Slow start keto with some concerns

gallbladder
coffee
blood-pressure
(Natasha) #14

Hi and welcome to the forum. Don’t feel that you have to drink bulletproof coffee. You could try a cup with 2, 3 or more tbsp of HWC and some sugar free flavoured coffee syrup. :coffee:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #15

You might like cold brewed coffee. Less bitter and acid comes out of the grounds than with hot brew. I drink a liter of cold brew every morning for breakfast. I have my own ‘keto’ mix I add to give a lot of nutrition. No sweetener other than a very small amount of sucralose in one of the whey powders.

(Jane) #16

You have to be careful and not binge on them, but they are a nice snack with some protein and fat (chx or tuna salad). 1/2 sheet is 6 g net and is a nice portion.

Take a sheet of the Joseph’s Lavash bread out and spray or brush with olive oil on both sides. Sprinkle seasoning on one side (ranch dressing mix, garlic salt and cracked pepper, cinnamon and sweetener for sweet ones). Score into cracker squares with a pizza cutter.

Place on parchment paper and bake at 400F for about 5 minutes. Watch carefully as ovens vary a lot. They can go from crispy brown to burnt in a hurry! I flip mine over for another couple of minutes. You want them lightly browned so they crisp up but not too brown.

Remove from oven and let cool. Break along score lines into crackers and store in plastic containers. They keep and stay crisp for quite some time.

#17

I have heard about trying this as well as some odd sounding methods like mixing egg into the grounds as it brews or a yolk into the coffee afterward. I really like coffee hot though and I love the convenience of my auto-drip machine… I know microwaving brewed coffee effects the flavor. Maybe I could use cold brew for a bulletproof frappe. :thinking:

@Janie Oooh, I will look for that. Probably won’t be able to afford often anyway even if I can find them, but it’s nice to know there are options. It feels less… confining.

#18

@Natasha I was intrigued by the idea of bulletproof coffee when I first heard of it. It was a big draw to try Keto, honestly. I have subsisted off some form of liquid breakfast all my life. When I was a kid, it was cereal with lots of milk. This just naturally transitioned to coffee (with sugar and milk) once busy adult life set in and somewhere along the way, I lost the desire to consume solid food in the morning. I have swapped coffee out for tea with honey when I was cutting caffeine and/or dairy and for fruit and yogurt/kefir and/or green smoothies.

Frankly, this is the first way of “healthy” eating I have tried that doesn’t want me to drop coffee like a hot rock and that makes me very happy! :star_struck:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

@bluedove I brew my coffee cold, I drink it hot. I don’t use egg. I do use a couple of different whey powders and hydrolyzed collagen, MCT and coconut oils, ghee and whipping cream. I use a blender with a mason jar to mix. Here I am with Bubba:

(Jane) #20

Waaaaay cheaper than a box of crackers! A bag of 4 is less than $3 at Walmart (are you in the US?) and it make a huuuuuge tub of crackers. I had company over and she showed me how to make them and we baked up the 4 sheet that came in a package and the 4 of us munched on them for days. I had chicken salad and pimento cheese to go with them. Yum.

(Lynn Roitt) #21

I found that I prefer less sweet and more bitter/sour/pungent flavors now that I’m off carbs. And I fixed my coffee just like the op. But sweet became more an idea than a preference, after only 3 or 4 weeks on keto. I also don’t have a gall bladder, but the only thing that sends me rushing to the bathroom is coffee, or eating after a long fast. Somehow fat never has bothered me much.

(Natasha) #22

Yes! Me too! I absolutely love coffee - sometimes I feel excited to go to bed because that means morning coffee! I don’t eat breakfast either, usually have ‘lunch’ about 11.30 - when I started this WOE I would drink 4 cups of really strong coffee with 2tbsp extra thick double cream (I’m in the UK) in each cup, it was delicious and really kept me full. Somewhere over the past 20 months I have transitioned to 2 cups of strong black in the mornings and 2 cups with 1tbsp normal double cream in the afternoon - I really wouldn’t want to give up my coffee and I’d definitely struggle to do my fasts without it! :coffee:

I hope you find a solution that means you can carry on enjoying your coffee just as much as always! :grinning:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #23

@Natasha Coffee lover here, too! For me, though, I view coffee as a delivery vehicle. If I’m going to bother making and drinking the stuff, it’s going to be worthwhile nutritionally. See my photo with Bubba above. That liter of coffee is my ‘breakfast’ every day. Here’s my recipe with my current macros if you’re interested in what’s in there. :crazy_face:

(Natasha) #24

I wondered about ‘breakfast with bubba’ as your thread title, now I understand! Your coffee breakfast sounds delicious, Michael! :grinning:

#25

I have run over my grocery budget for the month, so full blown keto is going to have to wait about another week. But I am continuing my “farewell to carbs” tour. My last bottle of Italian sweet cream coffee creamer will be finished by the end of this weekend!

