The hardest part of maintaining a ketogenic diet is making sure you properly restrict your meals to the allowed foods to eat on a keto diet. As a beginner, it is not easy to start a keto diet that's why I am giving a sample Sample menu for keto diet.
Since the carbohydrate requirements of the diet are very low, a single food has the ability to expel it from the state of ketosis. Therefore, I suggest keeping a very detailed food log when you start the diet and be sure to check the nutritional information to make sure you only eat foods allowed with the keto diet. Eventually, you can estimate the breakdown of macronutrients in your meals with high precision and easily avoid carbohydrates.
However, until you feel confident that you have an intuitive understanding of macronutrients, you should ensure that all your keto diet foods are on the following list.
Meats:
The vast majority of meats are allowed on a keto diet and your diet will likely contain a large number of meat products such as chicken, pork, beef.
Avoid: Any meats that are breaded or cured in a sugar or honey glaze.
Vegetables:
Although many vegetables do contain carbs, most of them are from fiber. Remember, when it comes to keto diet foods, it is net carbs—carbs minus fiber—that matters. It is important to eat a large amount of fibrous and leafy green vegetables on this and any diet. However, make sure you avoid eating large quantities of vegetables that are higher in carbs such as corn, carrots, and onions.
Avoid: All beans, potatoes, and yams are extremely high in carbs and are prohibited keto diet foods. You can count your carbs by apps like MyFitnessPal
Dairy:
All forms of cheese are allowed and are a basic component of most keto diets.
Avoid: yogurt and milk with high sugar content (thick cream is good for recipes).
Other Fats:
It is crucial to ingest keto diet foods that have adequate fat levels. For beginners, getting enough fat in the diet can be difficult, so it is important to make some of these ketogenic foods staples of your diet.
Healthy Fats:
Other Allowed Fats:
Leave a comment if you want to know whether or not specific foods are on the list of allowed keto diet foods.
When first starting, many people struggle with knowing how to structure a ketogenic diet menu for a full day even after reading foods to eat on keto diet. This process will become much easier and fairly intuitive once you have been doing it for a few weeks. However, I wanted to provide a full day’s keto diet menu to give a better idea of how to structure the full day.
Though I’m sure you have heard it before, breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and an integral part of any ketosis diet menu. Eating a high protein breakfast within an hour of waking is the best start to your day.
Sample Breakfast: Eggs
Ingredients:
Nutritional Facts:
Since most people usually workout in the mornings and usually only have a protein shake or small snack until lunch, you can slightly increase the number of carbohydrates at lunch to get you through the rest of the day. But be careful! You don’t want to go overboard with this meal. A cheat meal here can sometimes lead to binge carb eating all day long. And that is a very easy way to kick yourself out of ketosis and set yourself back a few more days.
Sample Lunch: Chipotle Salad (No Dressing)
Ingredients
Nutritional Facts
At dinner, you should try to lower your carbs again since you will be going to sleep soon. And why would you want to fill up your liver glycogen stores right before 8 hours of laying in bed? For more information, read “What Is Ketosis?“.
Sample Dinner: Cheese Covered Chicken
Ingredients
Nutritional Facts
Make sure all your snacks fall within 1-5 carbs. You don’t want to ruin a day of dieting by eating a sugary snack loaded with carbs. Try to also space out your snacks in between your 3 large meals. This way, you will be able to keep your hunger satisfied throughout the day.
Sample Snack 1: Large Spinach Salad
Ingredients
Nutritional Facts
Sample Snack 2: Almonds
Ingredients
24 Almonds
Nutritional Facts
Ketogenic Diet Menu Daily Totals:
