Let that sink in for a moment.

You only get to eat animal foods. No fruits. No vegetables. But all the burgers and rib-eye steaks you can get your claws on.

Most people have one of two reactions to this. A) “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Or B) “Sign me up!”

Of all the trends that buck conventional nutrition advice, the carnivore diet may seem like the most radical one yet. It’s one thing to recommend cutting carbs (the ketogenic diet) or eating only plant foods (the vegan diet), but to suggest that animal foods are all you need to be healthy, and that vegetables can actually be detrimental to health is a giant punch in the face to everything we were taught in school and all the recent nutrition and health headlines.

After all, everyone knows that meat is dangerous, especially if you eat a lot of it… right? And that you need at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day… Or do you?

Well, Onnit investigated the carnivore diet down to the marrow, and found out what happens to your body when you consume animals and nothing else. Here’s our guide to eating meat, bones, and organs for better health. (Spoiler alert: it’s not as crazy as it sounds.)

The Carnivore Diet For Humans

Animals with big teeth and short digestive tracts are meant to eat meat. But what about people? We’re omnivores. Is an all-animal diet even possible for us?

According to Brian St. Pierre, R.D., Director of Performance Nutrition at Precision Nutrition, an education and consulting company (precisionnutrition.com), plant foods aren’t absolutely required in the human diet. “What do we actually need to live? We need protein, fat, and vitamins and minerals in certain amounts,” says St. Pierre. Animal foods—and meat, specifically—can arguably cover those needs (see “Does The Carnivore Diet Create Nutrient Deficiencies?” below). That certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t eat plants, but, from a nutrition standpoint, it isn’t vital that we do, at least for short-term health.

The thing is, though, aside from some isolated tribal people in far corners of the world (such as the Inuits of arctic regions), few people have ever tried to live on animals alone. Those who have did so simply because no other sources of food were available. However, the carnivore diet (also called a zero-carb diet) has recently caught fire. And people are following it by choice!

Why? For many of the same reasons people try a ketogenic diet: weight loss, clearer thinking, fewer digestive problems, and a simple approach to eating that lets them consume foods they enjoy. It may also offer performance benefits. Though scrapping all plant foods seems like a severe step, it instantly removes nearly all of the allergens and antinutrients that some people find cause health problems and discomfort, and, as with ketogenic diets, the lack of carbs alone can offer a range of advantages.

With his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in late 2017, and his promotion through the website nequalsmany.com and Instagram (@shawnbaker1967), Shawn Baker is the most famous proponent of the carnivore diet. An orthopedic surgeon and lifelong drug-free athlete, Baker is in his 50s, ripped, and a physical marvel, having recently set two indoor rowing world records. He claims to have eaten only animal products—limiting himself mainly to rib-eye steaks—for more than a year, while suffering no ill health effects and watching his gains in the gym soar.

He hosts an ongoing and informal experiment, encouraging anyone who’s willing to follow the diet to record his/her experience with it, but admits that he hasn’t had his own health officially appraised since he started eating animals only. Rogan, in fact, cringed during their interview when Baker confessed that he hadn’t had any blood work done to check where his cholesterol, triglycerides, and inflammation markers rated. Fortunately, other (human) carnivores have been tested.

But before we discuss the health effects of a carnivorous lifestyle, let’s define exactly what it entails.

Carnivore Diet Food List

The carnivore diet consists of animal foods alone. As long as the constituents of your meal walked, crawled, flew, swam, or otherwise had parents, they’re fair game (no pun intended). You don’t have to follow any rules as far as food timing, macronutrient breakdowns, or portions. Simply eat when you’re hungry and until you’re full. The following are examples of approved carnivore diet foods.

Meat

Steak, burgers, and red meat in general are the main food sources for carnivore dieters. Because you’re not eating carbs—or any plant foods at all—it’s crucial that you get enough calories to keep your energy up, so fattier cuts of meat are best. Poultry and organ meats are also fine, as are processed meat products such as bacon and sausage.

Fish

Any kind is OK, but again, fattier types such as salmon and sardines are the smartest choices.

Whole Eggs

You’ll need the fat in those yolks.

Dairy

Milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter all come from animals and are technically admissible, although most carnivore dieters seem to omit or at least limit them. This is usually due to people discovering the carnivore diet as an outgrowth of the ketogenic diet, in which milk and yogurt are generally not permitted due to their lactose (sugar) content. (See “What’s The Difference Between The Carnivore Diet and The Ketogenic Diet?” below.)

As one of the goals of a carnivore diet is to eliminate nutrients that your body may not be able to process optimally (see “Carnivore Diet Benefits”), you should experiment with dairy foods one at a time and in small doses to see how you handle them. You may find you feel better with none at all.

Bone Marrow

Bone broth is allowed.

Fatty Meat Products

Tallow, lard, and other fat-dense foods derived from meat are greenlit.

Note: Baker doesn’t believe that your food needs to meet USDA organic, pasture-raised or wild-caught standards. However, we do. If you choose to follow the carnivore diet, or consume animal products as a cornerstone of whatever eating philosophy you follow, we strongly suggest that they be of the best quality that you can afford. See our discussion of organic foods in our rebuttal to the documentary What The Health.

Condiments

Salt and pepper are your friends here, as salsa, horseradish, mustard, and various herbs and spices don’t technically qualify. With that said, most sugar-free condiments don’t contain substances that cause digestive problems in most folks, so we don’t see any harm in using them just because they come from plants (especially since people typically enjoy condiments in small servings). With that said, due to its fat content, meat—particularly red meat—is quite flavorful on its own, so you’ll probably find that salt, pepper, or small amounts of butter provide the taste you want without the need for further add-ons.

Supplements

None. Although products such as whey protein and creatine come from animals, there’s virtually no need to supplement with them in this case. Eating animal foods exclusively pretty much guarantees you’ll meet your daily protein needs, and relying on red meat, which is rich in creatine naturally, leaves little reason for further supplementation.

Carnivore dieters who work out do report consuming coffee or caffeine supplements for an energy boost pre-exercise (in spite of the fact that it isn’t an animal product). If you’re concerned that you’re not getting enough micronutrients from your food, a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement may be a good idea.

What’s The Difference Between The Carnivore Diet and The Ketogenic Diet?

The carnivore diet and ketogenic diet both permit protein and fat while restricting carbs, but the carnivore approach is considerably more extreme. Because you aren’t eating any plant foods at all, your carb intake is virtually zero. This isn’t to say that your body won’t have carbs in it though. As with a keto diet, the body learns to make its own carbs to fuel activity in a process called gluconeogenesis. So while the carnivore diet may also be called a “zero-carb” plan, that’s somewhat of a misnomer.

In a ketogenic diet, the emphasis is on fat. Protein is limited in order to prevent excess gluconeogenesis, which can take a person out of ketosis. In the carnivore diet, however, you’re encouraged to eat both protein and fat liberally. As a result, depending on exactly what foods you eat and how much, you may or may not achieve technical ketosis following a carnivore plan. Whether you do or don’t doesn’t matter. The only goal is feeling better and getting healthier.

Unlike with keto, there are no clear guidelines to follow for the carnivore diet regarding macros or percentages of total calories. Because the diet has never been formally studied, there is no hard science to define how to set it up optimally. But Baker and other carnivore dieters seem to agree that relying on red meat makes the diet simple to follow and takes care of every nutritional need.

Remember that your food must be sourced from animals, so the avocados and coconut oil that typically abound on a ketogenic diet have no place in the carnivore plan. On the other hand, you can eat any animal foods you like in any amount or combination you prefer.

Dairy foods containing sugar, such as milk and yogurt, are generally not found in a keto diet plan, but may be included in a carnivore one, even though they contain some carbs.

See the table below for a quick comparison you can use as a reference guide.

*The classic, medically-defined ketogenic diet calls for only five percent of calories to come from carbs, but there are many versions of the diet (including the Mod Keto Diet described HERE) that allow for more and are more appropriate for athletes and active people whose energy needs are greater.

Carnivore Diet Benefits

Eating meat, meat, and more meat may sound like a nightmare to your doctor, but it has some strong advantages backed both anecdotally and by research.

1. Weight Loss

On an all-meat diet? Most people’s first reaction is that you’d get fat, but that’s highly unlikely. As with the ketogenic diet, failing to take in carbs keeps your blood sugar low at all times. You don’t get insulin spikes, so your body has no reason to store incoming calories as body fat. Additionally, the limitations on what you can eat make it almost impossible to get a calorie surplus without a concerted effort.

Ryan Munsey, a performance coach with a degree in food science and human nutrition (ryanmunsey.com), has been on a ketogenic diet for years. Last fall, he experimented with the carnivore diet for 35 days. “I wasn’t trying to lose weight,” he says, “but I went from 188 to 183 pounds in the first week.” Despite the weight loss and the severely restricted food list, Munsey says he never felt the least bit hungry—probably because protein and fat are highly satiating nutrients. To put weight back on, Munsey found that he had to discipline himself to eat two to four pounds of meat daily. “It wasn’t like I was stuffing myself, but it did feel weird at first to eat so much meat.”

If you’re the type who absent-mindedly noshes on nuts, pretzels, or other snack foods, taking in hundreds of calories without even noticing, the carnivore diet can help keep you in check. “You have to be truly hungry to eat,” says Munsey. It may be easy to throw handfuls of popcorn down your gullet, but you can’t accidentally eat a hamburger or cook a steak. You’ll get in the habit of eating only when you need to, and taking in just enough to keep you satisfied. “You learn the difference between physiological hunger and mindless eating,” says Munsey.

Also, though it wasn’t his goal, Munsey’s body stayed in a low level of ketosis throughout the five-week diet (he tested ketone levels to know for sure). “Most people in the keto camp would say if you eat more than a pound of meat a day you’re not going to be in ketosis,” says Munsey. “But I ate up to four pounds a day and I was.”

2. Better Heart Health

First of all, as we explained in our defense of coconut oil last summer, there’s still no clear link between the consumption of saturated fat and heart disease. There is also a solid pile of evidence that saturated fat can potentially improve heart health. Munsey himself found that to be the case.

A few months before starting his carnivore diet experiment, Munsey’s blood work revealed that his total cholesterol was 180mg/dL, his HDL level (frequently called the “good” cholesterol) was 57, and his LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) was 123. All good scores. After 35 days of carnivore dieting, he had his numbers checked again.

His total cholesterol climbed to 241mg/dL. While many doctors consider anything over 200 to be too high, part of the reason was the increase in his HDL—it went up 10 points. His LDL went to 162, but his VLDL levels—considered a major marker for heart disease risk—were measured at 12, which is extremely low.

The Mayo Clinic says your cholesterol ratio is a better risk predictor than total cholesterol or LDL. To find it, you divide your total cholesterol number by your HDL score. That gives Munsey a ratio of 3.6 to 1. As 3.4 is considered optimal, he’s in a very healthy range.

Another thing about cholesterol: even though higher LDL numbers are seen as risky, the type of LDL particles you have shuttling through your arteries is most important. If they’re small and dense, they’re considered more dangerous than if they’re bigger and “fluffier.” Therefore, two people with the same LDL value could be at very different levels of risk.

According to the Cooper Institute, a good way to determine what kind of LDL particles you have is to find your ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol. The lower the ratio, the less the risk. Munsey’s triglycerides came in at 59mg/dL, making his triglyceride-to-HDL ratio less than 1, which is exceptional.

Of course, Munsey followed the diet for a very short time, so it’s impossible to predict what would happen to his body long-term, but it should ease your fears about the dangers of meat for the cardiovascular system. Five weeks of eating cow parts didn’t give him a heart attack. In fact, it seemed to reduce his chances of having one. (For more on what he ate specifically, see “Does The Carnivore Diet Create Nutrient Deficiencies?”).

If you don’t believe us, or Munsey, see his official blood lab, direct from his doctor, below.

3. Lower Inflammation

According to some vegans, fat-rich animal foods promote inflammation to a degree that’s on par with smoking cigarettes. The truth, however, is that they can actually lower it. A 2013 study in the journal Metabolism compared subjects who ate a high-fat, low-carb diet to those following a low-fat, high-carb diet. Calories were restricted in both groups, but the high-fat eaters had lower markers of systemic inflammation after 12 weeks. As a result, the researchers concluded that high-fat eating may be more beneficial to cardiovascular health.

The liver produces C-reactive proteins (CRP) in response to inflammation, so measuring CRP levels can indicate how much inflammation is in your system. A level of 10mg/L or less is normal, and 1mg/L or less is good. Munsey’s CRP score post-diet was incredibly low: 0.34.

Simply cutting plant foods from your menu can lower inflammation by itself. “If you had a food sensitivity to some of the plants you were eating and had low-grade inflammation,” says Brian St. Pierre of Precision Nutrition, “then removing them will make you feel better.”

Lower inflammation can mean less achy joints. Plus: “There’s some evidence that eating more gelatinous proteins, as you find in bone broth, collagen, and gelatin,” says St. Pierre, “can improve cartilage health.” This is discussed further in our guide to bone broth.

4. Higher Testosterone

Diets high in fat have been shown to boost testosterone levels. In fact, a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that men who followed a high-fat, low-fiber diet for 10 weeks had 13% higher total testosterone than subjects who ate low fat and high fiber. It’s no surprise then that Munsey’s total testosterone levels leaped from 495 ng/dL to 569. Not bad for age 33. “I was pitching a tent first thing every morning,” he says.

5. Fewer Digestive Problems

We’ve been told how important it is to eat fiber our whole lives, and have been sold everything from bran muffins to Metamucil to make sure we get enough. But carnivore dieters think it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and science may prove them right.

A 2012 study in the World Journal of Gastroenterology investigated the effects of reducing fiber intake in people with chronic constipation—the complete opposite of what most doctors would recommend. Subjects were told to consume no fiber whatsoever for two weeks. Then they were allowed to increase their fiber intake to a level they were comfortable with, or follow a high-fiber diet. Incredibly, most of the subjects were doing so well that they opted to continue on the zero-fiber plan. The study lasted six months.

Those who ate high fiber reported no change in their condition, but those who ate no or small amounts of fiber noted significant improvements in their symptoms—including reduced gas, bloating, and straining. Furthermore, the ones on zero fiber actually increased the frequency of their bowel movements!

The reason fiber-filled eating could be problematic for the gut isn’t clear, but carnivore dieters blame certain compounds in plant foods as the source of digestive issues. They cite the book The Plant Paradox, by Steven R. Gundry, M.D., which argues that the natural defense mechanisms that plants contain to dissuade predators cause bloating, gas, and other digestive distress that may make them not worth eating for humans. Lectins, gluten, and phytic acid—common in fruits, greens, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds—can contribute to inflammation and auto-immune disorders such as IBS, Leaky Gut, and more. While this is a controversial opinion (see “Reasons The Carnivore Diet Might Still Be Totally F@#$ing Crazy”), it does provide an explanation for why carnivore dieters claim to feel better than they did eating plants.

“We’ve been told for so long that you need all this fiber,” says Munsey. “But maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t need any. The carnivore diet challenges what we think we know.”

6. Increased Mental Clarity

Just as with the ketogenic diet, carnivore dieters report thinking more clearly and having better focus almost right away. Again, as with going keto, there is a break-in period where your body has to figure out how to fuel your system without carbs, so you’ll probably feel lethargic and moody at first. You may have difficulty sleeping and even develop bad breath (an early sign that your body is making ketones), but you can ride it out. Within a few days, or just over a week, you could feel sharper than ever. Perhaps even better than if you were doing a standard ketogenic diet (see “The Carnivore Diet for Athletes”). “By the second week, your system comes online,” says Munsey.

7. Simpler Dieting

There’s one thing about the carnivore diet that no one can argue: it’s not complicated. You eat animal foods when you’re hungry, and that’s it. If you’re the type of person who gets confused counting calories or macros, is tired of weighing portions on a food scale, or isn’t sure what’s gluten-free and what isn’t, a carnivore diet will all but relieve you of having to think.

“I started by trying to eat one rib-eye in the morning and one in the afternoon, or the equivalent amount of protein and fat,” says Munsey. “It worked out to be about a pound of meat in the morning and then two in the afternoon. I never measured anything or tracked ratios.” It’s also worth noting that Munsey prefers to follow an intermittent fasting style of eating, having his first meal between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. and his second between 3 and 5 p.m. But you don’t have to.

“As far as your lifestyle goes, it’s quite enjoyable,” says Munsey. “You get to eat steak and bacon all day. I never got tired of eating meat. I actually started craving it.”

And while a meat-rich diet may sound like it would break the bank, the amounts you actually consume may not be high, since meat is so satiating. That should keep costs down—especially if you literally aren’t buying any other food.

Is The Carnivore Diet Safe?

Because it’s similar to a ketogenic diet, and we’ve already shown that meat isn’t to blame for heart disease, it appears fair to consider the carnivore diet safe for most people—at least in the short term. However, if you’ve ever seen the movie Beverly Hills Cop, there’s one question you’ve been dying to ask: is all that meat going to get stuck in my gut?

In the film, one character reads a (fictitious) article to another, citing science that claims that “by the time the average American is 50, he’s got five pounds of undigested red meat in his bowels.” Based on this one scene in a popular movie from more than 30 years ago—and an Eddie Murphy comedy at that—the urban legend has perpetuated that beef somehow blocks up your intestines, colon… you name it.

However, just as you can’t disable a police car by shoving a banana in its tailpipe (another bit of wacky science from the movie), your body won’t choke itself to death from eating rib-eyes.

