Typical food day

(Pat) #1

what food does anyone (who is not intermittent fasting and simply doing Keto) eat in a typical day for breakfast lunch and dinner?
Me:
Breakfast is eggs fried, scrambled, poached, boiled or in an omelette sometimes with bacon or sausage
Lunch is salad with ham, tinned fish or cheese
Dinner is chops, steak or chicken with salad or vegies.
I put some butter on my vegies and I don’t cut the fat off the meat. I have olive oil on my salad.
salad is lettuce/spinach, avocado, tomato, cucumber, celery and radish.
what does anyone think of my meals? I read a lot about calories in calories out, then I read about keto and not to worry about calories in calories out and keep carbs low and fat high. I’d just like to know a typical day’s meals.

#2

Your meals are fine, just like any other way of eating, our meals are all over the place as we simply like different things.

If you’re one of the ones that your hunger and satiety signals actually work, and you can get away with not tracking the calories, you have my jealously. But there’s no shortage of us that can’t do that regardless of how long we eat this way. So if you’re not progressing towards your goal, start tracking.

People like to say nonsense like “they don’t matter”, like they magically have some unlimited metabolic rate, except that’s not how real life works. Calories matter, a bunch of other stuff does as well, but so do the calories in the end. People try to nitpick it to death, but in the end your metabolic rate can only burn so much, go over that, and you gain, stay under that and you lose.

Definitely try to see if you can get away with it, but if you see the trend of not progressing for a while, or you do at first (many do) but then hit a brick wall, then start tracking. Also, remember, ketosis comes from lack of carbs, not from high fat. You don’t want to intentionally eat low fat, as that’s your main fuel source, but don’t try to add fat to things just to do it either. People do some seriously weird crap in the name of upping fat just to do it.

#3

It doesn’t matter much if I eat IF or not, my food is very similar and I have 5 meals on IF too sometimes. And I eat “everything” for every meal so I don’t care about the time of day, my body wants the same (I mean, the same food groups, I do want variety). Big meals need meat, all meals need eggs but that is just me :slight_smile:
And I do carnivore now :slight_smile: My non-carnivore keto is the same just with fruit and walnuts and gluten here and there. But it changed a lot during the times, I used to do it vegetarian with very much sweet desserts (I am still sure it was my best option back then)… So I don’t want to write details about my typical day now, it’s quite individual, it even changed so much for me! Even on carnivore.

Your day sounds good if it satiates and satisfies you and you eat enough to give your body what it needs. Amounts obviously matter a lot, you don’t want to undereat but overeating isn’t good either.

I never lost fat on keto when eating as much as I wanted, it’s way too much energy from my food so no reason to lose fat. Not like I did keto very long at a time but I am sure it doesn’t matter. I lost fat just fine with more sugar when I ate less. So I am not in the “eat all the fat, you will lose fat” group. BUT it works for others with different individual factors and circumstances so it’s fine to try the easiest way, I even encourage that and see what happens. If it works, good, it not, you need to change something. My something is always lowering fat (protein too if I am at that as I tend to overeat that too but as long as it’s not insanely high, I don’t worry about health or calories due to my high-protein. more like wasting resources. and most of us don’t eat insanely high, problem inducing amount of protein. I automatically stop, lose desire for protein before it could be a problem. some people can go way too high but it’s quite rare as far as I know) but some people need to eat more food or different items. I often heard the presence of certain items can cause a stall, I don’t have that myself.
I overeat on not satiating food, keto or carnivore or not and carbs make me hungry too so I eat accordingly. My protein need is somewhat high and I dislike most lean protein so when I ate my protein, my fat tends to be high as well, too high for my smallish energy need so I do my best to eat leaner (especially that I have some really beloved very fatty items, I need to balance them out with some leaner but still enjoyable meat) and I cut off fat from too fatty meat (but it’s too fatty even to my liking anyway. and the cut off fat is good to make lard and scratchings. I eat up the scratchings :slight_smile: ). Fat and very fatty meat doesn’t seem to satiate me well but my energy and protein needs and goals put a limit on my fat percentage for a good day anyway so I had to go a bit against my preferred fattiness. But it turned out leaner meats can be lovable too :wink:

Your food choices seem pretty good in general and I can’t possibly know your individual factors.
Food distribution (mealsize, meal frequency) is highly individual, eat as much as you need but you surely know that :wink:

Good luck!

