What is the keto diet, how do I create and follow a keto diet plan and how do I make a 1-day keto meal plan? This and delicious keto recipes all in one post.
What the heck is a Keto Diet Plan?
Let’s start by explaining what the keto diet is first, shall we?
The keto diet is a very low carb and high fat diet. You avoid carbs and replace carb calorie intake by fat calorie intake so the body produces ketones in the liver to be used as energy. Burning fat for energy burns body fat.
It can be referred to as ketogenic diet, or short: keto diet, low carb diet or low carb high fat diet (LCHF). To read more about this diet and get in depth information check out this keto diet info website. You’ll find tons of information and resources there.
Now to get to the Keto Diet Plan, you need to follow a very strict nutrition plan for this diet. Therefore, you’re best off having a precise keto diet plan. A keto meal plan either for the day or dinners of the week for example and accommodate the rest of your meals around those dinners.
I believe 1-day keto meal plans with delicious keto recipes prepared either one day ahead or right that moment following your keto diet plan are the easiest way to follow this diet.
1-Day Keto Meal Plan
The hardest about adopting a new way of eating is sticking to your goals. Meal planning is the number 1 thing that will keep you on track. That will make you reach your goal.
If all you have to do is grab your breakfast and grab your lunch and grab your dinner, how likely do you think you are to change your mind and go prepare or buy something else to eat?
You want to give the Keto Diet a try? Make a Keto Meal Plan that keeps you excited to stick with your goal. Plan a day at a time or a week at a time. Your choice. But plan!
Choose a Keto Meal Plan that is easy to execute, in your budget, and pleasing to your taste spuds. You won’t be able to follow a keto diet if you have only recipes on your list that take about 3 hours to prepare each. Recipes that cost a fortune. Or recipes that need to be swallowed with your eyes closed and pinching your nose.
The first thing you need to do for your Keto Meal Plan is calculate your macros. Everybody is different. We are all of different shapes and sizes and not only our dietary but also our nutritional needs should always be adjusted to OUR body!
A healthy keto breakfast as for a complete keto diet plan – unsweetened full fat greek yogurt topped with raspberries and sliced almonds.
Keto Calculator
For me as a 5’7″ (170cm) tall 122lbs (55kg) heavy 34-year old woman that is very lightly active throughout the day I’m supposed to eat about 1435 calories, from which 116g should be fat, 20g net carbs, and 78g protein in one day.
In this keto diet plan here I’m adding keto recipes that get me exactly to that goal. You might have to adjust your macros depending on your gender, height, weight and daily activity. Use this calculator to find out specifically what you need to be eating:
Defining Net Carbs
Net carbs are total carbs minus fiber!
This is suuuuper important because 20g of carbs are suuuper little and all vegetables have carbs because they have fiber. You need vegetables for vitamin intake and you need fiber for proper digestion.
If you consider overall carbs for your calculations you end up eating only protein and fat and that’s not healthy at all.
There are vegetables that are high in carbs and others low in carbs. The keto diet recommends sticking to the ones low on carbs but encourages you to eat a lot of them. Best vegetables are all green ones to make it easy. And vegetables that grow above the ground (e.g. lettuce) are always better than the ones that grow below the ground (e.g. potatoes)
It’s always good to eat a lot of vegetables, no matter what diet.
Fruits are rather limited in this diet because of their sugar (fructose) content and rather higher carb content. Fruits are healthy but vegetables are way more important in any diet.
If you love fruits stick to low-carb fruits like raspberries and strawberries.
A healthy keto lunch as part of a complete keto diet plan – chicken curry made with coconut oil and full fat coconut milk, topped with sesame seeds and baby spinach on the side.
Keto Diet the Healthiest Diet?
Is this the best diet for me if I want to be healthy? Short answer: Maybe.
Long answer: This depends on your health situation, your metabolism, your cultural understanding and upbringing, your personality, your goals, your current diet.
Who might not benefit from the keto diet?
Before starting ANY new diet it is always advisable to talk to your physician and/or nutritionist to see if the diet you choose to follow is safe for you.
From my research this diet is not appropriate for people with kidney disease; liver, pancreatic or kidney conditions; people with blood sugar issues such as diabetes; pregnant or nursing woman; and people suffering or recovering from an eating disorder.
Your metabolism might not be able to stomach the high fat content and requires complex carbohydrates such as whole grain rice or legumes to encourage healthy digestion.
Your diet when you were a child and how your culture understands nutrition might have a strong impact on wether you can implement this diet into your daily life. It’s hard to go agains everything you knew and everybody else knows and follows.
Which leads us to your personality. You need to be VERY strong willed to follow this diet. It follows very strict rules and you need to be able to commit to this. It makes it hard to eat out with friends or eat with friends in general. It’s hard to find food that fits this diet in common restaurants, but and this takes us to the next point, your health goals might be more important.