“Like most foods, meat is absorbed in the small intestines before it reaches the colon,” says St. Pierre. “The idea that meat gets impacted in your GI tract is silly.” It’s possible to get a bowel obstruction due to disease or physical injury, “but red meat isn’t something that blocks your GI tract.” Since there isn’t much coming out, people who have small bowel movements tend to assume that waste is getting stuck inside them. But St. Pierre says that small movements, including those of carnivore dieters, are simply due to low intakes of fiber. “Fiber adds bulk,” he says. So the reason your poop is small is because it doesn’t have veggies in it.

“I never had any distension, bloating, or water retention throughout the whole process,” says Munsey. “In fact, I felt light and had a bounce in my step.”

A more serious concern on the carnivore diet, however, is the risk of cancer. “There’s so much evidence on phytonutrients from plant foods and how they help with DNA protection,” says St. Pierre. “If you’re not consuming those things, your guess is as good as mine as to how that’s going to impact you long-term.” Bacteria in the GI tract and colon ferment fiber into butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid. Butyrate decreases inflammation in the GI tract, potentially decreasing the risk of colon cancer.

“I would highly suspect that an all-animal diet would increase your risk of colon cancer,” says St. Pierre. Not because animal foods are carcinogenic in any way, but because “you wouldn’t be consuming things that help to inhibit colon cancer. So the dose makes the poison. Having a few servings of red meat each week is no big deal, but when you’re eating three steaks a day with nothing else, that’s a different story. You’re changing the equation substantially.”
Not to mention, eating fruits and vegetables offer benefits for eye health, brain health, and overall longevity, says St. Pierre. “You’d be ignoring so much research on their potential benefits by cutting them all out.”

Another popular carnivore diet question: what happens to the gut biome? That is, the balance of bacteria that help digest your food and prevent disease. Surely, those critters must require some carbs. Or not.

“I had zero dysbiotic flora [the bad bacteria] at the end of the diet,” says Munsey, who had his poo tested. “And I had pretty good numbers on all the beneficial flora.” He chalks it up to the carnivore diet being, if nothing else, an extreme elimination diet that starves sugar-hungry bad bacteria to death. “Yeah, it would starve some of the good ones as well, but maybe we don’t need as many of those. Maybe we only need them if we’re eating a high-plant diet. It’s never been studied, so for people to jump right out and say the carnivore diet is wrong and bad for your health… well, we don’t know that.”

Does The Carnivore Diet Create Nutrient Deficiencies?

The risk of life-threatening illness aside, the carnivore diet—somewhat surprisingly—doesn’t seem to lead to many, if any, serious vitamin or mineral deficiencies. Red meat alone contains copious amounts of iron and zinc, and seafood and dairy supply vitamin D, which usually has to be added to plant foods. The one micronutrient that nutritionists like St. Pierre aren’t sure you’d get enough of is vitamin C, which is otherwise extremely easy to obtain when eating fruits and vegetables.

In rebuttal, carnivore supporters make the argument that, in the absence of carbs, your body may not need much vitamin C, thereby making small intakes sufficient. Stephen D. Phinney, M.D., Ph.D., author of The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living, has speculated that the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate—which your body will produce when you remove carbs from your diet—replaces the need for vitamin C, at least in part. On a balanced diet, one of vitamin C’s roles in the body is to form collagen, but Phinney says that the amino acids you get from a large meat intake get the job done without it. Indeed, neither Munsey or Baker have come down with scurvy, and neither have hundreds (thousands?) of other zero-carb dieters at home and abroad—as far as we know.

St. Pierre adds that if you make the effort to eat a diverse range of animal foods—i.e. NOT just rib-eye steaks—you hedge your bets that you’ll get the micronutrition you need. That means venturing beyond lean muscle meats and taking advantage of foods like bone broth and organ meats. That’s what Munsey did. “I was just being extra cautious,” he says. And “organ meats,” he points out, “have more micronutrients than vegetables.”

The Carnivore Diet for Athletes

The ketogenic diet has taken a lot of heat from critics who say that people who exercise must eat carbs to supply fuel, but science has shown that not only is it possible to work out on a low-carb diet, you can even perform at an elite level. But take away ALL carbs and all plant foods and it could be a very different story. The short answer is that we don’t know exactly how a long-term carnivore diet would affect muscle mass, endurance, or overall performance yet. But many carnivore dieters report making some of the best gains of their lives on the plan.

As mentioned above, Shawn Baker is a world-class indoor rowing competitor and deadlifts 700-plus pounds at over 50 years old. He could well be a genetic outlier, but what about Ryan Munsey? Without adding body weight, Munsey made dramatic strength gains on the diet. Below are the improvements he made on his two-rep max in the various lifts he tested. All were accomplished within five weeks of carnivore eating.

Front squat: from 235 pounds to 265
Deadlift: from 335 to 375
Incline bench press: 205 to 220
Weighted pullup: 60 pounds of added weight to 100 pounds

The first week on the diet, Munsey says he felt sluggish and had little motivation to train. But by the second week, he says, he was a “samurai” in the gym. He credits the gains to the increased amount of protein he was eating, as he had been doing a ketogenic diet prior. “With keto, I felt great mentally, but I never felt like doing much physically. On the carnivore diet, I just felt like a warrior.” He was getting 120 to 150 grams of protein per day before when he weighed between 185 and 188 pounds. After adopting a two-to-four-pounds per day meat habit, Munsey estimates his protein intake was between 200 and 300 grams.
It’s worth noting that Munsey did not do cardio, apart from daily walks (he averaged 5,000 steps a day, total). Therefore, it’s difficult to say how he would have fared had he been running, rowing, or doing more metabolically-demanding workouts such as CrossFit. “I think the adaptation period before you would excel again at those activities would be more brutal than what I went through,” says Munsey.

To be fair, Baker claims he needed six months to fully adapt to the diet and get his performance back on track.

“Just because we can live on a carnivore diet,” says St. Pierre, “doesn’t mean we’d necessarily thrive on it. If you’re an intermittent sport athlete, competing in sprinting or something else that requires high output for 60–120 seconds, it would be very challenging to perform well when you’re not eating any carbs. There are people who adapt really well to fat and their performance does improve, but I think performance would suffer for most.” As with any diet, you’ll have to try it and see what happens.

If you are an athlete or gym rat, you may do better to modify the carnivore diet just as we discussed modifying the ketogenic diet HERE. St. Pierre suggests starting by adding some vegetables. “Cruciferous ones like broccoli, cauliflower, and kale would be my vote.” If you find that your workouts are suffering, “maybe that means having the occasional sweet potato or apple,” says St. Pierre.

Carnivore Diet Meal Plan

Here’s an example of how you could eat in a day if you want to get the broadest possible nutrition from an all-animal diet.

Breakfast
Coffee (black, or with whole milk)
Scrambled eggs and bacon
(You may also choose to skip breakfast and fast till lunch)

Lunch
Rib-eye steak, OR chicken liver, seasoned with salt and pepper

Snack
1 cup bone broth, OR a few slices cheese

Dinner
Hamburger patty seasoned with cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper
OR salmon fillet

All meats and dairy products should be organic and pasture-raised whenever possible

Reasons The Carnivore Diet Might Still Be Totally F@#$ing Crazy

If you’ve made it this far into the article, you’re probably realizing that the carnivore diet isn’t as ridiculous as it may at first sound. Nevertheless, there are some compelling reasons to not try it—or at least not follow it for very long—apart from what we’ve already mentioned.

Environmental Impact

It’s safe to say that, if everyone adopted this diet, the world would run out of animals pretty fast. Supporting organic farming practices and eating locally is a noble, smart way to improve the welfare of animals and reduce pollutants, but drastically increasing the demand for meat would undoubtedly have a detrimental effect on the planet—at least while conventional farming methods remain pervasive.

Vegetables Are Still Good

Carnivore dieters blame digestive problems on plants. Grains, legumes, and nuts are indeed sources of phytic acid, an antinutrient that can prevent the body’s absorption of iron and zinc. But according to St. Pierre, the negative impact it has on your nutrition is minimal. “The data on phytic acid, lectins, and tryptin inhibitors is nowhere near as bad as people like to make it out to be,” says St. Pierre. Plants have innate defense systems to discourage predators from eating them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t be eaten. Similarly, “a lobster has a shell and claws to defend itself, but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat it,” says St. Pierre.

Also, the way we prepare food reduces the potency of the antinutrients within it. When bread is baked with yeast, the phytic acid content in the grains dissipates. Levels are also low in sprouted-grain and sourdough bread. “At the same time,” says St. Pierre, “in reasonable amounts, phytic acid also has some potential health benefits, one of them being anti-cancer, and it can chelate heavy metals.” One such heavy metal, iron, can be toxic in high amounts. And you risk getting such amounts on an all-meat diet.

This isn’t to say that some people aren’t especially sensitive to certain plant foods. If you know one that bothers you, don’t eat it. But it’s probably best not to weed out every bit of vegetation in your diet based on a reaction to one or two types.

Sustainability

The planet isn’t the only thing that could suffer if you go all meat, all the time. You may end up hating life, no matter how cool the idea of eating burgers and bacon all day sounds to you now. A strict animal diet means no beer, no avocados for your Fajita Night… and, in fact, no fajitas at all (tortillas are a no-no). You can bend the rules and have your cheat days, but then you’re not really doing the diet, are you?

Munsey says he didn’t get many cravings on the carnivore diet, but has since added back some plants and the occasional carbs for the sake of long-term health. “I still pretty much follow the carnivore diet because I love the way I feel on it. But it’s really difficult to do when you travel.” If you can’t find high-quality meat on the road, you need to be careful where you eat out. But that can be part of the thrill of going carnivore, too.

“It’s fun to order two rib-eyes and nothing else and see how the waiter reacts,” says Munsey. “I was in an airport and got four hamburger patties and the manager came out to confirm that my order was right. It definitely throws people off.”

The post The Carnivore Diet: Is Eating ONLY Meat Healthy, or Totally F@#$ing Crazy? appeared first on Onnit Academy.

That’s what you might find yourself saying when you step on the scale January 1, especially if media reports are true that the holidays will bloat you up like a certain morbidly obese, gift-giving elf.

According to a 2014 article that reviewed research on weight gain over the holidays, the average gain between Thanksgiving and New Year is only a little over a pound. However, the author went on to say that the range in individual weight changes is large, and that “When the average gain across the year was also measured, the holiday weight was the major contributor to annual excess weight gain.”

Your Holiday Survival Guide: Tips To Stay Lean This Season

Big, decadent meals and missed workouts due to travel and family time can knock you off your game, expand your waistline, and set a bad precedent for the month (and year) to come. But approach the holiday season strategically, and you can keep up with your training, prevent overeating, curb the risk of winter illness, and still have a jolly good time. Stuff these tips into your stocking and you may even be able to give yourself the gift you’ve always wanted: abs.

This is an excerpt from our FREE e-book, Your Holiday Survival Guide, which offers even more tips for fighting off fat and staying healthy.

#1 Avoid the aisle seat.

If you’re flying to see relatives, forgo the extra legroom and try to sit by the window. A study in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that plane passengers who sat on the aisle were more likely to get sick, even on a short-duration flight. Scientists think it’s because they were exposed to more people in the cabin as the passengers boarded and walked around.

#2 Eat more cheese.

Seriously. According to Dom D’Agostino, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of South Florida and one of the world’s top experts on low-carb and ketogenic diets (ketonutrition.org), cheese platters are often the best hors d’oeuvre option at a holiday party. “They sometimes offer a variety of nuts and meats as well,” says D’Agostino. “Eating low carb helps control your appetite because fats and proteins tend to be more satiating and typically don’t lend themselves to overeating.”

Fibrous vegetables are another good choice, so load up on veggie platters that offer broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, and celery. “The combination of fat, protein, and fiber will prolong gastric emptying,” says D’Agostino (i.e., the rate at which your stomach processes food). “It keeps you satiated and prevents a spike in blood glucose,” which leads to energy crashes and fat storage.

You don’t have to crunch down your veggies dry, either. “Most veggie dip has a mayo and/or sour cream base,” says D’Agostino, “so it’s usually a very keto option.”

#3 Avoid bread, crackers, cake, cookies, and rolls.

Processed foods made with refined grains and sugars spike blood glucose, creating an insulin response in the body that promotes fat gain. If you’re not sure which foods are “bad carbs,” D’Agostino recommends sticking with whole foods to keep it simple. Before you eat, ask yourself if your food ever walked, crawled, swam, flew, or grew in the ground when it was alive. If it’s close to how it looked in its glory days, it’s probably OK to eat. Bread, crackers, and other grain-based products don’t exist in nature.

“You can’t go wrong with meats and vegetables,” says D’Agostino. “Just watch out for condiments that might contain sugars or flour,” such as ketchup, and barbecue and Hoisin sauce.

#4 Swap out carbs for veggies.

When cooking for yourself, you can easily replace starchy carbs with vegetables in a number of instances. Make spaghetti squash in place of pasta (shredding it with a fork makes noodles). Cauliflower is highly diverse, and can be boiled down to make faux mashed potatoes, or pulverized in a food processor to form rice or low-carb flour for pizza crusts. It contains only five grams carbs per cup.

#5 Take the smallest serving size.

Research shows that the size of the portions you serve yourself greatly influences how much food you ultimately take in, and that overeating at one meal doesn’t cause you to eat less at your next one to compensate (as some people assume).

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had subjects eat macaroni and cheese for lunch one day a week for a month. They were given one of four different portion sizes to consume every time, but told that they could have as many servings as they liked. Ultimately, the people consumed 30% more calories when served the largest portion than they did with the smallest one, showing that the more food they were presented with, the more they ate.

The take home: if you serve yourself less, you’ll eat less overall. So, whenever possible, eat the smallest serving size available to you, be it one slice of pizza, a single brownie square, a paper cup of holiday punch, etc. You can go back for more if you’re still hungry or thirsty, but odds are you’ll eat less overall than if you filled your plate every time.

#6 Eat more slowly.

A landmark study from the University of Rhode Island had women eat lunch on two different occasions. In one instance, they instructed them to eat as quickly as possible. In the other, they were told to chew their food slowly and put down their utensils between bites. When eating slowly, the subjects ate less and consumed fewer calories. Nevertheless, they actually reported feeling less hungry an hour later.

The stomach needs time to signal your brain that you’re getting full. Plus, the women in the study also chose to drink more water during their slow-eating meal, which further promoted satiety.

#7 Don’t eat mindlessly.

The times we tend to overeat the most are when we’re distracted—by conversation, television shows, games of pool with Uncle Ted, etc. Research shows that simply paying more attention to your food when you eat can help you avoid taking in too much, so try to keep snacks out of reach when your mind is elsewhere.

#8 Pre-game with protein.

Protein promotes satiety, so chugging a shake before a big meal will help prevent you from gorging. But here’s the thing: the drink needs to look creamy, like a real milkshake.

A study in the British Journal of Nutrition found that the thickness and creaminess of a protein drink heightens your perception of its protein content, which helps promote the sensation of fullness even further. In other words, those fruit-flavored, clear protein drinks won’t work as well.

#9 Add greens to your smoothie.

If you already regularly make protein smoothies with fruit and healthy fats (such as the popular banana and nut butter combo), add a cup of fresh or frozen spinach to the blender. You won’t taste the greens at all, but they’ll bulk up the drink with fiber, helping you control your appetite further (not to mention add health-boosting nutrition).

#10 Drink wine or hard liquor.

If you must drink at all, that is. Dry white or red wines are low in sugar. “White Girl Rosé,” not so much. “Dry Farm Wines offers fantastic low-sugar wine options,” says D’Agostino, “which can even be enjoyed if you’re on a ketogenic diet.” Liquors such as whiskey and vodka by themselves don’t have many calories, but watch out for mixers. If you want a soda or energy drink to stir into it, make sure it’s sugar-free.

Most beers are high in carbs, but lighter beers can have less. “Check the labels first,” says D’Agostino. “A lot of lighter beers provide the nutrition facts.” To avoid doing too much damage, D’Agostino recommends stopping your drinking at the first sign of a buzz. That’s a good way to get the best of both worlds—the relaxed feeling you want from alcohol without putting excessive stress on your system.

Get all 25 tips in our Holiday Survival Guide!

The post Your Holiday Survival Guide: Tips To Stay Lean This Season appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Jack-O-Guac

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Yield:	8 servings
Difficulty:	Easy
Prep Time:	20 minutes

Here's another wonderful way to eat avocados...

Ingredients:

• 4 ripe avocados, pit & skins removed
• ¼ tsp. Onnit Himalayan salt
• 1 tomato, chopped
• ½ red onion, finely diced
• 2 tbsp. cilantro, finely diced
• 3 limes, juiced
• Seasoning to taste: chili powder, cayenne pepper, garlic powder
• 2 large orange bell peppers
• Blue corn chips*
• Fried pork rinds, keto option**

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, add the avocado meat, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt and seasonings. Mix with a fork until desired consistency is achieved. I’m a big fan of chunky guacamole, so I’ll keep some nice chunks of avocado in there, which happen to make this faux pumpkin barf look that much more real!
2. Take one large bell pepper, and carefully slice off the top and remove the seeds and membranes from center. Carve out the eyes and mouth with a small paring knife or a small carving knife. Make a greater than sign “>” for the left and a less than sign “<” for the right eye. For the mouth, cut a large “U” shape at the bottom of the bell pepper.
3. Using a spoon, add the guacamole to the inside of the carved bell pepper and add what’s remaining to appear like it’s pouring out of the mouth on the serving platter. Serve with sliced bell peppers, blue corn chips, and pork rinds (if a crunchy keto option is desired). Serve immediately.

