Vegan Keto beginner meals

I think it sounds delicious too. But as a long time vegan... why Keto? I've done that at the request of partners and for "science" but it's miserable and takes away many if not all of my staple foods.

Do you have a reason for keto? If not, I'd avoid it as a vegan. It can be done, but it's overly complicated if weight/fat loss is the only goal.

I have a feeling you will find vegan keto unstatainable as it is very restrictive with food choices and I am a huge believer in not starting something you can not sustain long term. Have you looked into just lowering your carbs and seeing how you go with that to begin with rather than going keto? Keto is a tool for achieving weight loss but it is only one of many. It all boils down to eating less than you burn.

If I'm reading your post correctly, in addition to vegan keto, you also plan to do one meal a day (thus the OMAD). While it may seem simpler to consume all your calories in one meal, I suspect it's much more difficult than that. You've got to get all your nutrition, macros and micros, into that one meal. Not to mention the inherent difficulty you may have in fasting for an extended part of every day, particularly since you apparently have kids to keep up with.

JStarDragon wrote: »

Lots of people have success with keto, vegan is just a different, healthier option. Why so many negative comments, do you all make comments like this on the other keto posts??? Give it a rest! I'm going to be eating within a healthy deficient and carefully monitoring my macros. I won't even be consuming saturated fats! Eating high carb has not worked for me, I'm sure it works for some people, good for them, I'm trying low carb high fat now.

I am sorry you feel this way. I am not negative about a vegan lifestyle, nor keto. Both can have many benefits. I was truly trying to helpful by recommending you start with just lowering your carbs first. Why? Because vegan is typically high carb whereas keto is low carb. Doing both at the same time will be very challenging because of this. I hope you have long term success but just remember that if it doesn't work there are other ways of reaching your goals.

JStarDragon wrote: »

Lots of people have success with keto, vegan is just a different, healthier option. Why so many negative comments, do you all make comments like this on the other keto posts??? Give it a rest! I'm going to be eating within a healthy deficient and carefully monitoring my macros. I won't even be consuming saturated fats! Eating high carb has not worked for me, I'm sure it works for some people, good for them, I'm trying low carb high fat now.

I don't think people are being negative toward either keto or vegan approaches to eating. I think they're being reasonably concerned about trying to combine two fairly restrictive approaches that typically each rely heavily on foods that are forbidden or effectively off-limits other than in very small quantities in the other approach.

It's going to be challenging to find vegan foods you can eat in sufficient quantities with a 20 g carb limit to hit a reasonable calorie intake, much less worry about hitting 100 g of protein as you mention later and hitting your micronutrients. Vegan-friendly foods -- i.e., plants -- are naturally heavy in carbs, and while you can isolate the fats from plants to get sufficient calories on a vegan keto diet, you're going to be hard-pressed to eat much solid food on a vegan diet with a 20 carb limit. I'm picturing a diet heavy on bullet-proof coffee made with vegan margarine and the lowest carb vegan protein powder you can find.

For instance, the broccoli, tofu, coconut curry dish you mention in the OP? If I were doing OMAD, I would think I'd want a fairly substantial amount of broccoli, say at least 300 g. That's only about two largish stalks and 100 kcal, but it's already 20 g of carbs. If you're doing net carbs, it's about 14 g net carbs. So, cut it back to one stalk for 10 carbs or 7 net carbs, 50 kcal, and 8 g of protein. Now the tofu. Again, this is your only meal. I'd want at least half a block (about 160 g) of tofu. That's only about 125 kcal, about 5 g carb or 3 g net carbs, and only 15 g of protein. If we're going by net carbs, you have 3 g of carbs left for whatever kind of coconut curry sauce you're using or making (the USDA database shows a quarter cup of a commercial Thai coconut curry simmer sauce as have 5 g of carbs, with no fiber, so that's 5 g of net carbs, which would put you over, and 70 kcal and 1 g of protein.

So, there's 245 kcal, 22 g of net carbs, and 24 g of protein. You don't say how many calories you're planning to eat, but even if it's only 1200 kcal, you're looking at somehow getting another 955 kcal and 75 g of vegan protein with no carbs. I'm not an expert on vegan protein powders and shakes, but I looked at a soy powder and a pea protein shake online and they were both about 1 carb gram for every 2 protein grams. Even seitan, which I've always thought of as the most "efficient" vegan protein in terms of protein per calorie is going to cost you about 15 g of carbs to make up that 75 g of protein missing after your broccoli-tofu-coconut curry (by the way -- how can you have coconut curry, since you also say you're giving up saturated fats? Do you plan to use a low fat or nonfat coconut milk? That seems sort of anti-keto, and it's just going to make getting enough calories without going over 20 g of carbs even harder.)

I have unsweetened, unflavored pea protein powder in my pantry, and even that would cost you about 4 g net carbs to get 75 g of protein. I guess you could mix it with one of those no-cal flavored waters if you get tired of blending it with your coffee and vegan margarine.

ETA to add last 13 words.

JStarDragon wrote: »

Lots of people have success with keto, vegan is just a different, healthier option. Why so many negative comments, do you all make comments like this on the other keto posts??? Give it a rest! I'm going to be eating within a healthy deficient and carefully monitoring my macros. I won't even be consuming saturated fats! Eating high carb has not worked for me, I'm sure it works for some people, good for them, I'm trying low carb high fat now.

So you're going to be doing vegan keto without foods like avocado and coconut? I don't understand why you would set further restrictions on vegan keto and eliminate saturated fat too.