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For beginners living in a low-carb world, it is difficult to navigate and understand what to eat on keto. How to adjust your diet to take all the useful and remove the excess? What to add to keto food so that it does not become harmful? I admit that food does not harm a person. We are what we eat. If the principles of nutrition harm a person, then this is not correct nutrition. In this article, I will write about the essential supplements and staples in the ketogenic diet to improve your keto life.
Essential keto supplements
The right supplements and healthy foods can help minimize the imbalance in ketogenic staining when the required foods are not available. It’s great and healthy if a person gets all the needed substances from a varied and correct set of products. But as practice shows, not everyone has the opportunity to find all the necessary food products in sufficient quantity, quality, and freshness all year round.
After all, our country is big! Moreover, as I wrote earlier. The keto diet is not cheap. If you do not just want to lose weight, but are concerned about your health, then the set of products is quite expensive.
Here is a list of those supplements that will be required at the beginning of the keto path:
1. First, you should buy high-quality electrolytes. The first thing that a competent ketosis person thinks about in advance is Adaptation! In a nutshell, it’s not nice, but portable if done right. How to avoid problems with keto-adaptation? It is either to drink mineral water in liters or introduce electrolytes into the diet with the right amount of water.
2. The second thing to buy BEFORE starting a keto diet is micronutrients and vitamins. Why? Because during the Adaptation period, a lot depends on the availability of the required amount of trace elements. How you transfer the Adaptation greatly influences its results. If it’s hard, it will be much easier to fly out with keto. You just might get lost. When washing out trace elements from the body, during keto-adaptation, and later in life in ketosis, you can harm your body. Lack of minerals and vitamins is harmful.
Tip: Pay attention to the dosage of the supplements you buy. In the proposed complexes in Russia, the concentrations are significantly lower than European and American drugs. If you buy vitamins in Russia, increase the dose, of course, in consultation with a competent specialist.
3. The third and essential element of keto-adaptation is fiber. Have you tried finding the right fiber at the pharmacy? So what would be gluten-free? (Unless gluten-free foods are shown to you.) I did not find it. But there is a way out – psyllium in pills. Why tablets? Try to eat spillium with a spoon, and you will understand everything))) You can scrape off the sticky and not tasty slurry from your teeth for several hours! And it would be best if you drank it with every meal. Conclusion – for use as fiber, only tablets.
4. The fourth thing that is desirable, but unlike the previous points, not necessarily for keto-adaptation, is MCT oil. When MCT oil enters the body, it immediately decomposes into ketones. It forces the body into a state of ketosis. This may be needed to kick-start ketosis if you have trouble getting it started or had to get out of keto for a short time.
Important! Just sitting on MCTs thinking you are keto is a mistake! Ketosis is when your body breaks down fats on its own, rather than using the fruits of civilization in the form of MCT oil.
Recommended supplements for long-term keto
If the keto regimen has become your usual way of eating, it is worth considering correcting some aspects of the diet. Of course, you should think about this from the very beginning, but if you plan to be in ketosis or on LCHF, most of the time, it is merely NECESSARY to resolve the balance of nutrients and trace elements.
Supplements that will be needed for a long-term ketogenic diet but will not interfere with the initial stage of keto:
1. Omega 3. If you do not know what omega 3 is and why it is worth consuming it, you should also read the article on keto oils. In a nutshell, if you are not a resident of a seaside city, and your diet does not consist of at least half of fatty fish and seafood, then you need omega 3!
2. If you are an active athlete or play sports, you may need protein and amino acids. It is essential to choose a protein with the correct protein balance and minimal carbohydrate content. Better to use protein from bone broth. It is also important not to overload the bek, count your dose correctly – this is important in keto.
3. For those actively losing weight on a keto diet, especially girls, it is essential to lose weight and the final appearance. Those who have lost 20-30 + kilograms may face sagging skin problems. These difficulties are more comfortable to prevent than to eliminate. Collagen is one of the key elements to restore skin elasticity. You should purchase it in advance and start the course along with the keto diet, or before starting to lose weight, but not after.
Supplements and products in keto recipes
The keto diet’s specificity is due to the lack of familiar foods, which can be replaced with analogs without losing their taste. And the main thing is to replace it with useful and correct products for the ketogenic regimen.
What foods should you replace on a keto diet?
- These are gluten-free foods. Wheat and other cereals. Why? First, they are high in carbohydrates. Secondly, they say they can be harmful, and at least it is worth excluding their consumption at the initial stage of keto (1-2 months) and, when added, watch your condition—feeling worse? Gluten is not for you.
- Harmful oils. No refined and deodorized oils! No margarine.
- Avoiding sugar and sweets. There are no usual desserts with all of the above.
- Sausages. No, no, and one more time no. The keto sausage diet is a utopia. So you can hurt yourself more than solve your problems.
What can replace the usual food groups and food sets? Fortunately, almost everything that can be imagined is realizable on a keto diet. Want a chocolate cake? Or a keto burger? Maybe ice cream or pizza? Bread or even condensed milk? All this is quite real! But it would be best if you stocked up on the necessary products in advance. You can buy a lot at the store next door, but not all. You can buy meat at a butcher’s shop, but the right spices for the marinade and boiled pork are harder to find. It isn’t easy to purchase psyllium or almond flour at a reasonable price near your home. And finding peanut butter or avocado oil in general turned out to be a problem for me.
I end up ordering a bundle of essential products from the internet. Here’s my set of foods that I can’t imagine a complete keto diet without:
- Coconut oil
- Cacao butter
- Avocado oil
- Grape seed oil
- GHI oil
- Almond flour
- Psyllium (powder for cooking).
- Coconut flour
- Erythritol
- Stevia extract
- Peanut paste
- Grated cocoa
- A set of spices (there is a whole pack of necessary spices).
I always use all of these products in the kitchen. You can see this in our section of Keto recipes. There you will often find each of the listed items on my list. How can they be replaced? Adequate and useful – nothing. So, either get used to the limited diet or stock up on these products and enjoy healthy and varied, and most importantly, delicious food. Don’t try to replace healthy oils with cheap refined oils. Don’t buy harmful sweeteners. Don’t experiment with cereal flour. This isn’t nice.
Can you be keto without these foods? You can! But it’s friendlier with them.
I tried to give you links to product groups so that you can choose the best for yourself. Which of these do I accept and use? The bottom line! If you’re tired of piecing together all the foods and supplements you need, piece by piece.
* Note: this selection includes specific base products that I purchased in several parts and that I liked, but not all. I will supplement it as it appears.