Top 10 Keto Newbie Tips
Stuck in the weeds? My 10 keto newbie tips may help!
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the information out there about the keto diet. Here are (probably) your most-sought after answers to the top questions asked by keto newbies.
As someone who’s been doing the ketogenic lifestyle for over 3 years, I talk to people who are new to the diet all the time.
I think you may find this article helpful if you have also asked these questions when starting keto…and here are my answers!
Please note: these are just my own personal views, but you may find other keto veterans will agree to at least some extent.
1. How do you get enough fat? I cook with butter and oils but I’m not getting enough in to make my macros.
Answer: You don’t need to worry about hitting your fat macro. EVER. *
As long as you have fat on your body to lose, you never need to worry about hitting your fat macro. The fat macro is an upper limit, not a goal. Keeping carbs very low is all you really need to worry about, when it comes to keto, not how much fat you consume [1].
The simple fix: choose fatty cuts of meat, such as well-marbled steaks, chops, and cuts of meat with fatty skin/fat caps intact that you don’t trim off before cooking/eating, you really don’t need to ADD fat to your meals. It’s a personal preference (also, see this post for more of a rant on fat).
* Unless you advance farther in keto to where you have surpassed your goal weight and need to add fat into your daily intake in order to maintain your weight.
Even once you’re in maintenance mode, you won’t need to worry about added fat. I know of several elite athletes, stamina exercisers, and body builders/lifters who just focus on getting protein from fatty sources, and the rest resolves itself.
2. How can I avoid or stop the “keto flu”?
Answer: Sodium, potassium, magnesium = The electrolyte trio. Keto flu isn’t a thing, if you keep these balanced.
With keto comes a lot of learning. One thing you may run into very quickly is weird aches, pains, or tiredness that may happen when you start keto.
Once you kick sugar, starch, and grains, and other processed foods out of your daily diet, your body craves electrolytes (salt, potassium, magnesium, and other minerals) which are flushed away from the excess water you lose once you rid your body of dietary carbohydrate. Then the lack of these electrolytes [2] makes you feel rotten, hence the “keto flu.”
To keep things easy when it comes to electrolytes: I just focus on eating WHOLE, nutrient-dense foods, and make sure I buy and use REAL salt to season all of my food. And I personally find, the more salt I consume, the better I feel.
But isn’t salt in high amounts bad for us?
Read: The salt myth & why your body needs it more than you think
3. Where can I find MCT oil? Do I need it?
Answer: You can find it on Amazon, Netrition, and in brick and mortar stores in the health food or pharmacy section. Do you need it? Nope.
MCT stands for medium-chain triglycerides, a structure of saturated fat. Saturated fats are healthy for us, and MCTs are no different, except that the medium-chain types are metabolized more quickly than long-chain triglycerides and used for quick energy, similar to how carbohydrates work.
However, pure MCT oil IS only a supplement, and while you can get decent amounts of MCT from cooking with and consuming coconut oil to not worry too much about having to buy pure MCT oil, there are benefits to using real whole foods that you wouldn’t get from a supplement…like tastes and textures.
4. Why does keto advocate only to use saturated fats like avocado oil, animal fat, etc., and not just vegetable oil, canola oil, soybean or corn oil? What’s wrong with them?
Answer: Because saturated fats have not yet been proven to be bad for us, and are, in fact, good for us. And the other fats listed are inflammatory and unhealthy (canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, “vegetable,” and most other fragile seed/vegetable oils).
These man-made oils go through processes where the plant’s seed is pressed, heated, and has chemicals added to it to make a clarified (clear) product (ever seen cloudy oil in a store?). Then they deodorize the oils, because they’re rancid and would smell totally disgusting, otherwise).
There’s no such thing as a canola plant. Additionally, soy is not meant to be consumed by humans unless it’s been fermented, which is fine in small amounts for some people. And corn? Where do I start, with corn? Most corn grown over at least the last two decades is 100% GMO and offers very little nutritional benefit, if any.
I highly recommend that you please view the following videos in your spare time. You will not only learn the truth about both saturated healthy fats and man-made toxic fats.
How it’s made: Canola Oil
This video is just a few minutes long (ignore the narration in the beginning about Canola being good for us because it’s low in saturated fat). Anyone who can buy another bottle of canola oil after watching this is made of strong stuff!