Notes:

*We bought Jackson’s Honest Blue Corn Tortilla Chips slow-cooked with coconut oil from Whole Foods Market. **We bought 4505 Chicharrones Jalapeno Cheddar fried pork rinds.

Black Blood Witches’ Brew

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Yield:	12
Difficulty:	Easy
Prep Time:	10 minutes

Because adults should be able to enjoy Halloween too.

Ingredients:

• 3 bottles dark red blend wine*
• ¾ cup brandy
• ½ cup organic orange juice
• 3 blood oranges, sliced
• 2 blood oranges, juiced
• 3 cups frozen blackberries
• 2 cups black grapes
• Spider charcoal ice cubes, optional
• Dry ice, optional

Directions:

1. Add the wine, brandy, orange juice, and fruit to a large pitcher. Mix together with a spoon and keep in fridge for 4 hours or overnight to let the flavor to develop.
2. When ready to serve, add to individual glasses or large caldron. Add dry ice to the caldron for the “smoky” witches’ brew effect. Wear gloves handling or do not touch the dry ice directly. It will burn your hands! Also, dry ice only keeps in standard temperature freezers for less than a day (I learned this the hard way). So buy it the day of serving. If adding dry ice to the individual glasses, note that you can consume only once the dry ice has melted. If it touches your mouth, it will burn your precious lips and that’s not a cute look. To break into smaller ice “cubes” I added it to a plastic bag, sealed it, and slammed it against the floor. Probably not the most professional means, but hey, it works. But remember, protect your hands and skin! We recommend not doing this around children.
3. If using charcoal spider ice cubes, add to individual serving glasses or toss into the caldron. Simply mix one scoop of charcoal with 6 fl. oz. water and add to spider molds. Freeze until set, about 5 hours.
4. Enjoy responsibly 🙂

Notes:

*We used Menage a Trois Midnight, dark red blend

Purple Monster Mash

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Yield:	6-8 servings
Difficulty:	Medium
Prep Time:	15 minutes
Cook Time:	30 minutes
Total Time:	45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 4 purple sweet potatoes, washed, peeled & quartered
• ½ cup potato water*
• ½ cup beef bone broth**
• 2 black olives
• 2 green olives
• 4 tbsp. goat cheese
• ¼ beet, boiled & peeled
• ¼ cup rendered herbed ghee (recipe with steak below)
• 1-2 tsp. Himalayan salt, plus more for boiling

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil, heavily salting the water prior.
2. Add the purple potatoes and beet to water. Cover and boil for about 25 minutes, or until you can easily pierce it with a fork.
3. Drain, but make sure to save ½ cup of the water to add back to the mash. Set aside the boiled beet. Add the saved water, bone broth, salt, and herbed ghee to the potatoes. If you prefer a sweet fall flavor, see the notes below. Mash using an electric mixer.
4. I would recommend kitchen gloves for this portion (I learned the hard way). Finely dice the beet into very tiny pieces for the monster mouth. Roll and mold the goat cheese to form the eyes and teeth. Slice the olives for the eyes. Get creative! This part would be fun for the kids, or adults. I love playing with food, especially when I can eat it afterwards...

Notes:

*Saved and set aside when draining the boiled potatoes. **We used Kettle & Fire beef bone broth. ***For a sweeter, fall-inspired flavor, swap the bone broth and ghee for coconut milk. Add ¼ ghee or butter, 1 tsp. ground cinnamon, ¼ tsp. ground cardamom, ¼ tsp. ground cloves, and Sweet Leaf Stevia Drops, vanilla creme flavor.

Bloody Steak with Herbed Ghee

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Yield:	2 servings
Difficulty:	Medium
Prep Time:	40 minutes
Cook Time:	8 minutes
Total Time:	50 minutes

Is there anything spookier than a bloody steak? Yes, there's a lot of things. The truth is, I really just wanted an excuse to eat a delicious steak. Here is my recipe for the perfect seared steak, medium rare of course, with my new favorite herbed ghee that I cook and dip everything in. So freaking good!

Ingredients:

• 2 grass-fed, pasture-raised ribeye steaks
• 2 tbsp. Himalayan salt or Fleur de sol
• Black pepper, to taste
• 1 cup ghee or pastured butter
• 4 garlic cloves
• 10 sprigs fresh thyme
• 3 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 2 tbsp. avocado oil

Directions:

1. Rub each steak with a more coarse salt, like kosher, Himalayan or Fleur de sol. Set aside at room temperature or in the fridge if overnight. Ideally, you want to salt your steak at least 40 minutes prior to cooking. I like ribeye the best for flavor and happiness purposes, but you can use whichever cut tickles your fancy.
2. In a small saucepan on low, add the ghee, fresh herbs on the sprigs, and the garlic cloves--you can keep the skin on because we’re just using for infusion. Let the ghee melt and the flavors develop for 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Preheat cast-iron skillet to high heat. You want it to be smoking hot when you throw on the steaks in order to get the best sear. Cast-iron skillets and fast-searing are both crucial components to a brown crust without overcooking the meat. Make sure you use a high-smoke point oil like avocado oil here. Butter and olive oil have to low of a smoke point and will brown and turn rancid, which is not good for flavor and can produce toxins.
4. Add the steak to the oiled very hot pan. The cooking times will vary based on the thickness of the steak, but I recommend about three minutes per side for 2-inch thick steak. Remove from heat and baste with the herbed ghee or butter, adding the herbs and garlic on top of the steak as you baste to add more flavor. To baste, tilt your pan to the side, which is basically an arm workout considering the weight of a cast-iron skillet, and continue to spoon the ghee on top of the steak to get a more golden crisp. Repeat on the other side. For this Halloween recipe, I like a bloody medium-rare steak, which is about 130-degrees Fahrenheit so make sure you double check with a meat thermometer.
5. Remove the steaks from the pan, and let cool on a cutting board for at least 15 minutes prior to slicing and serving. Serve with additional herbed ghee if you so choose. I like to make extra herbed ghee and save it for cooking other dishes, like adding it to the “Purple Monster Mash” or for scrambling my eggs in the morning. The options are endless!

Ghostly Keto Bites

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Yield:	6 bites
Difficulty:	Easy
Prep Time:	10 minutes
Total Time:	25 minutes

If you're looking for a slightly sweet and rich dessert without any sugar, this is the perfect recipe for you. All you need is four ingredients and almost no cooking skills. Does it get any better than that? Nope. You can easily create an orange creamsicle version by adding one tablespoon of our tangerine dream Joint Oil to the mixture prior to pouring into the molds. This will turn your ghost bites orange, but hey, it's a Halloween color, so it works!

Ingredients:

• ½ cup raw cacao butter
• ⅓ cup raw coconut butter
• 1 tbsp. Onnit Almond Milk Latte Emulsified MCT Oil
• 30 drops SweetLeaf Stevia Drops, vanilla creme flavor
• Ghost silicone molds

Directions:

1. In a small saucepan on medium-low heat, add the raw cacao butter (chips or bar) and coconut butter. Stir until melted and remove from heat.
2. Stir in the Almond Milk Latte EMCT Oil and the vanilla creme (or flavor of choice) Stevia drops.
3. Pour into molds and freeze for 15 minutes, or until hardened.
4. Store in airtight container in the fridge for up to one week.

Electrolyte Creepy Crawler Gummies

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Yield:	approx. 18 gummies
Difficulty:	Easy
Prep Time:	15 minutes
Total Time:	3 hours 15 minutes

These hydrating gummies are fun for the whole family. Too much wine pushed mom and dad over the edge? Looking for a sugar-free treat the kids will enjoy? This recipe will check all your boxes this Halloween. For a more tart flavor variety, squeeze in your favorite citrus juice. You can also switch up the flavor profile by using your favorite organic juice or coconut milk in place of the water.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 3 scoops Onnit Mineral Electrolytes, lime flavor
• ¼ tsp. of each color, vegetable-based colorants*
• 4 tbsp. grass-fed beef gelatin**
• Bug silicone molds

Directions:

1. In a mixing bowl, add ⅓ cup of cold water and stir in 3 scoops of Onnit Mineral Electrolytes. It will foam at first, but it will settle after a minute or so. Mixing the electrolytes with cold water prior to adding hot water is key, so don’t skip this step.
2. Bring the remaining water (⅔ cup) to a simmer, not a boil. Remove from heat and slowly stir it in the electrolyte mixture, adding the gelatin in between pours.
3. Divide the gelatin-electrolyte mixture into three mixing bowls. Add ¼ tsp. of each vegetable-based colorant to each bowl and stir. We used red, yellow and blue.
4. Pour the dyed mixtures into molds and refrigerate for 3 hours.
5. Once firm, remove from molds and store in airtight container for up to 5 days.

Notes:

*We used India Tree Natural Decorating Colorants purchased at our local Whole Foods Market. You can also make your own natural food dye at home using turmeric, beet, and spirulina. **We used Vital Proteins’ Pasture-raised, Grass-fed, non-GMO Beef Gelatin.

The post 6 Healthy Halloween Recipes appeared first on Onnit Academy.

When asked how much booze is OK to drink on a diet, most nutritionists sound like Mr. Mackey, the school counselor from South Park: “Alcohol is bad, m’kay. You shouldn’t drink alcohol, m’kay.” As booze carries a host of health risks and offers few real benefits for your waistline, it’s easy to write it off as an unnecessary addition to any diet. But, as with signs that say to shower before entering a public pool, some rules are just asking to be broken, and you’re probably going to drink from time to time anyway—no matter how badly you want to lose weight and get in shape. And who are we to try and stop you?

As booze tends to contain both alcohol and sugar, the question of where it can fit on a ketogenic (or other lower-carb) diet is a big one. After all, “going keto” means cutting carbs way down. But according to Dominic D’Agostino (ketonutrition.org), an assistant professor at the University of South Florida—and one of the world’s leading researchers on ketogenic diets—“If you avoid the kinds of alcohol that have higher carbs and consume other types in low to moderate quantities, you don’t need to totally cut it out.”

We’ll raise a glass to that.

Read on, and you’ll learn exactly how you can make booze a part of your pursuit for a better, fitter body on a low-carb eating plan.

The Expert’s Guide to Alcohol on The Ketogenic Diet

As we described in our guide to going keto, the original, medically-defined ketogenic diet stipulates that you get 75% of your total calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 5% from carbs. (A person following an average 2,000-calorie diet would then limit his/her carbs to around 25 grams per day.) This configuration causes your body to switch its main fuel source from carbs to ketones—molecules that are made from your stored body fat. When this happens, you are considered to be in a state of ketosis. At the same time, when the body needs carbs for energy, it learns to make them itself in a process called gluconeogenesis.

First used in modern medicine by physicians at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in the 1920s, the ketogenic diet was applied to help patients suffering from epilepsy, seizures, and other neurological issues. Since then, research has suggested that keto eating can also help increase mental focus and promote healthy weight loss—perhaps even better than a low-fat diet can. A ketogenic diet also helps your body’s cells become more sensitive to glucose, so your pancreas won’t have to work as hard to carry carbs into them.

The classic ketogenic diet, however, can feel very restrictive and is often hard to follow, especially for athletes and other active people who may need more carbs to fuel exercise and support recovery afterward. In that case, we like what’s called a Mod Keto approach that allows you to consume more carbohydrates than in the traditional ketogenic diet. With Mod Keto, you can get 40–60% of your calories from fat, 20–40% from protein, and 20% from carbs (100 grams for the 2,000-calorie dieter). Though you may not be able to maintain a state of ketosis on this plan, the carbs are low enough to keep you mentally sharp but also generous enough to provide fuel for intense workouts.

What To Know Before Drinking Alcohol on the Keto Diet

There’s no denying it: excessive alcohol consumption can jeopardize several processes in the body, whether you’re keto or not. Your liver recognizes booze as a poison and prioritizes ridding your system of it. While it’s doing that, it stops making ketones and puts the brakes on gluconeogenesis (more on this later). To add to the problem, if you choose sugary beverages, a single serving has the potential to kick you out of ketosis, or eat up most of your carb allowance for the day. Furthermore, an alcoholic beverage can add hundreds of empty calories to your intake. Multiply the effect of one such drink by three or four or more—as in a night of binge drinking—and you’ll easily turn your finely-tuned metabolic engine into a clunky old rust bucket. (For your reference, a study from the National Institute of Health defines binge drinking as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a single session.)

Of course, booze is bad for the brain, too. One of the reasons heavy drinking makes you stagger like you just ate a Francis Ngannou uppercut is that alcohol disrupts the cerebellum—the brain region responsible for balance and coordination. In his book Why We Sleep, University of California, Berkeley, professor Matthew Walker explains that even moderate drinking causes memory impairment. He cites a Sleep study that found that participants who consumed alcohol on the same day they performed a learning exercise forgot about 50% of what they’d learned afterward. Even those who had two nights of high-quality sleep between the exercise and their bout of drinking forgot roughly 40% of the information. Walker hypothesizes that alcohol interferes with the process of committing items from short-term to long-term memory, which usually takes place while we’re asleep.

Your Grandma probably swore by the slumber-promoting power of her evening cocktail, and maybe you do, too. But there’s a difference between short-term sedation and restful sleep. While it might make you feel drowsy at first, when the hooch wears off, you can experience a rebound effect that actually stimulates alertness. If you’ve ever woken up at 3 a.m. after a bender, now you know why. Another contributing factor: the hot and cold feelings that alcohol can induce by disrupting the hypothalamus, the area of your brain that modulates body temperature, and other parts of the endocrine system.

In the book, The Sleep Solution, Chris Winter, who has become the de facto “sleep doctor” for NBA, NFL, and other pro teams seeking a rest-related advantage, states that the biggest nighttime issue with drinking alcohol is the disruption it causes to REM sleep. Professor D’Agostino has felt it firsthand. “If I have more than 16 ounces of wine, it not only affects my REM sleep but also the deep restorative stages,” he says, “so I feel lethargic in the morning.”

And then there’s the hangover. Alcohol has a diuretic effect, meaning that it prompts your body to excrete more water. This is why you go to the bathroom twice as often during happy hour, and why you wake up with a dry throat the morning after. Unfortunately, at the same time your body is losing water, it’s losing electrolytes too, throwing off the fluid balance inside you. This can hurt your performance the next time you hit the gym or the trail.

On the bright side, alcohol does have some benefits if you resist the temptation to go overboard with it. Numerous studies have shown that consuming small daily quantities of red wine can help with blood pressure, inflammation markers, and perceived and actual stress levels. In an article published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Disease Research, the phytochemicals in plants known as polyphenols—particularly resveratrol, and quercetin, which are present in wine—were shown to promote heart health. “The positive effects of dry red wine are pretty well established,” says D’Agostino. “Since I started drinking four to 12 ounces each evening, my overall health numbers are the best they’ve ever been. My HDL cholesterol numbers have increased by 25–30% percent.”

More into beer? Then you’ll appreciate the ability of hops to help protect brain cells from oxidative damage, as the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reported.

How Does Alcohol Affect Your Keto Diet?

When you drink, around 20% of the alcohol (aka ethanol) enters your bloodstream, where it goes on to affect the brain and other parts of the body. The remaining 80% goes to your small intestine and then to your liver. Once in the liver, the process of metabolizing alcohol into energy begins via an enzyme called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). As NAD is also responsible for turning glucose into fuel, the liver temporarily stops glucose metabolism to deal with the alcohol.

“The liver is always going to prioritize metabolizing ethanol,” says Ben Greenfield, author of Beyond Training and host of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. “That will occur over and above gluconeogenesis and utilizing glucose in the bloodstream.” At the same time, as mentioned earlier, fatty acids will stop being converted into ketones. These systems won’t get back on track until the alcohol is burned for fuel.

To add further complications, your body must deal with the waste products that drinking alcohol produces. When your liver breaks down ethanol, it results in acetaldehyde. The body sees this as a toxic threat and slows down fat metabolism further so that it can deal with the load, which it converts to acetyl CoA. At the same time, a buildup of acetaldehyde levels along with the release of NAD prompts the liver to produce new fatty acids. In other words, not only does drinking hurt your ability to burn fat, it encourages you to store more of it—a double whammy.

Now consider that your body can only convert acetaldehyde into 30 ml of acetyl CoA per hour. That’s the best case scenario, with half that amount being the low end of the range. A typical pint of beer (16 ounces) will make most people produce just under 23 ml of acetyl CoA, so drinking just one has the power to prevent your body from burning fat for an hour. If you start imbibing at dinner and continue until last call, you could produce enough acetyl CoA to disrupt fat metabolism for 9 to 12 hours afterward.

Alcohol and Workout Performance and Recovery

If you follow some form of a keto diet and you work out, you’ve got even more reason to cut back on booze. New Zealand’s Massey University has done numerous studies on how alcohol affects performance and recovery. It found that drinking can inhibit the protein synthesis necessary for muscle repair and growth, as well as delay injury healing. In an article on the school’s website, study author Matthew Barnes concluded, “If you’re [in the gym] to perform, you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol.”

There’s also evidence to suggest that alcohol can diminish muscle-building pathways triggered by strength training. A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research concluded that, “Alcohol should not be ingested after RE [resistance exercise] as this ingestion could potentially hamper the desired muscular adaptations to RE by reducing anabolic signaling, at least in men.”

