I’ve bragged a few times in this blog about how good the food is on keto. Every diet involves sacrifices. I had to decide what I was okay living without, what was available to me instead, and what I got in return for those sacrifices. When you can eat a crab and bacon omlet smothered in hollandaise, it’s harder to be sad about not being able to eat pad thai. I mean, pad thai is great, and it’s true that there’s something to miss there. What I do not miss is the 200 extra pounds I was carrying around, and the ruinous lifestyle of being uncomfortable standing or walking, never fitting anywhere built for normal people, and a heart that felt like it was working 3 times harder than it was built for.

You might be interested in what I was eating instead. My pattern of eating, for years now, has been to maintain a consistent menu on weekdays, and give myself a lot of flexibility on the weekends. I like the no-brainer approach to life on days when I’m working; I love not having to actually think about or prepare food 5 days a week. Then weekends feel fun and celebratory. You’ll note a couple of things: I have bougie disposable income for dining out a lot of the time. Also, I’m not preparing food for a whole family, but only for myself. These are unimaginable luxuries for a lot of people. I am fortunate to have been able to throw money at the food problem, and not have to answer to anyone else’s food preferences or force anyone else to take on the same restrictions. 

I also don’t really subscribe to the idea that keto means bringing extra fat into your diet. I don’t shy away from it, but I don’t seek it out. Dan’s idea of keto is putting extra coconut oil and bacon fat into everything, and I really can’t see adding extra calories like that. If that’s what you need for satiety, more power to you, but that’s not how I did it.  

So here is a breakdown of a pretty typical weekday in early keto:

Early morning:	Coffee and Quest bar
Second breakfast:	Scrambled eggs with bacon, sausage, cheese and hot sauce
Lunch:	A Big Salad – with lots of veggies, bacon, hard-boiled egg, cheese, sunflower seeds, and Caesar dressing
Afternoon snack:	A fat bomb*
Dinner:	An ounce of cheese, a handful of almonds and/or pecans, some green olives, all the pickles you can eat.
Dessert:	Sugar-free jello. Because I am and will likely always be a compulsive eater, I would take down like 10 of these a night. Delicious, a textural journey, and guilt-free.

*Fat bombs:

12 oz. roasted pecans or macadamia nuts

¼ cup melted coconut oil

½ cup granular Swerve (or brown sugar Swerve with pecans – yum!)

Grind ‘em up in a food processor, pour into lined mini-muffin tins, throw ‘em in the freezer for 30 minutes, pop ‘em into a bag. Takes 5 minutes of actual prep time, feeds you all week. 

Weekends are more adventurous and flexible. Restaurants presented interesting challenges, but I have always been able to find something, except for maybe at Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants, where there are noodles or rice or sugary sauces in pretty much every dish. A weekend might consist of:

Breakfast:	Scrambled eggs with veggies, bacon and cheese or hollandaise (yeah, I ate a lot of eggs)
Lunch:	Restaurant time! Maybe a thai pumpkin curry without the rice (eat it like a rich soup!), or a burger on lettuce, or a Caesar salad without croutons
Dinner:	A Carbquick pepperoni pizza (I love effing Carbquick), or a big ole steak with veggies, or a plate of chicken wings, or a prosciutto-wrapped chicken breast – the possibilities are endless
Dessert:	Mocha Cheesecake bars, or peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, or Swerve cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, or berry crumble…there are a million great recipes out there. As long as it’s using fake sugar (Swerve is my favorite) and a flour substitute like almond or coconut flour, you’re golden

This was early keto for me, and I was so excited about what I could eat, I was hardly ever sad about what I couldn’t eat – and even took little rumspringas from keto on vacations and special occasions to have those carbs again for a little bit (I did gain weight during such breaks, but it always melted right off when I went back on keto). 

Meditation has evolved my ethics quite a bit, and I gave up meat about a year ago. This levels up the challenge, particularly at restaurants, quite a bit, but I’m still eating great food and happy to be low-carb all the time. You are probably already eating meat, and if you can follow keto, eat meat, and lose a ton of weight, I will be very happy for you. 

I never counted calories, just carbs. Before keto, between Cheezits and Taco Bell and hand pies and wine, I was taking in hundreds and hundreds (if not a thousand) of grams of carbs every day. In early keto, I stuck to about 20 grams of carbs per day (a little more on weekends), whereas now I probably stay at more like 30-50 (especially on weekends). This is probably contributing to my persistent 30 extra pounds, so I encourage you to do better than me. But I’ve stayed low carb for well over 5 years now, and I don’t have any more anxiety about carbs than I would about a food allergy – there are foods that just aren’t available to me now, and it doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m not waiting for the day when I can eat carbs again; I am just happy with the rainbow of food that’s available to me all the time. 

And as I’ve noted, keto isn’t quite the silver bullet it used to be for me. I do find now, in later keto, that I have to watch my calories more, and I don’t eat as many big meals as I used to. The good news is, without the insulin rollercoaster of eating carbs, it’s pretty easy to go a couple of hours on a fat bomb without feeling exhausted or ravenously hungry. 

If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. I’m a real evangelist for keto, so if I can help clear any misconceptions, I’m happy to talk!