Hey all,
So I have decided to partake in the keto journey. Long story short, I am 43 years old have a beautiful wife and 2 boys 6 and 8. I have been dealing with anxiety and obesity pretty for over 8 years now and it’s time to break those chains that bind me… I’m sure there will be a million questions along the way but the most important one is this: is there a reliable source for getting prepped keto meals? Let me know and thanks in advance for any help
Hi.
As far as a reliable source for meals, the best way is to cook at home (yourself or wife).
For recipe/meal ideas you can check out the “recipes” section as well as “what did you keto today”
Good luck with your journey and ask as many questions as you need 
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Welcome to the forum, Steve.
I agree with what @KetoCancerMom has told you.
Good luck in your journey =).
Welcome Steve!
There are prep meal services available that have Keto plans, but I am unsure whether they have clean ingredients or what the price points are. There are also LOADS of drink mixes and bars and stuff like that on the market but I would advise anyone to stay as far away from that stuff as possible. It’s junk. You’re looking for real food.
When you’re first starting out, just keep your carbs under 20 grams net per day and get those carbs incidentally from veg and some dairy. Some people disagree, but I would advise that in the first month, you don’t worry about a calorie deficit. Get plenty of calories at first while your body fat adapts. Cut the milk and opt instead for heavy cream. Cut the sugar and grains completely, as well as starchy veg. Make sure your protein is moderate and eat fat to satiety. Consume plenty of liquid and salt for your electrolytes to stay balanced and to ward off the worst of the carb withdrawal. Don’t panic if you don’t feel well in the first one to three weeks. Just come to these forums and seek advice and reassurance.
I love to cook and am lucky enough to have a lot of time to experiment in the kitchen. I am aware that many people don’t have that luxury. But bacon, eggs, steak and hamburger patties are quick, easy, delicious and highly nutritious. There’s so much perfectly Keto food you can make in 15 minutes.
Again, don’t be afraid to seek direction on the forums and when you get conflicting opinion, that’s ok too. This is a big, grand experiment. A highly successful experiment run by a group of individuals who are finding that we all Keto slightly differently from one another.
Welcome Steve76s.
I agree with what has already been said, especially the part about avoiding all processed foods, eating real food and cooking/preparing the food at home.
Wishing you a great start to your keto journey, do keep posting - both your questions and your results.
Honestly, from what I have seen it’s not worth going through a company that will deliver keto meals. 1) it’s expensive, 2) the macros may not for your needs, and 3) it takes time to receive
It’s much better to make your own
Welcome! I agree that preparing foods at home is the most optimal. That way you can be certain of all ingredients of the foods you eat. Keep it simple. There is nothing more simple than cooking up a nice steak and adding a veggie with butter. Or throw some skin on chicken thighs in the oven with your favorite seasonings, add veggies with butter, boom! Or eggs! So easy and versatile. Have a bunch of eggs scrambled and cooked in butter, a bunch of bacon, so easy, filling, and satisfying. If you are on FB, you can join the keto kitchen. So many good tips for prepping and ideas for meals. https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheKetoKitchen/ Cook in bulk. That way you have something for the next day or you can freeze for another meal another time.
Thank you all for sharing feedback and encouragement… our time is limited which was why I was looking for an easier alternative instead of having to cook… my wife hates cooking fish and is having a hard time accepting the keto challenge for me… thinks its unhealthy lol.
It might not be good to work just the Keto angle. By definition you’ll be eating to satiety so food (if you put in the effort) will not be a problem.
But, mental stuff can derail even the best laid plans. MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction) is a great 8 week course for this sort of thing if you can find it near you. Essentially, it teaches you to meditate. A few minutes of meditation each morning is definitely a good way to head off serious WOE (way of eating) derailments.
You say you are short on time - think about this quote “If you do not have 20 minutes to meditate, you probably need 2 hours”. Seriously, constant busyness is a great way to sabotage any of your plans so, you might want to focus on that also.