What Alcohol Can I Drink on a Ketogenic Diet?

Due to all the reasons listed above, alcohol intake should be minimized on any diet, and particularly on keto. But when you do drink, you can limit the damage by giving preference to the lowest-calorie and lowest-sugar beverages available. Below are some examples.

Hard liquor
This stuff is your best booze bet. Whiskey, rum, vodka, gin, brandy, and tequila have 0 grams of carbs and 95–105 calories per shot.

Dry white wine
Dry sparkling wines contain 1.3–3 grams carbs and 96–150 calories per five-ounce glass. Other dry whites also fare well, with Brut Cava (2.5 g carbs and 128 calories) and Champagne (2.8 g carbs and 147 calories) rounding out the podium, and Pinot Blanc not far behind (2.85 g carbs and 119 calories).

Dry red wine
Pinot noir, Merlot, Cabernet, and Syrah (Shiraz) have 3.4–3.8 grams of carbs per glass and around 120 calories.

Light (low-carb) and dark beer
While beer is one of the more carb-drenched booze choices out there, the lightest of the lightweight beers aren’t overly dangerous to a keto dieter. Budweiser Select 55™ contains under 2g carbs and 55 calories per 12 oz, and Miller 64™ has 2.4g carbs and 64 calories. Stouts and porters are higher in calories than most other beer options, but they also offer more health-boosting properties, so we don’t think you should exclude them on the weight of the numbers you see on their nutrition labels alone. Guinness Draught™ has 125 calories and 9.4g of carbs (of which only 0.8 grams are sugar), but also boasts high levels of flavonoids, which can help combat inflammation, lower oxidative stress, and reduce the oxygenation of cholesterol.

What Drinks Should I Avoid on a Ketogenic Diet?

The following drinks are known for packing a sugary punch. Indulge in them and you’ll swiftly kiss your ketogenic diet goodbye.

Any alcohol served with a soda, syrup, or fruit mixer
Sodas cram up to 50 grams of carbs in every 12 ounces. Cocktails made with syrups or artificial fruit can pack 20 grams per serving.

Regular beer
Some IPAs contain over 20 grams of carbs and more than 250 calories, and fruity beers can have more than 30 grams carbs and 300-plus calories.

Liqueur
Southern Comfort™ isn’t too bad with just 4.8 grams of carbs and 98 calories per serving. But Jägermeister™ (17g carbs and 154 calories), Kahlua™ (22g carbs, 137 calories), and amaretto (26g carbs, 165 calories) belong in the Hall of Shame.

Margaritas
The amount of tequila’s not the issue. The 100–175 calories and 30 grams of keto diet-busting carbs in the mix are.

Wine coolers
These pack a hefty 15–30 grams carbs and have between 200 and 250 calories.

After-dinner wines
Moscato™, port, and sherry contain up to 18 grams carbs and 75–100 calories per 3 ounces.

How Much Can I Drink On A Keto Diet?

It’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all answer for how much booze you can drink while still staying keto. We’re all different, and, just as with other kinds of food and drink, alcohol rarely affects two people in exactly the same way. According to D’Agostino, your metabolic state before you start drinking—whether you’re fed, fasted, or semi-fasted—can also affect the degree to which ethanol impacts you.

To be on the safe side, it seems best to limit yourself to two drinks per night at the most. This allowance assumes you’re choosing from the What Alcohol Can I Drink on a Ketogenic Diet list, as these options will make it easier to stay in ketosis, or at least low-carb enough that you’ll avoid disrupting your hormone balance while also gaining the health benefits that alcoholic beverages can provide in moderation.

Remember that moderate drinking is not only tolerable to the body but also helpful. The University of California Irvine’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders evaluated the lifestyle habits of people who lived to be at least 90. Researchers concluded that those who drank lived longer than those who abstained. Furthermore, drinking up to two alcoholic beverages daily has been found to promote longevity. With that said, Greenfield, warns that going keto can, over time, make you a bit of a lightweight when you drink. “If you’re on a ketogenic diet and your primary source of glucose comes from gluconeogenesis,” says Greenfield, “you might have lower tolerance to alcohol, as your body processes it right away,” he says. When your glycogen stores are depleted, as they are on keto, alcohol gets metabolized much faster and therefore goes to your head much sooner. “And as you metabolize more of the alcohol, you’re going to be dealing with more acetaldehyde,” says Greenfield, “so if you drink too much you could experience a worse hangover.” If you used to guzzle drinks with reckless abandon, your new low-carb lifestyle might cause you to get tipsy on lesser amounts. One drink alone may be plenty for you, so don’t rely on your pre-keto limit as a guide.

If you want to get really scientific about your boozing, D’Agostino suggests buying an Abbot Precision Xtra™ monitor on Amazon.com or at a drugstore to measure your ketone and glucose levels before you start drinking and 30 minutes after you stop. “Then see how different kinds of alcohol and quantities affect you,” he says. “I found that 12 ounces of dry wine is the most I should have, and I often only have six ounces.”

It’s not just a question of what kind of booze you choose, how much you drink, or how high the alcohol by volume percentage is. Your rate of consumption is also important. Try to avoid downing your first drink in one go. As mentioned earlier, your body can take more than an hour to process the byproducts created by the liver when metabolizing even a small amount of alcohol, so if you can, sip slowly to give yourself a fighting chance of keeping up with the intake.

“The toxicity of alcohol is related to how fast you administer it,” D’Agostino says. “Once you start to feel buzzed, you’re beginning to experience the negative effects. That’s why I stick to a small amount spread out over several hours. Last night, I had a small glass of Merlot while I was preparing dinner and then a second one a couple of hours later. That had no affect on my glucose levels and a minimal impact on my ketones.”

A further consideration is exactly when you should drink. If you’re going to have a glass or two, it’s best to do it a few hours before bed—say, with dinner. The closer your alcohol consumption is to bedtime, the more it’s likely to mess with your sleep and overnight metabolism.

Are There Any Tricks That Would Allow Me To Drink More?

As alcohol is a diuretic, you’ve probably heard the recommendation to pound water before, during, and after drinking to offset the potential dehydration. Like alcohol consumption itself, drinking water is fine if done in moderation. Drinking too much fluid, however, will start flushing electrolytes (magnesium, potassium, and particularly sodium) out of your system, and that can make a hangover even worse. Stick to an eight to 12-ounce glass of water per serving of alcohol and include a pinch of sea salt. The salt contains trace minerals that aid in fluid retention.

Eating food will slow down the absorption of the alcohol, so try to combine your drinking with a main meal. Blood alcohol content can rocket up to three times higher if you don’t have any food in your system. Whereas if you eat just before or while drinking, peak alcohol concentration can be reduced by between 9 and 23%. Be sure you’re eating the right foods too. While a night of drinking can be part of a cheat meal that finds you eating carb foods as well, it’s smarter to stick to keto-friendly fare like meat and vegetables. D’Agostino says fat, protein, and fiber slow the absorption of alcohol and reduce the load it puts on your digestive system. A big meal may also help you feel more satiated, causing you to drink less.

There are exceptions, however. “Personally, I’ve found that a small glass of wine that’s been fermented for a longer period of time to lower the sugar content allows me to operate well on a low-carb diet,” says Greenfield. “I do this particularly when my liver’s glycogen stores are low, which would be when I’m in a fasted state or post-workout. So I break the rules and drink on an empty stomach. I usually have a small glass of wine from Dry Farm Wines or FitVine Wines at 7:30 or 8 p.m. after I’ve exercised and before I eat dinner.” If he’s drinking liquor, Greenfield uses club soda as a low-carb mixer.

Even if you do overdo it at the bar, don’t panic. There’s a simple prescription for getting back on track. “Just drink a couple of glasses of water and go for a brisk walk,” says D’Agostino. “This way you’ll combat the dehydration and increase your circulation and metabolism, which will enable you to clear out the alcohol and get back into ketosis.”

The post The Expert’s Guide to Alcohol on The Ketogenic Diet appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The problem is that they don’t get their energy from the right foods. When you follow a carbohydrate-based diet, your blood sugar rises and falls sharply with every meal. When it goes down, so does your energy—this is the crash you feel shortly after lunchtime that makes you want to fall asleep at work in the afternoon.

By reducing the amount of carbs you eat and replacing them with healthy sources of fat, you can stabilize blood sugar and enjoy steady energy and greater mental focus all day. These are two characteristics of a ketogenic diet, the ultimate version of a low-carb approach to nutrition that’s also a great strategy for losing weight, preventing or fighting serious illness, and promoting a myriad of other health benefits.

Let this guide answer all your questions about how to “go keto,” from the original strict diet that started the low-carb craze to the modern, more flexible adaptations that may better serve athletes and people looking to adopt healthier eating habits.

What Is A Ketogenic Diet?

Like the Atkins Diet, a ketogenic diet is very low in carbs, however, the difference is that—in a ketogenic diet—the majority of calories come from fat and protein intake is lower. Here’s how it works: Most people take in the bulk of their calories from carbs, so when you restrict carb intake and increase your fats, you send the body the message that it must switch fuel sources. The liver begins to convert fat—both the fat you eat and the body fat you store—into molecules called ketones. When the number of ketones rises to a certain level in your blood stream, you are officially in a state of “ketosis.” At this point, your body uses fat as its primary energy source.

The medically-defined ketogenic diet has 75% of daily calorie intake come from fat, 20% from protein, and 5% from carbs. However, most of the benefits of ketosis can be achieved with additional, moderate amounts of carbohydrate, taken in post-exercise. The medical model of five percent carbohydrate is unnecessarily restrictive—especially if you exercise.

A modified version where 40–60% of your calories come from fat, 20–40% come from protein, and the remaining 20% from carbs typically works great for most people. (See “I Work Out. Is A Ketogenic Diet Right For Me?”) We call this approach—which appears to be more practical and sustainable for most—Mod Keto, and use that term to refer to those numbers throughout this article. While it may not technically put you into ketosis, you’ll keep insulin low enough to promote fat loss (see below) and mental focus while still having enough energy for hard workouts. Maybe best of all, you’ll enjoy the freedom to eat a wider breadth of food than you could on a classic ketogenic diet.

Where Does The Ketogenic Diet Come From?

People have inadvertently followed ketogenic diets for as long as they’ve walked the earth. Before the advent of agriculture, when humans had to hunt and gather their food, it was common to fast for long periods and then take in mostly fat and protein foods, with only limited carbohydrates coming from berries and vegetables. Avoiding food—particularly carbs—for long periods makes your body think that food is scarce, and it responds by making several adjustments to become more efficient with your energy. You don’t have to fast to make a ketogenic diet effective, but the two are often done in combination for the best results.

Suprisingly, Research has found that ketogenic diets have been formally prescribed to treat epilepsy since before 500 B.C. In the 1920s, they were adopted by Johns Hopkins Medical Center as a means of treating epileptic children, and have been used there ever since. In recent years, ketogenic diets have been investigated for their potential in treating several diseases (see “What Are The Health Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet?”)

How Will a Ketogenic Diet Help Me Lose Weight?

Since you begin to burn more fat for fuel, ketogenic diets make losing pure body fat much easier.

There’s a hormonal component at play too. When you eat carbs, your blood sugar (glucose) rises sharply. It rises when you eat anything, but carbs convert most quickly to glucose. The pancreas releases insulin to take excess sugar out of the bloodstream, storing most of it as fat. Because ketogenic diets minimize carb intake, insulin levels are kept low, limiting the calories that can be stored in your fat cells.

This is often cited as a reason why ketogenic diets tend to outperform low-fat diets in clinical trials. A study in the journal Lipids found that ketogenic dieters lost almost twice as much weight as a group following a low-fat diet over 12 weeks, even though calorie intake in both groups was the same. Incredibly, ketogenic diets often promote weight loss even when calories aren’t controlled. A trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine allowed a keto group to consume as many protein and fat-rich foods as they wanted, while the low-fat dieters had to restrict their calories. After six months, the low-carb eaters enjoyed significantly greater weight loss, and still slightly more after a whole year.

If this makes you question the old adage that “a calorie is a calorie,” and that it’s the overall number of calories you eat that determines whether you gain or lose weight, you’re right to be skeptical. A study from Nutrition & Metabolism had subjects follow either a ketogenic diet or a low-fat diet and then switch diets for the same amount of time (50 days for the men in the study; 30 days for the women). In each case, the participants tried to cut 500 calories from what they had been eating, but in the keto approach, the men ended up eating significantly more. Nevertheless, cutting carbs worked better for losing fat for both men and women across the board. More impressive still is the fact that the men lost three times as much fat directly from around their waists as they did dieting on low fat.

Results are one thing, but no diet will work long-term if it makes you miserable to follow it. You’ll quit, return to your old ways of eating, and regain the weight. But this is where a ketogenic or Mod Keto approach really shines. Fats and proteins are highly satiating; eating them keeps you feeling fuller, so you’re less likely to feel like you’re “starving”—even when your calories are low—and you break your diet to pig out. A study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association on overweight women found that not only did they lose more weight on keto than they did with a higher-carb, lower-fat plan, they reported feeling less hungry throughout the diet.

As we recently reported in our rebuttal to the Netflix documentary What The Health, two of the earliest studies that compared the effects of carb- and fat-based diets found strikingly different outcomes in how the subjects felt and behaved. Although calories were equal for both groups, the high-carb gang complained of being lethargic and depressed, while the high-fat eaters remained energetic and satiated from their meals.

What Are The Health Benefits of a Ketogenic Diet?

Apart from all the pros that come with dropping body fat, a ketogenic diet can improve several other aspects of health and even treat serious disease. A ketogenic diet can…

1. Increase focus

As we alluded to in the beginning, a carb-rich diet puts your blood sugar on a roller coaster ride all day. When it’s down, so is your ability think clearly and focus, colloquially known as “brain fog.” There hasn’t been much research on the ketogenic diet’s effect on brain fog in healthy people, but the first thing most notice after they cut carbs (even in the first day) is clearer thinking and a better attention span (that is, until they come down with the “keto flu”—see below—which is very temporary).

Ultimately, once you’re in ketosis, the brain can get 70% of its energy from ketones, so pay no attention to rumors you’ve heard that the brain “runs on carbs” and your IQ will drop when you cut them out. In addition, your body is adept at generating any additional glucose necessary through a process called gluconeogenesis.  Some find that they’re so alert on low carbs that they don’t need coffee in the morning.

2. Benefits for Epileptics

Since ketogenic diets promote better thinking, it shouldn’t be surprising to find that they have other positive effects on the brain too. Epilepsy is a brain disease that causes seizures and loss of consciousness. Research has shown that a ketogenic diet can help reduce symptoms in about half of epileptic patients. Furthermore, a study in The Lancet found that children who followed a ketogenic diet for three months—and previously hadn’t responded to medication—saw their seizures decrease by an average of 75%.

3. Benefits to Cancer Therapy

Cancers thrive under high-glucose conditions where there is a lot of sugar in the bloodstream. It stands to reason then that reducing glucose levels would help to combat cancer cells. This is one theory behind why ketogenic diets are effective for treating tumors, particularly in the brain and digestive tract. A 2015 article in the International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology sums up the findings of multiple studies on ketogenic diets and cancer with the following: “there is increasing evidence that the ketogenic diet may also be beneficial as an adjuvant cancer therapy by potentiating the antitumor effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.”

4. Benefits for Cardiovascular Health

Based on mainstream media fear mongering, you might think that a diet high in meat and animal products could damage your heart, but research on ketogenic diets shows the opposite. A review of studies that pitted low-carb and low-fat diets against each other for better heart health found that the low-carb approach was more effective for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease after six months and at least as effective (if not more) after 12 months. A 2012 meta-analysis in Obesity Reviews—23 studies examined; data collected from more than 1,100 subjects—confirmed the favorable effects of keto dieting on major cardiovascular risk factors.

5. Benefits for Skin Health

Remember when your mom would tell you that your zits were caused by all the junk food you ate? She may not have been crazy after all. A 2012 review in Skin Pharmacology and Physiology concluded that a ketogenic diet used as a short-term intervention (30–60 days) can support hormone levels that affect acne.

6. Eliminate Food Allergens From Diet

Many people have allergies or intolerances to the gluten in wheat, as well as beans and sugary foods, without even realizing it. They assume that digestive problems and brain fog are a normal part of life, but they don’t have to be. As these foods aren’t allowed on a ketogenic diet, you may notice near-instant relief upon eliminating them. See “What Can’t I Eat On A Ketogenic Diet” for a full list of banned foods.

What Can I Eat On A Ketogenic Diet?

In short, lots of fat and protein. Many times, when ketogenic diets are prescribed, dieters aren’t asked to restrict their intake of either nutrient in any way—that includes letting people eat as many saturated fats as they like. Although there are exceptions, many people find that relying on fat and protein keeps them satisfied to the point where they don’t feel the need to eat a lot of food. They don’t overeat, so they don’t have to keep close watch of their calories.

One of the great pleasures that a ketogenic diet offers is the liberal consumption of classic “guy foods.” You’re free to eat burgers (as long as they’re without a bun), cheese, and even bacon—provided that you’re sourcing them from high-quality, organic, suppliers. Here’s a list of the main food sources that get the keto stamp of approval.

