Hey all, newbie to the whole lifestyle change here. Just turned 46, have always been active and I have been very lucky weight wise, I love my veggies but equally eat way too many carbs and sugars, the last year or so weight has crept on and whenever I eat anything sugary or a pasta style dish my heart is racing and I’m suffering headaches, so thought why not try Keto for 30 days to see if it makes any difference, only one week in and the headaches have definitely improved. My concern is all the conflicting information on what to eat, it’s taking over my entire day trying to find food substitutes! I’ve eaten my weight in avocado and eggs to avoid picking! I bought Ketostix and I was mid way a couple of days ago so yey, today I have no trace 
Had sugar cravings yesterday so ate raspberries and blackberries. I’m sure I’m way over thinking all this but I’ve never eaten full fat foods before so I’m worried I’m not burning the fat and I’m taking in too many carbs. I want to stick to this so much. Any advice on getting through the infancy stage of a lifestyle change?
Week 1 - overwhelmed with right and wrong
Berries are usually added a little later in the process. Keep in mind also that avocados have three or four grams of carbs and an egg counts about 1 gram. Add a bunch of those and berries and you are probably getting quite a few carbs. You have to get out of the fat is bad mindset. Fat =satiety and also zero carbs.
Welcome to new beginnings! I know with time and a bit of reading you will find this lifestyle to be easier than you imagined. I found when I first started doing keto the app myfitnesspal helped because I could enter the food I ate and It would tell me my percentages of carbs I was eating.
If you haven’t seen the site DietDoctor.com please check it out. They have menus and ideas for beginners.
There is a thread on this site called
What did you keto today? The Trilogy, that shows tons of ideas for delicious keto meals.
Spend some time reading. Tips from the Oldies is a good thread also.
Keep it simple at first.
Scrambled eggs in butter, bacon, egg salad, pimento cheese on celery, chicken or tuna salad with full fat mayo, hamburger patty smothered in cheese, taco salad with full fat sour cream and cheese, etc.
Make up a large egg casserole and cook up a lb of bacon and reheat for breakfast so you don’t have to cook.
Fat is your new friend! It sounds counterintuitive to eat fat to lose weight but the only real sources of calories on keto are protein and fat. Fat is one of the best ways to feel full
Thanks all, it’s good to hear how positive you all are. I’ve ordered a recipe book for beginners and decided each day is a new start until I get the hang of it all. I’m still a week ahead of where I was when I started. I’ve not purposely fallen off the Keto wagon, it’s just a beginners bump!
It’s amazing how little attention we pay to what we actually put into our bodies until we really decide to make changes for our own personal reasons. This early in and I now wince when I think about ‘pie and chips’, that’s a staple diet where I come from 
Welcome to the forum, Amanda. All the advice above is excellent, so I will just add best wishes with your journey.
Hi and Welcome Aboard! Keep it Simple! Cheeseburgers, Cheeseburgers, and no bun please! Have fun with it.
Welcome! Yeah, we have different styles and attitudes, we are different persons coming from different diets, after all. You should find your own style, I think.
Loving vegetables may be a problem but if you can keep the amount low, it may be okay for you… or really only I could do even high-carb with veggies alone? Whatever, track carbs if you are not sure you eat little enough of them. If you are new, you don’t know where they may be hiding anyway! Vegetables have a lot but there are lower-carb ones, raw ones helped me as I couldn’t eat much of those and they felt more, fresh and juicy…
For you, fat is probably fine, don’t be afraid of it (I came from very high-fat, I had to be careful with it)! It helps protein with satiation and you need your energy… Very low-carb and low-fat is usually starving, not a healthy diet. Lots of added fat doesn’t work for everyone and we don’t even need that, fatty protein sources are great. I mostly eat eggs and nowadays fatty meat. Simple may work for you but even if you like cooking and want to create interesting, new dishes, it will take time to learn things. But if you eat your fatty protein with some vegetables, you get satiated and even desires, cravings are weaker then, it’s worst when one is hungry, I think it’s common, it was very true for me and I already ate low-carb since long when I went keto. I found so many very simple but new, exciting, tasty food on keto. Look up chaffles, it’s a big thing here with its own topic, I don’t even use a waffle maker or anything extra ingredients, some really tasty cheese made my simple and a bit boring fried eggs so much better. I know tons of good egg dishes now and it’s only one ingredient.
