are possibly experiencing the whole reason they ended up looking into the ketogenic way of eating in the first place … HOPE. Hope after years of failed attempts to keep weight off after successfully losing it. Read here why long-term calorie restriction does not work.
The first picture is chicken fajitas with full-fat sour cream and low sugar salsa. What makes it qualify as a keto meal? No gluten and therefore no tortilla. Low Sugar. The proper fats. Nothing highly processed, meaning not loaded with preservatives or concocted in a factory.
The second picture is a box of fat bombs and electrolyte replacements, because you must regularly replace them or you will get the dreaded Keto Flu, a nauseating, dizzying, headachy, fatigued state as your body goes through the switch of changing its energy source. When you eat lots of carbs, your energy source comes from those carbs in the form of glycogen. Eat more carbs than your body can burn, and even if those carbs come from healthy sources, the excess is stored as body fat. When you eat keto, your ingest very few carbs (but note all the veggies in the picture above). Your body is designed to find an alternate source of energy, and that is stored fat! Yay…that is why you hear incredible weight loss stories.
The third picture is ground beef, veggies, and marinara. What makes it a good addition to any sample keto menu? The beef is grass-fed which means cows are eating the proper food, not corn, and the result is meat that has the proper ratio of omega 3s and 6s. If your budget is tight, then buy the leanest cuts of meat you can afford, and add healthy fats back in when you cook it. Preservatives and hormones are stored in an animal’s fat, so you can improve your health by avoiding those. You will hear the term Clean Keto, which means you consider more than the macro ratios of fats to proteins to carbs; you consider the source and quality of those macronutrients as well. This meal also has very low sugar, gluten, and was coked with healthy fats that are not inflammatory.
For more beginner info on how to get going with Keto, please poke around the blog. I keep things simple. You can learn as you go! You may notice links to products I like… If you click and buy, I earn a small commission, but you do not pay one penny extra. Thank You!
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