keto sucks. why i love keto
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I’ve been on a keto journey for several years. Not until recently have I really focused on my overall health. Throughout the pandemic, like many I have struggled. March through June of 2020 were a blur of remote school (aka, chaos school) with a kindergartener who wanted nothing to do with math and writing sheets. My job is helping small businesses and between April and June, my team and I managed to push out $3.6 million in grants and loans to needy businesses owners to help them through necessary closures. This also meant I was working between 70-80 hours a week, while my husband also worked, and we managed remote learning.
Our routines were completely disrupted. Not only did we not eat well, we started drinking more, maybe because we were home and didn’t have to wake up at 5a.m. and worry about driving an 1+ commute, maybe from the stress of everything happening - pandemic, not seeing friends and family, missing my routine, watching small business owners I know lose their businesses, etc.. On top of it, I lost all activity I had.
It’s extremely hard to get exercise and stay fit in a wheelchair. This becomes impossible when you can’t get out of the house due to a pandemic and are sitting in front of a laptop or on the phone for 70+ hours a week. Oh and you can’t use the largest muscles in your body to burn calories.
So I was on keto the whole pandemic, but drinking carb free margaritas. Ok, right? Wrong. I wasn’t tracking (I hate tracking). Over time my tolerance went up and I was having 2-3 drinks on some nights. No carbs in that, but 1,500 calories. 1,500.
My husband was doing no better and he hit his highest weight. Time for a change. December 26, 2020 we both modified our eating and drinking habits. Michael has his own nutritional regime that works for him (don’t tell him, it’s basically keto). For me, I prefer keto.
Why Keto
I like keto because I rarely feel hungry, where other diets always left me starving and lightheaded all day. In some studies, ketogenic diets are touted as reducing inflammation and neuropathic pain. For spinal cord injury sufferers, this is a big deal. My legs and other joints get swollen from not moving my muscles like I used to and the neuropathic pain, or nerve pain can be truly unbearable. As an example, imagine your feet are in buckets of ice water and you can’t ever take them out. It’s awful. Ketogenic diets are supposed to help with that, so I’m in. The reduction of swelling in my joints and especially my ankles was visible. My husband even commented on it in the first week after I started.
Eating Keto
Keto is a pain in the ass. You have to plan your meals. I hate planning my meals. Unfortunately, there is very little way to eat on the fly with keto. If you get hungry, you better have a bar, a bag o’ pork rinds, or a lunch bag full of cheese sticks or you're screwed. Also, from an environmental sustainability standpoint, keto isn’t. Why? Because you kind of need to add beef back in your diet or you’ll starve.
To limit our impact, support local business, and ensure we were getting quality meats, we started buying from Walden Local Meat share. They offered customized shares of delicious beef, lamb, chicken, etc. and their customer service is amazing.
Also, I hate keto and dieting in general because I really miss my wine. I loved having a glass of red while making dinner and unwinding from the day. The thing is, as I get older (blargh) and busier, I find that wine not only causes inflammation, but really messes up my sleep. I love my sleep.
I miss crunch. Until recently (see below), I couldn’t find anything really crunchy on the keto diet. I miss toast, pretzels, carrot sticks in hummus, mixed nuts, etc. Over these last many weeks I’m starting to find snacks I can really get into, and even a few surprises.
Tracking
I hate tracking, remember? Unfortunately, for me it works well to keep my calories and carbs where they should be. I’m currently using Carb Manager app on my phone and opted for the premium service so I could add in all my own recipes and look up ones from their members. One caution is when you scan something in, don’t just pick the first food that comes up. Check it against what you see on the label. I think because many of the scanned items are crowdsourced, not everyone puts in the correct values and you don’t want to be tracking 10 net carbs for something that is actually only 3.
A Few Favorite Snacks & Recipes
ParmCrisps - I want crunch. ParmCrisps meet that desire and they’re zero carbs and made on only one ingredient. Parmesan cheese.
Goya Spicy Pork Rinds - Michael found these accidently because we were trying to make Wholesum Yum’s Orange Chicken which calls for plain pork rinds, but this is all he could find. They are amazing. Spicy, hot, and crunchy. What else could a girl ask for? Now it’s what we always use in the recipe and I keep the plain ones to snack on.
Keto Buffalo Chicken Dip - Sweet ambrosia of the gods. I love this stuff. It’s good on ParmCrisps, but a slightly healthier option for dinner is with veggies, such as cauliflower, brussels sprouts, or broccoli. I might eat this every day if my husband didn’t object.
Almond Bread - A good keto bread is hard to find. Again Wholesome Yum comes to the rescue with a low net carb bread with good texture and decent fiber content.
Cocktail Sauce - Healthy Recipes provides this amazing cocktail sauce that is so delicious with shrimp. It was something I didn’t know I was missing. We love ours with extra (extra) horseradish. Yum!
Spicy Pork Brussels Bowls - I stumbled upon this dish from Skinnytaste when Walden Local Meat gave us some ground pork in our share. You need to watch your carbs and calories earlier in the day, but man it is so worth it. My husband likes it with the fried egg on top, while I find it completely fulfilling without.
Pickles - Always an awesome choice for a quick snack with low carbs and calories. My favorite during the summer are homemade refrigerator pickles I described in The Veg Patch. I can’t wait until March when I can start my seedlings indoors and dream of dill, garlic pickles.
I find most of my recipes from my little sister and post the majority of them on Pinterest. So please check it out as I update it regularly with new favorite finds. If you have a favorite keto-friendly recipe, please drop it in the comments for this post on Instagram.
