Meal planning on keto, the 'Steak and Salad' diet

I’ve seen ketoblogs that offer ‘meal planning’ services. I guess if you need that help and you can afford it, it wouldn’t hurt to support the keto community by buying ‘meal planning’ services. But it’s better to eventually learn to plan keto meals by yourself, based on what you and your family eat, and on any extra diet restrictions you or your family members need to cope with food allergies and such.

To learn keto meal planning, think back. How did you learn about meal planning for a conventional diet (if you did?) In my family, a typical supper had a meat item, one or two starchy-food items (potatoes, bread, buns, rice, baked beans) and a cooked vegetable. Plus a sugar-based dessert, of course.

In keto diets, we can go back to the ‘Steak and Salad’ menu plan of the original Atkins Induction. Dieters were allowed just about any meat or seafood that didn’t contain carbohydrates, or have carbohydrate breading or buns or have bread or potatoes mixed in (like meatloaf from some recipes.) And for lunch and supper every day, you could have a cup of salad, made from the vegetables on a list in the Atkins diet book of 1972. (Later versions of Atkins added more veggies because of ‘net carbs’, a concept many modern ketonians are rejecting.)

For the ‘Steak’ item: the easiest way is to buy a likely piece of meat— a steak, a pork chop, a couple of chicken thighs, fish— and cook it in a simple way, like cooking a steak in a frying pan. If you don’t know how to cook, this is the easiest way at first. I’ve learned that if I happen to buy a cut of meat I haven’t often cooked before, I can find simple ways to cook it by searching online. I also look at an old, rather basic cookbook I inherited from my mother, which usually has at least one recipe for even odd food items like venison or salsify (a root crop.) As you go on in the keto life, you can purchase a number of fine cookbooks that feature low-carb, keto or paleo recipes, and find new, more complicated ways to cook your meat.

The ‘Salad’ item: I’ve never liked salads. My mom used to make salads, and I ate them (without dressing, as we never had salad dressing at home and I never liked it once I tried it.) But a salad wasn’t my idea of food, and I certainly never in my life ordered a main-dish salad in a restaurant. I wasn’t that eager to signal my dietary virtue that I’d give up a meal for a salad. Plus, back when I was a calorie-counter I knew many main-dish salads had more calories and fat than a Big Mac. 

But once I tried Atkins and got on Induction, I ate my two salads a day and liked it. Since I live alone and my salad items or bagged salad goes bad quick, I often sprout alfalfa and other seeds to use as my salad. I often eat my sprouts right from the sprouter, without any salt! Though of course I know salt isn’t bad for you, especially good kinds of salt like sea salt or Himalayan pink salt. 

The Atkins diet instructions also give a list of low-carb vegetables that can be cooked, but doesn’t say whether a cooked vegetable can replace a daily salad or how much cooked vegetable is allowed at what level of Atkins. The original Atkins isn’t big on making you count carb grams, but I think Induction is normally about 20 grams of carb a day, and other levels add back about 5g carbs each. A standard keto diet today is also about 20 grams of carb. But then, salad veggies and low-carb cooked veggies don’t use up that many grams.

I would suggest that for a meal with more variety, you might try cutting the raw salad in 1/2, and using about a half-cup of an allowed veggie for cooked vegetables. So in that case, you could have ‘Steak’ and ‘Salad’ and ‘Veggie’ as your menu items for supper. 

For an even fancier supper, you can have soup as a ‘first course.’ Broth is allowed, and home-made bone broth is often highly recommended these days. You can add a bit of veggies, or some cream or cheese, to make your broth into a soup. If you can handle extra carbs, you might even add bean sprouts or pea or lentil sprouts to create an analogue to bean, pea or lentil soups. (The hard part is finding the carb grams for pea or lentil sprouts.)

What about desserts? There are lots of keto dessert recipes. But I would caution against making any of them a major part of your keto life. Keto desserts nearly always use up some of your carb grams for the day. Many also use sugar alcohols, which they tell you that you don’t have to count. The problem is, that your body may not have gotten the message. It may metabolize some or all of the sugar alcohols. So, daily desserts should no longer be a thing for you. Get to enjoy the tastes of your other allowed foods for a while. Don’t work on your dessert-crafting skills until you have learned to cook or craft the more basic keto menu items.

So: your meal plan is: 

‘Steak’, 

‘Salad’, 

optional ‘Veggie’, 

optional ‘Soup,’ 

very rarely ‘Dessert.'

But how does that adapt for other meals besides supper?

For lunch, we often pick a lighter meal. Instead of a big piece of meat for the ‘Steak’ menu item, we may add a little chicken or tuna to our salad, or have ‘Soup’ and ‘Salad.’ For breakfast, if we eat breakfast, we often can eat ‘breakfast-y food items like eggs or omelets with bacon or ham. But we don’t have to eat ‘breakfast food’ for breakfast, and if we like breakfast food but are on the No-Breakfast Plan, we can have our low-carb pancakes or our omelets later in the day. Egg based foods, being a protein source, go under the ‘Steak’ part of our menu plan, and cheese or cheese-and-egg items fall in this category as well. Tofu, too. If you eat tofu and know how to make it taste like food and don’t worry about the soy content. 

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The Original Atkins book has a set of suggested meal plans at the beginning of the recipe section. These might also be of help. And there are many cookbook authors--- Dana Carpender, Maria Emmerich--- who have whole books full of ketogenic/low-carb recipes.