(KM) #4

I think you nailed it, your diet sounds good to me! A decent balance of fat and protein, definitely low carb, and fresh “clean” food. You can always tweak calories up or down as you progress, offhand your choices sound like a good starting point. :+1: And good luck!

(Bob) #5

Your meals look good for Keto, a nice clean, all-natural keto at that. It looks like you would be keeping your carbs low with what you are doing.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

Before I went carnivore, I was eating two meals a day, in general, not because I chose to on purpose, but because my body seemed to want that. Breakfast/lunch would usually be leftovers, mostly just meat or fish. Supper would be a bigger meal, with meat or fish and either a salad or a vegetable or both. My favourite salad dressing was blue cheese, and we usually had gravy made with heavy cream for the meat, and possibly a cheese sauce for the vegetable. Occasionally, I’d make Fathead pizza with pepperoni or with onion, peppers, and sausage meat.

The point of eating a ketogenic diet is to lower our insulin and promote metabolic health. Lowering insulin enough has the effect of taking the body out of sugar-burning, fat-storing mode, and putting it into fat-burning mode instead, which brings with it the pleasant side effect of shedding excess stored fat.

So the key is the carb restriction, which allows insulin to drop. The other part of it is that without insulin to cause excess carbohydrate to be stored as fat, we don’t need to watch our calorie intake so intently. Low insulin stops messing with our appetite hormones, and our body can then tell us how much food it wants. The fake food and drink manufacturers tell us it doesn’t matter what we eat, as long as we watch our calories. Researchers into keto have discovered that when we eat the proper foods, calories don’t make nearly so much of a difference, and we can eat to satisfy our hunger and stay satisfied for long periods between meals.

As Dr. Stephen Phinney says, “We are not what we eat, we are what our body decides to do with what we eat”–and that is determined by our hormonal response to the types of food we eat.

(Pat) #7

thank you all for your replies, it’s always good to get someone else’s view. I often think I’m not doing it right.
Paul how do you make your gravy and cheese sauce please?
Thanks for all your information it’s good to be reminded how keto actually works. Since we retired we sometimes don’t eat breakfast until mid morning/lunch time but then dinner is after 7pm.

Now I want to tell you about my daughter who is vegan by the way very slim at 47.2kgs and just over 5 feet. This is nothing to do with her diet although she does eat very healthy, but it’s about the fact that last week she travelled to the UK to represent Australia in the World Powerlifting Championships. She got a bronze medal in her category (under 48kg) maintained two of her world records in the squat and deadlift and created a new world record in the benchlift. As I said to my sister the other day no one gets away without me telling them about my daughter and how proud I am. So now I’m letting you all know about my daughter. She’s 35 by the way.
Thanks again for all your information.

(Robin) #8

Way to go, proud mama! I bet you and your vegetarians daughter have interesting conversations!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #9

I use cornstarch, because it’s a bit lower in carbohydrate than wheat flour. When you figure out the amount per serving of gravy, it’s negligible. I tried a more keto-friendly thickener, but the taste defeated me.

At any rate, for meat gravy, make a roux with a teaspoon of corn starch and heavy cream. Add it to the pan juices on high heat and stir briskly. You can add more cream to the mixture if it’s not thick enough. If you want to add more cornstarch, shake it up in a container with some cream, first, or it won’t behave. Once the mixture thickens nicely, very slowly add water, stirring all the while, until it’s a nice consistency. Remove from the heat and serve.

For cheese sauce, start with a base of heavy cream and cream cheese over fairly low heat. As the mixture warms, add slices of the cheese of your choice. Shavings melt more easily than thick chunks. Stir until mixed well. You can increase the heat to medium, but I wouldn’t go above that, or the mixture might separate. Keep warm on very low heat, until ready to serve, or you might end up with a solid block of cheese.

In both cases, practise makes perfect.

#10

Wow, congrats for and to your daughter (I hope I wrote it right, sometimes it shows English isn’t my first language :wink: )!!!

We experienced the same. (My SO cooked the dishes with roux when I already did keto, that’s why I say ‘we’.) Some starch worked the best, by far and the amount was little. My own keto dishes had no starch, though, I find it very easy to cook without despite Hungarian cuisine uses roux all the time. And never was used to gravy.
Carbs add up quickly though so one should be careful if there are plenty of carb sources in their diet. Starches were pretty much out for me while I still ate vegs, as much as I could squeeze into my keto day…