Foods to follow a keto diet is a frequent question. The ketogenic diet (or keto diet) is a great tool to burn fat, but we will surely agree that it is difficult to choose which foods to eat and which to avoid.
If your menu consists of only keto foods, you will easily enter ketosis and begin to lose fat at a rapid rate.
On the other hand, if you eat carbohydrates your body will come out of ketosis and the extra fat that you are eating will accumulate as reserve fat.
To do the ketogenic diet, almost all foods rich in carbohydrates such as bread and rice must be eliminated, mainly increasing the consumption of foods rich in fat and maintaining a balanced consumption of proteins in the diet. This diet works to lose weight because the body uses its own fat as an energy source instead of carbohydrates that come from the diet.
This type of diet is indicated mainly to control and prevent seizures in epileptic seizures, however, it is also being used to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes and in some cases for the treatment of cancer, since cancer cells mainly feed on carbohydrates, which is the nutrient that is consumed in minimal quantity in the ketogenic diet.
This diet must be carried out under the supervision and guidance of a nutritionist since a complete nutritional evaluation is necessary to know whether or not you can carry it out.
But you will be surprised to know that the key question is:
Are there ketogenic foods?
Not really. To know the best foods for the ketogenic diet, it is necessary to know the macronutrient composition of each food.
To follow a keto diet, the general rule of thumb is to avoid those that have too many carbohydrates and eat those that are rich in healthy fats.
In this article, you will discover the main keto foods.
Ketogenic diet: Foods to eat and avoid
The ketogenic diet is based on changing the composition of macro-nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) that we consume throughout the day.
The goal is to reach a similar proportion:
- 70% fat
- 25% protein
- 5% carbohydrates
As a general rule of thumb, your goal is to eat a lot of healthy fat and less than 30 grams of carbohydrates per day.
If you pay attention to the ketogenic diet, it does not prohibit any food. What happens is that with some foods it is easier or more difficult to meet the macro-nutrient goals.
For example, if you consume potatoes, which have 28 grams of carbohydrates per 100 grams of potato, it will be very easy to exceed the limits necessary to enter ketosis.
To make things more complicated you have to take into account three factors:
- All foods have some carbohydrates.
- Not all foods have enough healthy fat.
- The foods we eat also provide us with essential micro-nutrients.
Consequently, ketogenic foods will be those low in carbohydrates and rich in healthy fats and that provide you with all the essential micronutrients.
Similarly, at Keto-Vego we offer you a variety of nutritious and delicious foods that will help you follow your keto diet, you cannot stop visiting our website, we have nutritional bars to succulent cheesecakes that are waiting for you.
Allowed and prohibited foods
Below are the allowed and prohibited foods to follow a keto diet:
Allowed
- Olive oil, oils, and butter.
- Coconut milk, almond milk, and tofu.
- Peanuts or peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, brazil nuts, almonds, peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter.
- Fruits such as strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, avocado, coconut.
- Vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, broccoli, onion, cucumber, zucchini, cauliflower, asparagus, red chicory, Brussels sprouts, pak choi, kale, kohlrabi, celery, paprika.
- Seeds like flaxseed, chia, sesame, and sunflower.
- Stevia and olives.
Forbidden
- Rice, pasta, corn, cereals, oats, cornstarch.
- Beans, soybeans, chickpeas, peas, lentils.
- Wheat flour.
- Bread, toast
- Potato, sweet potato, banana.
- Cakes, sweets, cookies, chocolate, candies, cakes, syrup.
- Sugar, brown sugar, ice cream, smoothies, and sweeteners.
- Chocolate powder, diet, and processed products.
- Pizza, lasagna, cow’s milk.
- Alcoholic drinks.
Whenever food is to be consumed, it is important to read the nutritional labeling to verify if it contains carbohydrates and in what quantity, so that the amount of carbohydrates stipulated per day is not exceeded.
It is important to remember that the ketogenic diet should be carried out under the guidance of a nutritionist since, in addition to calculating how many grams of carbohydrates you should consume, it will teach you how to verify the number of carbohydrates they contain food to avoid exceeding the amount allowed per day.
Likewise, since it is a diet with restrictions, the nutritionist usually indicates the supplementation of vitamins and minerals such as calcium.
Vegetables: Authentic Ketogenic Foods
Vegetables are the ketogenic foods that will become your allies and that you have to eat in large quantities while in ketosis.
Vegetables will not only provide you with essential micronutrients, but they will also be the source of fiber that you will need so much in a high-fat diet.
It is important that the vegetables are seasonal and, where possible, from organic farming since they are richer in micronutrients than greenhouse vegetables.
There is an easy rule of thumb for knowing which vegetables to eat:
- The vegetables you have to eat the most are leaves or flowers.
- Second, the fruits.
- The least recommended are tubers and bulbs.
Leaf or flower vegetables
These leafy or flower vegetables are among the best foods for a ketogenic diet.
You can eat as many as you want since they are low in carbohydrates!
The only exception on this list is Kale, which, although very nutritious, cannot be eaten in large quantities as it is rich in carbohydrates.
These keto foods will fill your plate with color and provide you with micronutrients and fiber.
Fruit vegetables
We would have to qualify these vegetables as fruits, but culturally they have been differentiated from the sweetest fruits.
They have slightly more carbohydrates than leafy greens but their levels are low enough to be part of our foods for a ketogenic diet.
Tubers: Almost Banned on the Ketogenic Diet
Within this category are vegetables that grow underground.
They are vegetables with higher levels of carbohydrates and therefore they are not the best foods for a ketogenic diet and we will have to limit their presence in our ketogenic menu. The only exception is radishes.
As you can see, some vegetables such as potatoes or sweet potatoes are better to avoid completely, since they will easily make you exceed the limit of 30 grams of carbohydrates per day.
If you don’t want to be weighing vegetables all day, we suggest that you stick to eating vegetables with less than 5 grams of carbohydrates / 100 grams of vegetables.
You can eat as much as you want of these vegetables since you will hardly be able to exceed the limits (you would have to eat 3 kg of spinach a day to reach the limit).
Avocado is in itself a special category, its high-fat content makes it a great keto food. We recommend that you incorporate it into your diet 100%. A single avocado will give you 29 grams of healthy fat. But you can not abuse it either as it has a lot of carbohydrates.