Keto Newby needs shopping list help :)


(Nicola Edwards) #1

Hello all, I have been on the keto way of life for three weeks and really enjoying it, although I have made a few mistakes this past week.

Please could I ask for some shopping basket ideas as the mistakes I’ve made are mainly due to buying things that I thought were Keto friendly and they are not, there’s so much conflicting info out there it would be good to see what you experts are buying for inspiration!

Here’s what I’m buying so far :slight_smile:

Baby bells
Double cream
Cheese
Butter
Eggs
Coconut milk
Almond milk unsweetened
Chia seeds
Flax seeds
Psyllium husk
Peanuts
Almonds
Coleslaw
Coconut oil
Bacon
Peperamis
Chicken breast
Wafer thin ham
Vegetable stock
Cherry tomato’s
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Green beans
Bean sprouts
Spinach
Asparagus


(Alec) #2

Nicola
You are going to get a lot of differing opinions on this, but here’s my opinion:

  1. This looks like a long list: I would keep it simpler and buy less than half of that
  2. I would focus on meat and eggs, and a few veg
  3. I would switch the chicken breast for a fattier meat: if it needs to be chicken, I go for thighs
  4. I personally would add steak, lamb and pork to your list: fattier the better
  5. I would avoid seeds, totally unnecessary.
  6. Be careful with nuts, they are very morish and do have a decent amount of carbs

Most important: keep on top of the carbs from the veg… if you’ve got weight to lose count total carbs, don’t get sucked in to doing the net carbs thing.

Best of luck!
Cheers
Alec


(Robin) #3

Agree with Alec. Edit it down and add meat, eggs, and limit veggies.


#4

Which food do you get your Magnesium from?


(Alec) #5

Absolutely no idea and have zero interest. As a species we have been eating mostly fatty meat for a long time. Way longer than we have been eating vegetables. Fatty meat provides everything you need.


(Allie) #6

Meat, eggs, dairy if you can tolerate it - that’s all you need.
Forget chicken breast, choose thighs. Avoid all nuts / seeds until you know what you’re doing, veggies too as they’re really not necessary either. Keep it as simple as possible while you find your feet.


#7

Sounds good to me. Even now that I go for carnivore, I need at least this many items for variety… What’s wrong with that? :smiley: My old keto had hundreds of items I guess…

I can’t give any general advice, you already seem to avoid all the carbier stuff (not like there is any problem with those, I needed them and use them any time I fancy them nowadays too)… And you are supposed to know yourself. I needed my seeds on my original keto as I had no meat, nothing is wrong with that either if it’s what suits the one in question. I have no regrets but I changed and it’s easier now.
Different vegs? Sounds superb. It’s not like you use 12 different seed flours and syrups and whatnots. These are more or less okay food items even from a stricter but not super strict viewpoint I suppose.

Many people love chicken breast and keep it on keto, it’s fine but you will need something fatty. And indeed, if you have nothing against other meats, it’s more logical to buy normal ones too. Multiple processed stuff is fine to me, I never could do carnivore without them, they add variety but they are just little extras, not the real food. But if you like your eggs and dairy and everything else and you manage to get what you need from your diet, it’s fine to eat little meat. It was fine for me to eat zero, after all, I just realized that I ate way too much carbs even on keto so I had to change my ways (my carbier vegetarian keto was important though, it just had to be temporal). But not everyone should choose the heavily meaty route (but maybe you do just in a slightly interesting way, lots of chicken and processed stuff, maybe it works for you, who knows? don’t force fatty normal meat if you don’t like it, sure).


#8

Fatty meat and eggs are man made. The only way to obtain fatty meat and large eggs is by feeding animals seeds. To say we’ve been only eating animal foods is like a vegan saying we’ve been only eating plants.

We’ve been supposedly eating mostly fatty meat and eggs for a long time yet you’re popping electrolyte tablets like candy. It doesn’t add up.



#9

So many of us struggle to control obvious electrolyte imbalances (nighttime cramps and heart palpitations) on a keto diet, so personally, I try to include certain high mineral plant foods. A quarter cup of toasted pumpkin seeds provides a lot of magnesium. Salmon also has magnesium, but not nearly as much by weight.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

Green vegetables, the darker the better, are a source of magnesium, since the heart of every molecule of chlorophyll is a magnesium atom. Bone broth, especially homemade, is a good source of minerals, especially if you simmer it long enough for the bones to start to break down. Yum!

But there are plenty of long-term carnivores who do just fine without worrying about salt, magnesium, potassium, and calcium. Benjamin Bikman, Robert Cywes, and others even claim there is evidence to support the idea that the body doesn’t need as much of certain things, if we are avoiding carbohydrates.