That 'Potato Pay' commercial: Dietary Child Abuse?

Have you seen that ‘Potato Pay’ commercial that shows a parent trying to get a child to ‘clean her plate’ by offering a bribe of French fries? I can’t imagine anything more likely to harm children than the practices encouraged in that commercial. The most common ‘vegetable’ offered young kids is already French fries, do they really need more? Cutting the ‘crappy carbage’ (junk-food carbohydrates) out of children’s diets is needed, not teaching them that a particularly bad and unhealthy carb is a ‘reward’ for eating other foods. Here is what is wrong with the commercial:

1. Potatoes are starchy, unhealthy carbs, and French fries are concentrated bad carbs. A baked potato is about 33 grams of carbs— in other words, more than you should eat in a day, on keto, even if no other carbs are eaten. What about French fries? I used to make home-made French fries— I would cut up 2 to 3 potatoes to make enough French fries for one serving. Making potatoes into French fries concentrates the bad carbs and helps you eat more carbs as a serving. Could you really eat 2 to 3 baked potatoes at supper? Could your children? But it’s not tough to eat 2-3 potatoes worth of French fries and want more.
2. It assumes that the food that parents want kids to eat— vegetables?— are not tasty and have to be forced down. This is often the result of families who don’t know how to cook vegetables, or who fear that adding a tasty sauce to the vegetables is somehow not good. If you cook it right, vegetables can be a favorite food!
3. It assumes parents must enforce the ‘clean plate club.’ The idea of parents compelling their children to ‘clean their plates’ comes from the days before processed foods and snack foods were kept in every home. Food had to be cooked, and anyone, child or adult, who didn’t eat a meal would have to go hungry until the next meal. Some parents would go beyond urging their children to eat while the food was there, and actually punish children for not ‘cleaning their plate.’ I remember sitting in front of a plate of cooling food for what seemed like hours, because I had to stay at the table until I cleaned my plate, and I wasn’t going to eat some of the things on my plate, so there was a stalemate. The problem with the ‘clean plate club’ is that it encourages children to eat— perhaps to eat a great quantity— when they are not hungry, and to eat unappetizing or horrible foods in order to be seen as ‘good.’ 
4. It may assume the constant-snacking culture as OK for kids. Why do parents still enforce the clean-plate club today? Most parents don’t cook, and most homes contain ready-to-eat processed foods. If any nutritious foods are provided in the home, they are usually part of a meal. But children who snack between meals may not be hungry at meals. In the old days, parents could allow their kids to eat little at one meal, knowing they would be more hungry at the next. But in modern times, kids who don’t eat much at a meal will snack afterwards, and might never be hungry enough to address a healthy food item, since they can always snack on something full of carbs and sugars later. So parents unwisely try to force children to clean their plates in order to get some healthy eating in there.
5. It may be trying to counteract the knowledge that potatoes are not ‘vegetables’ in the way non-starchy vegetables are. In the past, some parents thought that because potatoes come from a plant, potatoes in any form were ‘vegetables’ in the same way that broccoli, cabbage and turnips are. So they were interchangeable items on the family’s dinner plates. And of course children liked French fries better than tasteless, overcooked cabbage. But now some parents are aware of the benefits of low-carb eating, and might avoid using potatoes as a vegetable-substitute. So— use them as a food-bribe. 
6. Overall, the ‘potato-pay’ concept adds to the problem of childhood obesity. We now know that overweight is not caused by people being ‘bad’ and eating ‘too much.’ It is all about insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, and these problems seem to be increasing at the same time people are adopting ever more carb-heavy diets. Children need to learn how to eat lower-carb foods. They need to learn to eat when they are hungry and not-eat when they feel ‘full’, satisfied or satiated. They need to be more in touch with what their bodies are asking for, not more obedient to what their nervous and perhaps ill-informed parents might want them to eat. Bribing children to eat— something— with a few morsels of junk food is no substitute for adopting a family-wide healthy (and low-carb) diet. Don’t be fooled. 

Questions: When you were a child, did your parents try to get you to 'clean your plate?' Did that practice affect your adult eating habits? Positively or negatively? Do you ever have the feeling that you need to be 'rewarded' for sticking to your keto diet by a high-carb food? Are there any keto-acceptable foods that feel like a reward to you?

Keto Comfort Food by Maria Emmerich
I have not yet bought this particular Maria Emmerich book as I am on disability with limited funds, but I have another cook-book by the author and am sure that this one will help you feed your children or your Inner Child better than the Potato-Pay concept will. 

Is a ketodiet bad because it helps people who can't exercise?

There are some uninformed people out there--- like Jillian Michaels--- who give as one criticism of the ketodiet that people who cannot or do not exercise can lose weight on it, as well as clear up various health problems.

OK, I know that in our ignorant-of-facts culture loads of people believe that exercise somehow cures people of being fat, or punishes them appropriately for being fat. We had examples like that horrible 'Biggest Loser' show where morbidly obese people were screamed at by skinny personal trainers to keep exercising on their gym machines when they were too exhausted or in too much pain to continue, so that they could temporarily lose some weight and then gain it back.

But the fact is that you can't out-run or out-exercise a bad diet. A fat guy who buys a gym membership and 'goes to the gym' daily is just going to end up a poorer fat guy.