The Oiling of America
I first saw this video in 2015 and it opened my eyes to the history of what we eat and how the food and medical industries have changed our health for the worst over the last several decades.
If you’re interested in learning about why traditional diets are best for optimal human health, this video is a great one to check out (it’s long, but you can definitely just play the audio in the background while doing other things, there are only a few slides, and they aren’t mandatory viewing).
5. How can you afford almond flour, xylitol, erythritol, etc.? These things are expensive.
Answer: I would buy them on Amazon, usually. And yes, they are expensive at first, when stocking your low carb baking pantry.
In the long term, very little is needed for each recipe since they’are usually many times the strength/effectiveness of traditional baking ingredients, so they can be economical if you don’t do a lot of low carb baking (I don’t, anymore).
However, no one needs to buy these items to succeed on keto. All anyone needs, to succeed on keto is to keep carbs very low and avoid sugar, starches, grains, and processed foods.
You’ll stay full eating whole, real foods like meat, fish, poultry, eggs, low-starch veggies, and some dairy (if you tolerate it).
6. How come I’m still hungry on keto after meals?
Answer: You didn’t eat enough. Duh!
I keep hearing about hunger complaints from people new to keto. I wondered out loud to myself, “Why is this happening so much?”
Some “gurus” out there have told people they must eat ridiculously small portion sizes, or think there must be a huge calorie deficit, for any diet to succeed. Guess what? The calorie-counting and all the “sticking to your macros” crap is mostly just that…crap.
The best way to succeed on keto, as I have learned the HARD way, is this…
Eat when you’re hungry. Don’t stop until you’re full.
If you’re not hungry, don’t eat.
Don’t worry about following the clock when it comes to meals. Not in the mood for breakfast? No one is going to make you eat it. If it’s lunch time and you don’t feel like it, skip that, too. Want to eat eggs for dinner? Leftover dinner for breakfast? Go for it.
There are many articles, podcasts, and even Instagram folks out there online telling you what you should/shouldn’t eat on keto. What meal plans to follow for success on keto, etc.
These are just offered as ideas and guides for when you’re lost or need inspiration. Feel free to tweak as needed!
You won’t be arrested by the keto police and taken to keto jail if you don’t follow certain rules, because there’s only one…
Rule #1 – Cut out the sugar/starch/grain carbs, and keep the good carbs low.
The rest of the rules: See rule #1
What works for someone else isn’t probably necessarily going to work with you, and vice-versa. The beauty about this lifestyle is you can adjust things to make it work for YOU.
7. How do you stick to keto and avoid temptation to eat sugary and starchy foods?
Answer: See the videos referenced in answer #4. Repeat until you get it. Oh, and focus on protein and fat!
When people offer treats, chips, and other things I don’t eat, I know how they make me fat, and more importantly, how they make me feel if I ate them again after being low carb so long.
The kind of symptoms I’d have from eating off-plan: Feeling like I got run over by a truck, bloated, irritable, aching head, and tired.
Remembering how these “foods” are not on your new lifestyle plan because they made you sick or fat (or in my case, both) may help you.
You can label these things in your mind as “TOXIC GARBAGE,” “poison”, “recipe for diabetes,” “crappy food for fat & cranky people,” or whatever awful words or feelings you want to associate to them in the file cabinet of your mind to keep you away.
If you’re like me, you don’t even give temptation a second thought, because these things are no longer attractive or tempting to us.
For me, it took getting very sick in a big and nasty way to completely save myself from mindlessly eating crap ever again.
I suffered type 2 diabetes, heart disease, thyroid problems, high blood pressure, edema, infected leg wounds, sleep apnea, neuropathy, brain fog, severe crankiness, and daily headaches for years.
But if helps you to be inspired by my misery to keep you from eating that stuff, then I’m happy to have helped at least one person! You’ll definitely save yourself all the years trouble I went through.
On the other hand, if one bite of cake at an event will keep the peace between you and a beloved relative and you’re able to get right back on track the next day without that bite turning into several pieces…by all means, have that one bite, and get back to plan tomorrow.
If you find yourself making excuses regularly (“I’ll get back on track tomorrow”) you have to draw the line with yourself and figure out a way to decline without feeling like you’re missing out (you’re not!)
Despite what others say, cheat meals and cheat foods are not going to help you in the long run.
