I have done keto in the past and lost 10 to 15 lbs and then quit because I thought I was doing it right but must not have been because I couldnt stay in ketosis and stopped loosing. I got tired of not liking the taste of a lot of what I was trying and then wondering what to do with leftovers of food I didnt like. Im older, have a lot of health issues ganed 100 lbs that is making my health issues worse. The extra weight is making it all worse. I know alll of these things in my head but I am reallly tired of the food commercials and watching my life partner eat the things I would like to eat. Please someone give me some advice to keep me motivated on keto I really want to and need to loose this weight. There is so much information out there and even here that it makes my head spin. I need something simple to follow that is correct and hopefully tastes good. I like to cook that is not the problem, I want to cook something that will taste good.
I am totally overwhelmed... too much information, I feel confused
I think I am replying to myself but after reading it I felt it did not reflect the real me. It sounded whiney and sorry for myself and wanting someone to solve my weight problem for me so I didnt have to. That is not accurate. I was the fat kid and lost my weight in my senior year of high school and maintained the lose until about 3 years ago when I began to slowly gain. I am very physically fit so at first it didnt show so much but now I look in the mirror and I am shocked. I have 4 autoimmune diseases and also degenerative disc disease of the spine. I put on 100 extra pounds and this other woman living with me is not paying rent so I am hereby evicting her. She needs to leave and 9 lbs of her did but now I had a very bad viral cold that settled in my lungs, it makes it hard to get rid of because I am immunosuppresed I am also a horrible speller. I am indeed confused by so much information, and so many good sounding recipes, many I like some I do not. I am not much of a sweet craver but I do miss bread. If anyone can point me the right direction for something to follow and get me on track with hopefully a menu plan that would be such a help. Thank you for reading this which I hope clarifies who I really am and what the problem really is. Confusion by so much info and feeling like I am not doing it right and not knowing how to fix that. Thank you. Blue
I see keto as simply “Minimal carbs. Adequate proteins. Fats as needed (for satiety).”
First, determine your macros, keeping in mind that the proteins macro is a lower limit, while the fats and carbs macros are upper limits.
So, two priorities:
- You need to keep carbs low to stay in ketosis.
- You need to make sure you get enough proteins. Your body needs them. Being significantly low on them over an extended period can cause the body to get them elsewhere. That may mean a breakdown of muscle tissue. Not good.
After that, ideally, it should be hunger that determines how many fats and additional proteins (and thus calories) you need to be eating, if only because leaving yourself hungry all the time means keto won’t be sustainable. You don’t need to eat all of the fats macro if you’re not hungry, because the body can make up the difference with stored body fat.
My boilerplate on foods and recipes:
There are so many low-carb options…
There are lots of low-carb veggies – mushrooms, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, peppers, snow peas, asparagus, radishes, celery, artichokes, onions, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, spinach, bok choy, …
There are lots of proteins – eggs, chicken, pork, beef, lamb, fish, seafood, …
There are lots of fats – olive oil, butter, avocado oil, heavy cream, coconut oil, mayo, cheese, …
There are lots of nuts and seeds – walnuts, pecans, macadamia, almonds, chia, pumpkin, sunflower, …
There are lots of spices – Salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, ginger, curry powder, …
There are all kinds of sauces and condiments – tomato sauce/paste, mustard, SF ketchup, SF BBQ sauce, salsa, guacamole, horseradish, SF jams/jellies, tartar sauce, …
There are lots of baking supplies – coconut flour, almond flour, flax meal, psyllium husk, Xanthan gum, extracts and SF syrups, unsweetened coconut or almond milks, artificial sweeteners, …
And so many I left out. Almost an infinite number of combinations.
I do cheap and easy keto meal preps based on the proteins that are on sale in a given week.
My meal preps are a variation on sheet pan meals, with a nod to slow cooking via crockpots.
Otherwise, my pantry list is mostly geared around lazy microwave recipes.
Favorite meals:
- Joseph’s Lavash Bread or Chaffles can be the start of a lot of tasty items.