Meat

Classic ketogenic diets don’t make any distinction about the quality and sourcing of your meats. Most diet researchers who are looking to help people lose weight quickly in a clinical setting don’t care if they eat grass-fed organic beef versus ground chuck that comes from a feedlot—but we do. There are proven nutritional benefits to consuming naturally sourced vs. conventional meats, especially in the long term. Do your best to eat organic, pasture-raised meats: red meat, chicken and turkey, and game meats. The Mod Keto diet we like uses these whenever possible.

Whole eggs

Preferably from pasture-raised hens and high in omega-3 fats (for the same reasons as organic meat).

Fish

Always wild caught if possible and the fattier the better. Salmon, trout, mackerel, and sardines are popular choices, whereas the larger predatory fish like tuna and swordfish are typically high in toxic metals like mercury and should be avoided most of the time.

Dairy

Organic and from grass-fed cows is crucial here. Butter, cream, unprocessed cheese (cheddar, not Velveeta). Note: milk is NOT included due to its carb content.

Avocados

Bring on the guacamole!

Fibrous vegetables

Greens, peppers, onions, garlic, cauliflower, and so on. Although technically a fruit, and fruit intake should be limited (see “What Can’t I Eat on a Ketogenic Diet” below), tomatoes are allowed, as they’re low in carbs.

Unrefined oils

Coconut, avocado, and extra-virgin olive oil, primarily.

Nuts and seeds

Go easy on these. While they’re great sources of fat, nuts and seeds contain small amounts of carbohydrate that can easily add up to something significant because they’re fairly easy to overeat (how many times have you absent-mindedly killed a jar of almond butter or a bag of pistachios?). If you’re following Mod Keto, they’re OK, but watch your portions. Macadamia nuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts are some of the safest choices.

Some condiments

Salt, pepper, salsa, mustard, horseradish, and various herbs and spices.

What Can’t I Eat on a Ketogenic Diet?

Basically, anything high in carbs—no matter how nutritious it is otherwise—should be minimized or banned from your kitchen.

Sugar

This encompasses soda, fruit juice, smoothies, pastries, candy, and desserts, as well as some condiments like ketchup and barbecue sauce.

Alcohol

No smart diet allows you to booze, but in addition to the problematic effects of alcohol by itself, most drinks contain sugar. However, the occasional small serving of dry red wine may not kick you out of ketosis or otherwise spoil your fat-burning efforts.

Processed foods

Crackers, chips, or any snacks labeled as “low-fat,” no matter what other nutritional benefits they may claim. Also included here: foods that contain sugar alcohols (such as sorbitol or xylitol). These are common in “sugar-free” foods and may negatively affect ketone levels.

Fruit

The sugar content is too great. However, small amounts of berries are low in sugar, and can be part of a ketogenic diet.

Grains

Oats, corn, rice, pasta, bread, and other wheat-based products. See “Are There Any Other Exceptions To The Rules?” below.

Beans

Peas, lentils, kidney beans, garbanzos, etc. Again, see our section on exceptions.

Processed fats and oils

Mayonnaise, soybean oil, canola oil, and other vegetable oils.

Are Starchy Vegetables Keto?

On a strict keto diet plan, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, and other root vegetables and tubers are blackballed. However, if you’re doing a ketogenic diet and working out, or the Mod Keto diet we like, you may want some extra carbs to support your workouts, and these foods should be your main source. See “I Work Out. Can I Do A Ketogenic Diet?”

Are There Any Other Exceptions To The Rules?

On Mod Keto, you can get away with eating moderate amounts of other carb-based foods such as fermented bread (sourdough), sprouted grains, and chickpeas. This version allows for a broader selection of foods because it recognizes the nutritional benefits of some carb foods regardless of their lack of compliance with a strict keto diet. Sourdough and sprouted grains, for example, contain numerous vitamins and minerals in a highly digestible form, and chickpeas are high in fiber, slowing down your body’s digestion of their carbohydrates and preventing the blood sugar spikes that raise insulin. When these foods are eaten late in the day or after workouts, the small hazards they pose to the effectiveness of ketogenic dieting are greatly offset and don’t outweigh the benefits. See “I Work Out. Can I Do A Ketogenic Diet?”

What Does A Day of Keto Meals Look Like?

Below is a sample day of eating for someone who’s just easing into a ketogenic diet.

Breakfast

Omelet made with (organic) eggs, tomato, and mixed peppers, cooked in coconut oil. Sliced avocado.

Lunch

Grilled (wild caught) salmon, salad dressed with olive oil and vinegar

Snack

Handful of cheese (from grass-fed, organic dairy), handful of almonds

Dinner

(Grass-fed) burger topped with salsa and (organic) bacon, asparagus spears dressed with (organic, grass-fed) butter.

As mentioned earlier, protein can raise insulin just as carbs can. The body actually makes carbs from protein in a process called gluconeogenesis, so it’s important that any high-protein food you eat be paired with fat and fiber sources to slow its digestion and keep insulin in check. Never eat egg whites—go with whole eggs and pair them with avocado. White fish are lean, so cook them in butter or oil, and eat them with vegetables.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, to get better results, consider cutting the number of meals you eat back and combining the diet with long fasts (called intermittent fasting). For example, start by skipping breakfast. Remember that our Paleolithic ancestors discovered ketosis out of necessity—they had to hunt and forage for food, and often went long stretches without any. Scientists believe that many of the benefits of going keto come from its mimicking the early stages of starvation. Your body is in fight-or-flight mode, which helps account for the alertness you experience. To take full advantage of the diet, you can gradually scale back to having one meal per day at night.

This isn’t as severe as it sounds. Without eating, your mind will be sharp and you’ll burn fat at a greater rate. To control hunger, you can drink water and coffee, blended with butter or MCT Oil, as needed (see “What Supplements Can I Take on a Ketogenic Diet?” below). At night, you can eat as much as you want. This strategy works well for people looking to lose weight (especially the very overweight) and improve general health.

Note, however, that if you’re an athlete, you’ll probably need to take in more food to support your activity and muscle mass. See “I Work Out. Is A Ketogenic Diet Right For Me?”

What Is The “Keto Flu?”

As your body switches over from fueling itself with carbohydrate to fat, there is going to be a little bit of a lag. This is what people call the Keto Flu, since at some point during the first two weeks of a ketogenic diet people can feel lethargic, moody, have difficulty sleeping, and even develop bad breath. Stick with it. All of this is normal and will pass as your body adjusts to ketosis. The bad breath is the result of a specific kind of ketone that exits the body through breath; you can mask it with a chlorophyll– or sugar-free mint.

It takes anywhere from three to six months to become fully adapted to using ketones, but the worst should be behind you in a matter of days, and you’ll be feeling better than ever.

Is the Ketogenic Diet Safe?

We listed keto’s numerous health benefits above, but a diet that’s heavy on meat and all but bans fruit and whole grains flies in the face of conventional nutrition dogma, leaving many to wonder if going keto might be dangerous long-term.

For most reasonably healthy adults, there’s no evidence to suggest that it is. Interestingly, our colleagues at Healthline.com unearthed a particularly powerful piece of evidence from the US Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board. Their 2005 report clearly states that, “The lower limit of dietary carbohydrates compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed.” While they don’t recommend consuming no carbs at all, and neither do we, it goes to show that extremely low doses are not only safe but natural as well.

How Do I Know If I’m In Ketosis?

The only way to be sure is by testing your blood glucose and ketone levels with a monitor (we like the Precision Xtra, available on amazon.com for $40). But not only is this invasive (you have to prick your finger), it can get expensive, as the monitor requires test strips too which can be five dollars each. Ketosis can also be measured through devices that analyze breath and urine, but these aren’t as accurate.

A low-tech, low-cost way to check that you’re on the right track is look for the telltale signs: keto flu and bad breath in the early stages, and then reduced hunger and fast weight loss. If you’re watching your carbs and staying true to the diet, it’s just a matter of time before you settle into ketosis—or close enough to it (if you’re following the Mod Keto protocol) to see and feel results.

I Work Out. Is a Ketogenic Diet Right For Me?

Sports nutrition science has long preached that carbohydrates are the body’s best and preferred fuel source during exercise, but research is emerging to suggest that they don’t have to be. A study published in Nutrition Metabolism looked at overweight women who weight trained on a ketogenic diet, finding that they lost body fat without significant loss of lean body mass.

Another trial from the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that a month of keto dieting didn’t negatively affect performance in gymnasts while decreasing their body fat levels. Furthermore, the researchers determined that muscle was spared specifically due to ketosis. In other words, despite a low-calorie intake, the athletes didn’t lose significant amounts of muscle because their bodies used ketones for fuel—not protein from their muscle tissue.

Other studies have shown that ketogenic diets don’t hurt strength or endurance (once the athlete is fully adapted to them), but if you’re a dedicated gym goer or highly active person, we don’t see a need to take the textbook keto approach. A more moderate, low-carb plan (such as Mod Keto) will work fine. According to Onnit’s Director of Total Human Optimization, Kyle Kingsbury, a former pro athlete who has experimented with low-carb diets for years, getting 40–60% of your calories from fat, 20–40% from protein, and 20% from carbs is a good balance that will give you the weight loss and focus benefits of ketosis without the potential for low energy or slow recovery from exercise.

If you’re a more passive exerciser and not doing aggressive workouts like high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which is characterized by short bursts of all-out work efforts interspersed with short rest periods, you won’t need as many carbs and can therefore increase your fats even more. In that case, a diet closer to 65% fat, 25% protein, and 10% carbs may be more appropriate.

Dominic D’Agostino, one of the world’s foremost researchers of ketogenic diets—and an amateur bodybuilder—has said that he personally takes in 65%–70% of his calories from fat and 20–30% from protein.

Try timing the carbs you do take in strategically. Carbing up at night after you’ve trained will make your liver and muscles soak up the carbs they need to recover from the workout and fuel your next one. Starchy, slow-releasing carbs like potatoes and other tubers would be perfect. Do NOT eat carbs before you train, as they will replace fat as your fuel source for the workout.

How Do I Set Up A Diet?

The beauty of a low-carb/ketogenic diet is its simplicity. For most people, eating more fat in place of carbs will prevent overeating and lower insulin levels so you lose weight quickly and without having to track calories or macros. Start with that.

However, if you’re an athlete or regular exerciser, or you find you’ve hit a plateau with your diet, you need to start reading labels and recording what you eat. Above, we gave you percentages of total calories to follow, which begs the question, “how many calories should I be eating?” The answer depends on your goals.

If you want to lose weight, multiply your current body weight by 10–12. If you’re very overweight, choose the body weight you’d like to have and times that by 10–12. This isn’t an exact science; you just need a starting point. You can adjust your calories from there as things progress.

If your goal is to maintain your weight but change your body composition (a little more muscle, a little less fat), multiply your body weight by 13–15.

For example, a highly active 180-pound man who wants to lose weight doing Mod Keto would set his calories at 2,200 (180 x 12 = 2160). Fat will make up 60% of his diet, which is 1,320 calories (0.60 x 2200). Since there are nine calories per gram of fat, he’ll eat about 150 grams of fat daily.

Twenty percent of 2,200 is 440 calories, or 110 grams each of protein and carbohydrate (as protein and carbs both contain four calories per gram).

So, in short, this 180-pounder should aim for 2,200 calories consisting of 150 grams fat, 110 grams protein, and 110 grams carbs to diet down.

Whether you work out or not, do your best to consume the bulk of your carbs in the evening with dinner. Not only will this keep your mind sharp during the day when you most need it to be, it will further help your body adapt to using fat for fuel.

What Supplements Can I Take on a Ketogenic Diet?

Going keto is much easier than it used to be. Products now exist that can help you reach ketosis sooner and bring you back into it after a cheat meal here and there. Exogenous ketones—including beta-hydroxybutarate—are ketones made in a lab that function just like the ones your body makes from fat. They’re particularly beneficial in combating the keto flu, helping you think more clearly while your body makes the adjustment.

MCT oil is another go-to for ketogenic dieters. A study in the journal Diabetes found that medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs)—a type of saturated fat—improve cognitive function when blood sugar is low, encouraging the body to generate more ketones for the brain to run on. And, as we reported in our defense of coconut oil last summer, MCT’s are burned quickly for energy. A Journal of Nutrition study comparing subjects who consumed MCT’s or the same amount of long-chain fats lost significantly greater body fat after 12 weeks. Meanwhile, research from 2015 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition revealed that subjects who consumed supplemental MCT’s ate less at meals afterward than those who were given processed corn oil. Their glucose raised less after a meal and their leptin, a hormone that promotes satiety, was higher.

Remember that proteins can raise insulin levels just as carbs do, potentially pushing you out of ketosis or preventing you from reaching it. The ever-popular whey protein is one such offender. In its place, you can supplement with an essential amino acid product. Take a look at products like NatureAminos, which you can pick up HERE. Amino acids do act on insulin, but not to the same extent as whey. You’ll get the muscle-building components of protein in an even more digestible form without threatening your ketogenic diet.

The post The Ketogenic Diet For Weight Loss, Energy, and Better Health appeared first on Onnit Academy.

So, if you’re interested in being vegan and keto, here’s how to do it.

The Complete Vegan Keto Diet and Food List

What Is A Vegan Keto Diet?

First, let’s be clear about what these terms “vegan” and “keto” really mean.

Vegans consume no animal products. Like vegetarians, they don’t eat meat, poultry, or fish, but they also avoid dairy, eggs, and other foods that contain even trace amounts of animal ingredients. Most vegans won’t eat gelatin (made from bones), casein (a milk protein), and fish oil supplements, or refined sugar (some brands of which use cow bones as a whitening agent).

There are many benefits to a vegan diet, including some that affect health and longevity. The authors of a 2016 study found evidence that reducing animal-based foods (when they’re conventionally raised on factory farms, that is, not organic) may reduce the incidence of diabetes, obesity, cataracts, and heart disease. Other people go vegan for ethical reasons, believing animal consumption to be cruel and harmful to the environment.

Now, what about those keto guys and gals?

Ketogenic diets originated in the 1920s as a treatment for epilepsy, but they’ve since been credited for promoting a number of health benefits ranging from improved insulin sensitivity to everyday mental clarity, in addition to fast weight loss. Strict ketogenic—or “keto”—dieters limit carbohydrate intake to about 5% of their daily calories while keeping protein intake at around 20%. Fats, then, make up close to 75% of their calories. (For more details on setting up various ketogenic diets, see our guide HERE.)

Restricting carbs and relying on dietary fat causes the liver to convert fat into molecules called ketones, which are used as fuel. When ketones show up above a certain threshold in your urine or in a breath test, you’re officially in what’s known as ketosis, and your body is running on ketones.

One big reason people go keto is sustained energy. When you don’t eat copious amounts of carbs, levels of insulin—the hormone that controls blood sugar—remain much steadier than they do on the carbohydrate-based diet most people are used to. When your blood sugar is stable, you don’t have afternoon energy crashes that make you want to fall asleep at your desk. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that a ketogenic diet controlled blood sugar more effectively than a more standard, low-calorie diet that was high in carbs.

Keto diets may also make it easier to burn extra fat off your waistline. Research from 2013 in the British Journal of Nutrition found that keto dieters lost more weight long-term than those who ate a low-fat diet.

Of course, one of the big complaints about a keto diet is that—like a vegan approach—it’s very restrictive and can be hard to stick to. That’s why we like to make people aware of a slightly less rigid approach we call Mod Keto that offers much of the same benefits as a strict keto diet but is much easier to follow long-term. With Mod Keto, carbs are raised to about 20% of your total caloric intake, protein to 20–40%, and fat is reduced to 40–60%. While not technically ketogenic (your body will probably not produce appreciable ketones at these levels), the higher protein and carb allowance supports workouts and activity better while still stabilizing blood sugar and promoting fat burning.

So we’ve got vegan and we’ve got keto… Put them together and you’ve got a plan that has you eating a higher-fat, lower-carb menu that is also devoid of animal products.

It sounds simple enough in theory, but the two approaches can be contradictory. Low-carb, high-fat meat, fish, and poultry are staples for keto dieters, but they don’t work at all for vegans. Meanwhile, high-protein legumes and meat substitutes are go-to’s for vegans, but their carb content makes them verboten for keto adherents.

How, then, does a person balance the two?

The Vegan Keto Food List

The goal for the vegan keto-dieter is to eat:

• plenty of plant-based fats
• some plant-based proteins
• as few carbs possible

Below are some foods that fit the vegan-keto bill nicely, courtesy of Liz MacDowell, N.C., founder of meatfreeketo.com. “This is basically every vegan keto-friendly whole food in your typical North American grocery store,” she says, “which can help take care of the what-can-you-eat-on-vegan-keto question.”

Good protein sources are marked with a “p”, while foods that have a higher-carb content (and should, therefore, be eaten sparingly) are marked with an asterisk (*).

