About Diet - Part 2

Practical tips to get you started

Thanks to the miracle of AI we can now see what the original followers of the Keto diet looked like. Apparently they were prone to unusual toe arrangements.

If you have yet to read Part 1, you may want to do so now. It will help you understand the reasoning behind adopting the Keto lifestyle. Notice that I said “lifestyle”, not “diet”. You can treat Keto as a diet, stay on it until you reach your weight goal, and then resume eating what added the weight in the first place. You’ll wind up with a closet full of clothes in multiple sizes, and you will miss out on the health benefits. If you have a lot to lose (60 pounds in my case) I would recommend staying on Keto until you reach a healthy weight. (In my case that was when friends started asking if I was ok.) By then you will likely have become fully fat adapted, and overcome insulin resistance. It will feel like the natural way to eat.

Getting Started

Looking at the image above, you might be inclined to wonder if Keto is what gave this man his muscles long before gyms had even been invented. It’s far more likely that he had to be in peak condition to bring down whatever mystery animal it is that he appears to be devouring. (Hat tip to AI - I asked for a cave man eating a turkey leg. I suppose a primitive turkey might have looked like that but it’s not what I expected.)

A common misconception about Keto is that all you eat is meat. While meat is a big component of the diet, vegetables can also play a significant part. The magic of veg is the fiber it contains. For example a cup of broccoli contains 6 grams of carbohydrates. But more than a third of those carbs (2.4 grams) comes from indigestible fiber. As you look at food labels, you’ll often see “Net Carbs” listed. Net carbs are the total carbs, less the fiber carbs. So our cup of broccoli is actually giving us 3.6 grams of carbs. That means you can eat 5 cups of broccoli while keeping your carbohydrate intake below 20 grams. Of course I hated broccoli while growing up, but now I eat my weight in it every year. When you have experienced the benefits of a food you don’t like, it becomes a lot more palatable. More about that in Part 3.

The ideal carbohydrate component of a beginning Keto program is 20 grams, but if you’ve been on a high-carb diet for most of your life, that’s pretty brutal. Start by trying to stay under 50 grams of carbs. If you have a kitchen scale you could weigh each component of your meal, but there are tracker apps available for mobile phones that make it a lot easier. Then you can reduce your carb intake gradually. We started with 20, and it did bring weight down quickly.

There is essentially no limit on protein or fat, but you should try to get as much fat as you can. You are training your body to burn fat, not carbohydrates. Also fat and protein take longer to digest, so you’ll feel full longer. If you’re really pressed for time, and you have a robust budget, you might try some of the meal delivery services that are available. Many of them will tailor meals to be Keto-compatible. That said, I recommend you do your own shopping and cooking so you know for sure what is in the food you are eating.

Before I digress on food choices, I need to stress the importance of tailoring your choices to be compatible with any dietary restrictions you may have. If you have a sensitivity to certain foods, don’t buy them. Likewise, any dietary restrictions your doctor may have made should also be honored. From personal experience I learned that foods that once bothered me no longer did after I’d been eating properly for a while. For example, lactose intolerance was problem, but no longer is. It’s possible that what I perceived as lactose intolerance was actually leaky gut syndrome, but that’s a topic for a different essay.

Meat

Pretty much all meat is good, but it’s not all equal. Beef, for example, is best when it comes from grass-fed animals. The digestive system of a ruminant (cow, buffalo, etc.) is optimized for processing grass. Grass-fed animals graze all day in pastures, absorbing the vitamins and energy from the grass they eat. In contrast, much of commercial beef is started on grass, but then sent to a feed lot for “finishing” (no pun intended). These animals are jammed in together, side by side, filled with antibiotics to prevent disease from the filthy crowded conditions, and fed grain that they cannot digest properly. That’s where the greenhouse gases come from that everyone worries about. A grass fed cow will emit much less of this. The reason they are fed grain is because it causes them to gain weight quickly. Just like it does in humans.

Grass fed beef is more expensive, simply because it costs more to raise. Not only is it healthier for you, it’s also healthier for the farm. Sustainable farming by rotating animals through multiple pastures is the best practice, but it is more land intensive than a factory farm, optimized for maximum profit. Get the best beef you can. Pro tip - when buying ground beef, don’t be afraid of the fat content. The lean package costs more, while the not-so-lean package is cheaper and you get extra fat in your diet. That’s the best choice.

Pork and chicken are also good choices, but again they are often factory-produced, and filled with antibiotics. Look for labels that say no antibiotics have been used. Free-range chickens is best, but may be expensive and hard to find. In this case “free-range” means the birds are not crammed into pens, but instead have room to move freely outside, without bumping into one another. Unfortunately government regulations allow a chicken that has a space the size of a closet to move around in to be classified as free-range. Chickens that can roam around outside, where they can eat bugs and other fauna, are much more nutritious. The more nutritious the chicken’s diet, the better it is for you. Sadly most chicken is grown in factory conditions, fed with antibiotics to keep the overcrowding from spreading disease, and fattening the birds as quickly as possible.

