Introduction

Hi there! I’m Unwright. Today, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the Ketogenic diet while
avoiding its staple food group, meat. You might be thinking, “Wait... but, how can you take away
a staple food and still have a diet?” Well, friend, the answer is simple, and doesn’t include as
much preaching about ‘green leafy vegetables’ as you might think. The answer is a myriad
things, most of which will be covered at the end, in a specific product guide. For now, we’ll
operate on the assumption that, as a vegetarian, you already know a decent amount about what
you can eat in a normal diet. Now, cut out all of the breads*, pastas*, yogurts*, and everything
with carbs. What’s left? Vegetables, eggs, meat substitutes, (I’ll talk a lot about these later)
heavy cream, oysters (more on this later on) and of course, water.

(*) denotes that there are substitutes for all of these things, which’ll be contained in a product
guide near the end.

Now, if you’re brand new to the ketogenic diet, you’re probably already aware that the price
point for Keto in general is higher than is normally spent on groceries. About 1.2 times, based
on my bank statements. For now, as a college student, I’m making Vegetarian Keto work on $60
a week, and I’m a pretty hungry guy. So far, it’s been a total success.

This guide will also assume that you know how to do basic things like sauteé a vegetable or
steam vegetables without sapping all the flavor out of them and turning them into mush. If you
have any problems with these things, I can outline how to do them in a concise manner. If you
have any further questions, you can always directly contact me through Reddit (Unwright), or
through my email.

Now, you’re probably wondering, “Who’s this Unwright guy and why is he of all people writing a
guide about the stuff I’M going to be eating?” Let me answer that with some of my credentials. I
may be young, but food is one thing that I really am good at.
● Well, I’ve learned most there is to know about food from my Chef of a father, a very talented and
professional guy. Spoiled me near to death with all of his gourmet cooking growing up and taught
me everything (well, mostly...) he knows..
● The person I dieted with over the summer has been vegetarian for 8+ years, and she was
instrumental in helping me with vegetarianism.
● I became a vegetarian three years ago and have been exploring the near and far of the lifestyle at
every opportunity.
● I started keto earlier this year because my weight was too high, and I lost 20 pounds over the
summer on just this. I did this with a friend, and we looked into every food alternative there was,
and came up with some really excellent stuff. Since then, I lost another 15 pounds. I’m still on the
diet now, because I just... feel better while on it than off.
● I’m in love with food. I want to know everything about it. Every flavor, every smell, every
consistency, every type of food that exists, I want to know about it.
● Combined score of 98.55% in a Nutrition course at the college I attend.
So those are some things to know about me.
 Common concerns:
There’s always a lot of worry about whether or not you’re getting all of the nutrients you
need from a vegetarian keto diet, because you’re not eating meat, so you’re missing out on Iron
and B12, and sometimes Vitamin E. Well, yes, if you’re only eating eggs at every one of your
meals without regard for vegetables, you’re going to develop a deficiency and you’re going to
feel terrible. The keyword here is variance-- when you go shopping, make your shopping list
very diverse. Don’t buy a lot of a single thing (the exception to this rule is always buy a lot of
avocados if you live in California, only because they’re about a third of the price there vs
anywhere else) and shop based on the assumption that you’ll be eating AT LEAST 20 meals
with what’s in your cart. Again, the answer to all of your problems is variance.
Another concern that I’ve noticed crop up now and again is not eating enough / not
getting enough calories for a day. I know that sounds a little peculiar, but that’s actually one of
the risks of keto. Depending on your coffee intake and depending on your activity level, you
might eat a 700 calorie meal and feel satiated for most of the day. By the time you’ve had
dinner, you’re only at 1400 calories. Now, if you’re doing the diet for weight loss, this might even
be ideal. But if you don’t want to lose weight too quickly, that might even be too steep of a
calorie deficit. It just might not match up with your goals. The solution is to just supplement fat
where possible -- add an extra teaspoon of coconut oil when you’re frying up your veggies. I
mention bulletproof coffee elsewhere -- try to switch to that over regular coffee drinks. Either
way, the end result will be ‘enough calories’. I know, I know -- this downside sounds like an
upside for people who are trying to rapidly lose weight, and you’d be right. This is one of the
perks of keto for some people.
Another concern I hear a lot is regarding the healthiness of keto itself. I get emails on a
near-daily basis from people who want to know if it’s okay to put their kids on the diet as well, or
if it’s useful for treating X. My answer is universally “no” to putting children on the diet, unless
they’re epileptic specifically. While this diet is awesome for a lot of reasons, (in terms of overall
health, weight loss, forcing you to eat healthy, etc) the developing child brain needs glucose. It
can get by on ketone bodies for energy, but glucose is optimal for development. I don’t
recommend the ketogenic diet for anyone under 17. I also don’t recommend it to diabetics,
because there’s a risk of diabetic ketoacidosis. In as many words, your blood becomes
unmanageably acidic and that’s bad. Again, only applies to diabetics. But I wouldn’t be doing
you a service by not telling you about non-ideal times to start a ketogenic diet.

