Setting Yourself Up for Keto Success
When you start a keto or low-carb diet, you'll find yourself constantly thinking about what you can and can't eat. It can feel restrictive, simply because there's a long list of things that are suddenly off the table. But here's one thing I'm absolutely sure of: thinking this way sets you up to fail.
If you limit your meals to just eggs, cheese, and avocado - my own early example - you'll get sick of your keto menu fast, and within a few weeks you won't even want to look at it.
Don't fall into that trap.
There are actually far more options than people realize when they first start. Once you shift how you think about food and build a menu around your own favorite keto and low-carb dishes, you'll see how much variety is genuinely available. A diverse, personalized menu is what keeps you from feeling like you're missing out.
Set Yourself Up for Success
When you're starting out, it helps enormously to stick to a meal plan. Know what you're eating tomorrow before tomorrow arrives. Better still, prepare some of it in advance - ideally at least two days ahead.
If you already cook often and make full meals as a habit, the shift to keto or low-carb will feel relatively smooth. If your normal routine leans on ready-made meals or takeout, expect to spend real time and effort getting comfortable with cooking regularly. If batch cooking suits your schedule, spend a few hours on Saturday or Sunday preparing meals for the week ahead. It pays off on the days you simply don't feel like cooking.
In the beginning, the priority is building the right habits - and eating consistently is the most important one of all.
If You're Following a Ready-Made Meal Plan
No meal plan fits everyone perfectly. It might include foods you don't like, ingredients you've never heard of, or items that are simply too expensive. It may not align with your personal macro targets either. Keep that in mind, and stay flexible. If you don't like chicken, don't eat chicken - there are always other options.
For diets aimed at weight loss, the minimum recommended calorie intake is 1200 for women and 1800 for men. Going below that isn't healthy, regardless of how motivated you feel.
In the first few days of keto, I'd actually advise against limiting your fat intake. Eat fat until you feel satisfied. Staying full matters - it's what helps you push through cravings for familiar foods from your old way of eating. Managing hunger keeps your mind off carbs, and away from reaching for them without even noticing.
Adding More Fat to Your Diet
Oils - Take romaine or iceberg lettuce, drizzle it with olive oil, then add cheese and eggs to the salad.
Avocado is delicious, and reliably fatty in the best way.
Almonds are excellent for curbing hunger. I recommend pre-weighing your portion (or whatever nut you prefer) to avoid overeating. I don't recommend going past 30 grams of nuts a day.
Hard cheeses - factor these into your daily plan too, since it's easy to overeat them without noticing.
Almond butter or avocado oil is incredibly filling, and genuinely good to eat.
Decoding Your Cravings
Your body is a remarkably good detective. Every day, it tells you what it needs through hunger - and since it can't simply say so out loud, it often speaks through cravings instead. Here's a breakdown of common cravings and what they may be pointing to.
A quick note before you read this: these are popular, commonly cited associations rather than clinical diagnoses. They're worth paying attention to as patterns, not treating as medical fact.
Chocolate - A craving for chocolate is often linked to low magnesium. At least two teaspoons of salt, alongside a magnesium supplement, can help take the edge off. Raw nuts and seeds are also strong natural sources of magnesium. And if you genuinely want chocolate, have a little - just keep two rules in mind: no milk chocolate, dark only, and look for 85% cocoa or higher, sugar-free. The darker, the better.
Chips or pizza - This craving often points to a need for more tryptophan or chloride. Cheese, spinach, fish, or unsalted cottage cheese are good places to redirect that craving.
Soda - Even the "healthier" flavored sodas can carry more carbs than your entire daily allowance. A craving for your usual can is often tied to a calcium gap. Cheese, broccoli, kale, or other dark leafy greens tend to settle it.
General, unexplained hunger - We've all had it: hunger with no clear cause. If a large glass of water didn't help, you might be low on silicon, tryptophan, or tyrosine. Nuts, seeds, fish, cheese, spinach, liver, and lamb are good ways to refill those stores.
Sweet or sugary cravings - This one is very often dehydration in disguise, so water is the first move - it helps more than people expect with the pull toward bread and pastries. It can also signal low chromium, phosphorus, sulfur, or tryptophan. These deficiencies tend to show up as irritability too, which makes reaching for candy feel a lot more appealing than making something properly keto. Dark leafy greens, nuts, liver, chicken, and beef cover most of these gaps, magnesium included.