Eggs from free-range birds are also better. Again there is a lot of flexibility in labeling, and regular eggs may be more expensive just because they’ve been tagged as organic. The best eggs, from free-range chickens raised in a healthy environment, will have yolks that are dark yellow, bordering on orange. Pale yellow yolks probably indicate birds that live their entire lives in a cage, functioning as egg factories. But even if you don’t have access to, or a budget for, the best eggs, you can still incorporate eggs into your Keto diet. Keep a few boiled ones on hand for snacking if you feel the need.

Dairy

If you have issues with dairy, just skip this section. It’s not essential to Keto, and you won’t stay on a diet that causes you discomfort. If dairy is okay for you, this is a great way to get some fat in your diet. Just don’t buy the 2% milk. Instead get the whole milk, with all the fat. The same goes for cottage cheese and yogurt. Of course you won’t find full-fat yogurt in those cute little cups with the foil top. Do not buy those! They are full of sugar, and having fruit on the bottom does not make them even slightly healthy. Instead get the big honking tub of full-fat plain yogurt. Choose Greek or whatever style suits you, but be very careful about reading the label to make sure they didn’t sneak in some sugar. If you need to sweeten it up a bit, you can add your own fruit. Choose fruits with “berry” at the end of their name. Just a few berries can perk up the yogurt, but they also come with carbs, so use moderation.

Maybe you’ve been using margarine made with seed oils, in the mistaken belief that butter is bad for you. Chuck the margarine in the bin and get real butter. Here again, grass-fed butter is the best. It has a lot of nutrients like Omega 3 that you will never get in the fake stuff. My preferred butter comes from Ireland, where all the cattle eat grass. New Zealand also feeds their herds on grass, and that butter is also good. As long as you don’t have dairy issues, always use butter liberally.

Veg

This page has a list of vegetables that work well with Keto, and they helpfully include carb counts. You’ll also see the glycemic index, which is a reference to how much each one affects your blood sugar. You want that number to be as low as possible when choosing food. Try to get your veg fresh, or frozen if you must. Avoid canned vegetables, since they may contain added sugar. Stay away from starchy vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, beets, and carrots. Starch is converted in the body to glucose, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid.

Rice, which is a grain, is also something to avoid, at least for now. It’s got starch, especially the white variety. Because of this, sushi is not Keto. You may substitute cauliflower rice, which is available in packages. I don’t care for it much now, or even when I was climbing the walls for something starchy. You may see cauliflower pizza crust. No, I’m sorry, that’s just wrong. We’ll address starch issues in depth in Part 3.

Bread, crackers, and crunchy snacks

Yes, you’re going to crave these pretty early on. There are Keto breads available, but they are very expensive. If you don’t care about that, read the label closely before you buy, as there may be seed oils in them. There are also Keto crackers, some made with flax instead of flour. These are also expensive, and not really that helpful to calm a craving. As for crunchy snacks, well the goal here is to eliminate snacks, but keep reading!

Nuts

Nuts are your friends, as long as you don’t have allergic reactions to cope with. Pecans are naturally high in fat. I like to put a handful in a microwave-safe container, throw on a generous pat of butter, and then melt it in the microwave. It’s my own version of butter pecan, without ice cream. Other nuts that are Keto friendly are almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and cashews. They all have some carbs, so don’t sit back on the couch and eat a whole bag of them. And if you like the flavored ones, like smokehouse almonds, read the ingredients VERY closely. Most of those use seed oils in the process of roasting and coating the nuts. Eliminating seed oils is critical to success with Keto.

Seafood

You should try to get some every week for the Omega 3 benefit. The bad part is that it’s expensive, even more so than everything else is these days. I would avoid farmed shrimp in favor of wild caught, mainly because of how they are raised. Farmed Atlantic salmon is generally considered good. Wild caught Alaskan salmon is getting somewhat scarce in my stores, and it’s pricey. Salmon is really good for you, especially with generous amounts of butter. Even canned salmon can be beneficial.

If your budget is already squeezed, consider sardines. You can find them packed in water or olive oil, and they are healthy. Again read labels to make sure you aren’t getting seed oil. A can of sardines makes a good lunch, though it may get you some dirty looks when the smell spreads through the lunch room.

Condiments

Salad dressing is universally bad, loaded with sugar and seed oils. However Mark Sisson has come to the rescue with his Primal Kitchen products. They were created to be healthy, with real ingredients. Mark has sold the entire line to Heinz, the first of the Big Food companies to actually make REAL FOOD. These were not available when I started my Keto journey, but now you can find them in many stores, as well as the PK website. They are not cheap, but they can be a real help in boosting the flavor of your meals. The website also has a lot of recipes. Just read the carb count on the label and try not to go over your daily number.

Recipes

As the popularity of Keto has spread, you can find an endless supply of recipe books and websites on the Internet. As expected, these range from really good to “What the heck was that?” I won’t comment on any specific recipe or book, but we have found that there is one common element in just about all of them. The amount of time to prepare is always at least twice as long as the recipe states. I suspect this is because the preparation time does not include the time it takes to get out the blender, mixer, food processor, or other implements. In any case, it’s a good idea to allow a lot of extra time when preparing a dish. Read the reviews as well, to avoid disappointment.

This is just a brief overview of how I approached Keto. Hopefully it will help you. Part 3 will follow soon, and will provide tips and hacks. This is the Internet, so yes, even Keto can be hacked. See you there!