And there is also the fact that many people who who need the various benefits of a ketodiet cannot exercise because of health issues. Some people are bedridden or in wheelchairs. Some people have serious heart defects. Some people have chronic fatigue to the point that when they get home from work they barely have the energy for survival chores like laundry and cooking dinner. Do we really want to tell these people they just have to go die because they can't do the kind of exercise Jillian Michael likes?

I have read more that one story of keto diet success in which the person went on keto, but did not start to exercise until the ketodiet had helped them lose weight and/or gain back some energy. Is that a bad thing that these people were helped?

I think the exercise gurus/professionals like Jillian Michaels need to get off their high horse and realize you don't need to do gym exercise to be healthier! And not everyone has a nearby gym--- I think the closest one to where I live is in the next state!

A good diet (ketogenic) and getting enough exercise are two different things. And formal exercise is not the only kind of exercise--- what about people who walk to their place of work or school, or who climb up and down stairs instead of using an elevator? That exercise counts, too.

There is scientific research that shows that a keto diet is a healthy and helpful diet. Is exercise helpful? Yes, but so is wearing your seatbelt and avoiding poker games with Mafia hit men. Any form of healthier living is an improvement, and you should not have to do one thing to be allowed to do others.

A recommended book by Gary Taubes, and a not-recommended book by Jillian Michaels. I'm reading the Taubes book right now, and am learning a lot. The language is kind of technical, though!

 

"Can you have fruit juice on the No-Breakfast Plan?"

Fruit juice for breakfast on the No-Breakfast Plan? Or even whole fruit? Since fruits and fruit juices are full of (natural) sugars, and in the case of juice, fast-acting sugars, it’s fairly plain that they will stimulate your insulin response and your hunger. 

But it’s understandable that some people think that fruit juice is allowed on the No-Breakfast Plan. Paul C. Bragg, in ‘The Miracle of Fasting,’ speaks of the No-Breakfast Plan but then says it allows fruit. The Diamonds in ‘Fit for Life’ say the body isn’t ready for food in the mornings, but allow fruit (which is a food) during breakfast hours. Ori Hofmekler in ‘The Warrior Diet’ wants you to divide up your day into fasting and feasting periods— but allows juices, fruit and vegetable, during ‘fasting.’

This is wrong. Fasting is not eating, though drinking water is allowed. Some fasting experts also allow certain calorie/carb-free beverages, like tea, coffee, and herbal tisanes (‘herb tea.’) But others reject that. And adding food— especially a carb-filled food that diabetics should not be having— to a fast is breaking the fast.

There is no such thing as juice fasting. “Health nuts” and the manufacturers of high-end juicing machines have been talking about ‘juice fasting’ for years, but a juice diet is not fasting. It does not have the benefits of true fasting. There are people who because of health issues (like diabetes) cannot go on a juice diet, but who can fast (once a doctor adjusts their medications.)

The No-Breakfast Plan is about fasting. It’s beginner-level fasting for just a short time during the day. Since daily hormonal changes make people the least hungry at breakfast time, and the most hungry in the evenings at supper time, the No-Breakfast Plan takes advantage of this to let you fast at the easiest time of day. 

Fruit is a problem. Early humans didn’t have the kind of specially bred, sweet and tasty fruits available. They certainly didn’t have them year-round at the grocery store. So humans are not adapted to be fruit eaters or fruitarians. Dr. Richard K. Bernstein, author of ‘Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution’ and ‘The Diabetes Diet’, who is a Type 1 diabetic, has not eaten any fruit for decades. He eats a low-carb diet, which along with his insulin controls his diabetes. His example shows that you don’t need fruit to live.

Fasting, including the No-Breakfast Plan, gives your body a break. When you are eating, your body has to produce insulin— maybe too much insulin, if you have Insulin Resistance as so many of us do. Your body has to digest the food— three times a day, or more if you eat snacks. And your mind has to plan meals, and perhaps cook and clean up after them. On the No-Breakfast Plan, your body gets a daily break from these things in the morning. 

Fruit eating is not fasting. Eating fruit breaks your fast, and takes you off the true No-Breakfast Plan into some fruit-eating plan. Now, your body may be in good enough shape that you can eat a little fruit from your own garden, in season. But not while you are fasting! Eating while fasting is like having sex during celibacy or committing murders while ‘respecting all life.’ A contradiction in terms. 

What the No-Breakfast Plan is. It is extending the natural fasting we do every night while we are asleep. There is no law that compels us to start eating at 7 or 8 in the morning. There is no law that insists that you must have 3 large meals every day. At some periods of history two meals were the norm, anyway. When you are on the No-Breakfast Plan, in the mornings you drink water. Perhaps pure distilled water. And you may have certain calorie/carb-free beverages such as tea, coffee and herbal tisanes. 

On longer fasts many people need a little home-made bone broth to help them through it. Dr. Jason Fung even allows people to add a bit of cream or MCT oil to a beverage to help them get through. But on the No-Breakfast Plan, it’s best not to make use of the broth unless you have persistent hunger that will drive you to eat before the appropriate time. (If you are very new to the No-Breakfast Plan, you might plan on consuming broth in the mornings at first, and stopping it when you are used to morning fasting.)

