Well, let’s cut to the chase.
For the first time in my 5-ish years of keto/carni… I gave in to my family’s pressure.
For example…
“After all the time and effort we put into this food, you’re not going to eat most of it?”
I personally made the brisket and green beans. Totally on-plan.
But knowing I am 100% capable of handling two days of stuff like mac-n-cheese, mashed potatoes, rolls, I went ahead and cheerfully indulged. But no dessert, period. No way.
Did I enjoy it? It was okay. But nothing that rocked my world.
Anyhoo… they are gone, I am back in the groove and feel fine.
Whew.
Very right, dessert is very easy in keto too, who needs carby ones? But nothing can substitute potatoes or apples. Not like we needed it to live and eat well, of course…
If you could handle it well, I mean, you didn’t get unwell, once in a blue moon it’s not that horrible I guess! (Not like anyone should listen to me who goes off on a whim… I almost never go totally wild nowadays though. It wouldn’t be hedonistic at all…)
It’s usually my experience with carby eating. Eventually, I learn and know what is totally worth it. It doesn’t mean I don’t eat anything else but it still helps tremendously.
That’s the best! One had their fun but the normal food is the best, after all, everything considered…
At my house, Thanksgiving is where we get together, cook for two days, gorge ourselves, and go around the table to say what we’re thankful for…the common recipient being my husband who puts up with me all year.
I always have trouble around the holidays. I’m the cook for everything. We have many food intolerances and allergies and I’m the only one who can pull it together. We had three separate holiday meals and two sets of overnight guests this last week. We get the picky eater grandkids for most of the week tomorrow (hubby and I still work full time). My underweight daughter is home from university, as well. She goes back to school today. I probably just undid a month’s worth of good over the last five days, and I didn’t even really make any desserts.
But… Why? I have exactly the same sized stomach and energy need at Christmas (we obviously have no Thanksgiving and I don’t visit family at Easter or on birthdays)… Why would I want to eat much more? Maybe a little but much? I am not a masochist…
Mom tried to do that. Cooking, baking for days and expecting me to eat up everything afterwards. It was super stressful.
Special dishes, I get it, that can be nice (but I still like the eat a dish whenever I fancy it, not on a fixed day!). But huge amounts… That sounds a very bad idea. I can handle the family Christmas dinner (it’s normal, plus extra tempting, extra rich dessert) but I better don’t eat before so it’s a perfectly fine food intake and I go back to some normal eating the next day (carnivore is the best).
Maybe I don’t get this as I always overate for decades. Definitely no room for any extra eating on holidays! Now I even had a somewhat changed taste… I just want my good food (and get tempted by others I don’t want or need… tasty though… and it’s fine here and there but not in big amounts).
It’s not always huge amounts. Our table had: a 22 lb turkey, and a ham. Biscuits, and croissants. Bowls and tureens of corn (creamed and plain), sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli, carrots, ambrosia, a sausage-bread-and-egg casserole, cranberry dressing, bread stuffing, brown gravy, pumpkin pie, apple pie, ice cream, keto brownies, snickerdoodles and sugar cookies. Even if you just have a smidge of half of it, your plate will overflow.
(And I will say, with this family, there’s always absurd competition / control issue. One person likes to host and try a new theme, but another always insists on filling in 4-5 traditional dishes that weren’t going to be on the new menu, and then everyone else feels slightly obligated not to arrive empty handed. Of course everyone’s made their specialty and wants to be sampled, recognized and appreciated …)
I think what amazes me now is how little thought I give to my food/meals now. Zero forethought. At big family events, it’s all about the food.
Interesting.
Yes. It’s very strange to me to have actually eaten breakfast in the first place, and then be asked an hour and a half later if I’d like some coffee cake, then a “light” lunch, knowing there’s a monster wave of food coming in two or three hours.
So aside from a caveman amount of turkey, including both the legs dinner wise I had a small amount of mashed potatoes, which lucky for me I only kinda half like, white potatoes don’t really do anything for me, the butter and salt is nice though! I did have 2 rolls, some stuffing (I could eat a dump truck of that) 1 slice of apple pie and a slice of pumpkin pie. Past that had my protein ice cream.
Lol. Stuffing … If someone told me there was no food but a sink sized basin of stuffing, I’d probably say gee, that’s a shame, so what are you going to eat?
