We’ve all become accustomed to the idea of having a diet that you decide to start, someone tells you exactly what to do and eat, you follow a strict plan, you lose a bit of weight and then go back to your normal lifestyle. I’ve spoken with numerous people who have told me that they’d like to try a ketogenic diet but it seems so overwhelming and they don’t know where to begin. This is because the ketogenic diet isn’t really a diet in the way we generally view diets, it’s more a lifestyle change. Changing your lifestyle comes with many options and decisions in order to achieve sustainable results. One of the many options in a ketogenic lifestyle is how you choose to begin your journey.
Starting a keto lifestyle is a lot like getting into a cold swimming pool. There are two ways to do it: jump all in or slowly ease your way into the water. For a more detailed explanation of the differences between the two ways to start keto click here. If you have decided to go all in and quit the carbs check back in to Cleanish Keto soon this post is coming up next. If you’ve made the decision to gradually ease your way into ketosis you’ve come to the right place!
Easing into a ketogenic lifestyle requires you to decide on a variety of options to create your own unique lifestyle that works for you. The following five steps will give you an outline of the actions required to achieve your ketosis goals. Each action contains its own set of decisions to set yourself up with a successful program that caters to your needs.
Five easy steps to ease your way into a ketogenic lifestyle:
- Learn to Use a Tracking App
- Go Keto Friendly Grocery Shopping
- Start Tracking Carbs
- Start Tracking Calories
- Fine Tune Your Macro Ratios
1. Learn to Use a Tracking App
For this first step you’re going to choose a tracking app that you enjoy, download it, and learn to use the key features.
If you’ve been eating a high carbohydrate diet your entire life cutting back the carbs can be a difficult thing to do. You don’t need to make it even more difficult by adding a layer of frustration to your day because your meticulously thought out meal is getting cold while you are trying to add a new personalized recipe to your tracking app. Spend a bit of time researching various tracking apps, download one and learn to use the key features. This way you’re not trying to learn how to adjust your carb intake and learn a new app at the same time.
Two of the most popular tracking apps for keto are Carb Manager and Cronometer. Both of the apps are free to use with the option of upgrading to a premium annual subscription. I’ve used both apps before and can tell you they are very similar and easy to use. The free versions on both will track your calories and macros (carbs, protein and fat) in slightly different user interfaces. I would suggest downloading both and testing them each to determine which one you prefer. These are just the two main apps I am familiar with that I would recommend. As always, I suggest you also do you your own research and find out for yourself which app suits you best.
Once you have chosen a tracking app take a few days to track everything that you’re eating before you start eating keto. Don’t worry at first how many calories you’re consuming or what your macro ratio looks like. Just track your normal everyday food and ensure you know how to use your app. Remember that this app is going to be used every single time you eat. You should be comfortable adding, editing and deleting existing food items from the database, new food items you have created and creating your own recipes.
Tracking Tip: The items in the food database are entered by other users. This means they are not always 100% correct. People make typos, input incorrect information intentionally to hit their macros, and nutritional values of items change in different locations across the world. When inputting a food item ensure that all of the nutritional values and portion sizes match the items you are actually using.
2. Go Keto Friendly Grocery Shopping
For this step you’re going to go do some keto friendly grocery shopping to ensure your kitchen is stocked up and ready to begin your keto journey. While you are out shopping focus solely on purchasing keto friendly items. If you come across an item that you would not eat when you start keto leave it at the store. After a few rounds of keto friendly shopping your home should be left with very few high carb foods, if any at all.
Unless you are planning to convert your entire family to keto at this time you may still need to keep non-keto friendly foods stocked up in your kitchen. I have segregated these items to a small shelf in my pantry and one drawer in my fridge. This makes it easier to just skip past these areas when I go search the cupboards and fridge for a snack as I know I cannot eat anything in these high carb areas so I don’t even bother looking at them.
Your first keto friendly grocery haul is a great way to learn about your new tracking app. Pull your phone out and check the nutritional values of food in the database and whether they match the nutritional labels on the packages.
The main items you are going to purchase are:
- Meats
- Eggs
- Butter (grass fed if possible)
- Healthy fats
- Low carb vegetables
- Pickles/sauerkraut
- Keto friendly sweetener (such as Swerve, erythritol or monkfruit)
- An easy to grab zero/low carb snack (such as pepperoni sticks, cheese sticks, olives)
- A zero/low carb sweet treat (such as no sugar chocolate, no sugar baked goods or sugar free ice cream)
While there are many other keto friendly food items you will gather along your keto journey just stick with the basics for now. Don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to acquire every single keto friendly flour or testing out every sugar free snack bar at this point. All those extras will slowly be acquired as you decide to experiment along the way.
Start cooking yourself simple and quick meals that contain a meat, a vegetable and a healthy fat. If you’re hungry between meals grab one of your easy snack options you chose at the grocery store, such as a pepperoni stick or some pickles. If you feel like you need something sweet have a few bites of whatever sweet treat you found on your shopping trip. The idea here is to keep it as simple and familiar to you as possible so you are not overwhelming yourself with the millions of keto recipes out there. Remember that this new diet is not a typical crash diet that is over in a month. It is a slow and steady process to beginning a new lifestyle for your health. You will have plenty of time to experiment with all those complicated recipes in the future, for now just get comfortable with your new low carb meal structure.