A Day in the Life of Unwright

Breakfast: 3 eggs over easy cooked in butter. Glass of pre-unsweetened vanilla almond milk,
sweetened with stevia extract. A slice of Julian Bakery (will talk about later) toast. Sometimes
add morningstar bacon strips if extra hungry. Delicious and will easily last me until noon. On
days where I know I won’t have enough time to make myself breakfast, a mug of bulletproof
coffee is enough to get me into the afternoon without issue. Sometimes I’ll instead substitute a
spoonful of almond butter, just to have something fatty on my stomach.

Lunch: 1-2 hearts of romaine lettuce with a salad dressing drizzled over it and a side (1/2) of an
avocado, with a dressing in the area where the pit is. Usually it’s ranch for the romaine hearts
and red wine vinaigrette with the avocado. Simplest snack in the world, and so delicious, while
also being moderately high in fat and protein, but with very, very few carbs. Alternatively, I’ll just
season and fry up some extra firm tofu and maybe some of whatever bulk meal I’ve made prior.
More on “Bulk Food” later.

Dinner: Keto is my excuse to have the richest dinners ever. For example, one pack (12 net
carbs per box) of Morningstar Meatballs cooked in heavy cream, sauteéd mushrooms, onions,
garlic and paprika, topped with goat cheese. On the side, some steamed and then stir fried
asparagus or brussels sprouts, or a side caesar (sans croutons, generally) and a glass of
homemade tea and/or lemonade. Or, I might just have a bowl of the stew I made. Stew is my
saving grace when I need a quick and delicious meal. Carrots, celery, gardein beef tips,
vegetable broth, black pepper, salt, garlic powder. Mmmmmm. This whole section is better
explained later on in “Bulk Food” when I talk about pressure cookers and slow cookers.

As you’ll notice, I have a tendency to have smaller meals during the day to give me
enough of a slow burn to get from A to B and see all the sights in between, and then a rich,
filling dinner to top off the day. On some days, my schedule is so constrained that I don’t get to
have full meals until dinner, which is closer to intermittent fasting -- explained in the section
below.

Now, a lot of people can’t handle rich foods like eggs in the morning, and need
something (prior to keto) sweet, like cereal or a pancake or some fruits. The answer to this
problem ended up being goat yogurt, which I’ll touch on the product guide later. Don’t worry,
sweet-breakfast eaters, you do have options. Meanwhile, let’s talk about fasting.

What you need to know about Fasting

So, you’re on keto to lose weight. For some people, after awhile (3 months to a year) of
being on keto, you’ll stop losing weight out of the blue. The answer isn’t communism, it’s
plateauing. Your body will reach an equilibrium in burning off weight at the rate you intake, or
slightly less. There are a myriad solutions available on the internet, but for now, we’ll just talk
about fasting. There are a lot of people out there who literally cannot make it through their day if
they’re not eating regular meals, and fasting isn’t for them. There are generally two types of
fasts-- intermittent and prolonged. Intermittent is a self-imposed schedule in which you simply
don’t eat, and then eat larger meals in the period that you allow eating. Some popular ones are
11 PM to 3 PM with an 8 hour window for 2 large meals, or 4 PM to Noon, etc. It all depends on
when you’re comfortable not eating. I wouldn’t recommend either of the above two for someone
who has to be on their feet a lot during the day, because your body does still need the energy
and you’ll wear out very quickly.

The other type, prolonged fasting, is what’s most commonly used to break a plateau.
The consensus for breaking a plateau with fasting is to fast for between 24 and 56 hours. You
don’t want to go for too long, and I’d do it on a weekend where you won't have to worry about
work or school commitments. Your only input during a fasting period is water, sweetened by
carbless ‘flavor enhancers’ like sugarfree tang or Mio or similar. You probably will feel terrible,
but the end result will be a broken plateau, and the ability to continue losing weight in ketosis.
Metabolically speaking, fasting puts very similar strain on your muscles as when you’re working
out. You’ll never gain muscle mass from fasting, but you will invariably feel like you ran a
triathlon when you’re knee deep into a fast.

