Starting Keto: The Cheesy Life

I like cheese— perhaps because I was born in Wisconsin, the dairy state? When my mother was young there were a lot of small cheese factories near where she lived, and she dated a few cheesemaker’s sons. They tended to have clean hands. 

Cheese is part of some recipes I use regularly, such as a cheese pancake recipe that I use for making small flatbreads. I also use cheese slices as a snack, and prefer my bun-free burgers with cheese on them.  You can add a little shredded cheese to the yolk mixture when making deviled eggs— a low-carb staple. 

What about substitutes for cheese? The only non-dairy cheese I know about that is explicitly allowed on Atkins - keto - lowcarb is tofu, or soy cheese. Tofu/soy cheese does have soy in it, which many of us don’t care to have in our food plan. If you cannot eat dairy cheese but can consume tofu, it may be a right choice for you. (What about other ‘non-dairy’ cheese substitutes? Check the label for carb count— if it is comparable to a real cheese in carb count and doesn’t have any nasty ingredients in it, you might try adding it to your eating plan.)

I used to eat American cheese when American cheese came in a big block rather than in nasty plastic-flavored slices wrapped individually in plastic. I have widened my taste to other cheeses: Colby, smoked Cheddar, Pepper Jack, Mexican blend shredded, Parmesan, Muenster, even blue cheese. I would say that the Kraft slices which are NOT wrapped in plastic might be ‘real-cheese enough,’ but a store-brand substitute I bought tasted exactly like those nasty plastic-wrapped slices even though it wasn’t wrapped in plastic. I have found American cheese in small blocks from actual cheesemakers, as well. 

Grated Parmesan cheese, along with good mayonnaise (like avocado mayonnaise) is great to put on fish of various types you are baking, or shrimp. Great for those of us who haven’t eaten fish or shrimp without breading before going keto. 

Of course, if you really can’t have dairy you have to skip the cheese. But for most of the rest of us, cheese is a good food that adds some variety to our eating plan. Next shopping trip, don’t forget the cheese!

Follow me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/nissaamaskatoj

Starting Keto: Love those Eggs!

Cuisinart Egg Cooker

When I first started doing Atkins, I would make up a batch of deviled eggs for the first day. I’d keep them in the fridge and whenever I felt hungry or wanted to eat something, I’d have a deviled egg. It got me through those first few days of getting into ketosis, which can be tough for some people. (For me it wasn’t the first time, but each time I went off Atkins and did Induction again I would have a tougher time. But the reward, greater energy, good blood sugars, and weight control, were worth a few bad days.) 

In the original Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (1972) eggs were an unlimited food, like meats. In Dr. Atkins New Diet (1994,) it is explicitly listed as a ‘free food,’ as meats are. Eggs do have a bit of carbs— 0.4 g— but it’s hard to wolf down enough eggs that the carbs will give you trouble.

Eggs have cholesterol in them, but eating food with cholesterol doesn’t give you blood cholesterol any more than eating beef makes you moo and eat grass. Eggs are full of nutrients, especially egg yolks.

The best eggs to eat are eggs from pastured poultry, which you probably have to buy from a farm or at least a farmer’s market, and pay more for. Pastured eggs have more Omega 3s. We like Omega 3s!  Farm eggs from poultry that are not pastured are the next best thing. They have stronger shells, which make them easier to get home without cracking. 

The problem with organic eggs is that organic chicken feed is not available everywhere, and where available often not in bulk. It adds to the cost. Organic chicken people also have the money to comply with state regulations for selling eggs in stores— in Michigan I’d have had to have spent thousands of dollars to build a building for handling the eggs from my 40 or so hens— and also have to pay the monthly fee to their organic organization to be allowed to call their eggs organic. So it’s mainly well-off egg corporations that can afford to produce the organic eggs you find in stores. And, frankly, I think that the pastured eggs from my totally non-government sanctioned chickens are healthier than the average grocery-store organic egg.

Are totally free range chickens producers of better eggs? Well, where I live free ranging chickens tend to become dinner for the local foxes and coyotes, which reduces the total eggs produced by the flock. It’s why I built a movable pen for my chickens during grazing season. Chickens can get fresh grass and bugs daily, but predators can’t get in to eat them. I hope. 