If you had decided to go all in and fully submerse yourself in a keto diet all at once now would be the time I suggest to get rid of all the non-keto foods in your home. The act of physically relieving yourself from the unhealthy food in your home is like drawing a line in the sand. Giving you a definitive stopping point and a fresh start. As you are trying to ease your way into keto this is an optional step. You can choose to slowly use up what’s left of the unhealthy food in your kitchen without restocking it. I am mentioning this action as a suggestion for those of you who feel like you need to do a purge of all unhealthy foods and start with a clean slate.
3. Start Tracking Carbs
Now that you have all the keto food and know how to track it you are going to pick a day to begin cutting the carbs. To reach ketosis you need to be eating under 30g, and in some cases even under 20g, of carbs per day. Remember that we are easing into this so you’re going to start with 50g of carbs per day for the first week. You may not reach 50g on the first day, and that’s fine. The main thing here is that you’re eating far less carbs than you were yesterday. So do your best to stay under 50g of carbs and keep at it for the entire first week. Don’t give up on this step. If you go over one day just wake up the next day and restart.
It will take a few days to get used to tracking your meals and getting your body used to the lowered carb intake. Take at least a week to stick to 50g of carbs per day. If you’ve reached the end of the week and you’re still not comfortable just take another week. At this point do not worry about tracking anything other than your carb intake. Don’t worry about the calories or other macros for now, we’ll get to that once you are comfortable with your lowered carb intake.
Once you are comfortable with the 50g of carbs you’re going to gradually decrease your carb intake until you are eating enough carbs to put you into ketosis. The easiest way to do this is to drop 5g of carbs each week. For example, if you were comfortable with the 50g of carbs by the end of the first week, then in the second week you would eat 45g of carbs daily for the entire week, then the third week 40g of carbs daily for a week. Continue to drop 5g of carbs each week until you have hit your goal carb intake. Your app will have a calculator to input all your personal information and goals when you begin and it will recommend a target carb intake. A sustainable and effective target is to stay between 20g and 30g of carbs daily to reach ketosis. You can go below this if you prefer, which will most likely lead to speeding up your weight loss. However, if you go above 30g of carbs per day you are far less likely to reach ketosis.
A few important things to remember while cutting your carb intake:
- Don’t starve yourself. If you’re hungry eat more fat/protein.
- Don’t worry about tracking your calories, fat or protein at this point.
- Drink lots of water to help you stay hydrated.
- Salt all your food. This will help replenish your electrolytes.
4. Start Tracking Calories
It may take a few days or even weeks to have a successful day. Just keep at it and try to improve a little bit each day. It’s a learning curve, but even throughout the learning curve as long as you’re doing your best you’ll start losing weight. Once you are comfortable with counting your carb intake you’ll start looking at your calorie intake.
Your app will suggest a target calorie intake for you based on your body and goals, just as it did for your target carb intake. Start this step whenever you are fully comfortable with the carb counting. This may mean you start your calorie counting in the second week or the fourth week, just do what makes you comfortable. You lose weight when your body is running on a calorie deficit, this means that your body is getting fewer calories than it requires to function each day. So when you start counting your calories you will most likely see an increase in the rate at which you’re losing weight.
5. Fine Tune your Macro Ratios
You are now eating the correct amount of calories, you’ve reached (or are in the process of reaching) your target carb intake and you will most likely be seeing results. It is now just a matter of fine tuning your macro ratios. Generally the target macro ratio for a ketogenic diet is 5% carbs, 20% protein and 75% fat. You’ve succeeded at the carb ratio and will now need to start focusing on the fat and protein ratios. This final step is going to be what keeps your body healthy and your diet sustainable.
We have all grown up with the fear of eating too much fat. It comes natural to us that we replace our carbs with protein rather than extra fat as that’s what we subconsciously consider to be the healthy option. That’s why most people who have reached this far in the five steps will have gotten there by drastically increasing their protein and only slightly raising their fats.
At this point you’re going to focus on increasing your fat ratio. Start replacing some of your protein with additional healthy fats into your meals to reach the 5/20/75 macro ratio. In my opinion, this is where the decision to ease in becomes extremely helpful. At first a meal comprised of 75% fat can appear completely unhealthy to anyone used to eating a high carbohydrate diet. Hopefully by the time you reach this step you have opened up your mind to accept a new meal structure. You’re already eating your goal carbohydrates and calories so really take the time to ease into this step to get comfortable with the idea of eating higher ratios of fat in your meals.
Start including extra butter, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil and any other healthy fat to your vegetables and meat. Stay away from the bad fats, which include vegetable oils, margarine, soybean oil, palm oil.
Setting Your Expectations
If you’re planning to ease into ketosis there’s a good chance that you’re willing to invest some additional time to start a long term healthier sustainable lifestyle and you’re not just attempting to drop a couple pounds and go back to your regular routine. Whatever your reasoning behind starting a ketogenic diet remember the definition of getting into ketosis is that your body is burning fat for fuel. While following through these steps keep this end goal in mind.
We’ve all read the hype about losing 10-15 pounds in a week on the keto diet. Usually these results are from people who went cold turkey on the carbs and jumped all in from day one. You will see results easing into a keto diet but remember that you are choosing to gradually ease your way into the diet so set your expectations as such. You will still see results from easing in and the results will likely be faster than any other diet you’ve done before. While easing in you’re likely to lose one to three pounds a week. This is still a great achievement and you should be proud of the progress you’re making to become a happier, healthier version of yourself.
