A MyFitnessPal friend just adopted a ketogenic way of eating. A few tips that just popped out of my head and through the keyboard that I thought I should share with all of you: how to incorporate more fat into your diet without scooping out spoonsful and eating it like ice cream.
Yes, I did that in the beginning. I was desperate to get all the fats into my diet that I needed to. For those who don’t know, the basic way it works with the ketogenic approach is you replace all the carbohydrate calories you normally eat with fat calories. In the beginning, when you are just starting out, that is a lot of fat! That’s why you see so many people (and I did this for almost the entire year I was strict keto) drinking Bullet Proof Coffee (if you google that, you might not see what I drank. I just added a tablespoon each of butter and coconut oil to my coffee and just stirred it in … much better together than either butter or coconut oil by themselves). Or they eat fat bombs. Really. I tried one recipe and it was just cold fat with something (I think it was peanut butter) meant to make you forget you are eating a chunk of fat but it failed.
The problem with doing drinking my bullet proof coffee every day was those nights when we would indulge in a fantastically fatty rib eye steak, I would go over on my fats (a lot). So, I slowly began skipping my bullet proof coffee days and consuming more fats with my meals. Eventually, it got to a point I did not need my bullet proof coffee.
So, what were these fantastic tips I gave my friend? The first tip: Starting now, buy fattier meats. Through so many years of being told to eat less fatty meats, we had switched from 80% ground beef to 90%, bought chicken breast instead of other cuts, and purchase pork loin instead of the fat-rich cuts that didn’t require sauces to make them edible. Now, we buy the 80% ground beef. We buy chicken thighs instead of breast. Did you know that most of the wonderfully smelling chicken that is grilled outside of Mexican markets is de-boned, skinned chicken thighs? That’s why it is always so juicy and WONDERFUL! We buy pork chops, the fattier the better and when we want steak, it is either rib eye steaks (with that glorious marbling) or tri-tip roasts. I’ve also (as I’ve written about before) begun branching out with pork butt roasts and even some beef roasts, leaving as much of the fat as I can. Don’t forget fish: any form of salmon has more fats but have you checked out canned fish like smoked herring or sardines?
The second tip (which I don’t think I told her): Track your fat! When I input my meals into MyFitnessPal, I would almost always forget to track the fats I used in cooking. On the days when I remembered, I would almost end up over my allotted fat amounts.
So, there you have it. Two tips to ensure your intake of fats is mostly from whole foods instead of a spoon. OH! I almost forgot. If you want to order fats in bulk (instead of paying outrageous prices for tiny containers at the store and do not mind if they are not organic), go here (this is not an affiliate link, I just really like them): http://naturaloils.com/shop/Default.htm