When starting the process of adjustment and adherence to a keto dash diet, you gotta take it slow. The first two weeks, especially if you’re like us and were full on carb addicts. We limited the sugars, and cut down the carbs you would normally have by half the first few days. So for example, if you have two slices of toast in the morning drop to one slice and add some sliced avocado, just to get yourself worked in on knowing what to expect.
In order to understand what your body needs you need to calculate how much protein, carbs and fats you need to maintain to reach your goal. We all know 20 carbs a day is the goal. However, to properly get the ratios of fats and proteins, we need to do a little math. I know, but the cool thing is there are sites online that can do this for you! This one I found is pretty simple to use https://www.ruled.me/keto-calculator/. It tells how much protein, carbs, fats (we call these “macros” in the keto world) and calories of daily nutritional needs. For best results, set your activity level to sedintary. We’ll discuss more on that in a later post. Now that we have our macros we can move on to toys!
There are a few things that helped us maintain and stay on track. First, a good scale. One that measures in grams is most helpful. An app that helped us keep track of our macros was Cronometer. Myfitnesspal works too, really anything that lets you make a diary and track nutritional facts. Before we found that I was doing it old school in notebooks and calculators. Putting to use all the nutrition classes I took in college. Gotta love technology! Now let’s walk down those carbs.
By Day 3 or 4 of the first week, start omitting one carb and replace it with a keto dash food. Keep it low sodium with high quality fats. High quality fats are the Omega 3’s and 6’s, those long chain, fatty acids. Monounsaturated fats are what you want most. Now, where to find them?
Look to the glorious Avocado! You can find avocado oil just about anywhere now and is awesome for cooking or just whatever you want to put it in. It can be expensive though. If you’re usually on a budget like we all are these days, go with olive oil, or ghee. You can also just eat the avocado, because you can always use the fiber.
Chia seeds. I came across these a while back when I worked as a pastry chef, at the time I didn’t pay much mind to them, but I should have. Now that I have been in full nutritionist mode, I realize how important they can be in a keto dash lifestyle. These tiny things pack a nutrient punch! Just one ounce gives you 9g of fat and 10g of fiber and nearly 5g of protein. All with just 2 net carbs. That not bad considering it’s a very useful thickener and make pretty tasty strawberry coconut pudding. Don’t worry I’ll share a recipe.
Flax seeds. Now these you can sprinkle in your salad,or use to top your breakfast. They even make flour out of it. I’ve used this to make foods just to increase the fiber and omegas. Coming in about 1g of net carb per tablespoon of ground seed, and 3g of fat.
