I’ve been doing keto for a little over 6 months now and one of my biggest problems is that I tend to waste a lot of food. At first, I would go to the store, get something I thought was low carb. The nutrition label would say no sugars and low carbs, but reading the ingredients I would see sugar and other things like HFCS or MSG. I threw a lot of them out right away. Being single, it either goes into my mouth or in the trash. Now that I’m totally fat adapted, my appetite is very low. I can go to the store and buy a bunch of good foods for LCHF then since it is real foods with no preservatives, I may not eat it all in time. I’m looking for any ideas how you avoid wasting foods for yourself or your family. I have a vacuum sealer which helps with meats and such. Sometimes I cook more than I can eat and it goes bad. I probably need to plan out my meals and only buy what I expect to eat within a couple of days only. I’m sort of a prepper type and like to keep a good stock of food on hand at all times though. Hard to break that habit.
Wasted food
When you have leftovers just seal and freeze, then you’ve got a done meal for the future. I only cook on weekends so seal and freeze quite a bit. Timesaver when you’ve worked all day and maybe don’t feel like cooking.
I live alone and have struggled with this too. Now if I make a big batch of something (soup, chili, sauerkraut/kielbasa, shredded chicken, etc.), I try to immediately portion some of it into freezer containers. Helps me not waste food and have easy meals already prepared in freezer.
I’m the poster child for boring Keto!
I don’t have a nice vacuum sealer and Tupperware sucks for freezing so…
I make one big meal and eat it all week or till it’s gone. Yup I’m that boring. My in between foods are simple things like bacon, egg, salad, cheese and pepperoni…
I have done both. When I was single I’d eat the same thing all week and now if I have extra portions I take them to work the next day or vacuum seal. Pro tip: flash freeze what you’re going to vacuum seal, first. Then bag and seal.
I went through this phase too. In fact, when I cleaned out my pantry, I actually returned unopened packages of food to the store. Stuff I couldn’t return, I gave away to non-keto friends or donateed to a food bank.
Now, I take my reading glasses with me to the grocery store if I’m buying something new.
I agree with the comments about cleaning out your pantry. It looks like you need to do a hard reset of your pantry inventory. Dedicate a day on the weekend and go through every cupboard and freezer and fridge. Also, write down what your typical meals will be and formulate what your pantry stock should be to support that.
By the way, something I discovered is that keto takes up less inventory and I have saved money, too. It wasn’t my goal…but, it is good it turned out that way.
When I found out I had T2 I researched it and found Butter Bob and Jason Fung and enough information to get me to try the keto diet. That weekend, I cleaned out my cupboards and the refrigerator of anything that wasn’t keto. I started with a clean slate. If I wanted anything non-keto, I had to leave the house to get it.