Raising your own chickens is not a way to save money on eggs— you have to feed the little darlings whether they are laying or not. And chicken feed in small-flock quantities costs money—plain, non-organic feed mill feed. But if raising backyard chickens is a substitute for you for having half-a-dozen big dogs, you are probably saving money. Chicken food is cheaper than dog food, and their manure can be composted for garden use.

Is cooking eggs a tough chore for you? It’s actually fairly easy to learn, and since eggs are a traditional Lenten food I will be writing some blog posts giving more details on things like cooking eggs over easy, cooking eggs in a George Foreman grill, and so on.

In the meantime I would like to share about a little gadget that I have. It’s a Cuisinart Egg Cooker, and it cooks hard or soft-boiled eggs without fuss, just by following the directions. (HINT: Read the directions.) It can cook from 1-7 normal sized eggs, fewer if you have older hens or egg-laying breeds of ducks that produce bigger eggs. You measure water into it, depending on how many eggs you have and whether you want them hard-boiled or soft boiled. It sets off a timer when the cooking is done. I immediately plunge the eggs into very cold water— ice water if I have ice in the house— and that makes them easier to peel. It’s a great aid to producing batches of hard-boiled eggs for deviled eggs or just for eating hard-boiled eggs. 

How do you like your eggs? What is the tastiest egg dish you have ever had? What kind of eggs do you normally buy/trade-for/gather from your poultry?

Starting Keto: When in Doubt, Eat Something!

Starting on the Keto * Low-Carb way of life means unlearning a lot of things we have all learned from advocates of the low-calorie, low-fat, Hunger Games diet (LCLFHG.) On low-calorie, there are no such things as allowed calories that you would be better off and a more virtuous dieter if you did not consume in full. That 350 calorie meal you are allowed— wouldn’t you be a better, thinner person if you didn’t finish it? And hunger was a sign that you were a good dieter and not a failure of a fat person.

Keto, ever since the days of Robert Atkins’ first book, has been different. There are ‘free foods’ on Atkins/lowcarb that you will actually want to eat— like bacon, steaks and pork chops. All of those items are zero carb. Atkins also encouraged people to not do things like skip breakfast. And even though I, like many in modern Keto, regularly do Intermittent Fasting, I would not encourage those new to Keto * Low-Carb to start off with skipping meals. That’s low-calorie thinking— the only good calorie is the one you don’t eat. But we don’t count calories on Keto. 

On Keto, we don’t start our Intermittent Fasting until we are already in ketosis. Ketosis is a state in which your body is fueled by fat-burning, not sugar-burning. To get into nutritional ketosis, you need to drop your high-carbohydrate diet and start on low-carb, doing two weeks of what we call ‘Induction—‘ a stricter level of low-carb. Once you are in ketosis, you don’t feel hunger, or at least you don’t feel it often. Many people, once in ketosis, skip meals without planning to do fasting because they are too busy doing things will all that new energy they get from going into ketosis. This leads to doing fasting on purpose, to help lose a bit of weight and to save time from doing that three-meals-a-day home-cooking grind. 

In Dr. Atkins’ first book, he tells case histories of some of his patients who were quite big eaters. Some ate as much as 4000 calories a day, all of low-carb allowed foods, and they still lost weight. In other books Atkins warns to eat when hungry but not to eat until you feel stuffed. Which is a good rule— eating until stuffed makes you feel uncomfortable. You can always eat more food a little later, when you no longer feel stuffed. 

Dr. Atkins encourages us to be ‘shockingly unafraid of fat.’ Yes, fat is not an evil substance that makes you fat and shortens your life. A scientific study in 1957 by Kekwick and Pawan showed that a 1000 calorie diet high in fat let people lose weight, while a 1000 calorie diet high in carbohydrates did not produce weight loss. And with a high-fat, moderate-protein, you don’t even need to count those darn calories. Just eat something (lowcarb.)

Starting Keto? Meet the Meats!

The starring food in the Keto * Low-Carb way of life has been a staple food of the human diet like since FOREVER. When humans were hunter-gatherers, they hunted. And meat, poultry & fish are the perfect low-carb foods, because nearly all of them (except scallops and the like) are zero-carb foods. See, we low-carbers DO SO have ‘free foods,’ and they are not lettuce.

