What To Do Before Starting A Keto Diet?
Every beginning is hard and starting the keto diet is not different. Therefore, before you start practicing this diet, you need to prepare for it. You should prepare mentally, so you can accept the changes more easily. But you should also prepare your kitchen and your family for the upcoming changes.
While many people think that starting a diet is a piece of cake and you just need to follow the rules of what to eat and what not to eat, it’s much more than that. In fact, there are certain steps you should take in order to prepare for the keto diet. These steps not only will prepare you for the diet itself but will also make the transition easier.
In this article, you’ll learn and discover, what to do before starting a keto diet.
Table of Contents
Know Which Foods You Can Eat And Which You Can’t
The keto diet isn’t too restrictive in terms of food. However, there are products that are allowed and products that are forbidden. For example, you can’t eat banana milkshake but you can eat a veggie shake or a keto strawberry shake. This is because some products don’t comply with the keto diet rules, i.e. being high in fat and low in carbs.
In order not to bother by reading or researching the nutritional value of each food, you should simply follow the list of can and can’t eat foods. The best way to follow it is by printing it out from the internet or writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it on the door of your fridge, so you never lose it.
Tell Your Family
Before you start dieting, talk to your family to tell them what you plan and why you want to start the keto diet. Moreover, you should tell them about the food-restrictions of the diet and what you can and can’t eat. It’s because you might not be able to eat the same that everyone else in your family eats.
Be Comfortable With The High Intake Of Fat
The keto diet is a high-fat diet, which means that all those who practice it have to digest many foods that are sources of fat. Some people might find it hard to accept this because they’ve been taught that fat kills. Of course, that’s not true because while on the keto diet, you digest only healthy fat. In order to become comfortable with the high intake of fat, you can start by making small changes in the way to eat. For example, you can order a burger on lettuce leaves and replace French fries with green vegetables.
Prepare Your Kitchen
Before starting with your keto diet, you should get rid of all keto-disapproved foods and ingredients and replace them with keto-friendly ones. Namely, you should buy butter, fatty meats, coconut oil, low-carb vegetables, berries, avocadoes, stevia or other natural sweeteners, and spices. Additionally, you should have few products that will help you with the start, including multivitamins and electrolytes.
Find Meal Recipes To Prepare
As a beginner in the keto diet, you still don’t know how to combine foods. Therefore, you should do a research online and find keto cookbooks or recipes for each meal, including snacks. Moreover, you can find some keto websites and sign up for their newsletter, and they will send you free cookbooks in return.
Know The Side Effects And What To Expect
The first 7-10 days of starting the keto diet, the body adjusts to the new situation. As a result, many people experience keto-flu. It’s very much like the regular flu, hence you feel tired, weak in your limbs, and might even deal with mental fog. In order to avoid the side effects, you should choose a start date when you have less or no obligations and when you can rest more. Also, you should avoid workouts during the adjustment period since your body starts burning more fat than carbs for fuel.
The keto diet is among the healthiest and most followed diets in the world. Although it’s easier to practice due to its low food restrictions, it’s still a diet with certain requirements. So, in order to have an easy start without serious side-effects, you should prepare well.