Welcome Steve, I am relatively new here, about 4 weeks in to my Keto journey. This site has been very helpful for me and I’m sure if you spend a little time here it will be the same for you. I’m not sure about a source for prepared Keto meals but I can say this, if you find one I would bet the cost of those would be at or above what restaurant meals cost. During my first month I have been shocked at how much money I have saved by shopping for and preparing my own food. I never spend more than 30 minutes, usually less than that, preparing a meal and that I usually get 3 to 4 meals from most everything I make. Shopping fir food is really quick and easy when you never use anything from over half the market. Good luck.
Welcome! And good luck. I’ve been eating this way since January 2 and am still learning so much. One thing I wish I had let myself believe when I started was that it does not need to be complicated. I was worried about how it would go so I went out and got some very dark chocolate and keto bars because I was sure I would need them as a sweet tooth safety net (don’t ask me, it is a mental thing). I went and got a bag of Swerve. I got a bag of almond flour. I made 10 fat bombs for the freezer.
Guess what I have now, eight months later? I have seven fat bombs left. I have 90% of that bag of Swerve because I only used it to sweeten homemade whipped cream a few times (which, by the way, YUM). I have 90% of a bag of almond flour because I soon realized I didn’t really miss bread and lettuce wraps work fine most of the time if needed. I have a box of keto bars with ONE missing. And I have a full bar of chocolate (which seriously, I should just give to my husband because I never was big into chocolate anyway and I am clearly not going to eat it any time soon).
It does not have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be fancy recipes. (Make them if you want, but it really isn’t needed.) And it really isn’t about pre-packaged anything. It can literally be scrambled eggs and cheese, bacon burgers (Costco has frozen ones which are great on the go), a nice little steak, a beautiful Cobb salad with EVOO, or one of my personal favorites, rotisserie chicken (Costco again) pieces with Buffalo wing sauce and chunky blue cheese and a side of raw broccoli with pre-made guacamole (so satisfying).
Just get some basics (eggs, HWC, meat, avocado, etc) and jump in!
A few things on my shopping list that might qualify as prepped (or nearly so):
Costco/Kirland pulled pork
Kirkland pre-cooked bacon
Wholly Guacamole
Rotisserie chicken
Raw broccoli
Jimmy Dean Meat Lovers scrambles (located near the dairy case in my grocery store, not frozen)
Quick n Eat frozen burgers (Costco)
Hard boiled eggs (ok, so you have to actually prep them, but you can do a lot at once and make egg salad or guac & egg salad for days)
Welcome @steve76s!
Take one day at a time and consider it a victory if you’ve stayed at 20g of carbs or less. I started with eliminating everything but meat, a few hard cheeses, and lettuce. It was surprisingly simple and satisfying.
Best of luck on your journey!
That’s been one of my biggest challenges, too. However, I do have a desire to cook more. That doesn’t always follow through to execution, though.
I like the kitchen gadgets, good cutlery, cutting boards, utensils. Typical male, I guess - I am into the gear more so that the execution.
However, going into this, I read a lot, and not just about this way of eating but of the other, more mainstream, ways of healthy eating. And they ALL, every one of them, emphasize food prepared from fresh whole ingredients, limiting processed and packaged foods (unless it is some kind of plan that sells you stuff - avoid those).
So I realized I was going to have to change to a healthy LIFESTYLE, not just healthier food choices. And that means I grocery shop a couple of times a week, buy fresh produce and meats, and prep and cook foods more often than I want to.
I just had to make the decision to fit it in. You can also get some pretty good vegetable choices (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, spinach) in frozen packages that require microwaving, so you just have to cook up some meat.
There are some tricks - batch cooking. Buy the bulk packs of chicken thighs - cook them all at once in a baking pan in the oven, eat a couple today and wrap and refrigerate the rest, which can be eaten for lunch / dinner, reheated or cold, or chopped up and added to salads or make chicken salad. Just means you’ll be eating a lot of chicken that week.
