If you pay attention to the healthy eating and diet trends of the past few years, then you have likely already heard of the keto diet. Keto, or the ketogenic diet, is one that sees you eating very few carbs, more protein, and plenty of dietary fats. This is done to encourage your body to go into ketogenesis, burning ketone bodies instead of glucose, and has a host of benefits including speeding up weight loss, lowering cholesterol, and managing blood sugar. There is even significant evidence that the keto diet can reduce seizures in those living with epilepsy.
However, the keto diet is somewhat notorious for being difficult to stick to. Many of us live in a food culture that is dominated by carbs, and as such, it can be difficult for newcomers to stay true to their goals. As such, we’re going to look at a host of tips that can help you stick to your keto diet without making it a herculean effort.
Keep it simple
There are a lot of more detail dietary tips that can help you ensure that your ketogenic diet is as effective as possible, speeding the process of ketogenesis up. However, in reality, there are only a few principles that really matter at the end of the day. One: cut down on your carbs and calorie-dense processed foods. Two: eat mostly protein-dense and fiber rich foods. With these two principles, so long as you are managing a calorie deficit, the benefits of keto are practically guaranteed to kick in, barring extenuating circumstances.
Prepare meals for the week
You might feel plenty committed, full of energy, and ready to take on the world at the start of the week. But what about when it’s Thursday evening, you’re tired out from a week at work, and you barely want to think about what to have for dinner? That’s when bad habits can come calling. Ketogenic meal planning is all about taking the energy you have at the start of the week and making sure that you plot out meals for every day that stick to your diet. You can even make some meals that you can chill or freeze so they’re ready for when you’re having a low-energy day.
Get the hassle of meal prep taken care of
Planning your meals can certainly help you make sure that you’re sticking to your keto diet throughout the week ahead. However, if you’re having a busy week, dealing with other responsibilities, or just a touch stressed out, keto meal delivery can even take that work off your plate. With delivery services popping up to give you ready-made keto meals that you simply have to cook, not only can you skip meal planning from time to time, but you can take those recipe ideas to replicate them in the future.
Find the vegetables that you love
The keto diet is going to remove a lot of carbohydrates from your diet. Mostly, you’re going to focus on the unhealthy sources of them, but there are healthy sources of carbs too: your vegetables. Aside from bringing plenty of benefits otherwise, eating more vegetables in your diet can satisfy your body’s craving for carbs, and they can also help you feel full without the bloating. In particular, a lot of people, find that leafy greens such as spinach, kale, and Brussels sprouts make for excellent staples.
Try intermittent fasting
You might think that sticking to a keto diet is enough work, already, surely adding some other new health fad to it would make it even more difficult to stick to. However, not only is that wrong, but intermittent fasting can actually help you manage some of the difficulties people find when sticking to keto. For one, it makes ketogenesis likely to occur all the sooner, triggering the fat-burning process faster than keto alone. What’s more, it’s been found that healthy lifestyle changes are actually more likely to stick if you’re making them at once. A large-scale life change makes it more difficult to slide back into bad habits than simply making dietary changes alone.
Make sure that you stay hydrated
One of the main sources of trouble for people trying to stick to a keto diet is that, initially, your appetite can feel like it’s constantly on your back. In time, keto actually decreases food cravings, but those initial hunger pangs can be tough to handle. However, the truth is that these are often not hunger pangs at all, but the loss of electrolytes due to a loss of water weight. You might actually be thirsty, not hungry, so making sure that you have plenty of water to drink can help you stave off those feelings of hunger. The mind often mistakes the feelings of hunger and thirst for one another, so the next time you feel those pangs, have a glass of water. Make sure that you replace the minerals depleted by sweating out your electrolytes with rich greens, as well.
Manage your macros
As mentioned, you don’t want to get too in the weeds as to what the absolute best keto foods are, or which might not be as good as others. You do, however, want to make sure that you’re keeping a close eye on your macros. You want to make sure that you’re getting the fats you need, proteins second, and fewer carbs. There are diet tracking tools that can make it a lot easier to simply scan or search for the foods that you’re eating to do the calculations for you, so you don’t get tired of having to do the math, yourself. Rely on the tools that cut down how much effort it takes to manage your diet.
Willpower is a greatly helpful tool, and can certainly make it easier for you to stick to your diet. However, what’s even more effective is putting the practices and tools in place that make it so that you don’t have to rely on willpower alone. The tips above can do that.