The No-Breakfast Plan can help you get started doing longer, more intense fasts, and has benefits of its own when you don’t do longer fasting, but it’s important to gain real fasting knowledge to do it correctly. The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore is perhaps the best source of information— please consider reading it.  

Recommended books for the No-Breakfast Plan:

Note that the Dewey book is very old-fashioned and not up-to-date or based on modern research. But it's interesting from a historical perspective. 

Fasting: Day 4 of 7?

Today I am on the fourth day of a fast which may go for as many as 7 days. My blood sugar was 78mg/dL this morning— lower than the norm of 84mg/dL. Lower-than-84 blood sugars are normal when fasting, and I understand are OK when you are not having low-blood-sugar symptoms as a result. 

Between my previous fasts and my keto lifestyle, I had to buy some new clothes, only size XL (1X) after having had to buy 2X clothes before. (Since I shopped a lot at thrift shops, I also had some 3X clothes, if they were cute and not too baggy.) But I noticed my new XL shorts were big on me, and so I’ve recently purchased some items in size L. They all fit!  Bad news is, since I’m on disability for my Autism Spectrum Disorder, I can’t afford to run out and replace all my new XL clothes with L size clothes— not when I’m on track to possibly fit in M size clothes soon! (I have not been so slim since my high-school-hell years.)

I must point out that fasting is not about quick-weight-loss. Quick-weight-loss is a crock. It only leads to quick-weight-regain. The keto-and-fasting approach is about making lifelong changes that will provide long-term health improvements. It may make you lose weight, and lose weight easily, but it’s not about quickly becoming slim-and-‘sexy.’ 

My last 5 day fast— my first fast of that length— started impulsively, when I realized I was not hungry, and not in the mood to cook any food that day. My non-hunger pretty much lasted the first 2 days of the fast. Day 3, I had some hunger, but not enough to make me seriously think of eating something. Days 4 and 5 were easier.

This fast was more intentional. I had a few blood sugar readings which were way better than my previous, not-doing-strict-keto ones, but not as good as the ones just after my last 5 day fast. I had a bit more hunger in the first three days as I had last time.

While water-only fasting is the gold standard of fasting, Dr. Jason Fung allows plain tea and black coffee while fasting, allows home-made bone broth, and allows 1 cup of ‘bulletproof’ beverage per day— in one part of the book, suggesting that the ‘bulletproof’ additions to the beverage be kept down to a lower level than in normal ‘bulletproof’ beverages.

I have made use of a lot of broth during this fasting period. I schedule my broth drinking at my mealtimes, I don’t wait to determine if I am really that hungry before I consume it. (As the fast goes on, if my hunger remains gone, I will try to skip some of the broth helpings.) 

I am doing a ‘mini-cheat’ on Dr. Fung’s instructions. He specifies home-made bone broth, and I do have some on hand, but don’t want to use it all up too quickly— being on disability, the ingredients for bone broth are hard to afford sometimes. So I used canned broth, broth powder, and even dashi powder (I have plans to get the fixings for home-made dashi, a kind of fish broth from Japan, very soon.) I’m trying to have at least 1 cup of authentic, home-made bone broth every day, though.

I also am drinking tea regularly, as well as some cups of peppermint tisane (‘herb tea’) in the evenings. I’m feeling fairly well, though I don’t have the energy boost I experienced on my last fast. I’ve experienced chronic fatigue for probably over a decade, so I’m not surprised, but I hope that the combo of regular fasting and keto lifestyle will help me overcome this problem.

Spiritual benefits

As a Christian (Catholic variety) I know that the Bible commends fasting, and that Jesus both did it and advised it. But I’m not sure that fasting done to help your health has full spiritual benefits. But, just in case, I am dedicating my current fasting to the conversion of sinners (God can pick which ones) and to the Holy Souls. I don’t really feel especially spiritual, and perhaps during a future fast I may add daily spiritual practices like going to daily Mass (or watching it on EWTN television) and more daily prayer and Bible reading/spiritual reading.

Selling out?

You may have noticed that I now have Amazon affiliate links on this blog. Is that a sell-out? Well, perhaps. But I’ve noticed a lot of other keto blogs have advertising to the point of making the blog hard to read. I don’t want to do anything like that. But it’s really hard living on SSI disability, and not being able to get things fixed like the plumbing and the electrical outlet to my stove (my stove hasn’t worked for years because of it.) If a few kind people buy through my links sometimes, it would really help. But if you are not so inclined, just ignore the links. I don’t mind. I write this blog because I want to help others who struggle with some of the same issues I’ve been faced with, not because I think I can ‘monetize’ this blog and live high of the hog. (Which reminds me, I need to buy more bacon.) 

The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jimmy Moore & Dr. Jason Fung

If you fast, you really should read this book. It gives you all the scientific information you need to fast properly and not get led astray into unhealthy practices.

Kettle & Fire Bone Broth, Chicken & Beef

OK, this is not 'home-made' bone broth. But it does look pretty good as a substitute. You might try it.

Atkins as a ketogenic diet

There is a lot of talk in the keto community about how to show that 'the' keto diet is different from that darn old Atkins. As well as outsiders who say 'that keto diet is just a new name for Atkins,' as if that would be some sort of proof that something was wrong with keto.

The problem is that most people don't even know what Atkins really is. Perhaps they are mislead by the commercials for Atkins brand diet products. But to understand Atkins, go to the source: the original Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution book, published in 1972.