You can eat the following types of meat-poultry-fish: beef, bison, venison, pork, lamb, mutton, veal, chicken, duck, goose, turkey, pheasant, guinea fowl, Cornish game hen, cod, salmon, tuna, tilapia, crab, lobster, shrimp, trout, perch…. any kind of meat from an animal, bird or fish.

You can eat any cuts of meat— steaks, chops, roasts, ground meat, chicken legs, wings or thighs, ribs, neckbones, or any other cut of meat you can get from your local farmer, fisherman or grocery store. 

FAKE MEATS, as manufactured for the vegetarian population, do not count as meats because they contain carbs. They may also be heavily processed foods. The carbs in fake meat count as carbs. Some fake meats probably should not be eaten by any ketonian. 

PROCESSED MEATS are not a major part of our eating plan. Lunchmeats of various sorts may have carb-containing fillers and even sugar added. We do not eat that stuff. Read the labels on purchased meatballs and meatloaf— these foods usually have carb-containing additives we should not have. Bacon and ham, however, though processed, are generally considered a permissible food. Meat in little cans, often found next to the canned tuna in the store, may have carbs— even budget brands of canned tuna may have a carb or two, because they add a bit of ‘vegetable broth’ or even ‘modified food starch.’ Boycott those foods wherever possible. If you are very low-income, and you get given some of these canned meats, or Spam, the carbs are low enough that you can eat them, but it is better to stick to the zero-carb meats from the meat department when you can. (The advantage of the canned meats and Spam is that they don’t need refrigeration or, in many cases, cooking. Compare the labels when you buy to get the lowest carbs you can get, though.)

KOSHER and HALAL MEATS are fully permitted on Keto * Low-Carb. It’s not a dietary sin to keep kosher!  If you are Jewish but haven’t been religious before, it is perfectly ‘kosher’ to start keeping kosher when doing Keto * Low-Carb. If it makes you more aware of what kinds of things you are putting in your body, that’s a good thing. However, if you are not even Jewish or Muslim, and are considering going kosher just because you know other people from your church who are doing it, consider whether you can actually obtain the kosher foods you need. If there is a pastured-pork producer living in your county, and you have always loved pork, maybe you need to reconsider the kosher thing.

AFRAID OF SCARY-UNHEALTHY MEAT?

Read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. This author reviews a lot of scientific research on diet, and shows how the low-fat theory got going in spite of the lack of evidence. You may find that a lot of what you have been told about meat is not true.

If you have been vegetarian, especially if you are in poor health as a result, read Ketotarian by Dr. Will Cole. It is full of meat-free Keto * Low-Carb recipes, along with a few fish recipes (for pescatarians.) 

MY KETO-RELATED TWITTER:

https://twitter.com/nissaamaskatoj

If you are a Twitter user, please consider following me on Twitter. I follow (most) back.

Put On Your Low-Carb Colored Glasses

A lot of people fail on Low-Carb, Keto or Atkins because they lack information. Dr. Jason Fung started asking his patients to fast because when he put them on a low-carb diet, they were coming back and reporting that they had given up bread and started eating pita bread. He would have his patients fast for three days right away— without doing Keto * Low-Carb and getting in ketosis which would make the fast painless.

We need to get to the point that we pick up a package of processed food, gaze at the ingredients list, and right away spot the ingredients that make the food not-for-us. We need to be able to look at a recipe and spot which ingredients are full of carbs. We need to put on our low-carb colored glasses.

The way I learned to do that is that I had an old copy of Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972.) I got it in a thrift shop in Iron Mountain, Michigan, at a time when low-carb and Atkins were considered just an old fad diet. There is a chapter in that book called: The Revolutionary Never-Hungry No-Limit Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet. (There is no chapter number in that edition, but there is an index in the front so you can find the chapter in question.)

This book chapter is essentially a diet sheet, probably based on one Dr. Atkins handed out in his practice. It tells you which foods you can eat in unlimited quantity, which ones you can have in restricted quantity, and which ones were out-of-bounds. I read that chapter multiple times until I had the content almost memorized, still read that chapter from time to time, and therefore I pretty much know what foods I can and can’t have. You need to learn that, too.

I prefer this old Atkins books to newer books because it is very practical for patients that didn’t keep food diaries, consult carbohydrate gram counters, or use modern apps to calculate macronutrient percentages. It doesn’t have you counting your carb grams, which means you are not tempted to give up your salads and your cheese and heavy cream rations to use those carb grams on a tiny portion of a high-carb food you are addicted to.