Why it helps to really like vegetables on veggie keto

I know a lot of vegetarians that really can’t stand vegetables. They’re odd ducks in my
mind, but that’s fine. However, you almost can’t do vegetarian keto unless you like at least some
kinds of vegetables. You can’t live on Morningstar or Gardein meat substitutes because most of
them have an amount of carbs where having them at 2 meals a day will put you roughly at or
above your daily quota of carbs for the day. (Varies from person to person and product to
product, just be savvy and read the labels.)

I’m someone who absolutely loves vegetables, so veggie keto is pretty easy. There’s
always options. My keto vegetable favorites are always mushrooms, brussels sprouts, broccoli,
cauliflower, lettuce (romaine, not iceberg (filler food, as far as nutrient content is concerned),
butter is okay) spinach, asparagus. I’ll eat any of the other kinds of veggies, but those are the
most reasonable in terms of price, deliciousness and availability. Avocado missed the cut
because even though it’s incredibly delicious and wonderful, they’re USD1.99 where I live, and
about 50¢ where I live during the summer. Once more, the key term is variance. Vary your
vegetable intake and you’ll never see the dark side of a deficiency. A problem I’ve been a
surprising amount of recently is low levels of Potassium, especially in vegans. If you’re at risk for
a potassium deficiency (no eggs, no mushrooms, spinach, etc etc), visit a doctor for a
potassium prescription. The reason I suggest getting a prescription is that the FDA bans
supplements larger than 5% of your recommended daily intake of potassium. The reason for
this isn’t very clear, but it has something to do with the fact that high dose potassium CAN
irritate the stomach lining. But, if you have a varied supply of foods in your diet, you’ll likely
never see a deficiency in any nutrient. Variance!

Now, here’s a bit of an interesting point for those on vegetarian keto. Oysters are
generally considered to be fair play on most vegetarian and vegan lists of acceptable foods.
They lack a central nervous system, can’t feel pain, are renewably farmable, and are a delicious
seafood that is bursting with all sorts of nutrients. Specifics will come later on types and
availability. The oyster is probably the most versatile of veggie keto foods. You can bake’m, eat
them raw with cocktail sauce, you can fry them (contested here, because batter is carbs, and
the only batter substitute for frying oysters comes in the form of pork rinds, a clearly meat
product), you can smoke them, whatever your heart desires. If you’re willing to throw some time
and experimentation at it, you can try frying them with carbquik or almond meal and egg whites.
Your results may vary. Half of the fun of a new diet is exploring, yes?

The Wonderful World of Meat Substitutes

Oh, boy. Where do I even start? If you have an Albertsons or a Safeway or a Winco or a
Smart and Final or a BigLots or a Fred Meyer, you have options. All of the above generally carry
at least one brand of meat substitutes (Bulk retailers tend to only have Morningstar, for some
reason, but some stores will take requests and order Gardein on your behalf) and Whole Foods
(if you have one) generally carries Gardein and Morningstar and Quorn and Boca. For the most
part, these meat substitutes are carefully constructed from wheat gluten and soy protein, with
some exceptions. (Morningstar’s hamburger patties also have mushrooms and other vegetable
matter)

You can buy your own soy protein online in bulk or at ethnic (Thai, in particular) markets
near you, and make the perfect addition to any stir fry. Sauteé appropriately because the default
construction is unbearably bland. Same deal with Tofu. I tend to avoid tofu because soy is just
infinitely better for cooking, but personal preference takes over here. Unless you have a water
retention problem, soy sauce is an awesome thing to have on hand for stir-frying.

Now, be forewarned. There are a lot of really excellent meat substitutes that Gardein
and Morningstar offer that can fill a thousand different eating roles-- BUT, you still have to avoid
some of them because of breading. For example, Gardein’s Chicken Tenders are delicious, but
each bag contains about 40 carbs split evenly among 10 tenders. On the other hand, a bag of
their beefless tips has 12.5 net carbs among about 13 tips. Always check the nutritional facts.

So, to get started, go visit your local grocery store and ask about Gardein/Morningstar
meat substitutes. There’s a whole world out there, you might as well enjoy it. Other brands have
also risen to prominence in the past few years that this guide has existed. Notably, Quorn and
Neat. Keyword: Meat substitute.

Eating Out, hur hur hur

Finding a good restaurant becomes a complicated problem to tackle when you’re on
vegetarian keto. Honestly, you really have to be familiar with the kind of place you’re living to
even make an educated guess about where to eat. If your town has a decent hippie or, well,
hipster population, there’s probably going to be at least one restaurant that serves meat
substitutes. If you’re out in the middle of nowhere like I am, finding a veggie keto-friendly
restaurant is almost impossible. Large city centers will invariably have a vegetarian restaurant,
and keto can happen there. Hit google for local listings.