The Atkins approach as outlined in that book is clearly a ketogenic diet. The concept of 'ketones' is introduced on page 12!  Dr. Atkins says, 'Now for a carbohydrate-intolerant Mr Fat to be in ketosis is a signal for rejoicing." He also mentions that when in ketosis, one experiences no hunger.

He defines ketones as little carbon fragments that are the by-products of the incomplete burning of fat, and ketosis as the state in which the person is putting out ketones in the breath or urine.

He also insists that testing for ketones with urine test strips--- the only method available to ketogenic dieters in 1972. He suggests that when your test strips are 'turning purple every day' you can be confident you are in ketosis and so even if you've lost no weight today, you are in fat-burning mode.

In the diet plan--- perhaps a reproduction of the diet sheet he handed out to patients--- unlimited consumption of carb-free meats is allowed, so long as you are hungry. Modern ketonians say to restrict protein. But remember that Dr. Atkins had a practice which included persons who would never read their way through a whole diet book. There were no apps to tell you what percentage of your food intake was in the forms of carbs, protein and fat. And many of his patients had been low-calorie dieting for years, and were used to being hungry all the time when on a diet.

I think Atkins was and is a realistic ketogenic diet for many people. The problem I find is in the levels.

On Atkins, you start out in Induction, where you eat about 20 grams a day of carbs, in the form of two less-than-one-cup salads. Then, each week, you add about 5-8 grams of carbs in various forms--- cooked veggies, nuts, berries.... As long as your test strips are still turning purple, indicating you are still in ketosis, you keep adding until you find a good level for you to keep losing weight. It's only when you hit the lifetime maintanance level that you are allowed enough carbs to get out of ketosis.

Another thing Dr. Atkins book has in common with more modern keto books is that he speaks of many different scientific studies that back up his statements. He doesn't ask us to take his word for it!

One different thing about about this earliest Atkins diet book is that it was written at a time when there were no Atkins products on the market. There were no food items claiming to be low-carb in the grocery store. The early Atkins dieter had to shop in regular grocery stores and eat regular, commonly available food. And the concept of 'Net Carbs' had not been introduced, so people were reducing their total carbs, and not getting out of ketosis by consuming too much coconut or almond flours.

Atkins is, so far as I am aware, the first low-carb diet that taught about ketosis, and insisted that dieters test for it. Where more modern keto diet books are less readily available, or where a dieter lacks the ability to buy such books online or lacks the funds, snagging a copy of the original Atkins book is a good place to start learning about the keto diet. I've been re-reading the book for years, since I've found that when re-starting my diet after a lapse, reading a bit from the book daily helped me to stay on track. And the recipes in that original book are great!

Why are people ashamed of Atkins, or insisting that people on keto be ashamed of it? It's like asking that people with infections be ashamed of taking penicillin, since that is an old-fashioned drug these days. Should we demand a more modern medicine that is trendy, but won't solve our problem? I think not. Atkins is a good basic step --- a keto diet for the common person who is not a medical research geek. Though it certainly turned ME into a medical research geek by the good example Dr. Atkins gave in his book.

Adventures in fast food, Keto style

Sometimes, a ketonian can't eat home-cooked meals at home. This was the case when I recently made a visit to my 91-year-old mother in Menominee, Michigan. Usually in the past I have gone off my diet to eat with my mom where she likes to eat, but now because of my health concerns with T2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, I had to be tougher.

For lunch, I made a run to the local Burger King in Menominee, MI. This local restaurant has been notorious to my family for decades for getting orders wrong. Usually adding unwanted toppings like ketchup and mustard when you have explained nine times what you want.

As usual, our burgers had unwanted ketchup and mustard on it, and lacked some of the things we did want, such as a tomato (for my mom's) and onion (for me.) Well, when I was discarding my buns, I used a knife to scrape off my unwanted ketchup and mustard, but I could still taste the nastiness. Also, I noted when the Burger King burgers were decarbed and de-mustarded, the remaining burger was dry and not very tasty, even though it had cheese on it. Since our receipt urged us to participate in a customer satisfaction survey, I told them exactly what I thought of their wrong order and their history of the same. [Note: the Burger King logo above is in Hebrew--- the chain has a kosher outlet or two in Israel.]

For supper I went out to Culver's in Marinette, Wisconsin--- just across the river from Menominee. I got home with our order--- my mom doesn't like to go out much anymore--- and proceeded to de-bun my swiss cheese and mushroom burger. I found that the burger was much less dry than the Burger King offering. Note: I have no clue what the carb count on any of these de-bunned burgers was. The Culver's burger didn't appear to have any sauce or other forms of added carbs once the bun was off. And, also, I was able to order a side of green beans. The Burger King had no salad or vegetables whatsoever. They should have posted a warning that their 'food' was not suitable for children!

Fast food burgers are not exactly a major food group within the keto lifestyle, but sometimes we just don't have the opportunity for a home made meal. Or we have other people to consider. De-bunned burgers are not ideal, but they are a way to stick to keto eating while not staying at home alone forever.

NOTE: in neither restaurant did I ask for a burger without the bun. I felt it would be too confusing to the people at the restaurant. I DID have a bag with some paper plates and some plastic knives and forks ready in case my mother wanted to come out to the restaurants and eat there. I would not be too embarrassed to de-bun my burger in full view of the public! After all, I am in charge of what and how I eat the food I've paid for.