- Cheesewiches
- “Everything” omelets
- Pizza
- Meat and veggie “dump” soups (includes chili and curries)
- Smoked salmon + capers + Jalapeno cream cheese + chopped hard-boiled eggs + diced onions
Favorite side dishes:
- Steamed green beans, or asparagus, or snow peas, drowning in butter and black pepper
- Stuffed mushrooms or peppers
- Cabbage Alfredo, topped with soft-boiled eggs
- Spanish Rice(d) Cauliflower
- Faux-tato salad
Favorite snacks:
- Cheese crisps
- Easy microwave fudge
- Egg Loaf or Fluffy Coconut Flour Pancake Rounds or Chaffles with sugar-free syrup
- Chia pudding
- No-bake cheesecake fluff
- Easy pecan cookies, although I usually add Lilly’s chocolate chips and unsweetened coconut.
- 2-ingredient fudgy brownies
- Chocolate donuts, although I make as cupcakes
- Chocolate Coconut Haystacks or Bark
- Lemon curd is easy to make in the microwave – 3 eggs + 1 cup lemon juice + 1 cup (powdered) erythritol + 1/2 cup butter (optional), whisking every 30 to 60 seconds until it thickens.
- Root beer float (diet root beer + HWC)
- Breyers Carb Smart or Halo Top or Enlightened or Rebel ice cream.
- SmartCakes are a delicious low-carb commercial product, although a little expensive.
I subscribe to these YouTube channels for all kinds of recipe ideas:
- Serious Keto
- Joe Duff, the Diet Chef
- Gayle McLeod
- RuledMe
- All Day I Dream About Food
- TPH Keto Desserts
- Papa G
- Black Sheep Keto
- Anna’s Kitchen
- Keto Connect
- Headbanger’s Kitchen
- Low Carb Love
- Cooking Keto with Kristie
- Yum Nibbles
- Nic Corbin Meal Prep
- Highfalutin’ Low Carb
- Caveman Keto
- Keto Cooking Guide
- The Sugar-free Mom
- Chad Hates Carbs
- Clean & Delicious Keto Recipes Playlist
You can even eat low-carb junk food and fast food. You just need to make different choices. A few restaurant references I’ve saved:
- Keto Fast Food Quick Reference Guide
- Wholesome Yum Keto Fast Food Guide
- Keto Connect Keto Fast Food Guide
- This guy has a lot of “How to order low carb at …” items for various restaurants. Or just Google that phrase and add whichever restaurant you’re curious about.
Most of the time, bread (or pasta or rice) doesn’t have much flavor on its own. The flavor comes from the fats and spices added to it. They are vehicles to serve something else.
One of my staples is Joseph’s Lavash Bread, a flatbread similar to a low carb tortilla. I always cut the sheets into bread-sized squares right away. From there, I can make pizza, cheese bread, nachos, “hot pockets”, pizza “rolls”, and more, in just a few minutes.
I often just skip the bread and make a cheesewich. I have one almost every day.
A good bread alternative is r/chaffles. Almost zero carb, because they’re made with eggs and cheese. My process.
Other than those, the “bread” I use depends on use and convenience:
- Cheesebuns are nearly zero carb. When I make them, I use my Magic Bullet to turn the shredded cheeses into a “flour”
- Protein powder bread is also nearly zero carb.
- Lettuce leaves and low carb tortillas work as wraps
- Buns based on the Diet Doctor’s Ke-Dough pizza dough.
- Quick microwave bread works for burgers. In rectangular cookware, OK for hot dogs.
- Soy wrappers work well for hot dogs, but also usable for burgers and wraps.
- Fathead dough
- “Diet Doctor” bread
- Headbanger’s Kitchen flatbread
I’ve not found a commercial low carb bread worth the cost, although I have not yet had the Franz or Aldi’s breads available in my area. I’ve tried the ThinSlim and Great Low Carb Bread Company and SmartBuns baked items. They’re OK, but expensive and filled with a lot of fiber. I always feel bloated and uncomfortable afterwards. SmartBuns were probably the best of the three.
Agreed, and I’ll add an observation of my own. I believe bread is a way of adding sweetness to many foods. Grains are the carbiest carbs out there next to sugar, many of them spike your blood higher than pure glucose.
Like you said, bread is a vehicle for carrying other flavors but I think it also sweetens them or dulls them in the delivery. Think about your favorite sandwich of all time. Now, think about eating just the ingredients without the bread. How would the taste change? Too intense, too salty, or too strong? There you go.
That’s what I do with the cheesewich I make most often:
I also tend to make a lot of “dump” soups. Different broths or sauces and different spices give an almost unlimited range of flavors.