Keto-friendly stuff at restaurants: salads (with all the cheese they’re willing to add),
sauteéd tofu or soy (a lot of Mandarin and Thai places will sell you sauteéd soy chicken/beef on
request) and some soups. Always ask about your foods-- talk to the servers about vegetarian
options. Talk to them about your diet. High end places are almost always accommodating. In
lower-quality restaurants, substitutions and diet-friendliness almost invariably go out the
window. On my budget, I tend to avoid going to restaurants entirely because I can make better
food at home.

Keto unfriendly stuff at restaurants: Glazes, the silent keto destroyer. Wherever you go,
if your food is sweet and glazed, either scrape it all off with the back of your knife or ask for the
same food without a glaze. You’ll also want to avoid certain soups like tomato basil, because
even though it’s delicious, it tends to be carb dense. Chili is generally on the no-no list because
most beans are pretty high carb, and finding a vegetarian keto-friendly meatless chili at a
restaurant is close to impossible, but you can make that at home. I wrote a recipe for this one
that uses morningstar griller crumbles instead of ground beef, and it is out of this world good.
See here for the recipe. Gardein now also offers fake meat crumbles. They’re both excellent.

So in short, buy all your ingredients and make your food at home whenever possible,
because you don’t know what the ingredients are at restaurants and the price is always too high
for something you could make yourself.

Snacking
Now, on any other lifestyle, this is where the diet-ruiners tend to appear. Keto, though,
your snacking options are limited only by the amount of time in which you have to prepare the
snack. My favorite of all time that requires about 8 minutes to create is a fried jalapeño with
cheddar or goat cheese. If you’re on the go and you need a snack, just stop in at your local
convenience store and grab a cheese stick. The usual snack fare, like chips and sweets, are all
off the menu here, but the realm of savory snacks is limitless. A much quicker snack is just to
cut an avocado in half, toss the pit, and put salad dressing where the pit was. Eat with a spoon
and enjoy. Maybe 1 minute of prep time, and it’ll tide you over pretty well. Plus, avocados are
extremely good for you. A good variant on the avocado is just with a little bit of salt and pepper,
maybe with some cheese.
Craving chips? Happens to the best of us. My solution is to buy blocks of cheddar or
swiss and cook’m in a pan on medium heat until they crisp up. High fat, delicious, tastes like
cheese-its with none of the carbs. There are also a few online stores that sell this premade.
Word to the wise, avoid the parmesan -- for some reason, premade parmesan crackers are
always dramatically oversalted.
Then, the holy grail of ‘junk food’ snacking. Blue Diamond and Emerald brand almonds. I
prefer Blue Diamond, but Emerald isn’t bad. You can even get your sweet snacks in the form of
Dark Chocolate baked almonds, which have a net carb value of 6 per 24 almonds. Don’t overdo
it. Blue Diamond will make up the bulk of your snacking after you try their various flavors. Go to
their website and you’ll see that they have all sorts of savory and sweet almonds, with very
reasonable net carb values. Nuts in general are pretty safe, but be wary of cashews and
macadamia nuts -- they’re comparatively quite carby relative to other nuts.
Like ethnic food? Give roasted seaweed snacks a shot. One little snack package (that I
have in bulk on my shelf) is worth 2 carbs, 2.5g of fat, and 4g of protein. Delicious! Pick up
some shirataki noodles while you’re there.

Keto Substitutions and General Product Guide, (warning, lots of information here)

Breakfast: We wanted yogurt. Our prayers were answered in the form of goat yogurt. Go to
your local shopping center and look at the nutritional facts. Almost all of them have high carb
content except a select few-- among them, Redwood Farms (California local) Siggi’s is probably
the most readily available. Get it in Plain/Unsweetened, and sweeten yourself with the below
paragraph. Again, you WANT fats, so look for something that isn’t fat free. As a related note,
when things are listed as ‘fat free’, there’s usually a supplement in sugar to make up for the
flavor loss. On keto, you pretty much want to always avoid anything labeled low fat or fat free. It
isn’t for this diet.

Sweeteners: this is important if you’re a big coffee drinker. Sweet ‘n Low and all of it’s brethren
are terrible. Not because of any purported health risk, but because they just taste terrible. The
product of choice for sweeteners that taste like sugar but aren’t sugar, is Stevia extract. You can
get Truvia or Stevia in the Raw, which come in the form of diluted stevia crystals which can be
used measure-for-measure of sugar. Or, you can get liquid stevia at Whole Foods or from
Amazon. This stuff is INCREDIBLY potent, and one drop will sweeten a whole cup of yogurt to
taste like regular vanilla yogurt. 4-6 drops will turn 2 quarts of lemon juice and water into some
of the best low-carb lemonade you’ll ever drink. It’s expensive, but it will last you a very long
time. It also comes in a variety of flavors, but vanilla cream and raspberry are the only ones I’ve
tried. Xylitol is also fine, and dissolves a little more like sugar does. I prefer it when it comes to
baking.