UNLIMITED FOODS

These are mostly zero-carb foods, and as such are mostly meats, poultry, fish and seafood. Eggs, which do have less than 1 gram of carbs, are also included as an unlimited food. Butter and fats, salt, pepper and spices, and water and carb-free drinks are also unlimited.

LIMITED FOODS

You are allowed the juice of ONE lemon or lime, four ounces a day of any hard, aged cheese, 4 teaspoons of heavy whipping cream.

FORBIDDEN FOODS

These are the foods that made you sick, or fat, or carb-addicted in the first place. Bread, biscuits, candy, cookies, bananas, baked beans, milk, macaroni and potatoes, among other things. You need to learn what these are— by reading the list in the Atkins book, and by reading labels in the grocery store. If that new ‘high-protein’ cereal has more grams of sugar than Froot Loops, we need to give it a pass. 

OTHER RESTRICTIONS

Many people on Keto * Low-Carb have given themselves many other restrictions— they don’t eat soy products, or green beans or alfalfa sprouts because they are ‘legumes’ just like baked beans, or they abhor ‘canola’ rapeseed oil. Sometimes the additional restrictions are based on good science. Other times they are arbitrary— such as not using butter or heavy cream because Paleolithic man didn’t keep dairy animals. Don’t jump in to following a rule just because you heard it on a podcast or read it in a keto online forum. Ask for the peer-reviewed scientific study that backs the new restriction up.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Get out your copy of Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (1972,) if you don’t have one, buy one. Find the chapter I mentioned above and bookmark it. Every morning for two weeks, start your day by reading this chapter through. You might each day pick out one kind of allowed food to buy and eat— things you already like and something new. And pick out each day one food from the ‘forbidden’ list, look up the carb count to see why it is so bad, and perhaps find substitutes for the ones you love the most.

Have you had any difficulties learning the rules for Keto * Low-Carb? Have you made mistakes and learned better? What makes you stick to it even when it’s hard? Drop me a comment!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Starting on Keto? Your reading list.

Knowing what the Keto * low-carb eating plan is really all about is important if you want to improve your health, treat health problems, or lose weight on this lifestyle. Don’t go by internet rumors, self-published ‘Keto’ books, or random web sites. Go to good sources. 

BASIC BOOKS

Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, Dr. Robert Atkins (1972)

Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, Dr. Robert Atkins, (1992)

These are the books I had you purchase and read in a previous blog post. They are still your most essential and basic books. Plus, Atkins books usually feature a batch of recipes in the back of the book. You may find some you make every week for years.

Keto Clarity, Jimmy Moore and Dr. Eric Westman (2014)

This book gives you the science behind Keto * low-carb from many different sources. Actual scientific studies are mentioned. 

Real Food Keto, Jimmy Moore and Christine Moore, NTP (Nutritional Therapy Practitioner) (2019)

This one is from Jimmy Moore and his wife. Modern keto has an emphasis on ‘real foods.’ This book will show you why. There are also recipes by Maria Emmerich. 

FOR INSPIRATION

How I Gave Up My Low-Fat Diet And Lost 40 Pounds ….And How You Can Too! Dana Carpender (2003)

Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: My Journey for Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny In One Year, Jimmy Moore (2005) 

Dana Carpender lost 40 pounds, Jimmy Moore lost 180, so both stories can inspire us. Dr. Atkins, in his many books, liked to include mini ‘case studies’ of people who lost weight and improved their health on his eating plan. All these stories help us to get inspired to get on Keto * low-carb and stay there.

COOKBOOKS

Dr. Atkins’ Diet Cookbook, Fran Gare and Helen Monica (1974)

Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Cookbook, Dr. Robert Atkin and Fran Gare ((1994)

Dr. Atkins’ Quick & Easy New Diet Cookbook, Dr. Robert Atkins & Veronica Atkins (1997)

500 Low-Carb Recipes, Dana Carpender (2002)

200 Low-Carb High-Fat Recipes, Dana Carpender (2015)

The Ketogenic Cookbook, Jimmy Moore and Maria Emmerich (2015)

Most of us need to start accumulating some Keto * low-carb cookbooks to give us ideas for making meals. There are some recipes that are rather elaborate and some that are simple. One problem in some of the cookbooks is that recipes call for low-carb specialty ingredients that are no longer being manufactured. This is why an emphasis on real foods is helpful. Your grocery store will continue to carry pork chops, heavy whipping cream and heads of cabbage far into the future, no matter what diets are the current fad. 

