Keto Diet Foods: What to Eat and What to Avoid

A keto diet: what to eat?

Keto diet foods for weight loss must have the lowest level of carbs. Foods with a high content of protein and fats (especially polyunsaturated fatty acids) would be the best option. However, even protein foods like beans still have some sugar.

In addition to the fact that carbs are different, simple carbs are much more harmful to health than complex carbs are. Moreover, complex carbs stimulate the intestines and may reduce appetite. This food list considers these nuances and is great for a keto diet. What can you eat on a keto diet? Let’s find out together.

What about meat?

Meat is the basis of any keto diet. This food product contains a minimum of carbs, fats and a lot of protein. However, the amount of fat can vary significantly in meat. The best keto diet plan includes kinds of meat with a high level of fat, namely:

• Duck
• Pork
• Mutton
• Goose
• Chicken

Remember: the above meats are presented in descending order. That is, duck is the fattiest (and preferred) meat, and chicken has the lowest fat level. Can you eat chicken on a keto diet? Sure! But give preference to non-sirloin parts. You can also eat byproducts. For keto diet, chicken wings are also a good choice.

You can eat poultry with the skin on; it adds fat to the food. Also, consider the cooking method. For example, grilling is undesirable because the meat loses some of its fat.

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Fish and seafoods: for your health benefit

Fish and seafood are very close to meat in terms of the ratio of proteins, fats and carbs. Nutrition experts also rate them as good keto diet ingredients, and you can even find them on the strictest keto diet food list.

A distinctive feature of seafood is its unique microelement composition that distinguishes them from poultry or beef. Because of the high content of mineral salts in seawater, seafood contains a large amount of useful trace elements, such as phosphorus, iodine, potassium and magnesium. These microelements are important for cell division, the heart muscle and the thyroid gland. Fish, particularly sea fish, is very useful in any diet and fits perfectly into the keto diet.

Eggs on keto diet

Eggs are a unique source of protein. Egg protein is concentrated mainly in the white part of the product and has record-high digestibility. Eggs are a great food to eat on a keto diet in Australia, as they are widely available in all regions of the country. However, we recommend eating no more than 6-7 eggs per week. The thing is that protein-rich foods can put a lot of stress on the liver. Besides, egg yolks can cause high cholesterol in people with a tendency to high cholesterol. If you have high cholesterol, eat no more than three egg yolks each week. Moderate egg consumption is also recommended for people with diabetes.

In other cases, it is desirable to eat both whites and yolks, while on the keto diet.

Cheese: choose but check

Cheese is even more preferable than eggs are, because its ratio of protein and fat is optimal for the keto diet! Whole milk cheese, made in compliance with all quality standards, will be an excellent source of not only fats and carbs, but also calcium for your bones. But we advise you to choose low-sugar cheese to make sure that extra sugar does not interrupt your ketosis.

Fruits and berries for your health

Most fruits contain a huge amount of sugars, and you should avoid them on the keto diet. However, occasionally you can eat a small number of some fruits. Just imagine that fruit is candy. You can eat peaches, melons or tangerines. They contain less than 10 g of sugars per 100 g of product, and you can include a small number of these fruits in the list of keto diet foods.

We recommend no more than 50 g of fast carbs per day and no more than 20 g of these carbs in case of a strict keto diet. It means that you can easily eat a couple of peaches a day. But a whole melon is too much.

The situation with berries is more optimistic. You can include substantial amounts of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and cranberries (up to 0.5 kg per day) in your keto diet, if this fits into the total calorie content. In general, we can recommend eating sour berries more often than very sweet ones (unless you have problems with high levels of stomach acid).

Best choice of nuts and seeds

Not everyone knows that different kinds of nuts have a different composition. Seeds and nuts are always high-calorie foods, but their ratio of fat and sugar does not always make them the best for the keto diet.

Here is the list of nuts you can eat:

• macadamia
• pecan
• Brazil nut

Almost all other nuts contain too much sugar for a keto diet (cashew has as much as 22 g of carbs per 100 g of nuts). We do not recommend eating such nuts while on the keto diet.

These nuts include:

• cashew
• pistachios
• hazelnut
• walnut
• peanut
• almond
• pine nut

What not to eat on the keto diet?