As an Aussie, Thanksgiving means nothing except what my North American friends talk about. As I eat nothing but meat and dairy, I think I would have eaten that again on Thanksgiving Day (is that a thing? )
BUT, in the UK/Aus culture, Christmas is THE big holiday/festival of the year. My wife (who is kinda ketovore) is insisting that we have a “traditional” big Christmas meal: roast turkey, stuffing (made from bread), gravy (made from flour), potatoes (grown in my garden), peas, carrots (and other assorted plants).
My wife and our family guests I am sure will enjoy all the carbs and plants, I will not be indulging. I will pile my plate high with turkey and bacon and butter. Maybe some smoked and regular salmon with cream cheese on the side. And then a steak or 3. I think I will make lots of hollandaise sauce and pour it liberally over my meal…. I am salivating already…
I will leave the plants to them.
What is much more of a challenge is what happens just after Christmas… i have a tradition with my son that on Boxing Day we travel down to Melbourne, and we then go and watch the Test match (cricket) at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). This is a big sporting event in the Aussie calendar. It goes for 5 days (!!).
So, the challenge as a carnivore is eating well when travelling in a carb centric world without access to my usual food at home. It can be tricky, but I usually manage OK. Finding carni food at a cricket ground can be very difficult! I often take my own food, but it takes some effort, thought and preparation, and sometimes some compromises. So, after this year’s travels I will let you know how I went and what compromises I allowed.
I made us a giant platter of turkey & ham alfredo (i.e., alfredo white cream sauce, melted mozzarella, slide sweet peppers, mushrooms, olive oil drizzle, salt/pepper) with a steaming side of heavily buttered/salted fresh broccoli. We washed it down with Sauvignon Blanc. Leftovers for Friday’s lunch.
Yeah that won’t happen to me Eating in the morning firmly belongs to my room 101 (my SO told me a room 101 should have worse things than low-fat, high-carb and eating breakfast but I find them horrible enough and don’t want to think about even worse things). Except when I wake up super early, for some reason a tiny scrambled eggs emerges and wakes me up…
I can’t eat all the time anyway, I was very used to 2 proper meals a day already in my high-carb times. If I go to relatives and it’s holiday or just a feast because it’s my annual visit, I try to do it OMAD. It would be a mess without it and I am a hedonist, I want to feel more or less okay (and eat proper sized meals, not tiny ones keeping me hungry all day, not like I can actually do that).
I don’t know about such things. My lunches always were big, I don’t eat a tiny snack for that meal…
I know all about too much food and competition in the family but thankfully my current one is all about meeting each other. There is food, sure but it’s not more in amount or fanciness than the normal fare - except the desserts but it’s only a few kinds (and I bring 2 of them, 1 is mostly a gift as it’s not so bad for someone with diabetes and it’s a very good imitation of her old fav treat… I just use way better ingredients especially now that they don’t even use almonds for the not-anymore-marzipan in it). Half of the family arrives after the food is eaten, it’s just talking and giving token gifts with them As I talk about our only family holiday, Christmas. They are very peaceful. I have read a lot about other people’s not so great ones where money and competition kill all remnants of love, horrible. Mom just cooked for days in extreme stress (and as I annoyed her, apparently, I couldn’t enter the kitchen. there were some hungry times but I always could fast, it was more like a mental anguish. that was when I decided I never will make a huge cooking deal of Christmas as love, togetherness, peace and chill are WAY more important. I never wanted all the fancy food at Christmas or ever. I just wanted to feel fine and eat good food all year round).
Good (I mean tasty) potatoes are really delicious and irreplaceable but even they are nothing without butter and salt I almost never missed potatoes but I would miss butter… Salt is vital so I eat it all the time, obviously. Salty butter is a nice snack
I can relate. I am more than 10-20 slice of cake type things myself so I consider your actions very mild. (Sadly, it takes some very very rich and low-carb cake for me not to be able to eat this much after satiation is reached by good food.)
