Have you found yourself asking does Keto diet work? Well, my husband and I have been following the Keto diet for almost two years now and have been very successful, but you don’t lose the weight overnight. It was definitely a long process, but well worth it. I want to give full disclosure here, I am not a Keto expert, I am just a mom who lost weight following the program I am not trying to sell you anything, but just trying to share my experience. Now are you asking, how can I start? One resource that I would recommend is the Healthy Living Bundle, which includes a number of Keto resources that you can download and use to start the Keto diet.

 

Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle 2019 47 eBooks, 32 ecourses, audios & workshops, 10 printable packs & workbooks, and 2 summits $37 for the full bundle

91 products worth $3,108.45 and you get it for $37. This bundles includes the following Keto Resources.

• The 7 Day Keto Challenge by Toni Coleman-Brown (eCourse) $7.00
  The perfect online video-guided program for beginners who have struggled in the past to lose weight and are interested in learning how to use fat to fight fat. 
• Keto Instant Pot Cookbook by Maria Emmerich (eBook) $10.00
  This book has more than 70 amazing recipes. And every recipe has slow cooker instructions too!!
• Keto Under 30 by Megan Ellam (eBook) $34.23
  From prep time to plate, this book delivers fast and delicious healthy keto meals that the whole family will love.
• Low Carb Casseroles by Lisa MarcAurele $7.00
  This eBook contains over 50 keto friendly casserole recipes for the ultimate in low carb comfort food!

Head over here to order the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle 2019

Our journey with Keto diet….

New Years Eve was like any other party in our house, lots of food and drinks with our closest friends and family, but waking up the next day for both my husband and I was a serious wake up call.  It wasn’t something that we did a lot, but when we partied – we definitely had a good time. Let me first tell you that we are not late night people, we get up extra early, so staying up to celebrate the new year totally threw us off. The first day of the year  we practically just allowed the kids to do whatever they wanted because we felt like total garbage. We knew that something had to change for the new year, but didn’t know which direction to go. I remember joining two facebook communities the week before after a friend posted about the Keto Diet and another friend posted about losing weight from using just a crockpot-those were our two options. We decided to watch the documentary, The Magic Pill, which opened our eyes to the dangers of sugar and jump started us to research more about the Keto Diet. We just jumped into it without much in our house and really no knowledge. This was the Keto Facebook Group I joined with Erin and I am still part of it. Books by Maria Emmerich are great! This book, Keto: The Complete Guide to Success on The Ketogenic Diet, including Simplified Science and No-cook Meal Plans comes highly recommend in all the Keto groups that I am part of.

I also followed my friend Kasey Trenum – she has a kick ass website full of all Keto Goodies! And this is her Keto Facebook Page

Also full disclosure that I incorporated daily exercise in the first two months and yoga in the following three months. I probably would had still lost the weight, but exercise played a big part as well.

Here is what we focused on When starting the Keto Diet.

My Fitness Pal app has the ability to track calories, exercise and measurements such as weight, hips, legs, etc.   – I used the free version and it worked fine for Keto Diet

Let me first tell you that MFP is a great tool, but you only get what you put into it. If you aren’t willing to track in the beginning, this could really prevent you from going into Ketosis  Lets first look at how we should setup MFP for the ideal Ketogenic diet:

• Create an account at www.myfitnesspal.com
• Set your macros properly:
  • • My Home -> Goals -> Change Goals
    • Select Custom and hit continue
    • Set the Macros for keto. AKA Carbs to 5%, Protein to 30% and Fat to 65%
    • I set my calories to 1700 and my husband did more, maybe 2000.

I cannot express enough how important it is to track your macros. The picture above is what mine looked and what I would do throughout the day was check to not only make sure that the balance was there between all the numbers, but if you click on each goal- for example, I will post the protein image below, it will tell you if you have gone over or under in protein for the day. I would check this all the time because if you aren’t hitting those numbers, it’s not going to work. Notice that I only had 108 grams of protein and my goal was 114.7, so I fell short. This helps throughout the day in case you need to add a little more fats or cut back on the fats and add some more protein.