Things get easier later. It takes some getting used to for sure. I can’t even imagine going from high-carb low-fat to keto in one big jump!
There is so many nice keto food, you surely will find your favs unless if you are very choosy but one can change A LOT! I experienced that.
Welcome. Just eat meat and vegetables and you will do fine. And a bit of cheese. You can add in berries and nuts, and keto substitutes later, if they work for you. My breakfast today was salad and hamburger. Dinner was shrimp and mustard greens.
I know, when people first start this eating plan, it is so different from the standard diet, that sometimes they end up just feeling overwhelmed by confusion.
Here is what I recommend. One thing at a time, work out something you know or find in a recipe online is pretty good to eat. It can be a single food (“eggs” “any meat”) or a recipe you have written/saved somewhere (“chicken red curry” “microwave bowl muffin”) or a food with some spec about it (“small salad but no french style dressing”). Keep a list on the fridge or something. It’s easy to forget especially early on.
It will not take long before you have a pretty good list going, and when you look at your list and it’s just not enough, hit youtube or the web at large with “keto recipe” in the search or “keto chicken” or whatever, and you will find unlimited amounts of other ideas.
My second suggestion is that you simplify your life by doing some bulk cooking or bulk prep of basic ingredients. In my case, I cook 5# chicken in the instant pot. It takes 10 seconds with the beaters IF that to shred it perfectly. I store it in quart ziplocs, about how much I might use in one meal, in the freezer, and one or two in the fridge. I do the same with taco-spiced hamburger meat.
I use my ninja food processor (must be a high-speed FP) to ‘mince’ cheese (I only rarely need to shred it for something) in bulk, and store it in ziplocs. I super-briefly use it to fine-slice things like sweet peppers small as well, that I toss into dishes I’m making. And I make chili con carne 4-5# at a time and put in small plastic bowls in the freezer, and keep one in the fridge. So at any given time I can have chili, I can make something with taco meat or chicken, and it’s super fast and easy – not a whole cooking job. I think you get the idea.
Most of us are not used to having to plan, shop, prep, cook, clean so damn much, and that alone – the inability to just eat fast food, or to just wrap something in a tortilla or bread – is a big part of the “this is more work and frustrating” part. If you do these two things though, I think you might find this all gets much easier. It certainly did for me.
Best wishes!
PJ
I spend a day cooking large batch meals and put them in individual containers in the freezer. When I am headed to work I just grab one out of the freezer for my dinner and go. Pots to clean only once.
It’s amazing how much room there is in the freezer after I purged it from all sorts of carbage.
Visit this thread here- What Did You Keto Today? The Trilogy!
It’s an ever growing photo collection of people’s keto meals from this forum. Loads of great meal ideas and recipes.
Thank everyone, it’s not been too bad so far the last couple of days, it’s easier when I’m at work. Discovered swoodles this evening, had them with garlic chicken and a small amount of broccoli, so delicious. I’m not going to worry about measuring anything other than carbs and calories until I’ve sorted the menus out, I’m at 4.0 keystone level so back in the game. Also my Keto recipe book turned up and has some really easy meals in there. Definitely gonna stick it out, I’m full of s cold but my headaches have gone and my thought process has not been this sharp for months! I have the carb manager app and I think I’ll prep next weeks lunches at the weekend.
Love and appreciate all the advice 
I check cronometer.com daily. I put in the food to see how many carbs it has. I try to keep my macros at 60% fats, 30% proteins and 10% carbs. ( 10% carbs is about 20 g.)
Thats about it. I also go to youtube for recipes which are keto friendly.
That’s a concern, sounds like your base metabolic rate is down which is bad news if you want to lose weight. Are you eating enough fat? A high-protein diet that is too low in fat caused this for me.