Now let’s talk about bans. Obviously, these are foods high in carbs. These foods will stop ketosis and put you back into carbohydrate metabolism. It is always easier for your body to process carbs, and it will do it at any opportunity.

First, you should exclude fast carbs from your diet. Starch is your main enemy among complex carbs. Unlike fast carbs, it is not sweet, so be careful. They often add starch as a thickening agent to various dishes such as sauces, puddings, and jellies, and you can easily overlook it.

Starchy and low-carb vegetables

Vegetables with high levels of starch are now a taboo for you. Potatoes, maize, sweet potatoes and other starchy vegetables are foods not allowed on a keto diet.

To make it easier for you to navigate the variety of vegetables, we suggest you remember a simple rule. According to statistics, vegetables with the highest starch content are always root vegetables. And fiber that is healthy and does not interfere with the diet is found predominantly in the stems and leaves, that is, in the above ground parts of plants. This simple rule will make it easier for you to choose vegetables. Choose leaf vegetables and avoid root vegetables.

Here is one more tip for choosing vegetables: the greener a vegetable, the less sugar it contains. For example, white cabbage has less sugar than red cabbage does, and green bell pepper contains fewer carbs than red or yellow varieties do.

High-sugar fruits: one of the main taboos

90% of fruits are on the list of banned foods. Banana is undoubtedly the number one on the black list. This fruit has the highest level of starch. That is why bananas are one of the keto diet fruits to avoid.

Also, we do not recommend the following fruits:

• grapes
• mango
• apple
• pineapple
• pear

Remember that in the case of sour fruits, the sweet flavor is often masked by a lot of acid. However, a sour flavor does not equal the absence of sugar.

No grains on the keto-diet

Grains are another source of starch. Definitely, you should avoid grains while on the keto diet. But the grains of different plants have a very different composition, and you can include some varieties of grains in your meals. Nevertheless, all grains and beans are under a ban. Naturally, this means that you should include all grain products in your keto diet avoid food list. The banned grain products are as follows:

• wheat and rye bread
• grain cereals
• baked products (excluding the ones made with nut flours)
• muffins and cakes from grain flour

We also advise you to avoid sprouted grains: they have less starch but a lot of fast carbs.

These strict restrictions should not upset you. There are many types of alternative flours that can replace grain flour. We recommend coconut, almond or flaxseed flour.

Attention: sweetened yogurts!

When we discussed milk products, we mentioned yogurts in a positive way. Natural milk yogurt and other fermented milk products are really suitable for a keto diet, but with one very important condition. It is the absence of any sweet and fruit flavors. It does not matter that a yogurt is based on high-quality milk if you mix it with molasses or sweet jam in a ratio of 1:1. When we mention dairy products in a keto diet, we mean products that contain no sweet flavors.

Forbidden juices on the keto-diet

With the exception of very exotic options, like sugar-free cranberry juice, all other juices are not suitable for the keto diet. The amount of carbs in fresh fruits and juices from them is about the same. And we mean just fast carbs, and not useful fiber.

As for canned juices, they always have added sugar. Juices, even in small amounts, are taboo on a keto diet. Avoid juices with added sugar! You can identify these juices by sugar in the composition. Even juice made of lowest carb berries like raspberries is not suitable for the keto diet, if it contains added sugar.

Without sweeteners and desserts

Desserts, except for the few ones we mentioned earlier, are keto diet foods to avoid. Meringue, sweet cream, jams, chocolate and honey, are a source of both starch and a huge amount of fast carbs. We recommend replacing them with stevia-based desserts and nut flour baked products.

Besides, you can eat dark chocolate, strawberry, raspberry, cranberry, blackberry and such fruits as peach and melon.

No drinks?

We strongly advise you to avoid sugary sodas and milkshakes. Limit the drinks which contain sweeteners (we have already mentioned their health risks).

Also, remember that you cannot drink all types of alcohol while on the keto diet. Here is the list of highly unwanted alcoholic drinks on the keto diet:

• beer
• liqueurs
• alcoholic cocktails with juices and syrups
• dessert wines

And generally, drink alcohol less often because it does not benefit either health or metabolism. Your daily maximum is 360 ml of beer with a strength of 5%, 150 ml of wine with a strength of 12% or 40 ml of alcohol with a strength of 40%. And we recommend drinking only one of these alcoholic beverages.

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