I live in a retirement community where some meals are provided. I often take the food home and use it as raw ingredients as I convert them into something else. 
A hamburger patty can be great for making a single bowl of chili, with all kinds of special additions.
here is a great low carb site for recipes.
I second what OZ said about bread…now some fancy breads do have fab flavor which most of us would love, but regular ol’ bread ain’t a wonderful thing to eat, it is just a vehicle.
Any thing you can eat on bread or with bread can obviously be eaten without bread 
so you do have to have some mind changes truly about how you are going to change your life and what that entails.
hope some of this helps if you find boredom and are a person who likes to cook the link below can help, but keep your Keto macros in mind when eating portion sizes and all…cut the carbs and life is good
BUT LIKE YA SAID in your other post, you truly have to pony up and grab onto a lifetime of eating changes to get results and to make it sustainable and keep those results…so work on you ya know. Work on changing that mindset that how you eat now is for health, vitality, energy and just an overall well being in your life that gives you a daily reminder of what you want…a good darn healthy life
big changes and waiting for those results we all want overnight isn’t an easy road to walk, but many of us just that and find what we want, you can do it too!
I get it and felt the same way when I started. I had so far to go that I thought “this is never going to work.” I brought all my questions/concerns here, and people responded immediately.
Honestly, keto is not difficult. Don’t get bogged down in how to do it “right” or perfectly. My suggestions, take a few hours and make a simple list or database of the one-ingredient foods you like (butter, cheese, eggs, bacon, heavy cream, meat, chicken, fish, all kinds of protein, various low carb veggies, etc.). Look up their carb, protein and fat grams per ounce, slice or whatever that may happen to be, and capture that on your list. Keep adding foods as you think of them. Go to the keto calculator on ketokarma.com and get your daily macros for protein, fat and carbs. Keep the carbs under 20g/day. Meet or exceed your fat macro every day. Please don’t use pee strips or any other mechanism to calculator your ketones. If you keep the carbs under 20/day, you will be in ketosis, no matter what those things stay. Don’t weigh yourself except at the beginning. It can really sabotage your progress whether it’s good or bad.
For simplicity, I’d suggest eating the same thing for breakfast every day - for me, that was three eggs and a couple pieces of bacon or sausage. Enjoy a butter coffee with that to satisfy you. If you eat a salad, make a simple, pure dressing (heavy whipping cream, blue cheese crumbles, worcestshire, and some spices). Be careful with “recipes,” as they can have a high carb value from many ingredients for the serving size that is recommended. Instead, consider having your dinner consist of simple foods - a steamed vegetable in butter or bacon grease with a large pan seared piece of protein of your choice. Eat until you are satiated. I could not believe the rich, delicious food I was eating - three times a day - and the weight still came off! Never been on a “diet” where I wasn’t hungry, stressed or miserable until keto.
Don’t count calories. If you find you are hungry or craving various things, increase what you are eating at your meals. Don’t snack. You should be eating enough to get to your next meal comfortably. Just continue with this plan and try not to stress about it. If you follow these principles, I believe you will lose weight. Let the time pass and enjoy the rich, delicious things you can eat. Don’t concentrate on what you “can’t” eat.
Good luck! I hope you will keep posting.
If you can keep the carbs very low there is no need to figure out if you are in ketosis or not.
Thank you, your advice makes a great deal of sense and simplifies what I need to do. I will try what you have suggested, I was using the pee strips and could not figure out why they showed ketosis one time and didn’t the next. I was also weighing every day which was fine until the weight loss stopped. Therefore, no weighing until I am at the Drs office and no more pee strips. Thank you very much
I always went for the dense wheat and multi grained breads, loved the nutty taste. Have to say I do miss that at times.
i miss the dense wheat and multi grain breads with their nutty flavor
oh boy lemon curd is a huge love of mine i hope this tastes close to the real thing
lots of good info thank you
You betcha. One of the first things I did when I went keto was whip up crustless pizza. I slathered tomato sauce on a non-stick, sided baking sheet and layered all the goodies on top of it, then melted it in the oven. If you wait until it’s cool and then pop it in the fridge, it’ll solidify to the point you can section it with a spatula and then freeze yourself some pizza squares. Except, I never did.
Because I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to put off fresh, hot pizza for another day…nom…nom…nom…
PS: Don’t talk to me about pork rind crusts, etc., that takes even longer.