Nuts

• Almonds*
• Brazil nuts
• Hazelnuts/filberts
• Macadamia nuts
• Pecans
• Peanuts*
• Pine nuts*
• Walnuts

Seeds

• Chia
• Hemp
• Pumpkin
• Sunflower

Nut & Seed Butters

• Almond butter
• Coconut butter/coconut manna (“meat” of the coconut)
• Hazelnut butter
• Macadamia nut butter
• Peanut butter
• Pecan butter
• Sunflower seed butter
• Tahini Walnut butter

Other Whole-Food Fat Sources

• • • Avocados
    • Coconuts
    • Olives

Healthy Oils

• • • Almond oil
    • Avocado oil
    • Cacao butter
    • Coconut oil
    • Flaxseed oil
    • Hazelnut oil
    • Macadamia nut oil
    • MCT oil
    • Olive oil

Vegetables

• • • Artichoke hearts
    • Arugula
    • Asparagus
    • Bell peppers
    • Beets*
    • Bok choy
    • Broccoli
    • Brussels sprouts*
    • Cabbage
    • Carrots*
    • Cauliflower
    • Celery
    • Celeriac*
    • Chard
    • Collards
    • Cucumbers
    • Daikon radish
    • Dandelion greens
    • Eggplant
    • Endive
    • Fennel
    • Fiddleheads
    • Garlic
    • Jicama*
    • Kale*
    • Kohlrabi
    • Lettuce (all types)
    • Mushrooms
    • Mustard greens
    • Okra
    • Onion
    • Radishes
    • Rhubarb
    • Rutabaga*
    • Shallots
    • Spinach
    • Squash—winter*
    • Squash—summer
    • Swiss chard
    • Turnips
    • Zucchini

Fruits

• • • Avocados
    • Blueberries*
    • Coconuts
    • Cranberries
    • Lemons
    • Limes
    • Olives
    • Raspberries
    • Strawberries
    • Tomatoes
    • Watermelon

Sauces & Condiments

• • • Chili sauce
    • Hot sauce
    • Hummus*
    • Mustard
    • Soy sauce/tamari
    • Salsa
    • Tomato sauce
    • Vinegar

Vegan Keto Fridge Staples

• • • Apple cider vinegar
    • Dairy-free yogurt*
    • Dairy-free cheese*
    • Pickles
    • Micro-greens
    • Sauerkraut
    • Seitan*(p)
    • Sprouts (all kinds)
    • Tempeh (p)
    • Tofu (p)

Vegan Keto Pantry Staples

• • • Almond flour
    • Artichoke hearts
    • Baking powder
    • Baking soda
    • Coconut flour
    • Coconut milk (canned, full fat)
    • Cocoa or cacao powder
    • Dark chocolate (85% and up)
    • Glucomannan powder
    • Hearts of palm
    • Jackfruit (green, canned in brine)
    • Psyllium Husk
    • Nutritional yeast
    • Vanilla extract (most brands OK, but check for sugar)

Other Vegan Keto Meal Staples

• • • Herbs and spices
    • Edamame
    • Kelp noodles
    • Kelp flakes
    • Lupini beans*(p)
    • Shirataki noodles
    • Nori sheets
    • Roasted seaweed

Foods You CAN’T EAT On A Vegan Keto Diet

• • • Meat, fish, poultry, dairy, eggs, other animal products
    • Gelatin
    • Sugar (refined, cane, honey, corn syrup, and all other forms)
    • Grains (wheat, pasta, rice)Legumes (beans)
    • Starchy vegetables (yams, potatoes)
    • High-carb nuts (chestnuts, cashews, pistachios)
    • Partially-hydrogenated oils (trans fats)
    • Refined vegetable oils**

**Even though they’re not derived from animals and are high in fat, oils such as canola, corn, rapeseed, and margarine are highly processed and have a poor ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids. They promote inflammation in the body. Because they have low smoke points, these oils are also terrible choices for cooking. High heat will turn the fats in the oil rancid, and make it even more unhealthy, causing damage to your heart, neurological problems, and other health woes. Always cook with saturated fats, such as those found in coconut and red palm oil.

How Do I Limit Carbs on a Ketogenic Vegan Diet?

In our sandwich-with-a-side-of-bread culture, cutting carbs down to the wire trips many people up. “Exact numbers vary person to person, but in general, strict keto dieters need to consume less than 50 grams of carbs a day,” says exercise physiologist Michael T. Nelson, Ph.D. (miketnelson.com). “Some people need to go as low as 30 grams.” The Mod Keto approach allows two to three times as many, but it’s still very low-carb compared to the diet of the average American. (For reference, one banana, one apple, or a single slice of bread would put you over your daily carb allowance on a strict keto diet.)

Cutting out grains, rice, bread, and pasta will reduce your carb intake substantially, but you’ll also have to cut way back on nearly all fruits (exceptions are in the food list above, though even those should be eaten sparingly). Starchy vegetables like potatoes and yams are out, too. And the sugary dressings and sauces you may be so accustomed to that you don’t even question them anymore… well, start questioning them.

If you’re longing for carbs so badly that you feel your resolve to stay on the diet is breaking, it’s possible to trick your brain that you’re eating them by making approved foods look more like your starchy favorites. Cauliflower can be grated into “rice,” or boiled and mashed like potatoes. You can slice zucchini into noodles to (sort of) replicate pasta. See “Vegan Substitutions for the Keto Diet” below.
But by and large, you’ll simply have to develop a taste for fattier foods and rely on them to supply energy in place of carbs. Avocados, coconut oil, and nuts are all filling, flavorful options that can also power your workouts.

And speaking of working out, if you’re a gym rat or avid runner, prepare for your workouts to suck for a while until your body fully adapts to the diet. If you’re cutting out carbs for the first time, your body will need two weeks or more (and sometimes months) to fully support the demands of exercise with ketones. And if you’ve been relying on animal products, you may find it difficult to recover without the full array of amino acids that every serving of animal protein provides. You’ve chosen a hard road to travel, nutritionally, but don’t lose heart. Time and persistence will force your body to accommodate just about any regimen you subject it to, and there are plenty of people whose performance has thrived on unconventional diets.

A 2012 study found that gymnasts on a strict ketogenic diet for only 30 days lost weight without losing strength. The researchers concluded that keto eating may actually prove advantageous to athletes in weight-class sports since it could allow them to keep their strength up when competing at lighter body weights.

How Do I Get Enough Protein on the Ketogenic Vegan Diet?

For anyone following any vegan diet, and athletes especially, the question always comes up: “How do you get enough protein?” Nelson recommends about 0.7g of protein per pound of your goal body weight as a baseline daily intake for active people—and most nutritionists recommend up to one gram per pound if you’re weight training. (Goal body weight means the amount you want to weigh—not the number that currently comes up on the scale. So, if you weigh 205 pounds but remember looking and feeling your best when you weighed 175, eat 0.7g of protein x 175, or about 120 grams daily.)

Your main challenge will be to find plant-based protein sources to hit that number that isn’t also high in carbs.

To get an idea of what that entails, consider that an average-sized person who eats about 2,000 calories a day will need 100–200g protein daily (on the lower end for strict keto dieters, and on the higher side for those going the Mod Keto route). A three-quarter cup serving of sunflower seeds nets you 25–30g protein, but also costs you 10g of carbs. Almonds have a similar protein-to-carb ratio at 30g to 15g per cup. The key is to accumulate enough protein from vegan sources without letting your carbs creep up too high.

Your best bet for low-carb vegan protein may be hemp seeds, which provides 30g protein and 8g fiber (NOT counted as carbs) in a mere half cup. Seitan, which is made from wheat, is another good choice and offers about 18g protein and 2g carbs every three ounces. Tofu and tempeh rank high as well (tofu has an 8:1 ratio of protein to carbs; tempeh is about 6:1).

If you’re willing to go the supplement route, hemp and other vegan-sourced protein powders such as rice and pea, which have about a 5:1 protein-to-carb ratio, are the best choices and may be indispensable for athletes and workout fiends.

If you were doing a more conventional ketogenic diet previously and relying on animal foods, you may have only counted the protein in those foods toward your allotment for the day because they are complete sources. In other words, the protein in animal products contains all the essential amino acids that your body needs from food and in substantial amounts. This is a rare find in plant foods, and the reason that bodybuilders have historically kept track of the protein they eat from chicken, beef, and fish, but don’t consider the amount they take in from vegetables, grains, and nuts. The thing is, though, while they may be less bioavailable than animal foods, plant proteins are still usable by your body and still count toward your total—and if you’re going to forgo animal products entirely, you’ll need to get them in to support muscle, performance, and general health. Otherwise, you’ll be protein deficient.

Vegans have long known that they can’t get all the amino acids they need from one source of plant protein, so they make an effort to eat a diverse selection of them and often combine foods in the same meal to get a complimentary assortment of aminos. You don’t need to do this at every meal—your body can hold on to the aminos from one food a few hours until you eat another food with aminos that complement them and form a complete protein. But don’t get in the habit of basing your meals around only tofu or only hemp. Eat as broad a menu as you can to ensure the richest nutritional intake you can. (See more reasons to limit tofu under the vegan substitutes list below.)

Vegan Substitutes for the Keto Diet

If you’re already a keto eater used to animal products, the list below will give you ideas on how to switch to zero-cruelty food options while keeping carbs low. (Likewise, it will help vegans find lower-carb alternatives to their starchy or sugary favorites.) As always, be extra sure you’re staying faithful to the diet by checking labels for the presence of added sugar, carbs, and hydrogenated oils (harmful, processed fats that have no place in any healthy diet).

Replace the foods you’re currently eating in the left-hand column with those in the right-hand one.

Dairy foods

Grains and starches

Snacks

Desserts

Processed soy-based meat substitutes (such as Boca Burgers) and protein powders are major go-to’s for people transitioning to vegan diets, but they come with a catch. A 2016 position paper published by Virginia State University explains that soy contains isoflavones, a kind of plant estrogen that can act like the female hormone in humans. While typical serving sizes (one to three of soy foods, or less than 25g of soy protein from non-concentrated sources like tofu) have not been shown to be problematic, amounts more than that (totaling around 100mg isoflavones or greater daily) could negatively impact testosterone. To our thinking, why take the risk? It may be best for a keto dieter to get the majority of his/her protein from nuts, seeds, vegetables, and supplements and less from soy products, apart from the occasional slice of tofu.

Dominic D’Agostino, Ph.D., one of the world’s foremost ketogenic diet researchers and founder of ketonutrition.org, agrees. “I generally avoid soy isolate and soy milk,” he says. “But I don’t think this is a major concern unless you are consuming large amounts of soy.” Note that fermented soy products—such as soy sauce and tempeh—don’t pose the same risk, and can, therefore, be eaten more liberally.

Vegan Keto Diet Sample Meal Plan

The following menu, courtesy of Dr. Nelson, will give you an idea of how a day of eating on a vegan keto diet could look (with a Mod Keto carb allowance). One thing’s for sure: you can eat a high volume of food without having to worry about taking in too many calories, so you’re unlikely to gain weight by accident with this style of eating. It’s easy to stay satiated due to the fat content and the abundance of fresh vegetables makes this diet rich in phytonutrients and fiber. On the downside, it’s very tough to get enough protein in. As you can see, aiming for the bare minimum amount—20% of calories—almost certainly requires supplementation.

Breakfast

Smoothie made with:
Rice protein powder (30g protein)
½ cup mixed berries
1 tbsp MCT oil***
1 ½ tbsp almond butter
1 cup chaga tea

Lunch

3 servings tofu (300g)
2 cups asparagus, baked
2 tbsp MCT oil, as dressing

Snack

Salad with:
1 green bell pepper
2 cups cremini mushrooms
4 oz chopped onion
1 serving tempeh (100g)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 oz vegan teriyaki sauce

Dinner

Salad with:
2 cups spinach
4 oz cucumber
4 oz tomato
1 cup red cabbage, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
¼ cup walnuts

Totals: 1,728 calories, 86g protein, 78g carbs, and 125g fat

***Whether you go full or Mod Keto, supplementing with MCT oil can help support ketosis by providing a quick-burning fat for fuel, says D’Agostino. Other helpful strategies for making a keto diet more user-friendly, he says, include “eating in a time-restricted window [such as 16 hours of fasting followed by an eight-hour period in which you get all your food in], and breaking the fast with a ketone supplement. You can have a whole-food vegan keto meal a few hours later.”

While it hasn’t been formally studied, “it is generally observed that, if you are keto-adapted,” says D’Agostino, “it is easy to fast for prolonged periods of time. This has practical benefits for occupations where stopping to eat would be an inconvenience—such as for military personnel—and jobs where you do not want to lose the flow of productivity.” If you do get hungry during a fast, D’Agostino recommends taking a supplement that provides ketones (known as exogenous ketones), which will help sustain ketosis and energy. “I typically take a ketone supplement late afternoon and follow up with a whole-food meal in the evening,” he says.

Common Vegan Keto Deficiencies (And How to Fix Them)

OK, you’ve banished nearly all carbs from your diet, kicked out the animal products, found a way to get all your protein in, and have fallen in love with avocados. You’ve pulled off the triple-Axel of diets… or have you?

In your admirable pursuit of both personal and planetary health, there’s still a good chance you may become deficient in one or more key nutrients essential for long-term health. These nutrients include:

Vitamin B12 (aka cobalamin)

It’s essential for your skin, eyes, hair, and nervous system, Metabolically, it helps you digest protein, fats, and carbs. Unfortunately, B12 is hard to come by in plant foods. Some decent vegan, lower-carb food sources include nutritional yeast, fortified almond milk (which only has 1g carbs/serving) and nori (purple seaweed, 0.5g carbs)
Still, most plant foods that offer B12 pack a lot of carbs at the same time (you’ll blow through 5g carbs getting your B12 RDA in nutritional yeast), so Nelson suggests getting the vitamin via a vegan supplement. Look for one that provides 6–10mcg of methylcobalamin (a form of B12), as opposed to cyanocobalamin, which is absorbed more readily

DHA and EPA

These omega-3 fats provide building blocks for cellular structures throughout the body and aid in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Fish oil is the most common source of DHA and EPA, but a good vegan source—and one that, arguably, offers a better concentration of DHA—is algae (which is where those oily fish get their omega-3s from anyway). By supplementing with algae oil, you’re effectively cutting out the middle-fish. Aim for about 300mg/day.

Iron

This mineral is the key ingredient in hemoglobin, which transports oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. When levels get low, hemoglobin drops, and energy and vitality take a nosedive. Hair and nails get brittle and weak. If you’ve ever met a vegetarian who looks pale and routinely complains of exhaustion, low iron is often the reason.
Vegetable-sourced iron, known as non-heme iron, is harder to absorb than heme iron, which is found in animal products. This is why iron levels can plummet even when a plant-based dieter eats iron-rich foods like Swiss chard, nuts, and seeds. It’s wise, then, for vegan keto eaters to add a vegan-based iron supplement to their diets. This goes double for women, who lose some iron every month through menstruation. For women 19–50, 18mg of iron per day is recommended.

Vegan Keto Diet Recipes

Being a vegan keto dieter doesn’t have to limit you to salads and smoothies. It is possible to enjoy more gourmet fare by getting a little creative with how you prepare food. Liz MacDowell, a holistic nutrition consultant, and longtime keto dieter herself, offers up the following recipes, also available on her site meatfreeketo.com.

Vegan Chili “Fish” Tacos With Hempseed Sour Cream

For the “fish”:

1 can hearts of palm, drained, rinsed, and chopped
2 tbsp tamari, soy sauce, or liquid aminos
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp Sriracha or chili paste
1 tbsp sesame oil

For the hempseed sour cream:

1 cup hulled hempseeds
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup water
pinch of salt

Fixings

Romaine lettuce boats for taco shells
About a ¼ cup shredded purple cabbage
1 scallion, chopped
kelp flakes to taste (optional)
juice of 1 lime

Directions

1. Add all hempseed sour cream ingredients to a blender and process until smooth. Add water if you want a smoother, creamier texture. Set aside.
2. Place a saucepan over low heat and pour in the sesame oil. Add the hearts of palm mixture from step 1 and sauté until everything is warm and the excess liquid is absorbed (about 5 minutes).
3. Let the hearts cool a bit and then assemble tacos by layering the hearts in the lettuce boats first, then the cabbage, sour cream, and scallions. Sprinkle kelp flakes on top (if desired) and finish with lime juice.

Servings: 2, Calories per serving: 215, Protein per serving: 11g, Carbs per serving: 4g, Fat per serving: 16g

Vegan Keto Protein Brownies

Ingredients

1 ½ cups warm water
½ cup peanut butter
¼ cup sugar substitute
2 scoops plant-based protein powder
¼ cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut flour
2 tsp baking powder

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and coat a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. In a bowl, combine the water, peanut butter, and sugar substitute.
2. In a separate bowl, sift together protein powder, cocoa, coconut flour, and baking powder.
3. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ones. A thick batter with a frosting-like texture will form.
4. Scoop the batter into the pan, smooth the surface, and bake 40–45 minutes (check that it’s done by inserting a knife; it should come out clean). Let cool before serving.

Servings: 8 brownies, Calories per serving: 157, Protein per serving: 12.5g, Carbs per serving: 4.2g, Fat per serving: 9g

Low-Carb Sandwich Bread (Soy-, Grain-, and Gluten-Free)

If going keto has you missing bread, this substitute offers much of the flavor and texture of real dough without the carbs or gluten.

Ingredients

½ cup psyllium husks
3 tbsp ground flax seed
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt (add up to 1 tsp if using unsalted peanut butter)
1 cup water
½ cup peanut butter (almond and sunflower seed butter work too)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add psyllium, ground flax seed, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined.
2. Add water to the mixture and continue whisking until all the water has been absorbed. Mix in peanut butter until the mixture forms a uniform dough.
3. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Scoop mounds of the dough onto the paper and flatten them into discs that are about a quarter-inch thick. Bake 60 minutes.

Servings: 4 rolls, Calories per serving: 252, Protein per serving: 9g, Carbs per serving: 4g, Fat per serving: 12.5g

Want even more recipe options? Pick up The Ketogenic Cookbook by Jimmy Moore. It’s the most comprehensive collection of tasty keto-friendly eats we’ve come across yet.