Same with beef - buy the bulk pack of ground beef. Portion it out. Cook enough for two or more meals, freeze the rest using a vacuum sealer (buy one of these if you don’t have one).
When I really want a good meal but don’t feel like cooking, I go out to eat. I have several favorite restaurants that have choices that line up perfectly with how I eat. Go get your favorite fish (grilled or blackened, not breaded and fried) + side veggie + salad. Or a slab of dry-rubbed barbecue ribs with green beans instead of baked beans as the side. Or just a big chef’s salad.
But life is much easier if you decide going into it you are going to start eating healthy real foods, and limit the packaged and processed stuff as much as possible.
The most important part of this way of eating is to keep your carbohydrate low, under 20 grams a day. That alone will make an enormous difference. Stick to leafy greens and vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower, and you’ll be fine. Eating that way will lower you insulin and allow some of that extra fat to come out of storage to be burned. You don’t need to count calories. Just eat to satisfy your hunger. If you skimp on the calories, it will only tell your body to hang on to everything because there’s a famine going on, and you don’t want that.
There are no rules for eating keto other than this, though there are a lot of ways we can suggest to eat more healthily. But the best approach is to do what you can. There are people who managed to heal their metabolism and lose weight on fast food (McDonald’s without the bun, etc.). Not ideal, but it was all they could afford.
For the sake of optimal health, it’s a good idea to avoid processed foods and eat real, whole food. A lot of food can be prepared in batches when you have time, and then eaten during the rest of the week. Roasts and casseroles are easy, because you put them in the oven and go do something else for a while. A pressure cooker can speed up cooking times (InstaPot is a popular brand right now), and a slow cooker (Crock Pot being the iconic brand there) allows you to start a meal in the morning that will be ready by the time you come home.
So if you want to get started, have eggs for breakfast, instead of cereal. Put heavy cream in your coffee, and eliminate the sugar. Cut out the toast, jam, and homefries. Bring some pepperoni or pork rinds to work to have as a snack, if and when you need one. For lunch have meat and salad, no dessert. Same for supper. If you cut out the sugar, starches, and grains, and eat to satisfy your hunger, you will see an enormous difference fairly quickly. You will start to find it very easy to go hours between meals, and you won’t be afflicted by constant hunger. Give it a try!
I agree with this. I was really worried when I first started and bought all kinds of unnecessary stuff, and overbought groceries, which would eventually go bad before I used them all.
You kind of have to plan out what you’re going to eat this week, and buy just enough for that.
Another time saver is that many groceries sell freshly cooked that day rotisserie chickens for about $6 or $7. A whole chicken, cooked, for about the price of McDonald’s drive through. Depending on how hungry you are, that’s 2 or more days worth of food for one right there, or at least the meat portion of a meal for two.
Welcome to the forum and keto life. As someone who started out at over 300lbs I am testament to this lifestyle change.
It can seem daunting at first but keeping it simple is the key to quick meal prep, hard boil a bunch of eggs, cook up a load of bacon…two great standbys that have seen me through many days!
As most people have said the key is ditching the carbs, definitely under 20 g and you will see and feel the progress.
Keto is not ‘magic’ as in everyone drops weight really fast…some do and some don’t…but it does heal your body as it goes, you will notice small things happen, celebrate them!
I found that this way of eating reduced by physical and mental hunger within days and so my anxiety around food and eating which affected the way I behaved was much reduced.
Stick to the simple but great keto pleasures, an avocado, great with just salt and pepper, a cheese omelette made with plenty of butter. Steak, flash fried…again in butter or other animal fat, pork belly, slow cooked to be meltingly soft…with the crackling cooked separately to be a salty crunchy delight!
Honestly, I spend less time in the kitchen cooking than ever before, my food bills are lower and I feel I eat like a queen while never needing to snack or obsess about food the way I did.
