Living the Keto life – Week Three

Hey everybody! Here we are at the end of week three! I must admit I’m SO proud of myself. I’ve been on my Keto journey for about 40 days now and I’ve lost a whopping 15 pounds! Crazy right?! Everyone is constantly asking me, “what are you doing?” The response is simple; the Keto diet. So to backtrack a bit if you’re just now joining my journey, I started my Keto lifestyle change on February 3, 2019. Since that day, I had loosely followed the Keto diet as I had done research and began to learn more about it. Two weeks ago, I decided to commit to this lifestyle change 100 percent. Since then I have no regrets!

As always, here’s my weekly menu and shopping list:

Here’s a picture of my grocery haul for week three:

As the weeks go by, it’s becoming easier for me to plan my meals. When I first started, I was slightly over whelmed as I had given myself too many food options. With practice you get better, let me tell you that. This weeks meals were to be quick and easy, they also were to be a guide as to how I could balance hot/cold lunches and dinners. Typically during the week, I make lunch my heaviest meal of the day. This way, I’m able to burn it off easily and have more energy to get through my day. One thing I have struggled with between this week and last week is snacking. I’ve noticed several times after lunch, I was still a little bit hungry. So, I make the mistake of just grabbing whatever is around me and chowing down. Please don’t do this. While, it didn’t throw me off balance too bad, it did leaving me feeling guilty and I didn’t like that.

Towards the end of this week I had my first Keto restaurant experience! I went out after work with some friends to my local Tumbleweed bar and grill. I was nervous to say the least; I have a rule whenever I dine out that I will not order anything that can be easily and quickly made at home in my own kitchen. Looking over the menu sharing laughs and funny stories I settled on a classic steak, loaded baked potato with extra butter and sour cream, and grilled vegetables. It was delicious! I’ll include a picture down below:

In addition to my meal, I had one alcoholic drink.

Here’s a snapshot of what I ate this week to give you guys an idea of my eating patterns. My breakfast meals usually always consist of eggs, cheese, and some kind of meat and/or fruit. My lunches consist of meat, veggies, and/or a fruit as well. My dinners however are lighter and may contain more vegetables, meat than fruit.

Well you guys, that’s it for my week three update! I’m constantly adding new recipes and whatnot to my stockpile and would love to hear what you guys like or have tried.

Have a recipe you want me to try? Leave a comment down below!

Living the Keto life – Week Two

Here we are guys! Week two! I’m not gonna lie, this week has been rough. At the beginning of this week I slacked on my eating and indulged myself in bread and other non-Keto friendly, allergy foods. The results? I got sick! Well, not deathly ill but, enough to make me think long and hard about taking a chance and eating a Reese’s cup or a sandwich with bread. If you’re just now finding my blog, I recently discovered I was allergic to both wheat AND peanuts. I have a post coming about living with various food allergies so stay tuned for that!

This week was all about simplicity for me. I wanted to make a meal(s) that were both filling and comforting. I wanted to change my thinking from”we’re on a diet” to “we’re eating healthy”. This week I had two mini shopping days. We’ll refer to these as day one and two. Day one, I picked up my essentials I needed for my long-awaited Keto chili! Day two, I picked up some other Keto friendly products I wanted to try. I’ll insert photos as well as list what I bought each day.

Shopping list and menu:

So for day one I bought everything needed for my chili. I got my recipe from https://pin.it/df34y5h5jtiaub. Check them out! This recipe was the bomb! The only thing I tweaked in this recipe was I added ground fat-free turkey meat instead of sausage. Aside from my chili materials I stocked up on some more cheese sticks and deli meat, I grabbed some coconut flour and cream cheese to experiment with (I’ll post that later today).

So for day two, I was able to go to Walmart which I think will be my Keto-meca ! I saw a TON of Keto friendly products I wanted to try I just didn’t have enough hands. 😩

During this trip I picked up some organic ground flaxseed, to add more fiber back into my diet. Monk fruit in the raw, to try that out in various recipes. I must admit I was sad to see there were no bigger bags of stevia, which is what I’ve been using lately. Dole berries and kale smoothie mix to up my veggie intake and help replace some nutrition I could be losing. Lastly, I grabbed some sunflower butter and celery. As I mentioned above, I have a peanut allergy and I struggled with finding a substitute for peanut butter or any nut based butter product since I am also allergic to a multitude of nuts.

I’ve noticed this week specifically, I’ve struggled with bread and sweets. I’m not sure what to do in the way of fulfilling those wants without binging or abandoning my diet. I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.

