7 Tips For Sticking to Your Keto Diet
Keto is undoubtedly the world’s most popular diet. It is a diet low in carbs and high in good fats. When you reduce the body’s intake of carbohydrates, your body goes into a state of ketosis, the phase when your body burns fat through its stored energy.
The Art Of Keto Discipline
The key to enjoying the many benefits of keto meals is to stick with the routine. After all, consistency is key. You can’t expect to start seeing results from your hard work when you suddenly stop and then start over again.
While this may sound difficult, it’s not impossible to achieve. There are many things you can do to help you stick to your keto diet. Here are some tips:
1. Invest in a Good Food Processor
Once you’ve decided to start on a keto diet, you’re going to be spending more time in the kitchen. To achieve success, you’ll want to eat as much homecooked food as you can so that you don’t give in to the temptation to order from fast-food chains.
Spending more time in the kitchen can be intimidating, particularly when you’re also busy with other tasks. All the manual slicing, chopping, and mixing may eat up much of your time, which is why you’ll need the help of good tools.
One of these is a food processor—the ultimate tool of comfort and speed that’ll do all the chopping, grinding, and slicing for you. It’ll cut down cooking time tremendously, but you’ve got to ensure you invest in a good one to avoid wasting money.
Here are some tips in choosing a good quality food processor:
- Size matters and the optimal one should be able to hold at least 11 cups. Otherwise, it can’t work its magic in speeding up with mixing and slicing process for batch cooking.
- Be particular about the noise, especially when you’ve got young kids at home as some food processors can be extremely loud.
- Check out the blades as those with small serrations can stay sharper for longer than straight blades.
2. Consider Keto Meal Prep Services
It’s also important to note that buying a food processor isn’t a necessity in successful meal preparation. If you don’t want to whip up your food and purchase a food processor, you can still have good options delivered right to your doorstep through EatProperGood.com and other reliable sources.
Here are the benefits of when availing of a keto meal prep service:
- You save the time and effort of preparing keto-friendly meals.
- It is easy on the pocket as you avoid wasting ingredients and food.
- You are guaranteed healthy, keto-friendly meals.
3. Cook in Batches
Going hand-in-hand with the tip above, having a processor also means you can now start batch cooking. This is one of the best secrets to apply to help you stick to your keto diet more. With batch cooking, you don’t need to cook every day. You can dedicate one day to making meals for the entire week. In this way, you’ll only have to remove the food from the freezer and then reheat it when it’s time to eat.
Particularly if you’re on a busy schedule, batch cooking can help ensure you’ve got enough of your keto-friendly meals to cover you for every eating window. You won’t be tempted to order an unhealthy takeaway because you didn’t have time to cook.
4. Consume More Vegetables
While you’re going to want to remove carbohydrates from unhealthy sources, there are ones you shouldn’t let go of—vegetables. These are excellent sources of healthy carbs that fuel your energy and keep you well-nourished, even if you’re only eating two meals a day.
When you consume low-carb green leafy vegetables, your appetite is satisfied and it leaves you feeling full without the nasty fats and bloating. Plus, it keeps your gut health in good shape, helping increase your likelihood of success through the keto diet.
Some of the best vegetables are low in carbohydrates, and the ones that work best in the keto diet are cauliflower, spinach, kale, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. You can vary things up by alternating these between soups and salads.
5. Exercise Frequently
Just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pair it up with physical activities. Frequent and regular exercise is recommended not just to help you stick to your keto diet but also to make it easier for your body to shift into this healthier lifestyle.
When you exercise, your body’s ketone levels are boosted, enabling a smoother transition to a low-carb and high-fat diet than if you didn’t exercise.
Remember, to achieve a state of ketosis, the body has to remove any of its stored glucose, and exercise can help you do that.
6. Fast if You Can
Fasting means not eating three meals a day, and for most of those on a keto diet, they’ll realize it’s easier to stick to it if they limit their meal intake. One of the most effective ways to do this is to do intermittent fasting.
There are different ways to do this type of fasting, but the most common is to fast for 16 hours and then eat within the 8-hour frame. This increases the likelihood of some of the hours within the 16-hour window for your body to burn up stored fat as its energy source.
Apart from helping you stick to your keto diet, intermittent fasting has many possible health benefits such as losing weight, reduced blood sugar, and lower blood pressure.
7. Study What Foods are Good for You
As you eat more home-prepped meals, it’s important also to understand what’s good for you and what isn’t. This takes some mastery, but eventually you’ll get used to shopping only for things beneficial to your keto diet.
One of the biggest frustrations for people starting on the keto diet is they may feel they aren’t getting enough healthy fat.
If this is the case, here’s one way to remedy this: top off your meals with a drizzle of olive oil or avocado oil. These two types of oil are high in monosaturated fats, which are healthy for you. You can do this with salmon, salads, or any vegetables you’ve prepared.
Here’s a list of what you can and can’t eat on a keto diet:
- Dos: high-fat salad dressing, fish, low-carb sweeteners, lamb, stevia, eggs, blackberries, and hard cheeses;
- Don’ts: potato, cereal, yam, rice, apples, corn, bananas, and wheat.
Conclusion
Considering these tips for your meals, it’s hopefully easier for you to start on and stick with a keto diet and a healthy lifestyle. The hardest part is to just take the first step toward a healthy lifestyle. Once you do this, everything else follows.
Sure, it’s still going to be challenging and you’re going to have hard days. But don’t give up. Keep this list in mind and soon enough, when you begin to see the changes in your body, you’ll love yourself for the effort you put in to sticking to your keto diet.