I hope keto is as kind to you as it is to me, my very best wishes to you on your journey, your wife will see the changes and accept that this works, just give it a go!
As all and sundry have already mentioned, keto eating is easy and most healthy with home cooked food. However, I get being short on time so I will recommend the company Factor 75. I’m not sure where you are located and I’m not sure how limited their service area is, but they deliver individual, fresh (as in not frozen) meals for various different “diets.” It’s expensive as all get out, but if I remember correctly I got like $20 off my initial shipment. And the food is pretty decent for something that comes out of the microwave… saved me a couple of times when I was a lazy so and so and failed to pack lunch for work.
Welcome!
Search the forum for “lazy keto” and you will find lots of posts from folks who don’t cook much and get some ideas.
Keto cooking is the simplest you can do - it definitely does not take more time than eating out and less time than cooking a regular meal. About the only thing that beats cooking your own is a fast-food drive-thru. But it is messy to eat a burger in the car w/o a bun but convenient when you just don’t want to cook (and clean up!).
Like others have said - you can cook up a whole week’s worth of food on the weekend. You can throw some frozen, peeled shrimp in a skillet of butter and throw in some sliced zucchini and onion (careful on the amount) and voila - dinner in 15 minutes and one skillet to clean up.
You can make up egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad (I sense a theme here), pimento cheese and put up in the fridge and it will all keep up to a week or longer.
What you will discover is all the work up front will diminish as time goes on. Believe it or not in 4-6 weeks you won’t be hungry all the time, thinking of food all the time, thinking of what you will eat for your next meal. Put the time in the first 2 months and stick to it and you will be amazed at the results.
You will start skipping meals and eating less and this reduces the time you need to cook or procure food. You will no longer be a slave to hunger and this to me is the MOST.AMAZING.BENEFIT of keto.
Hi Steve and welcome! Personally, I do very lazy keto, I’ve only recently started doing more cooking than just heating up.
I do all the meal prep for my household, I’m the only doing keto. While I enjoy cooking, with my job I don’t have time to cook during the week, at all. My meal prep is about once a month, and as easy as I can do it. Pork butt in the crock pot with Butt Rub, liquid smoke, salt and maybe some garlic powder. Cook on low at least 14 hours, and you have pulled pork. Freeze in meal-size bags, then thaw one out and serve with some frozen veggies or salad. Dinner ready, your wife can have hers on a bun if she wants. Taco meat is cooked in 5 pound batches using home-made taco seasoning (no sugar or additives), then bagged and frozen. The rest of my family uses tortillas, I make a taco salad instead.
Chicken legs and thighs in the sous vide (or in the oven), cook a bunch and freeze. See above. Same with country ribs, top round (awesome with the sous vide). Pre-measure burgers and freeze, or freeze chubs in the size you normally eat. We normally cook 3 burgers, so a 1 pound pack works for us.
Each weekend, unless it’s a really crazy one, I take an hour or so and cook some veggies, then split them between containers for my lunches. Add protein leftovers from the nightly meals, and lunch is done. If it’s crazy, I get salad mix and heat some up with olive oil, garlic powder and salt in the microwave. Two minutes and I have sauteed greens. 10-15 minutes for dinner most nights, if that.
The best thing that worked for me was to have lots of zero carb snacks around. Follow this rule for the first couple weeks…if you are hungry, you are doing it wrong,…go get a zero carb snack. Forget all the fasting stuff, all the meal timing stuff…start with getting yourself into ketosis then worry about the rest.
For the first couple weeks…avoid all carbs to the best you can. This is sort of your de-tox phase. Try to hold to 5 grams of carbs if you can.
After this first couple weeks you should be able to up the carbs to 20 grams…but try to stay below it.
Fill your calories with fat. Lots of good fats.
In this first phase…Remember…if you are hungry…you are doing it wrong.