That’s right! After months and months of my dad pestering me to try the ketogenic diet, I was bored, tired and couldn’t afford to gain any more weight from quarantine snacks, so I tried KETO.
Well, What Is It?
Before I begin, I guess I have to explain what the diet actually is. The ketogenic diet is a high fat and protein diet that focuses on limiting your net carbohydrate intake to about 30 grams a day. The purpose of Keto, in short, is to starve your body of carbohydrates so that it begins to burn fat for energy instead of those carbs, overall resulting in ketosis, an intense fat-burning state that causes weight loss. There’s also a lot of other things about your liver and fat etc., but you can probably google that. Today, I’m here to tell you about my experience. Hope you enjoy!
What Can’t You Eat?
What has to be the most annoying thing about Keto is the vast amounts of food you cant eat. And when I say you can’t eat it, I mean not even a little bite. It’s sad that you don’t realize how many carbs are in certain foods until you can’t have as much. Just yesterday I wanted to have one York Peppermint Patty and it was 35 carbs! I MEAN 35 carbs! Can you believe that?!
Some of my favorite foods that you can’t eat on Keto include (and this is in their normal form, Keto has a bunch of alternatives so don’t worry):
- Bread
- Cereal
- Sugar
- Ice Cream
- Pasta
- Rice
- Most Fruits (they’re too sugary)
So, What Can You Eat?
One of the best pros of Keto is that you can essentially (and I mean essentially, don’t go overboard) eat as much meat, chicken, and fish as you want since they have like no carbs. Once you begin Keto however, you’ll soon realize that even though there are different ways to make the food you can’t eat anymore “Keto-friendly”, these alternatives all have the same ingredients: eggs and cheese. This is great for someone who loves eggs, but for me who despises eggs with a passion, it was a hard reality for me to get past.
Keto Food Alternatives
Here are the keto alternatives for your unhealthy carb cravings. I found the majority of these through painstaking research so… you’re welcome!
- Flour — Flour is a big no-no on the ketogenic diet with about 90 carbs per cup, so a good alternative if you want to make some cookies, bread, pizza, etc. is almond or coconut flour. Keto also uses mozzarella in a lot of recipes to make a dough.
- Milk — Heavy Cream is a great low carb alternative when baking and cooking as well as almond or coconut milk.
- Sugar — While sugar is not allowed on the Keto diet, a lot of sugar and sweetener alternatives like monk fruit or stevia can still do the trick. I even discovered a Keto soda called Zevia, and if your interested you should check it out (they sell them at Publix).
- Fat — During Keto, you’re encouraged to have lots and lots of fats like butter, cheese, heavy cream, cream cheese, avocado, etc., and the benefit of that is you’re almost always full and never feel like you’re starving like on other diets.
- Don’t forget if your craving sweets you can still make them, just use the sugar and flour alternatives!!!
Takeaways
So bringing it back to my experience and less of the science mumbo-jumbo…
So far I’ve been doing the Keto diet for about 2 weeks, and to be honest, it’s pretty tough. That kind of happens though when you can’t eat all of your favorite foods anymore sadly. But I have seen a lot of results, and I hope if I continue I can at least be a little healthier. In my opinion, Keto is a diet that everyone should try at least once, especially if there’s some stubborn fat that you can’t seem to lose.
HCXO!