As always, I’ll include pictures of what I ate this week. Keep in mind, I typically have the same thing for all meals everyday with the exception of how many eggs I consume, what I run out of, etc. Just an FYI, if you ever wonder why I only post a certain amount of photos each week.

Keto Fathead Crackers with Coconut Flour

Hey guys! Since deciding to try the Keto lifestyle and finding out I’m allergic to wheat, I’ve had to make a lot of changes to my diet. Some of these changes were easier to accept than others. One change I had to make was finding a cracker option that did not contain wheat. This task, was easier said than done.

I did my research and scoured Pinterest for the best recipe to make your own Keto friendly / gluten free crackers.

Here’s the link to the recipe:

https://www.wholesomeyum.com/keto-fathead-crackers-recipe/

This recipe calls for three basic ingredients: some coconut flour, two eggs, and some shredded mozzarella cheese. Sounds easy right?

Well, I had some trouble while creating these crackers and I’m sure it’s due to being a beginner and instead of using a food processor I used my knock off ninja bullet blender. I made these crackers to go with my Keto chili and WITH the chili, they were amazing! By themselves? Not so much. Lol

This is what my crackers looked like both before I put them in the oven and after.

Before:

After:

Overall, it wasn’t a bad recipe I just need more practice to get better at baking breads and things while on my Keto journey.

Lastly, I’ll include a picture of my crackers with my chili. Like I said, when I ate the chili combined with the crackers it tasted great! It was the perfect combination of salty from the cheese, the sweetness of the coconut flour, and the robustness of the chili.

Have any Keto recipes you want me to try? Leave a comment down below!

Living the Keto life: Week One

Hey you guys! I’m back with an update as I end my first week of living Keto-ish. Remember in my last post where I said I was loosely trying the Keto lifestyle? Well, I’m all in! I’m one day shy of completing my FIRST 28 day challenge and I’ve already lost 11.4 pounds! I can’t believe it! During this time, I learned a lot about myself and the life I want to lead. I’m not gonna lie, when I started this challenge I had my doubts. It’s gonna be too hard, I’m gonna be starving myself, I don’t have enough money to buy groceries, blah blah blah. I sat down one night while at work and I decided I was gonna budget my money correctly, meal prep appropriately, and I wasn’t gonna deny myself of any food cravings I may have.

With that being said; here’s my first update of how this week went. Did I stumble? Yes, did I have wanna give up and go back to what I knew? Hell yes. But I didn’t and won’t give up. I made a goal to lose weight and become healthier and I’m gonna stick to it so help me.

Before I started to become more organized with this journey I just researched and picked healthy food options on the fly. I tracked them in MyFitnessPal which is a lifesaver! While at home one night, I thought to myself, why just eat on the fly? Why not pick meals that you like and that’ll be healthy for you? Just like that, an idea was born. Each week I design a weekly menu for myself including the grocery list. I follow this menu and make changes as I see fit and the best part? I’m not depriving myself of foods that I love!

Week one’s menu was a mess I admit, I gave myself too many options. I started off too big, I wasn’t thinking “healthy” I was thinking “don’t be hungry”. So back to the drawing board I went to see what I could do to make this menu planning less scary. What I came up with worked wonders this week and I’m glad I made revisions until I was comfortable with it.

This menu was MUCH easier to stick with, I didn’t feel intimidated by all the food options. I knew how my day would go eating wise and I was okay with that. Now that I had a menu I was comfortable with, it’s time to look at this grocery list I came up with.

Granted, even though I fixed my menu I STILL put way too much on my grocery list. I sat down, one more time, and circled what was IMPORTANT. Then that’s what I bought off this list. When I got home from the store I was elated, for about $50 I bought groceries for my first week (and a tad bit into the second week)! Check out my grocery haul picture down below!

Now that I had the food portion down, I needed to figure out what I was going to be drinking during this journey.

Y’all get the hint? WATER. WATER. WATER. and more WATER.

If you don’t like water, try fruit infused water. It’s Keto friendly, tastes great, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. As a tip, while doing the Keto Diet you can drink diet drinks but let’s be real, diet drinks have twice the amount sugar and nonsense that regular drinks have so you’d be better off just having an occasional regular soda every once in a while.

To wrap this up, I’ll include some pictures of what I ate this week. I hope you enjoyed this post and I can’t wait to come back next week!

Wanna join me on this journey? Leave a comment down below and I’ll try to include recipe links and nutritional facts!

-Lavender ❤️