Who might benefit most from the keto diet?
If you are on what many people refer to as Standard American Diet, you most likely are much better off following a keto diet plan, regardless of any of the points above.
Eating extremely high processed foods is never a healthy option. If the keto diet helps you stay off highly processed foods and makes you feel healthy and strong and marvellous, YES it is the healthiest diet!
Make a keto diet plan and try it out. Write down the effect it has on your body and both physical and mental health and find out for YOURSELF if this is the best and healthiest diet for YOUR body.
If you’re not sure after your initial test, explore other healthy diets such as clean eating and always have in mind that your number 1 goal should be to avoid overly processed foods (keeping this definition fairly broad of course, as we live in the 21st century and have to adapt to modern age as well, where hardly any of us have time to spend 12 hours a day evolving around food production, gathering and cooking).
A healthy keto dinner as part of a complete keto diet plan- butter lettuce, avocado, hemp seed salad with mayonnaise, a soft boiled egg and cherry tomatoes.
Keto Diet Plan
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup greek yogurt
- 1/4 cup raspberries
- 1.5 Tbsp sliced almonds
- 2 Tbsp coconut oil
- 1 clove garlic
- 1.5 Tbsp yellow curry
- 1/3 cup full fat coconut milk
- 180 g chicken breast
- 80 g baby spinach
- 1 Tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- 70 g butter lettuce
- 1/2 avocado
- 8-10 cherry tomatos
- 1 egg
- 2 Tbsp hemp seeds
- 2 Tbsp homemade mayonnaise
- sea salt
- pepper
Instructions
- Breakfast: add yogurt to a bowl, top with raspberries and sliced almonds.
- Lunch: pat dry chicken and cut into cubes. Lightly (!) salt and pepper. Heat a skillet over medium heat, once hot add coconut oil and fry chicken cubes until brown from all sides. Remove chicken, and add crushed garlic, curry paste and fish sauce to pan. Stir until fragrant and remaining oil in pan and curry paste are well combined. Then add coconut milk and whisk until well combined. Simmer and reduce sauce until desired consistency (1-3 minutes). Pour sauce over chicken and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve with baby spinach.
- Dinner: In a small sauce pan bring 2-3 cups of water to the boil. Cook a large egg in rolling boil for 5 minutes, then transfer to ice bath (a bowl with cold water and ice cubes in it). Wash and spin dry butter lettuce, top with sliced avocado and hemp seed. Serve soft boiled egg with cherry tomatoes, butter lettuce salad and mayonnaise as dressing.
Nutrition
* this post contains affiliate links and I might earn a small commission at no added cost to you if you purchase the product.
Mexican Chicken Meal Prep Bowls
Salsa Roja (Homemade Mexican Salsa)
Healthy Chicken Wrap
Jasmine says
Hello Lorena!
Today I started with this Keto Diet Plan. I was so full after lunch, I didn’t even knew this was possible. But it was perfect. Unfortunately I put too much curry in the sauce, tomorrow I’ll do it a little bit less spicier.
I‘ll try to drink more water, too, and especially after lunch because of the sesame seeds.
Tomorrow I’ll have the breakfast for lunch (because of work) and I’ll eat dinner in the morning. I just try to experiment a little bit.
Thank you for this! It’s a perfect start for me to look into and learn more about Keto and lose weight.
Judy Hurt says
I have ordered over ,200.00 in Keto products and recipes . I have been charged but ha e never received anything. I can’t find anyone to help me.
Lorena Grater says
I’m sorry I don’t know where or who you ordered them from. I don’t sell any keto products or recipes.
anwitasinha says
good keto diet plan.
Mayna says
Love love love Lorena’s blog. As for once it is full of advice that is achievable without breaking the bank. So many keto diets or just diets make you use products that are quite expensive. With this and Lorena’s super easy to follow recipes I refund my mojo to cook healthily. I always have before but slipped up a few times. I am back on track now. Thank you!!!!! Garcias !!
Lorena Grater says
I’m so happy to read you are enjoying the recipes :) Thank you for your kind comment.
Amelia says
In the beginning it was the worst. On the third day it was hard for me to take, but I made it!
Greenhealthycooking is the BEST BLOG about keto diet. I read it almost every day because it helped me lose 10 KILOGRAMS. I hope it will help others!
Have a nice day :D
Diet With Keto says
Wow Nice, Thanks for sharing.
Thomas B says
Hi Lorena,
I ordered all the ingredients today, starting monday i’m going to try to eat this 7 days.
The total cal intake 1434 might be a little low for me (182cm 70kg) so somedays I might increase portions a bit, also some days I want to swap the breakfast with a big keto omelette, do you have macro’s from the breakfast so I can deduct them and recalc with an omelette?