Folks still addicted to crap have “cheating” as part of their plan, which leads to excuses to regularly eat things they know they shouldn’t (I’ve been there).
For me, a “cheat” has never done me any favors.
By definition, the word “cheat” means something to gain an advantage or win at something by taking a shortcut or easy way out. There’s no advantage to be had in cheating at keto, at least, for most of us. To me, it’s not winning, more like losing.
Here’s an example of why cheating doesn’t work:
Say I decide to go ahead and eat a thing I shouldn’t, the next thing you know, I just generally feel like crap for at least a day afterward.
I ate half a slice of apple pie at my mom’s house during Christmas last year, and as my “win” for “cheating,” I suffered a massive headache the next day for several hours while lying on the couch.
Additionally, for some people, one small cheat can lead to eating 2 or 3 more of that thing, and you find you’re 2 pounds up the next day. That’s 2 pounds you could have been DOWN. Put this into perspective for yourself, and figure out your own ways to handle these scenarios.
8. Is there any way I can sweeten things without stevia? It’s tastes bitter to me, or too sweet.
Answer: You’re probably using way too much.
The pure powder extract of stevia is almost concentrated, so only a TINY amount is required (I’m talking 25 milligrams). Using too much stevia is common, and makes it VERY overpoweringly sweet, to the point of bitter, for many people.
However, most stevia products that are more popular and inexpensive are so because they’re not in concentrated form.
Many stevia products in powder form are cut with maltodextrin (you’ll want to stay away from that), or diluted with glycerin, alcohol and/or water if in liquid form , so you may find you have to use a few drops more than you would of the pure extract.
If a recipe calls for more than a miniscule amount of stevia (say, 1 tablespoon or 1 cup of stevia), they’re probably using the kind that’s been bulked with maltodextrin. Stick with the pure extracts.
A better answer: Don’t use it.
Once you’ve quit sugar and sweet things in general, your taste buds do adjust and you find you require less and less sweet in your life.
9. Can I drink diet sodas?
Answer: Absolutely.
You may find that after awhile on keto, you don’t care for diet sodas anymore, as they’re overly sweet, once your tastes adapt to a lifestyle of no sugar.
Diet sodas can also be very dehydrating and have been reported by some to cause people weight loss stalls (if artificially sweetened). Another theory is carbonation expands the size of the stomach over time, allowing you to eat more without feeling full.
You can test these theories out on your own. I only drink a diet soda on the rare occasion that I’m at some event where there’s mostly only alcohol. I just drink water, coffee, tea, and broth. Once or twice a year, I enjoy a glass of dry red wine or a shot of whisky without any problem.
10. Is it OK to exercise while on keto?
Answer: Go for it!
Is exercise necessary to succeed with the keto diet? No! However, I like to fit in some exercise a few times a week just for the sheer benefit it gives to my overall health. I love how a nice walk can elevate my mood and clear out the cobwebs of a stressful day. Exercise is also excellent for strength and joint flexibility.
If you’re serious about taking on an exercise routine on keto and you’ve never exercised much before, that can add some difficulty to your lifestyle and may keep you from continuing, if exercise isn’t something you enjoy.
I would suggest you focus on just one big lifestyle change at a time! But by all means, if you LOVE exercise, keep doing it while you’re on keto – but don’t get discouraged.
I recommend seeking out advice from a coach or trainer with experience in low carb or keto clients, before diving in to something new with exercise, because it’s easy to overdo it, or do it incorrectly.
Many people find they also have to adjust their keto dietary habits along with their fitness goals (example: increasing caloric intake & adjusting your protein intake, fitting in intermittent fasting, etc.)
BONUS question asked by keto newbies
This is my own personal tip and will vary case-by-case. Use it, or don’t!
How can I deal with negative comments about my new lifestyle?
Answer: Sometimes people are just nosy or bored with their own lives, and may want to start a debate. If you sense this kind of interaction coming on and don’t have the energy to offer explanations or links, here’s what I do…
I say, “I’m happy to answer questions if you’re genuinely interested in trying it out.”
Then I excuse myself and go talk to someone else before I start ranting about how awesome it is, to someone who’s probably just trying to argue or thinks I’m a freak.
I wrote a WHOLE thing about dealing with criticism of your new keto lifestyle.
Sources:
1. Effect of lower sodium intake on health: systematic review and meta-analyses, BMJ 2013;346:f1326
https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1326.long
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