Keto For Vegetarians!

At the age of 6 years old, I decided to step into the world of the vegetarians. I don't even remember why I decided to stop eating meat, but I did and I have not eaten a single piece of meat since.

My mom was always concerned about me not getting proper nutrients, but my doctor said as long as I was eating eggs and cheese I would be fine.

From then on, I would eat Italian food at least 10 times per week, and all food from Italy is just loaded with carbs. I would say I was ingesting over 600g of carbs per day for the last 10 years. This never came as an inconvenience to me until a few weeks ago, when I decided to start my first Ketogenic diet.

If you are not familiar with Ketogenic ("keto" for short) diets, the main idea of them is to get into a state of "Ketosis" where your body will eat up fat like crazy for energy. In order to reach Ketosis, you must keep your carbs extremely low - 15g or less per day. For the average person, this diet is not too hard; in fact, this is a preferred diet of many people.

They can eat as much meat as they want, just stay away from the bread and you will lose nice amounts of fat. But for vegetarians such as myself, you must be willing to make sacrifices beyond belief!

A Vegetarian Keto Diet

For the first week of my diet, I ate nothing but eggs and cheese. That is the only thing I was able to find with very low carbs. And since I did not want my heart to stop beating from amazing amounts of cholesterol, it was actually limited to egg whites.

Egg White Products In Our Store

I would eat egg white omelettes with cheese a few times per day. Whenever I would get hungry, off to the frying pan I would go to fry up some eggs. When it came to my protein shakes, I could not take them with milk since even skim milk has 16g of carbs per serving.

I tried taking them with water, but I couldn't stand the taste. Somebody then told me to try mixing the shake with Egg Beaters. I did so, and I thought it tasted something like pancake mix. So, off I went to my frying pan to experiment with something.

I discovered that by mixing my whey powder and ¼ of Egg Beaters, I was able to cook 2 pancakes that tasted pretty damn good. I then found a company that produced a syrup with 0 carbs! This made my diet a slight bit easier to do, now that I was able to eat more than just plain eggs all day!

More Recipes

Later that day, I found a great recipe for a Greek Salad. romaine lettuce, green peppers, radishes, cucumbers, hard boiled eggs, feta cheese, and an Italian dressing.

One serving of this salad consisted of 8g of carbs, so I would eat that as my dinner for every night from them on. I still needed something else to eat to hold off the hunger, and not get bored to death from the same foods all the time. I then decided that I would pick up some Protein Bars.

So now I was able to have somewhat of a variety of food. I was eating my six meals a day, and getting over 2500 calories per day, so I was not losing any muscle, and actually I gained a couple pounds of muscle while on the diet!

To make sure I was shedding the fat off of my body, I needed to make sure my body wasn't being resistant to insulin. In order to increase insulin sensitivity, I decided to take some ALA. This helped me shed body fat even more than I was already. Since I wanted to stay on this diet for a while, and not quit, I decided I would need to have a cheat day.

I decided every Saturday would be my cheat day, where I would go and eat like crazy. My first cheat day, I ordered a pizza and ate the whole thing. This allowed me to tell myself "Okay, I only have to watch my carbs for 6 more days," instead of "I have to stop eating carbs for 2 months!" That was much easier to do!

I have been on this diet for almost a month now, and I am loving the results! But, I would only recommend this diet to a vegetarian if he/she is willing to sacrifice more than they can imagine!