Thanks for you time
Thomas
Lorena says
Hi Thomas, please take all nutritional information with “a grain of salt”. I’m using an automatic caluclator. I’m not a certified dietician so I wouldn’t dare making my own calculations. I recommend finding a calculator you trust. My husband used to use “my fitness pal” to calculate everything when he was on the Keto Diet.
Sim @ Sim's Life says
What a fantastic post! I researched for weeks before starting Keto and have not looked back since. Such a great way of life and fab to see it so popular now! Sim x
mobasir hassan says
Let me first thank you very much for the great source of information about keto diet plan. Your article really help me to understand better about this diet. The FAQ section is really helpful. Thank you again.
Lorena says
I’m so happy to read you found it useful :) Thank you for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it.
Mary A. Bell Jr. says
I am not able to eat gluten, milk, cheese, dairy, pork, beef, or mushrooms. Some of the items I don’t like and some will mess me up badly. Where can I get recipes which doesn’t include these items?? With a quick prep time??? and still taste delicious???
Lorena says
I recommend a paleo-oriented blog and then there search for chicken/egg/fish recipes. The paleo diet is gluten and dairy-free so that’s where you’ll have the best chances to find a lot of recipes that fit your diet.
Charlie Berry says
I’m so glad I found your site. I’ve been looking for a meal plan that I can follow with meals that I would try. I have a food allergy and just about everything on here I can have. I believe with this meal plan I can say goodbye to high blood pressure and
obesity.
Lorena says
I’m so happy you found it useful Charlie :)
Rohit says
No other diet for weight loss is near to keto diet. Fast loss of weight was never so easy. This post covers all about keto diet, great job. If you’re new to this diet and wanna know the mechanism, what to eat and not, benefits, types of it, FAQs and some of the biggest mistakes to avoid in a keto diet. Read this and burn fat quickly.
Gabrielle says
Hello, what meals did you eat?
I would like to start this diet although I have no idea about meals?
Sara Fletcher says
Well done on all your hard work!
Greatly appreciate it.
Do you work, what I wondered is what my husband would take to work for lunch with him. That’s easy to transport?
Sara
Lorena says
Hi Sara, it depends on if your husband eats cold food or not. The lunch suggested here is great to take to work, the chicken can be enjoyed cold, or he can reheat it in a pan if his office has a small kitchen. If he doesn’t like cold chicken and he has no option to reheat you could change the lunch and dinner options suggested in this meal plan. He can eat the egg and salad for lunch. It’s a great lunch to enjoy cold and then the chicken and baby spinach for dinner instead. Great cold lunches that are keto friendly in general are always hard-boiled eggs with veggies, or turkey/cheese roll-ups and raw veggies, or salad greens with shredded chicken or shredded pork with homemade mayo on the side to then mix up at the moment as a salad dressing.
Courtney says
Hi I was just wondering if you could do a few recipes that could benefit me on the keto diet that I want to start but am not really sure there are a lot of meals I could have due to being allergic to all nuts. Is there any chance you would be able to create recipes without any nuts being involved.
Lorena says
Hi Courtney, I’m currently working on a 21-Day Keto Meal Plan. Unfortunately, it’s super time-consuming. And after buying a keto cookbook yesterday and returning it the same day because it wasn’t well researched and the recipes clearly not created specifically for the Keto diet you wouldn’t want me to rush this. I want to make sure the Meal Plan is SPOT on and the recipes complement each other and make eating Keto easy. Give me another month or two and I’ll hopefully have more news on progress. Currently working on a rough sketch but still have to test all recipes and photograph them, too. You definitely don’t need nuts to be able to eat Keto. For now, I recommend to keep it as simple as possible. You can eat my 1-day meal plan 4 days a week and find other recipes you like to build another similar day and then keep switching between mine and the other.
Arjen J. Hoving says
Dear Lorena, my dear daughter-in-law pointed me to your Facebook Posts. What a fun and informative page that is! I visited your website to see if you might also have Keto-friendly recipes and in the Q&A section you write on February 24, 2019 that you are in the process of creating a 21-Day Keto Meal Plan. You understand that I am very curious whether your 21-Day Keto Meal Plan is now available? Kind regards, Arjen.
Lorena Grater says
Hi Arjen, unfortunately, that project did not come to fruition. I polled my audience and turns out 90% are not on a specific diet other than clean eating so instead, I focused on creating a second omnivore book. Since I personally don’t follow the Keto Diet I figured it’s smarter to stick with meal plans that fit my and my family’s diet. I’m so sorry to tell you that I won’t be creating a Keto Plan :(
Angela fefeti says
Pls I need a week by week Keto menu plan
Lorena says
Working on it :) It will take a couple months though I’m afraid. It’s very time-consuming.