The post The Complete Vegan Keto Diet and Food List appeared first on Onnit Academy.

We brought in Zach Rocheleau, king of food porn, of The Flexible Dieting Lifestyle to show us his skills. He’s created two keto recipes that are going to blow your mind. Want to eat pizza and cookie dough while still feeling good about it? We got you. Behold the Keto Pepperoni Pizza (cauliflower crust not included) and Keto Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

You’re welcome.

Keto Pepperoni Pizza

By: Zach Rocheleau, The Flexible Dieting Lifestyle
Yields: 1 small pizza
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients (Keto Crust)

50g almond flour (3.5 tbsp.)
5g coconut flour (1.5 tsp.)
30g whole milk ricotta (⅛ cup)
56g (2oz) shredded monterey jack cheese (or any full-fat cheese you want)
1 pasture-raised egg
2g baking powder (½ tsp)
Dash of dried oregano and dried basil

Ingredients (Toppings)

60g no-sugar-added marinara of choice (¼ cup)
28g shredded Monterey Jack cheese (1 oz)
6 uncured pepperonis

DIRECTIONS

1) Preheat your oven to 450 degree Fahrenheit. Add your ricotta and 2 oz. of Monterey Jack cheese into a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds. Then take out and mix until they are full formed together.
2) Now you will add your egg and mix that in. In a separate bowl, mix together your dry ingredients to avoid any clumps. Then add those a little bit at a time and start to mix them in with cheese and egg mixture. Once you’ve mixed them around a good bit, you should have a super thick paste like consistency.
3) Now you will take your pizza pan, add some parchment paper to it, and add your dough on top. Make sure to have a bowl of warm water to wet your hands because the dough will be too sticky to handle if not. So dip your fingers into the warm water and then start to spread your dough out. You are just spreading it out by pressing your fingers into the dough and just working it out bigger and bigger into a pizza shape. Continue to wet your fingers.
4) So now once you have a solid pizza shape, take a fork and poke some holes in it to ensure it doesn’t bubble up. Now add to your oven to cook for about 12-15 minute. You are cooking until it is golden.
5) Once pizza is done, take out of the oven and add your pizza toppings and add back in for about 5 minutes. Then put on broil for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the cheese turns golden on top. Slice up and enjoy this heavenly Keto Pizza!

Pro Tip: If you want to bring down the macros a bit, you can use half the amount of cheese in the base of the dough (drop to 28g) and use more 30g more of the ricotta.

Macronutrients
9 net carbs, 63g fat, 18g carbohydrates, 9g fiber, 42g protein

Keto Edible Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

By: Zach Rocheleau, The Flexible DIeting Lifestyle
Yields: 1 bowl (serves 2-3)
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

INGREDIENTS

42g grass-fed or pastured butter, room temperature (3 Tbsp)
28g cashew butter, room temperature (2 Tbsp)
14g full-fat organic cream cheese, room temperature (1 Tbsp)
120g unsweetened vanilla almond milk (4oz)
42g coconut flour (¼ cup)
2g vanilla extract (can omit this if you use the drops) (½ tsp.)
6 drops of Sweet Leaf Liquid Stevia vanilla creme (Can sub 2g Zero Cal Sweetener of your choice)
15g Lily’s Stevia-sweetened chocolate chips (1 Tbsp)

DIRECTIONS

1) If not at room temperature, add butter, cashew butter and cream cheese to a microwave safe bowl and add them to the microwave for 15 seconds to soften. Then mix together.
2) Now add your almond milk and sweet drops. Mix all that together. Now add half your coconut flour and mix together. Then add the rest and mix. Once it is pretty thick, add your chocolate chips and store in the fridge. I like to do this overnight because the longer it is in the fridge, the more the coconut flour will thicken it up.
3) Then take out and enjoy! Remember sweetness is super relative. You can always add more. So feel free to add more drops or sweetener if you want it be a bit more sweet 🙂

Pro Tip: If you want to lower the carbs a bit and add more protein, you can use 15g of protein and take out 21g of your coconut flour to balance it out!

Macros for bowl:
20g net carbs, 63g fat, 42g carbs, 22g fiber, 16g protein

The post Have Your Pizza And Cookie Dough Too With These 2 Keto Recipes appeared first on Onnit Academy.

We’ve long suggested that a lower-carb, higher-fat eating approach is best for most people, and new research from the UK just added further support to that stance. Published in February, a meta-analysis of 12 different studies that included more than 300,000 people from around the world found that those following diets comprising foods that are high on the glycemic index (GI), and with a large glycemic load (GL), were at a significantly greater risk for cardiovascular disease.

What Are Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load?

The glycemic index is a reference guide for the effect that the carbohydrate content of a food has on your blood sugar in relation to pure glucose. Foods are assigned numbers according to how quickly they raise blood sugar. For example, pure glucose has a GI of 100 (read: pretty damn high), so fast-digesting, insulin-spiking foods like white bread, pastries, and cornflakes that come in at 70 or above on the index are therefore considered high-glycemic foods.

Foods with high GI scores are often poor choices to eat, as they’re processed and low in nutrients. However, this isn’t always the case, and this is why scientists also take into account a food’s glycemic load. The GL of a food compares its potential to raise blood sugar to other foods that contain the same number of carbs as a way of assessing food quality. It’s calculated by multiplying the GI of the food by the grams of carbs in a serving of it, and then dividing by 100.

For instance, both watermelon and a donut have a GI of 76, but one serving of the melon is only 11g carbs, versus 23g in the donut. Watermelon has a GL of 8, and the donut a GL of 17, so the watermelon is the healthier option. (A glycemic load of around 20 or greater is consider a high-GL food.) Another example is fiber-rich parsnips. They rank higher on the index than pasta, but have a much lower GL.

A person’s dietary GL is the sum of the GL’s for all the foods he/she eats.

Sugar and Disease

Research shows that people who make a habit of eating foods that are both high GI and GL develop health problems. It’s presumed that their insulin is up all day long trying to bring down the blood sugar spikes that their carb-dense foods cause them, and that leads to weight gain and decreased insulin sensitivity. A study that analyzed data from 1909 to 1997 found that the increased consumption of refined carbohydrates (specifically, corn syrup) by Americans, in conjunction with a declining intake of fiber, paralleled the increase in cases of type 2 diabetes in the 20^th century. Meanwhile, a 2014 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that consumption of high-GI and GL foods was associated with a roughly 50% greater risk of developing diabetes.

Too many refined carbs is connected to heart trouble too. A meta-analysis of 14 studies determined subjects were at a 13% greater risk of cardiovascular disease when following a high-GI diet, and a 23% greater risk when eating a high-GL diet. Other research indicates that women in particular are more likely to suffer cardiovascular problems when eating high-GI and GL. A 2015 meta-analysis of seven studies found that dietary GL was associated with a 35% increased risk of ischemic stroke.

Based on these findings, most nutrition experts agree that consumption of refined carbs seem to be a common denominator in people who are unhealthy, but they’ve never been sure that carbs themselves are to blame—usually because of confounding factors like smoking, poor overall diet, and other lifestyle choices that make it impossible to determine which contributor is having the biggest impact. The new UK analysis, however, could provide some clarity.

What makes it such a standout is that the researchers used the Bradford Hill criteria, a set of principles used to determine a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect. In other words, Bradford Hill groups together criteria that can indicate causation from studies that only show correlation. All nine categories for probable causality were met in this case, so the findings didn’t just show that eating refined carbs was a common trait in people who were developing cardiovascular disease—as plenty of research in the past has already done. They actually gave the researchers reason to say that the refined carbs could be the cause of cardiovascular disease. Also worth noting: all of the studies’ subjects were healthy when the research began, and over years of follow-ups, the ones who ate high-GI and GL were determined to be in increasingly poorer health.

How To Eat To Live Longer

To be clear, while the UK study indicates refined carbs as a possible cause of heart attacks and strokes, it does not completely exonerate fat either. It also doesn’t paint all carbs with the same brush. More studies will need to be done, but the researchers concluded that people should pay more attention to the “quality” of carbs they eat. This echoes advice from the Linus Pauling Institute to lower the glycemic load of your diet by eating more nuts, non-starchy vegetables, and whole grains, while avoiding sweets, white bread, and white rice.

Of course, ketogenic diets are always chock full of low-GI and GL foods, and have been shown many times to help reduce the risk of heart disease and many other health woes. Download our FREE ebook to going keto, and see our guide to staying keto at restaurants and fast food windows.

The post Processed Carbs May Cause Heart Disease appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Whether you are already an avid keto dieter, feel better consuming fewer carbs, or simply want more healthy recipes incorporating whole foods, this guide to the best keto lunch ideas, recipes & easy keto meal prep will make your life easier and full of flavor, every day.`

What Fast Food Lunch Can I Eat While Keto?

You can get a great keto meal at just about any drive-through window, as long as you’re prepared to tell your servers how you want it. At burger and chicken joints, simply ask them to hold the bun/bread, or remember to take it off yourself. Some restaurants, such as In-N-Out Burger™, won’t require you to modify the existing menu. Just order the burger “protein style”. For that reason, if we had to choose one, the Protein Style hamburger at In-N-Out™ is our pick for the single best keto hamburger out there. You won’t have to explain yourself to the staff, the burger tastes great, and only packs 240 calories and 11 grams carbs for its 17 grams of fat and 13 grams protein, but the In-N-Out™ franchise is limited to just a few states in the southwest (California, mainly).

A close second, and a more widely available option, would be, believe it or not, McDonald’s™. If you order a bunless burger there, you’ll get 100 calories, six grams of fat, and eight grams protein for only three carbs.

With any burger order, watch out for special sauces—see if you can get them on the side or not at all. Apart from that, the only thing decidedly un-keto about standard orders at burger/sandwich shops is the dough they serve the meat on. The same rules apply to egg-based breakfasts. Lose the bun and the hashbrowns, and maybe double down on the eggs and cheese. If an avocado bowl is an option (such as at El Pollo Loco™), go for it.

For lighter fare, almost every convenience stop offers some kind of salad. Just be sure to pick out the croutons and be conservative with the dressing.

To learn about more ways you can eat while following a Ketogenic diet, check out our Keto Diet Guide to Restaurants, Fast Food, and Takeout HERE.

10 Best Keto Recipes

1. Sheet Pan Eggs with Sausage, Asparagus, and Goat Cheese

Yields: 12 slices
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

● 12 spears of asparagus
● 1 yellow onion, organic
● 2 Andouille chicken sausage, nitrate free
● ¼ cup. goat cheese
● 12-14 eggs, pasture raised
● ¼ cup heavy cream
● 2 tbsp. grass-fed butter
● Himalayan salt, to taste
● Black pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350-degrees Fahrenheit
2. Slice the onion. When caramelizing onions, you want to slice against the grain, so chop off each end (the bud and the root), then lay the onion on one of the flat surfaces. Slice onion in half through the core. Lay flat again, and starting at the root end, slice against the grain.
3. Chop asparagus and sausages into 1” bite-size pieces. In a medium saute pan over medium heat, add the chopped sausage. Once the edges begin to brown, add the onion and 1 tbsp. of butter. Turn down to medium-low heat. Once the onions soften and begin to caramelize, add in the asparagus. Saute for another 5 minutes, and set aside.
4. Grease sheet pan with raised edges using remaining butter.
5. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, heavy cream, and season with salt and pepper.
6. Add sauteed sausage, onions and asparagus to the sheet pan. Top with egg mixture. Dot with cheese evenly. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cut into squares.

*Serving ideas:

● Toss arugula in lemon juice and olive oil. Serve salad and sliced avocado on top of two egg squares.
● If you’re not following a strict ketogenic diet, you can cut the eggs into perfect-sized squares to fit a breakfast sandwich.
● Slice and store in an air-sealed container for up to three 3 days in the fridge.

2. Avocado Stuffed with BLT Chicken Salad

Yields: 2 servings
Cook time: 20 minutes
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

● 1 cup shredded rotisserie chicken
● 2 tbsp. Primal Kitchen avocado oil mayonnaise
● 3 slices uncured, nitrate-free bacon
● ½ tbsp. rendered bacon fat
● 2 tbsp. diced red onion
● Himalayan salt, black pepper & garlic powder, to taste
● 2 ripe avocados
● ¼ cup thinly sliced romaine lettuce
● ¼ tomato, diced

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400-degrees Fahrenheit. Lay bacon strips flat on raised sheet pan. Cook for 20 minutes, flipping once in between. Remove bacon and lay flat on paper towels. Save the rendered fat in the pan for this recipe and in future cooking (can I get a YAS?!)
2. In a mixing bowl, add shredded chicken, mayonnaise, diced red onion, rendered bacon fat, and spices. Mix to combine.
3. . Slice the avocados in half. Carefully remove the pits and discard. Scoop out about 1 tbsp. of avocado meat (then eat it as a pre-meal snack). Add chicken salad in each of the 4 halves.
4. Crumble bacon on top of chicken salad, then sprinkle diced tomato and lettuce on top. Serve with a spoon.

3. Kelp Noodles tossed in Homemade Pesto

Yields: 1 serving
Cook time: 10 minutes
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

● 1 12-oz. package kelp noodles
● 2 cups fresh basil
● ¼ cup toasted walnuts or pine nuts
● 4 Brazil nuts*
● 2 cloves roasted garlic**
● ½ cup Parmigiano Reggiano
● ½ lemon
● ½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
● ¼ tsp. Himalayan salt
● Black pepper, to taste

*Brazil nuts and macadamia nuts are higher in fat, lower in carbohydrates compared to other nuts making them ideal for the ketogenic diet.
**You can use raw garlic instead, but roasted garlic adds an extra complexity of flavor–in other words, it’s good!

Instructions

1. Add basil, nuts, garlic, Parmigiano Reggiano, juice from the lemon, salt and pepper to a food processor or high-powered blender. Pulse until smooth. Slowly add EVOO to the processor and continue blending.
2. Pick the largest, most sturdy pieces. Add about ¼ cup of the shredded chicken, 2-3 slices of avocado, and a sprinkle of blue cheese on top of the lettuce. Squeeze fresh lemon juice on top of the avocado slices to prevent browning. Enjoy!
3. For the kelp noodles, simply rinse. They’re naturally a bit crunchy, but if you prefer them softer, you can boil in water for 10-20 minutes until desired consistency is achieved.
4. Toss in with the pesto. Serve with a nice, fatty piece of fish or steak.

4. Keto-Friendly Lettuce Wraps

Ingredients

● Head of red leaf lettuce, or any bibb or romaine lettuce of choice
● ⅓ cup. crumbled blue cheese
● 2 ripe avocados, sliced
● 1 lemon
● ½ cup Parmigiano Reggiano
● ½ lemon
● 5 chicken breasts, USDA organic
● 13-oz bottle buffalo sauce*
● ⅓ cup chicken broth
● ½ sweet onion, diced

Directions

1. Wash and pat dry the head of lettuce.
2. Pick the largest, most sturdy pieces. Add about ¼ cup of the shredded chicken, 2-3 slices of avocado, and a sprinkle of blue cheese on top of the lettuce. Squeeze fresh lemon juice on top of the avocado slices to prevent browning. Enjoy!

5. Keto Biscuits and Gravy

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground sausage
• ½ tbsp. grass-fed butter
• ½ cup beef bone broth*
• 1 cup organic half and half
• ½ tsp. xanthan gum
• Pinch of Himalayan salt
• Black pepper, to taste

Dry Ingredients

• 1 cup super-finely ground almond flour
• ¼ cup cassava flour¼ cup coconut flour
  
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. Himalayan salt
  ½ tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. fresh rosemary, very finely chopped
• ½ tsp. onion powder

Wet Ingredients

• ½ cup organic sour cream*
• 3 tbsp. grass-fed butter, softened
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 3 large pasture-raised eggs
• 2 tbsp. organic half and half
• ½ cup organic whole-milk ricotta cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. First, mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. You might need to break up chunks of flour with a fork. In a different bowl, add the wet ingredients except for the ricotta cheese. Mix until combined.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix with a silicone spatula. Fold in the ricotta cheese.
4. Grease mold of choice. I used a standard muffin tin, but a biscuit mold would be even better! You want to opt for a higher smoke point fat or oil when baking at 400 degrees. I recommend a little grass-fed butter, rendered bacon fat, or avocado oil. If you use a biscuit mold, this will make about 7 biscuits verses about 12 muffin-size biscuits.
5. Spoon mixture into mold, and flatten the tops. This is completely optional, but for a more crisp top, coat each with an egg wash. (Whisk an egg in a small bowl, and brush over the flat tops of each mixture).
6. Place the tin or molds into the over and bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Biscuit molds may bake for a little longer. They’re done when the tops are a nice golden brown.
7. While the biscuits are cooking, make the sausage gravy. See recipe below.
8. Remove from oven. Enjoy warm!

Notes

*If you aren’t following a strict ketogenic diet, you can substitute the sour cream with a whole-fat Greek or Skyr plain yogurt instead.

What Foods Should I Avoid?

Basically, anything high in carbs—no matter how nutritious it is otherwise—should be minimized or banned from your kitchen.

Sugar

This encompasses soda, fruit juice, smoothies, pastries, candy, and desserts, as well as some condiments like ketchup and barbecue sauce.

Alcohol

No smart diet allows you to booze, but in addition to the problematic effects of alcohol by itself, most drinks contain sugar. However, the occasional small serving of dry red wine may not kick you out of ketosis or otherwise spoil your fat-burning efforts.