Preparing your body to start fasting

When I was young, I was really bad at fasting. I had a book or two about fasting, but as I remember, I never did even a one-day fast with any success. I just couldn't put up with being hungry.

Now, at a much later stage of my life, I have even managed a 5-day fast. And the first day or two of that fast was completely hunger-free! The remaining days, there was slight hunger, but not enough to compel me to eat something.

I am not successful every time I try to fast, though. When I have nagging hunger that can't be dealt with or ignored, I cut a planned fast short. I'm not getting some sort of diet brownie points by being hungry and miserable! When my body tells me it wants food, I listen, and provide healthy real-food that is consistent with my keto diet.

There are steps in preparing your body to fast. My early-in-life attempts at fasting failed because I didn't know about any of these steps. If you want to fast, you should try these steps first.

1. Go on Keto for 2-4 weeks before attempting fasting. When you are on strict keto, your hunger goes away, and you often find yourself skipping a meal or two without meaning to. When Jimmy Moore had his Fasting Talk podcast, he often asked his guests about whether they had been skipping meals in an unplanned way on keto before they tried fasting.

2. Track your overnight fasting. What time do you normally stop eating for the day? After supper? After an evening snack? After a 3am snack? Don't judge yourself, just write it down. And at what time do you first eat in the morning (or at noon or afternoon?) As you continue on keto, this might change just because you don't feel as hungry.

3. Try intermittent fasting in the form of the No-Breakfast Plan. Odds are that you are the least hungry in the mornings, anyway. And likely you do little socializing over breakfast. If you do, you can always have a cup of herb tisane (herb "tea") or coffee with the family at breakfast time. NOTE: If you are ravenously hungry in the morning, eat something. Maybe delay that eating something a little if this is a daily problem, but when your body is demanding food, give it something keto.

4. Try narrower eating windows. An eating window is the period of the day when you normally allow yourself to eat. The No-Breakfast Plan gives you a longer fasting period each day. You can try switching from 11 am lunch to 12 noon, and then to 1pm or even 2pm. When you have done that for a while, you might try the ultimate in intermittent fasting--- the one-meal-a-day plan, which is usually supper (the evening meal.) I first tried this after attempts to fast longer. Since I kept being hungry, I added a good keto supper to the meal plan.

5. Try a longer fast when you don't feel like eating. My successful 5-day fast started on a hot day when I just did not feel like bothering with cooking and eating things. That was a signal that both my body and mind were in a mood to take a break from regular meals. It wasn't until lunchtime on the first fasting day that I even decided I was on a fast day, and it wasn't until the second morning that I decided I was going to try to extend my fast more than one day. I was ready for that fast, and so it worked for me.

Fasting isn't about fast-fast-fast weight loss. It is for your general health. It is about taking control of yourself. Every hour you fast, you are showing yourself that you don't have to eat constantly to feel good. In fact, eating too often puts your body to extra work with all that digesting. And if you have an insulin resistance problem, each eating session triggers more insulin release which makes you fatter.

Who should not fast: Dr. Jason Fung says that you should not fast if you are clinically underweight, if you are dealing with anorexia (and are probably underweight) if you are pregnant or nursing (for women), if you are a child under 18. Patients on meds, especially diabetes meds, need to discuss their planned fast with their doctors to get their meds reduced during the fast. (I was lucky, my incompetent nephrologist took me off all meds, said I could only be on insulin, and never bothered to prescribe the insulin. So I didn't have to ask permission to fast or negotiate to lower meds.)

Doctor Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore's book, The Complete Guide to Fasting, is the best fasting book I have found.
My oldest fasting book is Paul C. Bragg's The Miracle of Fasting. I haven't read it in years. Since the author wasn't a doctor, the book is mostly of historical interest, but you might be interested.
The above links are affiliate links, which means, though you pay no more, I get a tiny commission when someone buys through the links. Since I am on disability and can't afford to get plumbing and electrical repairs, every bit of help is gratefully accepted. Thank you!

Do the veggies in your keto diet put you at risk for oxalate poisoning?

Recently I listened to an episode of Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low-Carb podcast which featured nutritionist Sally K. Norton, who warned listeners of the dangers of foods high in oxalates. These foods include many popular on the keto diet: spinach, almonds, peanuts, chocolate, swiss chard, tumeric, and cinnamon.

She tells of one case where some young children got kidney stones from the consumption of almond milk. The fact that oxalates can be toxic has been known since the 1930s.

Oxalate poisoning can cause many symptoms, and most medical doctors don't think that it may be at the root of the problem. Sally Norton gives on her web site a list of the symptoms that might be associated with an excess of oxalates: https://sallyknorton.com/symptoms/

Rhubarb leaves are high in oxalates--- so much so that many of us have heard that rhubarb leaves are poison. And they can in fact cause death from kidney failure.

Some low-oxalate greens you may use to replace spinach in your diet: arugula (what's arugula?), lettuce, bok choi, cabbage and watercress. And meats raised properly (grass-fed? raised without hormones?) are a healing food.

I am personally reducing my consumption of tea and chocolate, and eliminating almond and peanut products and spinach from my diet. Since I have kidney problems related to my diabetes, I think that's wise.