CARB COUNTERS

Carbohydrate Guide to Brand Names and Basic Foods, Barbara Kraus (1988)

New Carb and Calorie Counter, Dana Carpender, (2010)

Even if you have an app or a internet site available to help you count your carbs, you probably should have one or more in your home. I have two and use both to work out the carb contents of foods. The brand name foods and fast food items go out of date rapidly. It’s better to check the box on any processed food, so you know the carb grams of the current version. And of course fast-food places change their menus often, You can find the nutritional information online, but it is often useless. They presume you are going to be eating your bun, so you don’t know the amount of carbs in a beef patty with condiments, or of a fake-meat patty (which certainly will have more carbs than a meat patty!)

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Buy a few more books from this list. Continue to read your Atkins book, as assigned in the previous blog post, daily, but add some of your new books into the daily reading rotation. Be sure to give special attention to the how-to-do-the—diet chapters in the Atkins books— perhaps read a paragraph every day from those chapters until you can practically recite them. Your other books should have a place in your daily reading for variation and inspiration. Remember, you have spend many years of your life learning how to overeat carbs. Now you need to learn a new way. 

Starting on Keto? It doesn't come in a pill

Recently I was exploring the products in the Dollar General store in Stephenson, Michigan (USA.) I noticed, not far from where the few Atkins diet products were kept, there was a bottle of pills labelled ‘Keto.’

‘Keto’ is not the name of a fast-weight-loss gimmick pill! ‘Keto’ is short for ‘ketogenic’ which is the name for an EATING PLAN (or lifestyle) which puts your body into a state of KETOSIS.

Scientific research shows that the state of ketosis can have health benefits of many kinds. It can help with brain conditions such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s Disease, it can help diabetics control their blood sugars, it can help in treating cancer and may show promise in reversing diabetic kidney disease. And, oh yeah, it helps people lose weight without feeling hungry or deprived. 

This is the first post in the Starting Keto series. 

The first popular ketogenic eating plan was published by Dr. Robert Atkins in Doctor Atkins Diet Revolution in 1972. It actually advised that people test for ketosis daily! It allowed unlimited amounts of zero-carb foods like meats and fish (and eggs, which aren’t quite zero.) Other allowed foods were limited in quantity, so one could have about 20 grams of carbohydrate per day in the initial phase, called Induction. 

Many ‘keto’ advocates, such as the podcaster Jimmy Moore, started out on Atkins. Many started when the common name of the eating plan was ‘low-carb’ rather than ‘keto.’ 

There are also diets which claim to be low-carb diets but are not. Dr. Atkins warned in his first book about it— there were diets such as the Drinking Man’s Diet which restricted carbs but allowed you 60 grams of carbs a day— enough to keep you OUT of ketosis. Today, there is a diet called the ‘Controlled Carb’ diet, which allows more carbs at ONE MEAL than I can eat in a day. And it expects you to eat three meals a day, plus snacks! If the 60-grams of carb diets are more moderate-carb than low-carb, the ‘Controlled Carb’ is more of a moderate-high carb diet. 

Because ‘keto’ is often seen as a trendy fad diet right now, it’s very important to get your ‘keto’ information from a good source. Don’t pick up stuff from random web sites and blogs (not even this blog.) You need accurate information, or you will end up like the patients of Dr. Jason Fung who were put on low-carb eating plans but in their food diaries had merely replaced their ordinary bread with pita bread. They were still eating plenty of carbs!

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: If you are thinking of staring a keto *low-carb eating plan, or renewing one you tried  before, your first step is to find accurate information. BUY one of the basic Atkins books— either Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972) or Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (1992.) Read it cover-to-cover. Pay special attention to the chapter called ‘The Never-Hungry, No-Limit, Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet’ in original Atkins or Chapter 8, ‘The Rules of the Induction Diet’ in new Atkins— these are the chapters that tell you what to eat and what to restrict on your new eating plan. EXTRA CREDIT: Buy and read both books. After the first read, read about a chapter’s worth of one or the other book every day to help keep you inspired.