Food Planning: Friend or Foe?
Now that we have successfully completed the Keto diet for a full month, I do want to stress the importance of meal planning. For our first month of Keto, we wanted to carefully track our diet and have cooked all of our meals at home to ensure that we are eating the best whole and organic foods as possible, while sticking to our diet plan closely. We have yet to eat out at a restaurant, and have not purchase any ready-made meals or pre-packaged foods. Each meal this month has been whole foods cooked from scratch. It’s a good thing I love to cook!
For this reason, we have started a new page on our website for Recipes. Here you will find a handful of my favorite Keto recipes, so far, to help inspire your Keto kitchen!
To stay on top of our food planning, Nic and I sit down together on Saturdays to plan our week’s menu and grocery list. A typical week looks something like this:
Sunday Night
We use Sunday nights to prep for our work week by preparing our lunches. First, we make a delicious Fat-Filled Egg Casserole, split into 6 portions for lunches on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It’s bomb and can easily be customized to change it up from week to week!
For lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I usually make an Egg/Tuna Salad served over greens with avocado. It’s quick, easy and super filling! I’m also a big greens fan, so this is a great way to get a variety of different greens each week.
Morning Routine
Our morning routine can be a little involved, but now that we have our rhythm, it’s streamlined and efficient. Many of these steps can be prepared the night before if needed.
Each morning, we have our Morning Tea or Coffee. Nic’s a coffee drinker, but I have never acquired a taste for coffee and love, love my tea! We use our morning drink to kick off our day with tons of fat. This is our breakfast, which I love because it’s simple, easy to drink, easy to bring to work, etc. to get your day started. Honestly, this holds me over until at least noon!
I make a full-diary version on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we eat our salads for lunch. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because our casserole is heavy in dairy, I make a diary-free version using plant-based fats. I think it’s important to change these up a bit and diversify how and where you are getting your sources of fat and calories throughout the week.
We also make an electrolyte and fiber water for the day. Because the Keto diet can be low in fiber, we each have a tablespoon of Amazing India Psyllium Husk with at least 12 ounces of water every day. Gotta keep your digestion and bowels regular! We also make a quick electrolyte water with 1 teaspoons of Klinge Losalt and 2 teaspoons of Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar. We love the Klinge Losalt because it is lower in sodium and has the proper daily balance of sodium to potassium as well as some magnesium. The apple cider vinegar adds great prebiotics to your gut while also giving your body more potassium. Altogether, it’s a great combo! Throughout the day, I just sip on my electrolyte and fiber water, or mix it with the many glasses of water that I drink throughout the day.
Snacks
Now, we haven’t gotten to the point where we can go without snacks. We’re not so much hungry, as just missing the act of eating. It sounds weird, but it’s amazing how much food cravings are just psychological! So, we have a number of go-to snacks for the day. First, we make a Keto trail mix with salted pumpkin seeds, macadamia nuts, brazil nuts, and cocoa nibs. Just a handful of this trail mix packs in between 300-400 calories! Another great snack is Epic Pork Rinds. These are great to satisfy your potato chip craving, if you have one. I also love Epic’s mission to using the entire pig, snout to tail, and these pork rinds are tasty and filling. The barbecue flavor is my favorite! Last, a great and healthy snack is bone broth. We prefer homemade with fresh, local beef/ox bones, but otherwise opt for the next best ones: Thrive Market, Epic, and Kettle and Fire.
Dinners
Now dinners are the fun part! I know many of you will think this is super weird, but I love cooking after a long day of work. It’s like my therapy! I can get very Type-A or maniac about my work, and when I come home, I have lots of unharnessed energy. I feel like I have to be doing something constantly. I’m working on this! But cooking, for me, is relaxing, and at the same time, I am still doing something productive. A win-win after my day in the office.
Now, there are also days when I am super tired, wiped out, or know that I won’t be home until after 8pm, so I also have few glorious Crockpot recipes up my sleeve as well! When we plan our week’s menu, I’ll check my work calendar for events, late nights, and deadlines to try to plan accordingly. Doesn’t also work as planned, that’s part of life, but for the unplanned days, you can always default to eggs and greens for dinner!
For dinners, we try to get tons of low-carb veggies and grass-fed proteins along with fat. We strive to eat plenty of fat at every meal. We attempt to diversifying our sources of proteins as well, so we are not eating too much fish, red meat, or poultry in one week. I also try to avoid red meats on days when we eat our casserole, as that is filled with bacon/sausage.
A typical week looks something like this:
Mondays:
Our fish night! We like to eat our fish as fresh from the store as possible, so we tend to have our seafood night on Mondays.
Northern Atlantic Salmon (or other fresh fish, but Nic’s crazy about salmon), asparagus, greens
Tuesdays:
Meat is what’s for dinner! Tuesdays are usually our red meat nights and we have a variety of great go-to recipes:
Moroccan Lamb Shanks
Grass-fed local Prime Ribeye with Cauliflower Puree
Wednesdays:
I like to have a veggie night around the middle of the week. I think it’s important to not eat meat every day of the week. And honestly, with these recipes, you don’t even miss the meat!
Veggie Stir-fry with Shirataki Rice
Spaghetti Squash with Greens
Thursdays:
This is our poultry/pork night! Growing up with a mom that didn’t eat red meat, I practically grew up on chicken --I’ve had a lifetime’s supply of chicken! So for many of our recipes, I opt for pork or turkey, but any of these can be cooked with chicken.
Pork and Egg Ramen with Shirataki Noodles
Turkey Meatball Green Curry Soup
Chicken Curry and Cauliflower
Fridays:
At the end of the week, this is our easiest day: leftovers! We always have something leftover or can always opt for our classic default to eggs and veggies.
Saturday mornings:
My favorite, which I start craving throughout the week, is to wake up on Saturday mornings and make Keto Crepes! They are so good! I make a savory crepe to start with cheese, salami, sauteed greens, olives, roasted bell peppers, or sun-dried tomatoes. Then I follow with our “dessert” crepe with fresh blueberries/raspberries (I was shocked how low-carb these berries are!) and fresh unsweetened whipped cream. It’s divine and a great way to start the weekend!
So there’s our week in a nutshell. Let us know what you think of our recipes, and keep in mind that each recipe can be easily tweaked to your preferences and cooking style.
Happy cooking!
Stay tuned for more recipes.