#11

And some of us experience just that… I don’t remember the numbers but when I looked up my magnesium intake on carnivore, it was just as pitiful as on my original keto (I never liked most green vegs so didn’t eat them. I adored most of the others). At least way below recommended, I am bad with numbers… Still, I only got cramps (magnesium pills helped immediately) on vegetarian keto, not on carnivore (maybe it happened once but I ate very little meat in the beginning. never happened later. and I do eat tiny plants and have off days but I still don’t get cramps anymore. if I went into ketosis without meat, I always got cramps as far as I remember).
So I suppose it’s a bit similar to Vitamin C. Our needs may change in the absence of carb plants. I just don’t understand the magnesium thing while the Vitamin C is logical.


#12

Ep:62 SUPPLEMENTS AND WALLET BIOPSIES, IS THERE A DIFFERENCE? - YouTube

“Anybody has to add supplements to a diet to make the diet complete is on an incomplete or inadequate diet by definition” - Robert Cywes

Then Robert Cywes goes on saying that Vitamin D supplements don’t work. He sounds like a conspiracy theorist.

Feel Great System | Do You Need Supplements? - Dr Benjamin Bikman | Rav Malik & Kiran Kalsi-Malik - YouTube

I like Bikman’s honesty.

Who? In all honesty. Isn’t it best not to mislead others?


(Marianne) #13

I agree with @Alecmcq.

My husband and I favor pork, the fattier, the better. Especially delicious if you sear on a smoking hot grill. The fat carmelizes and tastes delicious. If we eat pork chops, which are pretty lean, I supplement with pouring bacon grease or melted ghee on top. Pork is also very economical. Same with chicken breast. Because it is so lean, it is a wonderful conduit for fat - like an alfredo sauce or nice cheese sauce. I don’t follow recipes, but a cheese sauce with like Kraft Am. Cheese and some ghee or bacon grease and a little heavy cream is fabulous. In my book, this plastic cheese is okay in small amounts, and it is great for melting and making sauces.

Also agreed about nuts - if you can manage them, great. For me, they are too delicious and I want to binge on them, so I don’t eat them or keep them in the house. I have trouble limiting my intake to just a small handful.

My list would also include:

  • ghee
  • brussels sprouts
  • mayo (not made with the best oils but good for deviled eggs, tuna, etc. I don’t overdo.)
  • brick cheese like gouda, havarti, cream cheese
  • hamburger (73/27 is the best, IMO. We get it at a discount club - BJs)
  • beef - inexpensive cuts like round steak, London broil, etc. I shop beef for price and get whatever is the cheapest. Cheap cuts are just as delicious, if you cook them rare/medium rare.
  • probably fish, but I detest it and don’t eat it
  • I’d ditch the seeds.

Home made dressing is also great for a green salad or as a sauce - again, no recipe - just HWC, blue cheese chunks, worcestshire, lemon, salt, pepper.

Best of luck to you! I am so happy to hear that you are liking keto!


#14

Yes, many of us should be careful with certain nuts… But some of us need them at some point, even in bigger amounts - or we just like them and won’t give up our tiny treat, it makes perfect sense to me.

I heard from many people that nuts just aren’t satiating for them (I experienced the same) - it may be very useful for the ones who easily undereat on keto though. I am the opposite, I easily overeat so I go for satiating items like not too fatty pork as too fatty makes me overeating fat (every mistake makes me overeating fat, it’s my life). But very lean protein sources need something fatty to balance them out for most of us (who can’t eat low-calorie without problems even for a while). I prefer the middle ground: not too lean, not too fatty, ideal for my caloric and protein need and tastes. But sometimes I go for lean and enjoy more fatty stuff that I should allow on days with pork chuck as my main dish (the mentioned middle ground as it’s not super fatty but fatty enough. it’s great, I don’t need to add fat to it but it doesn’t generate a ton of lard either. great staple).

I always considered the protein and energy need very very important factors when one think about which items to use. Taste, variety may be very important too. We don’t want to get bored or hate our food (I can’t eat food I dislike).
But even timing matters, at least in my case. I can be way more indulgent if I have one meal per day but if I do it a bit longer term, I need my fattier, less satiating items to be able to eat enough.

If we write lists, me too :smiley:
I only write about my diet from here on, you were warned.