The podcast I talked about can be found on this web page: http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/17322/1412-sally-norton-sounds-the-alarm-on-the-oxalate-toxicity-of-eating-plants/     I listened to the podcast 3 times so far, it was that informative and inspiring.

Sally K. Norton's web site is full of information: https://sallyknorton.com

Making cauli-rice in a Vita-Mix

Cauli-rice, or cauliflower rice, is a staple food for many on the low-carb, ketogenic way of life. It's a low-carb substitute for things like rice, potatoes or biscuits.

Dana Carpender repeats the basic cauli-rice recipe she uses in many of her cook books. Her versions often call for 1/2 a cauliflower. I weighed my two cauliflower heads and averaged them, and came up with a 12 oz weight for 1/2 a cauliflower. That came to 2.5 cups of cauliflower after the cauli-rice making process. This is 3 servings, each with 5 grams of carbs. (And 2 grams of fiber, if you do the 'net carbs' thing.)

Dana suggests putting the cauliflower through the food processor on the shredding blade. I no longer have a food processor as I never used it, so I make cauli-rice in my Vita-Mix®️, which is kind of like a blender with superpowers. There are two ways to make cauli-rice in your Vita-Mix--- the dry chop method and the wet chop method. I tried the dry chop method first, and it left a lot of unchopped bits of cauliflower.

So I resorted to the wet chop method, as you will find in your owner's manual. I put in enough cauliflower to fill it within an inch or so of the top, and then added water to cover. You only need a few seconds of chopping to get it done. You put it on forward, then reverse, 3 times within your few seconds, and you will have a bunch of well-chopped cauliflower.

I steamed the cauliflower for about 8 minutes in my steamer pot. I first put the water in the pot and brought it to a boil, then put in the steamer insert filled with cauliflower rice.

Since I live alone, I put one serving of the steamed cauli-rice in each freezer bag, and froze them in my big upright freezer out on my porch. I then put the frozen bags into a larger sized freezer bag, so they would be double-bagged.

I also made up Dana Carpender's Fried Rice Recipe from her book 300 15-Minute Low-Carb Recipes. I omitted the cooked meat, since I planned to serve the fried rice with a meat dish. It turned out fairly well, but I thought the 2 eggs called for were a bit much. Next time I think I'll make it with 1 egg only.

Dana Carpender's cookbook also has several other recipes that call for cauli-rice, such as Spanish "Rice", Beef and Bacon "Rice" with Pine Nuts and Chicken-Almond "Rice"--- which is a lot like Rice-a-Roni.

I have a very nice kitchen scale which weighs things in pounds or ounces or also with metric measurements. It also "zeroes out" the weight of a container, so you can weigh food in a container without adding the container weight to the measurement. I find it a very useful item, as when I figured out how much 1/2 cauliflower weighed.

So now I have some home-made cauli-rice in my freezer. I plan usually to thaw it out in my fridge before heating, but I've heated frozen cauli-rice in the microwave before, and it was still OK.

Do you make and eat cauli-rice? What dishes do you make with it? Is it something you might try to add diversity to your diet?

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A book and some products mentioned in this blog post. 

Who is Jillian Michaels to condemn keto?

Recently I became aware that some celebrity I'd barely heard of, Jillian Michaels, had seen fit to ignorantly condemn the keto way-of-life. She did it in a blog post misleadingly entitled "The Truth about Keto." Worse, since her blog allows no comments, there is no way that we can defend ourselves against this ignorance.

Now, if Jillian Michaels is out there condemning keto, we might assume that she is DR Jillian Michaels and that she's done a good deal of original of scientific research on keto and diets in general.

But she's not a doctor or scientist. According to Wikipedia, she's just a famously lesbian personal trainer and product pitchwoman. She was also associated with the TV show The Biggest Loser. If you have read The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jimmy Moore & Dr. Jason Fung, you know that the contestants on the low-calorie and exercise based Biggest Loser program have gained their weight back, in part because they have slowed down their metabolisms.

I'd like to contrast Jillian Michaels' approach to keto to that of Jimmy Moore, also a non-doctor. Jimmy Moore's book Keto Clarity is just chock-full of quotes from doctors in support of keto, and of mention of legitimate scientific studies (The Biggest Loser was not a legitimate scientific study.) Jillian Michaels just seems to presume the facts  support her side, without bother to check. After all, she's a celebrity. And a LESBIAN celebrity. You are not supposed to be allowed to question her. (My own same-sex orientation doesn't count toward making ME beyond being criticized, since I'm also chaste & Catholic. Sigh.)

In JM's blog post, she starts out saying she's going to infuriate the keto community. Like she's doing something brave or something. Yet she's not brave enough to allow ketonians to have their say by opening up the comments on her blog.

I would not waste my time reading this celebrity personal trainer's opinions. Though I did have to read through the swill to compose this blog post. I would rather re-read Jimmy Moore's book Keto Clarity, or, better yet, listen to one of Jimmy Moore's podcasts. (You can find links to the Jimmy Moore podcasts in this blog's sidebar.)

The keto diet is not a 'fad' diet. The first diet book published in the English language advocated low-carb. There were other low-carb supporting books on the market before Atkins. And Atkins/low-carb morphed into today's keto as a result of scientific facts becoming known to the community. If anything is a fad, it's the idea that calorie & fat restriction plus 'going to the gym' will result in a permanent change in weight or health.