Dinners the last few days have been a bit carb heavy and oddly seem to have caused the old problem of running to the bathroom that I associated with a high fat meal. Perhaps I have been wrong about what really caused that issue. :thinking:

Also I went to Starbucks yesterday. Tried to be good and had them use the skinny mocha, sugarfree vanilla syrup and heavy cream in my cuppa. Then they had someone take off after ordering on the drive through and asked “Would anyone like some free Frappuchinos?” and my inner sugar addict leaped up and shouted “Hell yeah!” before I could stop her, lol! At least it was a small one… :blush:

I also raided their stock of sweeteners for Splenda and one(Whole Earth brand) with erythritol, stevia and monk fruit . I tried the one w/ monk fruit today and found it sweet and slightly fruity without the nasty aftertaste, even though it has some stevia! So I think I may have found a go-to sweetener, yay! :metal:

@amwassil Bubba looks tough! Mine is a Swig and not very photogenic anymore after a few tumbles from the top of the car. :laughing:

@Janie I found the Lavash bread! :grin:
They had pitas in the same brand, which I resisted, but might have to try when I’m ready to kill someone for a slice of pizza! :skull::pizza:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #26

I also have one of these, which holds a bit more than Bubba:

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I travel with the Manna. Bubba stays home.

(mike lisanke) #27

Janie, Nobody (except me) asked this (that I’ve seen). Do you still eat celery in your keto diet? Did you/do you still/ find it spikes your insulin? e.g. does it crash your ketosis? Thanks, Mike

(Niko Neko) #28

I’m interested on the Lavash crackers :+1: I like to cook and make stuff, on Keto I get lazy and mostly just make meat and eat it once a day :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(Jane) #29
(BuckRimfire) #30

I would not really call that recipe keto/low-carb. It looks like roughly 40% of the calories are from starch.

If you’re truly going to eat only three or four crackers the size of a postage stamp per day and nothing else that is high in carbs, OK, that could work. But this appears to achieving the “low carb” rating primarily by draconian serving size control, not by being genuinely low carb.

The bowl of crackers shown in the illustration would serve roughly ten people!

(Jane) #31

All true. I usually only eat a few when I want something crunchy to go with chicken salad or pimento cheese.

(Lauren Gratte) #32

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(B Creighton) #33

My sweeteners include xylitol, erythritol with monk fruit, rabaudioside stevia drops, monk fruit drops, allulose and glycine. I find glycine to have a slightly sour aftertaste, but I use it in my yogurt now so don’t notice it. It’s too expensive to use like sugar though. The rabaudioside stevia drops I use really don’t have much aftertaste, and are so sweet that I only need 8 drops to sweeten my drinks, but these drops are a fairly powerful diuretic, so I stopped using them in the evening so I didn’t have to get up during the night. I do not find these drops to have much aftertaste like standard stevia. I do like the monk fruit drops but they are more expensive, and are weaker, so I limit their use to my evening drink. Xylitol tastes much like sugar to me, but it is not quite as sweet, and does raise blood sugar some. It has gotten cheaper since the blood platelet study. It also acts much like sugar for cooking purposes, so I keep it for that, and no longer use it in my morning yogurt.
I’m sure you don’t expect anyone to mention your coffee… it is just standard, but it does spike cortisol, and that does raise your morning blood sugar, and keeps it more elevated for at least 2 hours… So it is not just the sugar you add that is at issue. I get my morning energy from the MCTs I eat in my goat yogurt. They are rapidly converted to ketones.

I don’t eat any processed meats. I have used cucumber slices in the past. Mushrooms are not a bad idea. I suggest using goat cheese. I now eat it like I used to use cream cheese. It is just simply healthier.

I really don’t hardly snack. I don’t snack at all while doing keto, which I will start in Nov. I do eat some crackers and olive oil hummus this time of year. The crackers I have been using are “Simple Mills Organic Seed Flour” crackers I got from Costco. These do have starches. If I am really being naughty and eating something like guava shells, I will use goat cheese as my spreadable cheese as I no longer tolerate dairy cheeses with A1 casein in them. Otherwise my snack is going to be a protein bar or my homemade nut mix sweetened with some date pieces… or you can use some organic raisins. IF you are off all sugar, you may consider a fat bomb. I make one with coconut oil, cocoa powder and erythritol /monk fruit sweetener. It is a lot like fudge. I don’t know how you would do with this without a gall bladder though. A bite at a time might be OK. I think for keto, you will have to concentrate on protein. I just bought some organic strawberries, I am going to use for chocolate covered strawberries… however this will be for dessert, and not a snack. The sweetener will be the erythritol/monk fruit sweetener. However, I don’t really crave sweets anymore. I just enjoy them occassionally for dessert… basically sugarless of course. This time of year I typically just have some whole fruit for dessert. For instance last night I shared a very good mango with my wife for dessert. Dessert is dropped during keto though almost completely.