Keto

I have been eating a fairly strict keto diet since January 1st of 2019. Let me tell you...it works! I'm down 115 pounds as of today. I was very obese and needed to lose 200 pounds. I am no longer on metformin. My last A1C check was 105 without taking any diabetes meds! I no longer need blood pressure meds! I have no prescribed meds at all and have so much energy even though I still need to lose 85 pounds. I want to encourage anyone wondering if they can do this that maintaining a keto diet is very possible! Here are my keto food tips that have helped make me successful:
-I make my own keto bread with almond flour using the recipe found on youtube for nutritional yeast bread-the lady on youtube shows exactly how to make it.
-I add MCT oil powder to my coffee in the morning. It adds needed medium chain triglycerides which help maintain ketosis and helped me get over the initial "keto flu" quickly.
-I still eat chocolate chip cookies but learned to make them with Lily's dark chocolate Stevia chips, Swerve or Monk fruit, and almond flour. I freeze a batch and allow myself 1 or 2 cookies per day.
-I enjoy Rebel brand keto friendly Ice Cream about once a week. It curbs any sweet cravings and I feel I can stay on this way of eating forever! It's a treat to look forward to and I use it as a reward.
-I limit my fruit to blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, lemons and limes.
-Once in a great while, I will by the peanut butter cups made by Slimfast-Keto, but I'm careful to limit them as they are expensive!
-I have made my own fat bombs with almond butter or unsweetened coconut dipped in melted sugar free Lily's chocolate chips - yum!
-I have learned to eat more veggies - I love grilled salmon with Brussel sprouts, make roasts with cabbage, grill hamburgers and eat them with my keto buns with spinach and asparagus, put Kale in my eggs and make awesome zuppa Toscano soup with kale and cauliflower instead of potatoes. I use cauliflower in place of potatoes in all my recipes. Frozen riced Cauliflower and riced broccoli rocks...it's a true timesaver!
-Oils are very important. I only use Olive oil, Coconut oil, Avacado oil, Ghee (clarified butter) and grassfed butters such as Kerry Gold.
-I'm working on a Thanksgiving menu with all the traditional foods transformed to be keto friendly.
-The keto cookbooks that are my favorites are from Warrior Made and the ones by Maria Emmerich. They are great!
-I try to track my foods and weight loss in myfitnesspal, but sometimes stop. When I find that I'm not losing weight for a few days...it's usually because I stopped tracking. When I start tracking again, the weight starts dropping. I invested in myfitnesspal (rather than the free version). This allowed me to easily switch between grams and percentage so I can make sure I'm sticking to the correct percentages of fats, carbs and protein as well as tracking my calories.

If you are thinking about doing keto, be encouraged. If you can get past the first few weeks of change, it's possible to keep going and it gets easier. Good luck!