Milk: Lactose is a complex sugar, that’s why all those carbs are present in regular milk. Soy
milk and rice milk, even the unsweetened plain kinds have more carbs than is reasonable
(unless you buy PURE soy milk from an ethnic retailer, which has almost no carbs but is
extremely disgusting and tastes just awful). The answer here ends up being Almond milk. As it
turns out (and to my recent delight), unsweetened vanilla almond milk, sweetened with 5
packets of Stevia in the Raw is as close to actual milk as you get, without any of the lactose.
Plus, it’s one net carb per cup. You can also consider hemp milk -- it’s not bad, but it’s watery by
comparison and doesn’t have a lot to it. You can mix various milks together and see if you like
any of them. For me, hemp milk and self-sweetened vanilla almond milk gives both the
consistency and flavor of regular milk. See what you like!

Cheese: If you love cheese, there’s no better time than keto to go out to your favorite store and
just try samples of various cheeses. It’s high fat, low protein, no carb. I’m a sucker for goat
cheese because I love how creamy it is, but at the same time, a nice sharp cheddar or swiss
can also be found in my cheese drawer. Check around your local area. If there’s a cheese store,
go take an hour and sample their wares. Cheese and keto are star-crossed lovers.
Special Note: Some fancy cheeses are often made with animal rennet-- consult your local
Cheesemaker and ask for samples of vegetable rennet cheese.

Mashed Potatoes: Mashed cauliflower. Cut off the stems and break into individual heads.
Steam for 20 or so minutes, until a butter knife can easily cut through it. Put into a bowl and
mash. Take a paper towel and press on the cauli-mash to absorb some of the water. Mix in a
small amount (1 tbsp) of heavy cream, add salt and pepper, mix and serve. It will always end up
being more moist than regular mashed potatoes, but it’s as close as anyone’s going to get. Plus,
it’s delicious and nutritious.

Heavy Cream: The staple of almost all of my dinners. Heavy cream sauces are delicious and
provide a lot of extra fat content to any meal, plus you can make fruit mousse out of it for
dessert. Always have at least one container on hand, you’ll end up using it quite a bit.

Bread: Julian Bakery. When I originally wrote this section, it was pretty critical of Julian Bakery
for having dubious claims of carb content and rubbery bread. In the few years that have passed
since then and now, they’ve upped their game. Their low-carb bread is pretty good, and not
rubbery anymore. This and other low carb breads are available online, as well as all sorts of
other awesome low-carb stuff. Look around and try for yourself, different strokes for different
folks! Julian Bakery is just the most consistently good in my more recent experience.

Energy Drinks: While I specifically suggest not drinking them (they’re bad for you), about half
of those Rockstar and Monster energy drinks have about 2 carbs per can. If you need a fix of
energy, get coffee instead, sweeten it with your own stevia and heavy cream (Heavy cream? In
coffee? It’s more delicious than you think!) and enjoy. My drink of choice is a double espresso
macchiato (not the Starbucks kind of macchiato, the actual real world kind of macchiato which is
straight espresso topped with a little bit of foam) with a pump of sugarfree hazelnut syrup.
Delicious and gets me energized faster than any energy drink, with a carb tag of less than one
net carb for the milk foam. Alternatively, if you need a big source of fat really quickly in the
morning when you get going, I personally recommend bulletproof coffee. I do it atypically. 2
shots of espresso, 1 pad unsalted (preferably fresh) cream butter, 1 tbsp coconut oil, one packet
stevia, stir vigorously and enjoy. Makes for an incredible boost of energy in the mornings.
Special note: Most energy drinks contain taurine, which is an animal product. Again,
stick with coffee.

Vitamins: All this said, you still might want to consider a multivitamin supplement if you varying
up your foods but still not eating mushrooms or oysters or green leafy vegetables. One-a-days
are enough, you don’t have to go nuts with them, and as usual, NEVER take megadose
anything. The exclusion to that rule is Vitamin C and to a lesser degree, B12. B12 deficiencies
are especially common among stupid vegetarians that think they can get away with eating only
lettuce and salad dressing, so you might want to pick up some liquid B12. Vitamin C isn’t fat
soluble and unused amounts of it pass through your system very quickly.
Special note: Some capsules for Vitamins contain Gelatin, an animal product. Whole
Foods carries multivitamins that smell awful and taste terrible but don’t contain gelatin.
Capsules only, not pills. Just capsules with that little plastic-looking coating.