My basic list is…:

  • eggs
  • pork (various cuts, some organs, various processed stuff too. between 5 and 86% fat in my case but only the processed things go over 30%)
  • chicken liver
  • turkey
  • sour cream
  • quark
    Smaller amounts but important:
  • mustard and other condiments and spices. but mostly mustard :slight_smile:
  • butter
  • coconut oil

Rarely consumed items:

  • cheese (some nice half-hard one, usually)
  • beef (once a month but it’s nice to have)
  • fish (less than beef as the variety here is tiny and I am not into the cheap, lean kind. tuna is lovely, I have some tiny tins for emergencies, tuna in brine of course)
  • whipping cream (we don’t have heavy)
  • greek yogurt (only recently. it’s like a creamy lower-fat sour cream. low-fat sour cream sucks but high-fat yogurt is different :))
  • onion (for stews, sometimes for liver)
  • tomato
  • lemon

But I use almost everything non-green from the original quite small list (no matter how I look at it, it’s pretty small, I couldn’t eat this simple for sure) and several dozens of items more. Just rarely or a tiny bit. Walnuts and poppy seeds are high on my non-carni list as they are awesome. Dozens of different fruits (but most of them are my own)… I wouldn’t buy most vegs and fruits if I lived alone. But if they are here, I taste them here and there. They add variety, juiciness, sometimes crunch.
Lovely things. I just don’t use them as important items and don’t care about their nutrients, it’s mostly negligible. They are for joy.

So I still can’t imagine not having a very long list if we consider everything we eat… I am used to have 30 rows on the tracking site I use and that’s for a single day (some of them were complex meals*)! It changed on carnivore, it’s probably always below 15 now… (Too bad I usually add extra items but they are negligible.)
*My simple veggie soup had maybe 10 ingredients but it’s easy to make a zillion ingredient omelet too. Eating plants is complicated. Meat is way easier as I just add salt most of the time (works for my soups too but those have water as well ;)).

Indeed, cheaper cuts can be great too (and very expensive compared to pork and turkey but it’s fine even for me occasionally), I just fry or cook the hell out of them, it’s personal taste. We usually make beef stew, that’s something special. I love my pork, good pork is the best tasting thing in the world to me but beef stew has a special charm. My favorite stew is beef stew I think (or mutton but I rarely can get some). Yum. And the best cut to make them (according to an article I have read) is the cheapest cut here (lower leg, it has tendons and membranes or what, not so enjoyable to work with it but it really makes a nice stew).


(Robin) #15

I’m having a hard time understanding… are you saying Paul is being misleading or one of the sources mentioned?

Do you want a list of carnivores who don’t take supplements? What’s your point?


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #16

Yep. I agree.

No, he doesn’t. It is demonstrably true of a lot of the commercial supplements, that the form that is easiest to make and sell is not always the form that is most bio-available or beneficial to the body.

Also, something you might have missed in that particular video, and which he has stated in other videos, is that Dr. Cywes’ clinical experience is that people on a ketogenic diet seem to need less of certain specific nutrients and hormones, so that low values of them on blood tests do not necessarily indicate poor health or a problem that needs fixing.

Moreover, and quite apart from the foregoing, there is a growing mass of data to indicate that in the case of a number of vitamins, the vitamin when eaten as part of the food it normally comes in is much more efficacious than the exact same molecule when taken in pill form. Freaky, huh? Nobody knows why this should be so, but it definitely appears to be the case.

Try these long-term carnivores: Kelly Hogan, Charles Washington, Laura Spath, L. Amber O’Hearn, Georgia Ede, Anthony Chaffee, Shawn Baker. See what they have to say. Also check out what Peter Ballerstedt has to say on the topic of proper diet and supplements—though he is not a carnivore, so far as I know.

Definitely. So if you have data to show that a statement of mine is wrong, please share those data. I want to be as close to 100% accurate as I can get.


(Michael) #17

Grass fed beef is less fatty than grain fed beef, but within every cow are varying levels of fat depending on the cut. Ribeye are fatty cuts (for that animal). I eat only grass fed beef (and other grass fed ruminants). The ribeye’s on buffalo are VERY fatty, but I have watched them graze on grass, so I know they are not grain fed. Filet mignon is not fatty, regardless of the feeding strategy (but oh so tasty!). If you want to go all out, buy a lot of bone marrow. Grain or grass fed, bone marrow is over 95% fat and contains lots of vitamins in either feeding scenario.
P.S. 9 months carnivore, and my bloodwork has never looked better. I will update you with my vitamins and minerals once I get a skin/hair analysis to confirm I am as healthy as I feel - but my iron, potassium and sodium are all on the high end of normal ranges. I do not add salt or supplements for either of those minerals.


(Robin) #18

@Joyfulness. -the original poster was asking for help with a grocery list, not a debate on your unrelated current soap box. Maybe consider starting your own thread where others are looking for that sort of discourse. Otherwise, we derail the conversation and do a disservice to members.