Processed foods

Crackers, chips, or any snacks labeled as “low-fat,” no matter what other nutritional benefits they may claim. Also included here: foods that contain sugar alcohols (such as sorbitol or xylitol). These are common in “sugar-free” foods and may negatively affect ketone levels.

Fruit

The sugar content is too great. However, small amounts of berries are low in sugar, and can be part of a ketogenic diet.

Grains

Oats, corn, rice, pasta, bread, and other wheat-based products. See “Are There Any Other Exceptions To The Rules?” below.

Beans

Peas, lentils, kidney beans, garbanzos, etc. Again, see our section on exceptions.

Processed fats and oils

Mayonnaise, soybean oil, canola oil, and other vegetable oils.

The post The Best Keto Lunch Ideas, Recipes & Easy Keto Meal Prep appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The Keto Diet Guide to Restaurants, Fast Food, and Takeout

Luckily, eating out isn’t as daunting for the dieter as it used to be. Even the strict keto/low-carb eater—who strives to avoid carbs most of the time—can find good, tasty options on the menu when indulging in almost any kind of ethnic cuisine, as well as at franchise restaurants and fast food hubs. Believe it or not, this includes Chinese and Mexican food, and chains like Buffalo Wild Wings™, McDonald’s™, and Taco Bell™.

You don’t need an iron will to see results from your diet. Just use this article as a field manual for what you should order, or ask to be modified, at several different eateries you used to think were only acceptable on cheat days.

The Challenges of Eating Out On A Keto Diet

One of the great benefits of a keto or low-carb diet is that it’s pretty simple to follow (check out our free ebook on the diet HERE if you’re not sure exactly what it entails). Stick mainly to meats and green vegetables, and you’ll be able to control your carb intake without obsessing over portion sizes.

But when you head out to a restaurant, or grab fast food, all bets are off. You really have no way of knowing for sure what they’re serving you, even when you make the safest order you can. Though some cities require restaurants to list nutrition information on every menu item, this is almost always limited to calories alone and/or the macronutrients—you don’t get to see the ingredients. And even if such data is available, you can’t trust even a big name, standardized chain to publish completely accurate information. The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reported that, on average, restaurants underestimate the calorie totals they list by 18%.

Mom-and-pop restaurants might offer better quality food in terms of ingredients, but any numbers they offer are even less reliable, as the chefs get creative and use a dash of this and a sprinkle of that to slightly vary their recipes every time. So if you can’t rely on restaurants’ self-disclosure to plan your meal, what can you turn to?

One increasingly popular option is apps that claim to “count” the calories, and, in some cases, the macros, in certain menu options. New York Magazine writer Jake Swearingen compared the leading apps out there and determined that FatSecret was the most helpful one available, given its broad database of foods and ease of use. It features a list of drop-down menu options of meals you can select to get calorie and macronutrient content. Another app, Lose It, tries to remove the legwork by presenting such info after you shoot and upload a picture of what you’re eating. While it sounds great, Swearingen writes that “it worked fine if I snapped a pic of, say, a can of ginger ale, but not so great if I snapped a pic of a chicken-salad sandwich.” The fact remains that most nutrition apps are still in their infancy and developers simply don’t have enough data yet to create a service you can rely on.

Even if you could trust the numbers in food apps, there are less obvious dangers to your keto diet and your health lurking under every lettuce wrap—things that an app or menu won’t reveal. “Forty percent of calories in an average restaurant meal come from highly processed vegetable oils,” says Brad Kearns, co-author (with Mark Sisson) of The Keto Reset Diet. “This isn’t just an issue in cheap, greasy takeout, but also in that salmon that you assume is healthy and pay $30 for.”

The trouble with such fats is that the high temperature and pressure at which they’re processed distorts their structure at a molecular level. (This is in contrast to cold-filtered, first press olive or avocado oil, which rank as healthy fats.) Such refinement means your body will treat these fats as a foreign and potentially hazardous substance, leading to inflammation and arterial dysfunction for up to 24 hours after consumption. And the trouble doesn’t end there.

According to Kearns, “Industrial vegetable oils also disrupt fat-burning because of their distorted structure. This means that even when you choose meat and veggies or a salad—which seem to be solid, keto-friendly options—the oil they’re cooked in or that’s drizzled on top can actually short-circuit ketosis.” The solution? Kearns suggests asking for your meal to be cooked in butter. The fat in butter is saturated, and therefore safe and stable at high cooking temperatures. It can’t be changed chemically, so it won’t get corrupted like polyunsaturated vegetable oils will.

If you get a stuffy waiter or counter clerk who won’t indulge you, tell him/her that you’re allergic to oil and can’t eat food that’s cooked in it. Chances are, they have butter (or lard) in the kitchen, and can make the swap.

What to Avoid Eating at Restaurants on the Keto Diet

While we don’t want to encourage dogmatism or severe restriction on any diet, there are certain categories of food that you should steer clear of most of the time if you want to keep keto. Some of the no-no’s include:

Bread and other baked goods

When you’re keto, they’re not so “good.” They pack a big calorie punch and will send your blood sugar soaring. This category includes wraps, tortillas, and any other kind of starchy vessel that may be used to hold the main ingredient of the meal.

Fruit/fruit juice

A handful of berries in your salad is fine, because the carb count will still be low. But watch out for fruits that come from a can with syrup, such as mandarin oranges and pineapple (fast food places love to throw these into salads). A cup of orange juice is essentially sugar water; order a black coffee or plain water instead.

Soda

Give the bubbly sugar water the heave-ho—there’s no room for it whatsoever on keto (or really any other diet, for that matter). Even the smallest serving size you’ll find at an eatery (12 ounces) will contain between 30 and 40 grams of carbs per serving—90–100% of which are pure sugar. This includes those trendy “all natural” brands, and restaurants that pride themselves on serving their own homemade concoctions.

High-protein platters

Everybody has a friend who delights in deepening his voice to a James Earl Jones-level tone when he orders the meat sampler at a restaurant. While meats are a keto staple, and you feel like a big man ordering them, large servings will result in a protein overload, and too much protein on keto leads to gluconeogenesis—the body making carbs out of protein. This process will raise insulin levels and take you out of ketosis.

How much meat can you get away with? The classic ketogenic diet limits protein to 20% of your day’s calories. So if you’re eating roughly 2,000 calories a day, you should have 100 grams of protein (400 calories). (Note that if you’re doing Mod Keto, a higher-protein and carbs variation of the diet that we like better for athletes and active people, you can get away with 20–40% of your calories from protein).

Consider that four ounces of most cuts of most animals (about the size of your palm) will give you 20–30 grams protein, so a meat platter in addition to a main course of fish or steak—plus your other meals throughout the day—could be pushing it. The moral of the story: don’t be afraid to eat meat, but don’t be a mountain lion, either. Thinking you can pound protein just because it’s carb-free is misleading.

Nuts

Another way that you can unexpectedly switch off ketosis is by combining multiple sources of protein. The nuts in that stir fry give it some much-needed crunch, but they have protein—and small amounts of carbs—and both can add up to take you out of ketosis. The same goes when you eat a ton of cheese or other dairy, although nuts are easier to over-consume without thinking about it.

Alcohol

Even if you choose a meal that’s largely carb-free, a bottle of wine or a pitcher of beer (or even one cocktail or margarita) can kick you out of ketosis faster than Patrick Swayze ejected those redneck troublemakers in Road House. If you do drink while dining out, you don’t have to abstain completely, but stick to a single glass of dry red or white wine, one dark beer, or a shot of whisky, gin, or vodka (see our guide to drinking alcohol on keto for more info).

Desserts

You’re kidding, right? The only exception would be if you’re at some hipster joint that serves Paleo and/or keto options like chocolate mousse made from avocado and cocoa. In which case, you may be able to indulge, guilt-free, but ask about the sugar and oil content first.

What Can I Eat At A Mexican Restaurant?

Fajitas are your best bet, as the standard ingredients (meat, vegetables) are always keto. Just skip the tortillas that come with them. For that reason, burritos, enchiladas, and corn chips are out of the question as well. If you don’t mind eating salsa, guacamole, and cheese dip without chips, they’re all acceptable sides you’re free to go to town on.

What Can I Eat At A Japanese Restaurant?

One of the best things about a Japanese steak house is that the hibachi chef often cooks in butter, so you’ll avoid those nasty industrial oils we mentioned earlier (also, who doesn’t want a front-row seat to a fast-chopping, fire-spouting food prep act that looks like it belongs in a Cirque du Soleil show?). Feel free to have the shrimp, steak, or chicken, along with some fire-grilled veggies, but avoid rice.

Due to the rice bed it’s served on, sushi isn’t keto, but sashimi (just raw fish) is. No dumplings, tempura, or sweet sauces for you, but miso soup, edamame, and seaweed dishes are fine.

What Can I Eat At A Chinese Restaurant?

Sadly, the sweet and sour chicken is off the menu for keto folk. The same goes for egg rolls, wontons, and any other entrée drowned in a sauce that’s overly sweet. Yes, the fried rice tastes great, but it’s not going to cut it if you’re determined to stay keto (ditto all the other rice choices, even unadorned versions like brown). Your servers should be able to substitute steamed vegetables for any rice side.

Relax, you still have plenty of delicious options, including stir fried beef and vegetables, Moo Goo Gai Pan, Szechuan prawns, and egg drop soup—although you should ask if they can leave out any cornstarch they might use in cooking. Somewhat surprisingly, black bean sauce doesn’t contain that many beans and is fairly low carb. Lettuce wraps and chicken skewers should be fine as well. Ask your waiter to leave out the noodles.

If you’re really craving Asian flavor but want to know exactly what’s going into your meal, try Mongolian barbecue. You can specify every ingredient in your bowl, and they have multiple meat and veggie options that come free of sugar and starches.

What Can I Eat At An Indian Restaurant?

There’s nothing like naan bread fresh out of the oven… but you won’t be having that. However, that clay cooker can offer up something else for you that’s almost as delicious: tandoori chicken. You should be good with most kebabs and chicken and goat options, from mild (korma) to medium (tikka masala) to hot (vindaloo). Meat in cream sauce dishes are purely keto.

Avoid curries with potatoes, and carb-laden side dishes like papadums, pakoras, and samosas. Order creamy saag (toasted cheese and spinach) instead. To add flavor to any meal, ask for ghee (clarified butter), which is pure fat. Raita, a dip made from yogurt, is a tasty option too.

What Can I Eat At An Italian Restaurant?

Pasta and pizza! Just kidding. Maybe…

Some Italian restaurants are now offering spaghetti squash as an alternative to grain-based noodles, and cauliflower crusts for their pizzas. If you find yourself at one that does, load them up with meat and veggie toppings.

No keto-friendly alternatives on the menu? Start with an antipasto platter—an assortment of meats, cheeses, and vegetables (although be aware of how your protein is adding up, as we warned you earlier). A thin soup such as minestrone also makes a good appetizer, if you can get them to go easy on the pasta or rice that’s usually included. Another one: carpaccio (thinly sliced beef or fish served with vegetables). For a main dish, order meatballs, steak with a side salad, shrimp, steamed clams or mussels, and cioppino (a fish stew). Say yes to olive oil, and no to sugary dressings like, fittingly, Italian. Tell them to hold the croutons and breads. Chicken and veal parmesan have plenty of fat, but the breading is too carby to be keto.

What’s the Best Keto-Friendly Fast Food?

You can get a great keto meal at just about any drive-through window, as long as you’re prepared to tell your servers how you want it. At burger and chicken joints, simply ask them to hold the bun/bread, or remember to take it off yourself. Some restaurants, such as In-N-Out Burger™, won’t require you to modify the existing menu. Just order the burger “protein style”. For that reason, if we had to choose one, the Protein Style hamburger at In-N-Out™ is our pick for the single best keto hamburger out there. You won’t have to explain yourself to the staff, the burger tastes great, and only packs 240 calories and 11 grams carbs for its 17 grams of fat and 13 grams protein, but the In-N-Out™ franchise is limited to just a few states in the southwest (California, mainly).

A close second, and a more widely available option, would be, believe it or not, McDonald’s™. If you order a bunless burger there, you’ll get 100 calories, six grams of fat, and eight grams protein for only three carbs.

With any burger order, watch out for special sauces—see if you can get them on the side or not at all. Apart from that, the only thing decidedly un-keto about standard orders at burger/sandwich shops is the dough they serve the meat on. The same rules apply to egg-based breakfasts. Lose the bun and the hashbrowns, and maybe double down on the eggs and cheese. If an avocado bowl is an option (such as at El Pollo Loco™), go for it.

For lighter fare, almost every convenience stop offers some kind of salad. Just be sure to pick out the croutons and be conservative with the dressing.

What Can I Eat At Buffalo Wild Wings™?

Chicken wings are generally very keto, given the protein and fat content, but it’s the sauces and glazes that can really get you here. However, a conservative order of regular wings with the dry lemon pepper or desert heat rubs contain just one gram of carbs per serving.

The worst offenders on the menu are the honey barbecue wings (36 grams of carbs), bourbon honey mustard (35g), and mango habanero (32g).

What Can I Eat At Chipotle™?

With 50 grams of carbs, the giant tortilla is a ketosis buster all by itself. Add rice and beans and you’re looking at a whopping 112 grams. Want a large side of chips? Now you’re up to 239 grams. The good people at Chipotle™ must have realized that their establishment was a carb-killer, because they recently rolled out a new menu of significantly lower-carb alternatives.

The aptly named Keto Salad Bowl has just 15 grams of carbs, with 42 grams of fat and 32 grams protein. The Whole30 Salad Bowl comes in at 19 grams carbs, 34 grams fat, and 27 grams protein. Then there’s the Paleo Salad Bowl, with its 21 carbs, 29 fats, and 28 proteins. Though Chipotle™ is also touting its new Double Protein Salad Bowl, steer clear if you want to stay in ketosis, as it packs in 71 grams of carbs.

What Can I Eat at Olive Garden™?

With 25 grams of carbs each, the breadsticks are not something you want to nosh on mindlessly (or at all). And while the asiago alfredo is money, it’s also a carb-fest (92 grams). Furthermore, don’t even look at the lobster mac and cheese. It packs nearly 100 grams carbs, enough to take you as far away from ketosis as the Arizona Cardinals are from a Superbowl.

So is there anything that grows in this garden you CAN eat? Absolutely. The chicken piccata comes in at just 12 grams of carbs, and while the lasagna classico has 39 grams, it tempers this with an equal amount of fat and 40 grams of protein, so Mod Keto eaters may indulge.

What Can I Eat at Taco Bell™?

Taco Bell servers will gladly prepare most of their burritos as tortilla-free bowls, and the champ might well be the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito—sans the two-tortilla shell. It’s a filling, classic-style burrito with meat, cheese, and some beans. The tortilla-less version of the Naked Egg Taco Bundle is another solid option, as is the Grande Scrambler. The main thing to avoid here is anything with rice or flour-based wraps.

The worst choices? The XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito (97 grams carbs), the Quesarito (68 grams), and, on the breakfast menu, all three varieties of the Breakfast Crunchwrap (51 grams).

What Can I Eat at McDonald’s™?

As mentioned above, just order the patty without the bun. They should be able to accommodate you at any burger spot, be it McDonald’s™, Burger King™, Wendy’s™, Five Guys™, etc. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, and other “special” dressings are still a concern, so have them taken off if you can, but the dough is the main culprit to eliminate in order to keep keto. Very few of these places will offer grass-fed beef, which isn’t ideal, but a little conventional beef eaten sporadically, despite all its hormones and antibiotics, won’t kill you.

French fries? Forget about it. Even the small size at Ronald McDonald’s™ house contains 29 grams of carbs, while the Supersize will completely detonate your keto diet with a whopping 77 grams. The Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Sandwich is a worthy opponent though: 320 calories, 14 grams fat, eight grams carbs, and a massive 42 grams protein—which is more even than their burgers, making it a good selection for higher-protein eating Mod Keto adherents.

When In Doubt, Fast

In conclusion, yes, Virginia, there are ways to stay keto when you can’t prepare your own food. You just need to be more intentional with your choices, and not concede to impatient waiters/waitresses who want to stick to what they know. If all else fails and you can’t get keto accommodations, you do have one other option to exercise: fasting.

Often times, not eating at all is a better decision than eating badly. You may need some time to adjust to it, but fasting will ultimately help you feel more alert, and that’s just what you need when you’re traveling or having a hectic day (situations that would tempt you to eat bad food from a drive-through window). One study showed that fasting helps boost the brain’s resistance to damage and degeneration, and it’s been linked to improvements in blood pressure, various health conditions, and, of course, weight loss.

And fasting doesn’t mean you can’t consume anything at all. You might be surprised how satiating water or black coffee can be—use them to tide yourself over until you can get healthy food in front of you again.

“One of the benefits of being on the keto diet is metabolic flexibility and increased resilience,” says Brad Kearns. “If you’re keto, you should be able to go for several hours without eating. So sometimes I’ll just have a handful of macadamia nuts in the morning and an omelet in the evening. I know that might sound odd to have breakfast at night, but if you’re keto, then you’re already bucking a societal convention.”

If you find yourself in a strange town, surrounded by fast food that you can’t improve with a few tweaks, treat it as an opportunity rather than a nuisance. “Try fasting and exploring a new city,” says Kearns. “Instead of spending half your trip inside, sitting down at restaurants.”

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