Noodles: Your best bets in the pasta department are ethnic options. There are a few different
types, but the easiest to find are shirataki noodles. These noodles are made of yam, and the
noodles (when cooked) are a little crunchy and have some vegetable crisp to them, but if you
boil and then pan fry them with various seasonings and tofu, it’s the spit and image of a real
pasta dish. Originally in this section I suggested “Dreamfield” products -- after enough time, it
was revealed that their claims of low-carbness were dubious at best and the product was pulled
from a lot of shelves following the controversy. Shirataki noodles aren’t the only kind of noodle
available, either -- shredded daikon root can also make for a great noodle substitute. Be wary of
low carb pastas, and stick to things like shirataki when you’re trying to get your low-carb noodle
fix.

Eggs: There’s a thousand and one ways to cook an egg, and depending how you feel about
them, you’re probably going to be eating a lot of them, unless you’re vegan. With that in mind,
make sure you’re getting good eggs. In my experience, locally grown large brown eggs are
almost always better in terms of flavor and quantity than the generic brand mass produced white
eggs. They offer nothing different in terms of nutrition, but you’ll get way more bang for your
buck (in my opinion) buying local farmhouse eggs. You might pay a dollar or two more per
dozen, but you’ll be paid back in spades with deliciousness. Eggs also provide the foundation
for some of my favorite bulk meals. For example -- I’ll crack two dozen eggs into a disposable
aluminum baking pan, and then fill it with broccoli, extra-firm sauteed tofu, top it in pepperjack,
and bake it for about a half hour at 350. Once the cheese browns on the top and a toothpick in
the center comes out clean, your bulk delicious nutritious keto meal is done. Makes like, 15
servings.

Beverages: Your best bet here, as always with keto, is water. Water water water. I use this
monstrosity. Wherever I am, it’s there. Always have water nearby. Lipolysis is an extremely
inefficient chemical process that requires tons of water to complete. No water, no energy. Water
water water. You can buy it from K-Mart online, and it’s 8 bucks, with shipping. If you have a K-
Mart nearby, it’s 3 bucks. Some CVS and Rite-AID have them for 5-6 bucks. As far as other
drinks are concerned, you can have any diet soda you want, but I suggest not doing that as
some diet sodas have been known to cause stalls in weight loss. If you want to avoid that whole
problem entirely, Zevia Sodas are delicious and carbless and I haven’t seen any reports of stalls
with those. Stay away from fruit juice and regular milk. Sugar Free Crystal Light drink mix is also
pretty good. You can also purchase Mio (in a variety of flavors) at pretty much any supermarket
to make your water less boring... if that’s ... a problem. Also comes in Energy and Fitness
variants, which provide a hit of caffeine and electrolytes (as well as some nutrients) respectively.

Seasoning: You’re going to want to season your food. My most-used are soy sauce, paprika,
garlic (powdered or clove, depending on how much time I have), chili flakes, rosemary, salt and
pepper, and soy sauce. You’re going to want AT LEAST those. Unseasoned food is the worst.If
you plan on branching out and trying to make all sorts of dishes, I might recommend getting a
rack and buying an assorted spice kit. Experimenting with new flavors is half the fun of food!

Cooking your food: Butter and extra virgin olive oil are the cover-alls for keto. High in fat and
makes the food delicious. But, there’s a different oil for every occasion. Try to get a feel for the
smoke points of different oils and use them accordingly. As a general rule, most vegetables are
better with olive oil (onions and garlic are excluded) and most non-vegetables are better with
butter. I cook my brussels sprouts in oil and soy sauce and black pepper, and then add butter at
the end because it makes them unbearably delicious and rich. Either way, always have butter
and olive oil nearby. You’re going to be using a lot of it. Alternatives include coconut oil (used for
a lot of Hawaiian-type dishes and general vegetable sautee), Walnut Oil (awesome for Shirataki
Noodles and has a rich nutty flavor, also really good for you) and hell, a hundred other oils.
Again, the keyword is variance. Find one you like and go nuts.
Let’s Talk Bulk: Let’s face it, in a perfect world, we would be able to to cook all of our meals
every time and always be able to enjoy a hot and delicious and nutritious keto meal.
Realistically, though, life gets in the way and suddenly you find yourself gravitating towards
things that might not necessarily be the best keto foods or the healthiest diet ever. It turns out
the solution are two cooking appliances on two ends of the spectrum: a slow cooker and a
pressure cooker. These are two pieces of kitchen hardware that fill two specific niches, and I
recommend you pick at least one that fits your schedule. The thing about both, though, is that
they’re both very lazy and low-effort methods of cooking that you can use to create bulk
delicious keto food for the coming week. They both involving throwing in a bunch of ingredients
and closing the lid and letting it do its thing for either 10 minutes or 10 hours, and then eating
the results. Slow cookers are usually better for things that you want to be really unctuous and
thick and dense.
● One example might be broccoli/fake meat/bell peppers/onion/garlic/szechuan
sauce/oyster (or soy) sauce. Let all of those things slow cook all day long, and as
long as the szechuan sauce you used was low carb, you’ll have a thick and rich
and delicious spicy dish that doesn’t break the keto bank.