This is what I ate for the day above:

Breakfast- egg and cheese omelet cooked in butter and coffee with heavy cream. Looks like for lunch I just ate 9 slices of cheddar cheese (no clue why that was, maybe in hurry). Dinner was shrimp, zucchini fritters and mozzarella cheese. Snacks were bacon cheddar ranch dip (found at Sams) peanut butter and heavy cram ( I love mixing those when it’s whipped).

Favorite Keto Grocery Items 

• Almond Flour
  • This is probably one of the most expensive investments that you will make in the Keto Diet. Buying Almond Flour at the grocery store could cost you $4-$7 for a small bag. The big bags are around $11 at Sams Club, which will last a lot longer.

• Parm Crisps (Sams) and Moon Cheese (Target or Wegmans)
• Pepperoni (buy in bulk if possible)
• Cream Cheese
• Veggies- we eat a lot of broccoli and cauliflower rice and anything that can look like spaghetti haha
• Macadamia Nuts
• Heavy cream- use in coffee or even for a quick dessert (just whip it up)
• Almond Butter
• Olives
• cheese of course!
• Pesto

The Keto Flu is really and probably hits at the end of the second week. The bone broth or chicken broth of a help with keto flu and drinking propel helps as well because it’s really the electrolytes.

 

Keto Meal Planning and Meal Prepping

I have a lot of just quick recipes, but mainly -it’s all just getting creative, honestly there are times that I throw things together and make my own recipes up. It’s important to really plan ahead to be successful. The above image was just some baked chicken with pesto sauce and I added shredded mozzarella the last 10 min and covered with foil. (soooo good)

Our go to for veggies- Broccoli and cauliflower add cream cheese and cooked bacon (with grease) bake it for fifteen minutes and add shredded cheddar at for last ten min. Honestly, you can add bacon and cream cheese to anything and it will taste good.

We once made spaghetti squash and added some cream cheese and ground chicken then mixed it and baked it. YUM!

• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Chocolate-Avocado-Cookies/

One of my favorite dips is White Pizza – you can use Crisps or Celery to dip into it or you can add it to Fathead pizza crust (recipe below)

• Easy Keto Friendly Dip

I have also used the dip above to add to fathead pizza crust. We put a ton of different toppings on the fat head pizza crust, but make sure that you use parchment paper and definitely wet your hands before spreading. Additional toppings include- shrimp, ricotta cheese, spinach, ground chicken, buffalo chicken, and  blue cheese.

 

 

 

• • Keto Chicken Pot Pie –

This was hard to get the right consistency but totally worth it.

10 Things to Order When Going Out To Eat on Keto Diet

• Steak
• Caesar salad no croutons
• Burger No Bun
• Wings with sauce on side
• Shrimp
• Veggies with Cheese
• Chicken or steak and cheese no bun
• Fish
• Chef Salad
• Chicken/tuna  Salad no wrap or over a salad
• Grilled chicken or veal parm, light sauce extra cheese

Also fast food on keto list.

Keto Resources

• Keto Calculator – Quickly calculate your macros.
• AreYouReadyToReddit’s 1-Week Meal Plan – A Guide to plan your meals up to a week in advance.
• Mega Video Collection – K4L’s video compilation.
• MFP macro script – to show net carbs (Thanks /u/Surye)
• Online Progress Tracker – PapaTua’s excellent progress tracker
• A Guide to Ketosis – by Joseph Artica
• Linda’s Low Carb Menus & Recipes – hundreds! of keto-tastic recipes

In the end, only you can make this work for yourself. You took the first steps, but you need to make a leap now and decide how committed you are to changing. Going Slow on WeightLoss- it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I lost 8 my first month. It’s not always what the scale says, but to us it was about feeling better in your clothes and having more energy. These are just a few tips on how we got started. Please leave questions in the comment section if you have any! Good luck