I don’t get the hype, honestly. All my possible carni foods are way more tempting… And I do love cheese. I do have some nostalgic feelings towards our macaroni with cheese (we call the long stuff with a tiny hole “macaroni”. so it’s one size thicker than spaghetti so it already can have a tiny hole. I love that pasta shape best, we keep it long like spaghetti) but it’s a quick dish, barely even fit a normal meal let alone a holiday one… Though one should eat whatever they want and can for any meals if you ask me. But pasta has a too low joy/carb ratio for me. Even our normal, eggy ones. So if I want a cheesy “pasta”, I just make my nearly full egg things as pasta. It’s even much tastier than the eggiest pasta (egg beats flour taste wise, that’s very clear… it changes the texture and other things though and nostalgy may not accept that), my only woe is that I can’t make it macaroni shaped. I may do some kinda-tube though… It never was that important, sometimes I give in and buy macaroni (4 eggs is the most I can find so I should add eggs too, not just cheese. pasta with eggs is a common dish as well. of course I made it with eggy pasta in my carby times. double eggy pasta, fabulous. a bit too floury for me now)…
Doesn’t sounds so good to me… I have problems with the super rare occasion when my SO’s Mom makes stuffed chicken. As she ruins a perfectly edible meat (well it’s not very tasty, supermarket chicken isn’t so great but it’s cheap and easy and tender and it has protein and fat and not carbs) It’s even worse when my SO cooks our once per 1-3 months ruminant meat with beetroots, rendering it borderline inedible for me. Sigh.
Fortunately gravy isn’t a thing here, at least I never saw anyone making it… Potatoes are fine as they are tasty AND still easy to avoid… But leaving the stuffing seems a tiny bit rude…? Who will eat it alone? And no way I throw away any kind of food ever. But I still don’t like the useless stuffing (even if it’s kinda tasty but I don’t get much joy from it as I don’t want it).
I may try it one day… I just never buy salmon anymore. Raw salmon ruined cooked salmon for me and I can buy very lovely fish for less money anyway. I am into bream since last Christmas and decided to buy it again! Is it okay with cream cheese too? Probably… Maybe it’s unnecessary, I usually eat my meat (fish is totally meat to me) alone or with eggs… But sometimes with pickles
As I still love some plants but the vast majority just doesn’t worth it at all.
I am looking forward to hearing about it!
It’s always easy for me as I mostly am at home and after Christmas dinner, it’s very obvious I should start my winter carnivore-ish times. The only difficulty is that my SO’s Mom packs a ton of Christmas rolls - but after eating way too much of it the previous days, I can behave for the very, very short time my SO needs to eat them. He has extreme dessert eating skills and he can show them at any time, even many times in a row. I use it for my benefit sometimes, to avoiding tempting but unnecessary carbs.
But it’s still the time when I get ready for my not wild but still carbier than ideal Christmas dinner. November was too fruity, it had unusual difficulties this time… But now I go back to carnivore so I won’t feel bad from some carbs when the time comes. And anyway, it’s my default especially in winter.
I had a bunch of stuff including bread (that I made), stuffing (also from bread I made), cranberries, desserts, ice cream, pizza. Oddly, my BHB got to 0.1 mmol/l, which is the lowest it got and only once. I only tested in the morning though. I’m sure a continuous ketone monitor would’ve shown something different.
Edit: ketones were higher than 0.1 mmol/l in the mornings, even eating carbs. Though my “normal” ketones are 0.2-0.3 every morning, regardless of what I eat.
I made a traditional Thanksgiving meal since my brother-in-law was joining us. He lives alone and never married, so a holiday meal is a special treat for him. I sent him home with lots of leftovers
Seven years ago my hubby and I started low carb after Thanksgiving and then we switched to keto in Jan 2018 after my gf suggested it and I watched Dr. Berry’s youtube videos.
We didn’t stuff ourselves or overdo anything. Today we are starting a 48-72 hour fast after lunch and then will do strict keto until Christmas.
But nothing can substitute potatoes or apples. Not like we needed it to live and eat well, of course…
One had their fun but the normal food is the best, after all, everything considered…
dinner wise I had a small amount of mashed potatoes, which lucky for me I only kinda half like, white potatoes don’t really do anything for me, the butter and salt is nice though! I did have 2 rolls, some stuffing (I could eat a dump truck of that) 1 slice of apple pie and a slice of pumpkin pie. Past that had my protein ice cream.
so I should add eggs too, not just cheese. pasta with eggs is a common dish as well. of course I made it with eggy pasta in my carby times. double eggy pasta, fabulous. a bit too floury for me now)…