Now, the pressure cooker is a little bit different in that it cooks things to be even more tender
and thoroughly seasoned due to the nature of pressure cooking. Similar to the slow cooker, you
can throw a bunch of ingredients in with each other, add a cup of water, cook on high pressure
for 10 minutes, and enjoy the fruits of your labors. The pressure cooker is best for stews and
soups, or preparing other vegetables for turning into soup. Broccoli and butternut squash are
examples of things that are meaningfully softened (and seasoned!) up by the pressure cooker
for future soup-making. The most salient feature of this paragraph is that you can make a lot of
food for very little effort, and it’ll facilitate your keto adventure because it’s ... easy. It’s so easy.

Conclusion
So anyway, you’re going to have a great time with it as long as you have a spice rack
and a pepper grinder and a willingness to explore your kitchen and market. Explore your
farmers markets, because fresh food is best food. Cheese will become your best friend, whether
it be in the form of a 6 month aged truffle-infused brie or just a nice hunk of cheddar, there’s a
cheese for every person. Always ask for samples. Get a feel for how many calories your body
needs. If you find yourself still hungry after a meal, go for a second helping. Keto is wonderful
because you effectively eat until you’re comfortably full, and then you stop, and you lose weight
in the process. I’m at my target weight and I’m still on keto, just because I feel better on than off.
I always have energy, I wake up in a flash, and I get to eat the most rich foods in the world and
never gain a pound. Keto is amazing.

If you’re interested in my philosophy and theory of keto, scroll down to the next page. I didn’t
include it in the main body of the guide because it’s long-winded and is only my experience of
living the diet for a few years.
Good luck out there, and welcome to ketosis!