Keto is here to stay. The science backs it. And unlike a celebrity-personal-trainer approved diet, the keto way will change for the better as more good scientific studies are done. Keto has already improved my diabetes so that I have lower blood sugars without any meds than I did without keto and on two meds. I'm sticking with it for the long haul!

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What do you think about the Jillian Michaels condemnation of keto? Do you think she knows enough about the keto diet and medical issues in general to have an informed opinion? Answer with a comment, please.

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Books mentioned in this blog post. This are links to the real-book editions, the Kindle ebook versions are $9.99 for each book. 

My July results on Keto

It's the beginning of a new month, and time to consider what keto has done for me the past July. And I think it's pretty good!

July was days 10 to 40 of my renewed keto lifestyle. And it had some great results. My blood glucose was 170 and 156 on the first two days of July. It was 101 and 93 on the last two days, and today it is 88. Compare those results to when I was on 2 diabetes meds, and still had readings in the mid 200s unless I was on strict low-carb--- a diet at least 1 of my doctors actively discouraged. She wanted me on the dreadful DASH diet, and thought that telling me it was a government-approved diet would encourage me to like it. There was no way to make me like the constant hunger, non-weight-loss, and higher blood sugars on that diet, though.

Fasting: I had 8 fasting days during July, mostly individual days with one 5 day fast. Each time I fasted, my blood glucose became more normal, and since I was on keto the other days, it stayed more normal.

Weight: I weighed 196.8 pounds at the beginning of July, and 185.2 by the end. I had not weighed under 190 since college, maybe since high school! My BMI (body mass index) went from 32.0 to 30.1. My Ketonix says I was in high level ketosis for almost all the days of July.

Clothing size: I bought two pairs of jeans and a pair of shorts in a new, smaller size: XL. And they fit really loose on me. I really want to buy a new pair of jeans in 'L' just to see if it would fit!

There are bad sides to my new keto life, though. I've been feeling so much more energetic, I got a lot of things done, including starting on a major house cleaning. But with all that energy, I spent too much money. Since government disability doesn't PAY much, I have to be very, very careful in August. Which is too bad since I want to buy some new clothes. And I can't even afford a trip to the grocery store this week.

Also, my blood pressure has not improved any. I'm hoping another month will see some changes in that. Keto is supposed to be good for your blood pressure. If I don't see improvement, I will probably have to resort to blood pressure pills. If my 'health care provider' (not a doctor) is willing to prescribe a kind I am willing to take.

Keto-foraging at a rural grocery store

Being keto in a rural area has its difficulties. Low-carb specialty products don't really appear at the rural grocery store--- not enough demand.

Gary's Quality Foods of Stephenson, MI is a cut above. In season they have a little produce from local farms. They were known for their meat department, though now the exciting meats are at the related Gary's market in Wallace, MI.

Gary's in Stephenson is now the sole grocery in town. Their rival went out of business years ago. But now two dollar stores have opened in town, both with a lot of processed food, crappy carbage, and other not-really-food junk.

Gary's only has a small fresh veggie section, but it does carry fresh veggies (and fruit, which is a matter of indifference to me.) It doesn't have the more exotic ingredients, but it does have the basics. Even some KETO basics. And sometimes they surprise me--- they regularly carry fresh ginger root, for example.

Cauliflower, that keto mainstay, is not always a given in their fresh produce department. Last fall I know they had some from the local Jandt's Farm, which was a real prize. I always prefer to buy locally-grown veggies when I can.

The goal of this foraging expedition was, first of all, cauliflower. I wanted to make up some cauli-rice (cauliflower rice, steamed riced cauliflower) in bulk and freeze most of it, so I could just pull out some and heat for easy meals.

My luck was in. They did have some Dole cauliflower--- since the local cauliflower isn't ripe yet. As you can see in the picture, they also had broccoli and brussel sprouts, neither of which were on my purchasing plan for the day.

My next stop was in the meat department. There is a recipe for West African stew that I was itching to try. I found it in my recipe book More-With-Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre--- a Mennonite cookbook with an emphasis on economy, and saving the world through a more vegetarian diet. It was written by a large number of contributors, though, most of whom added meat to their recipes.

What the recipe called for was beef, but since it called for 2 pounds of it and I'm not made of money, I decided to buy a pack of pork steaks and cut them up for stew meat. The bone, of course, got frozen in the 'pork bones' bag for future bone broth cooking. (You CAN make bone broth from pork!)

The recipe calls for tomato paste also. I could have used real tomato paste--- perhaps using a little less than called for--- and I imagine the carb count would still be acceptable. But I have on hand some Walden Farms calorie-free ketchup, which is also carb free. I bought this at Gary's market also, though I'm not sure they still carry it, it's an older bottle. I used 1/2 cup of it in the recipe to partially replace the tomato paste.

My foraging expedition was a success. My freezer has a batch of packs of cauli-rice, and my Crock-Pot®️ is busy cooking the West African stew. Future blog posts will include more about how I make cauli-rice, my stop at a local farm stand for zucchini, and eventually my own version of the stew recipe, once I refine it.

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This is the recipe book I've mentioned. It's one of only two regular-diet, carb-filled cookbooks I turn to all the time. Mostly to find recipes to tweak. It's really worth owning in spite of the lower-meat-consumption emphasis.