Theory of Keto
Let me start by warning you. This section is going to be really long-winded and pedantic,
as I attempt to describe my understanding of success and failure with the diet over the past 2.5
years since this guide was initially written. You were warned! Anyway, I wrote this guide initially
because I was able to fill a niche. My experience, and my friend’s experience starting keto for
weight loss was a bit of a weird journey, because the ketogenic diet in general hadn’t yet risen
to prominence like it has now through Pinterest and Tumblr and other blogs. As a result, we had
very little to go on and basically winged it. Before then, I was fresh out of that Nutrition class so I
already had an understanding of the basic premises of the diet (specifically, the biology and
mechanisms) and the diet fascinated me on a lot of different levels. Among these were the
evolutionary biology perspectives which suggest that our diet was originally closer to the Paleo
diet, and due to periodic shortages of fruit (the lone source of carbs in a pre-agriculture/nomad
world) there were likely long periods where humans were ketogenic. Of course, theories of
evolutionary (re: diet) biology are unproven, but built upon well-supported ground. If you ever
get a chance, read this scholarly article. Sadly, it’s paywalled but (as it was for me) it might be
available through your local library or University via things like Interlibrary Loan or Iliad. All of the
diet theory you’ll ever need is in there. I’d host it myself, but I’d get crucified by copyright law.
Anyway, I pitched the keto diet to my friend and was shot down initially. Oops! Later,
after more discussion, we decided that it might actually be the right choice and started
examining all the literature. We had the basic premise of low-carb-high-fat-enough-protein, but
we weren’t sure how to navigate that issue with keto’s staple food being meat, due to it being
pretty much ideal in terms of pure protein and fat content. For awhile, we were eating the most
standard meals ever -- eggs and vegetables. Boring but functional. Here’s where I get more into
my own personal outlook on food -- things that are boring but functional (think of all of the
connotations of the word “diet”, and you’ll understand what I’m driving at) are the hardest to deal
with. Things that accompany this idea are things like flossing and taxes and laundry detergent.
These are all things that we use to improve our lives, but is there anything at all that’s fun or
interesting about those things? Not even a little! To me, that’s what all previous experiences of
dieting were. It meant cutting yourself off from the things that you liked so you could instead eat
something boring but functional to serve a purpose. Green leafy salads with a vinaigrette. Fried
egg. Celery and peanut butter. None of these things are especially bad or boring (hell, I have a
fried egg every day!), but they lack interest and feel very much like taxes after a long time. Like
homework. Like a diet. Awful.
It was at this point where we were both getting a little exasperated, so we resolved to try
a bit harder and branch out and explore the food universe because there had to be something
better than the homework we were eating at home. So, we set out into every local market just to
examine food nutrition labels. For hours, for days, for weeks we did this until we knew what was
in everything. We realized that there are ways to eat that didn’t have to be restrictive within the
diet. We could branch out, we could indulge, we could still enjoy the foods that we loved, but it
forced us to be creative. At this point, I had a realization that I had to treat this like a lifestyle and
not a diet, because if you’re always wrapped up in what you can’t have, it blinds you to the
things you don’t know that you do have. For example, I’m sure there are those among you that
miss chocolate. Did it occur to you that Lindt and Ghirardelli both make luxury dark chocolates
that are low-carb enough for keto? It certainly didn’t to me! Would you have known that you
could make a legitimate low-carb berry pie and keep the entire pie (crust included) under 30g
carbs? I honestly didn’t know either, but after some experimentation and some god-awful failure
meals, it turns out you can.
Let’s talk theory of food for a few moments. In my experience, there are two camps of
people -- foodies and functional eaters. I’m not going to disparage either group because both
have their shortcomings and benefits, but I will say that I’m a foodie, as is my girlfriend who is
also doing keto. Now, I’ll be straight up (blunt?) with you, foodies will have a harder time with
keto in the long term if they’re unmotivated. The only reason that I was able to live keto and also
be a foodie was because I was always willing to put in the time to figure out how to circumvent
the carb limitations. It required reframing of thoughts like, “I wish I could have cookies” and
“Spaghetti sounds great right now” to “I wonder how I can use almond / coconut flour to make
cookies” and “I wonder if there are any thick shirataki noodles.” Eventually, it all becomes
second nature. It’s at that point where keto is no longer a diet, but a lifestyle instead, and it
makes it that much easier to stay with in the long term. Functional eaters (people who eat to
consume chemical energy rather than make an experience or blow a mind with food) by and
large have an easier time with keto because they’re okay with fried egg / light salad / bulletproof
coffee / sauteed tofu for 30 years. I know a lot of people like this, and while I don’t totally
understand myself, I can see the functional usefulness of taking that approach as well.
Personally though, in my experience, the people who get the most out of keto are the people
who are willing to explore the landscape of food that they’re in and be able to creatively figure
out ways to indulge healthfully. It’s not always possible -- sometimes the region in which you live
merely doesn’t have enough non-wheat/starch food products to do the diet, and that sucks.
Being a foodie in that context makes keto nearly impossible, and my heart goes out to the poor
souls who’ve reached out to me via email to tell me the same.
So, after finally exploring all of the food labels we could possibly find, and after
branching out into the internet to see what kinds of things were offered there, we finally had
enough information to really stay consistently happy and satisfied on keto, and I resolved to
write the guide. The first drafts were pretty basic -- casually worded, tips here and there, no
formatting, no product guide. The next version was updated a month or so later with a product
guide and a few other small suggestions and tips for success. The next few years elaborated on
that, and influenced what the guide is now.
Now that it’s been a few years, I think it’s important to share my whole experience with
keto and with friends and loved ones with you all. If for no other reason than because I think it’s
important to see just one type of mindset -- just one person’s mental framework for success.
Maybe it’ll help you come to your own conclusions about how the diet would work best for you,
or possibly steer you towards something else if you find that keto isn’t right. Either way, I
welcome and encourage and appreciate your feedback. Thanks for a few years of awesome
support and friendly emails and messages on reddit. I look forward to our low-carb future
together.

As always, http://reddit.com/r/vegetarianketo will be a helpful resource as well.

If you have any suggestions or requests, please get ahold of me via Reddit or my email, and I’ll
happily address any complaints or suggestions or comments.

Credit for being an awesome friend, a peer reviewer, a constant source of inspiration for being
creative with vegetarianism and keto goes to my partner in crime, belephant.

Revision 1 notes: Changed wording, modified product guide, fixed misspellings, cleared up
some unclear things, generally made the guide better.

Revision 2 notes: Tidied the thing up a bit, added a bit more information. An insubstantial
update. Next update is all content!
Revision 3 is now in progress. Small bits are going to be written and rewritten until Feb 15
(2015), at which point the guide will be considered to be in its next revision.