Healthy Fats O’ Healthy Fats
If you’ve been reading up on the keto diet, you know that nutrient-dense healthy fats are a critical element in any successful meal plan.
Remember – a healthy diet doesn’t have to be a low-fat diet.
It’s no different for the vegetarian keto diet, and the lack of meat or seafood increases the need for fats to substitute for the naturally occurring varieties found in animal products.
Here are some suggestions of vegetarian fat sources that could play an important role in your diet:
Cook with these oils, or use them to top salads and dishes, adding tons of great fats and nutrients to your meals.
Add Bacon To Any Meal With Homemade Vegan Bacon
Although there are many vegan bacon products on the market, they tend to be filled with chemical preservatives and other questionable ingredients. Make healthy vegan bacon instead!
There are plenty of vegan bacon recipes on the internet that claim to give you the bacony taste and texture you crave. Try some out for yourself:
- Side Dish: 1 serving of Easy Keto Creamed Spinach
- Dessert : pick any dessert from above and use it to fulfill your macronutrient needs.
Top Keto Vegetarian Diet Foods
Now that we’ve covered some essential facets of a healthy vegetarian keto diet, let’s cover some of the best foods to incorporate into your meal plan.
You need to avoid nutritional deficiencies on this diet, a pitfall of traditional keto diets that vegetarian options are even more exposed to. These foods will help you get the vitamins and minerals you need without breaking ketosis.
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What About Vegans Is It Even Possible To Be A Keto Vegan
Going keto is a little tougher for vegans. A traditional vegan diet completely excludes all animal products and relies heavily on whole grains, bread, noodles, and starchy veggiesall of which are to be avoided on a keto diet. However, with some careful keto meal planning, vegans can also reap the benefits of the keto lifestyle.With the exception of eggs and dairy, keto vegans can enjoy all the foods listed above along with the following vegan options:
- Coconut provides a healthy dose of satiating fat. Look for full-fat coconut milk, coconut cream, and nosh on unsweetened coconut.
- Vegan dairy, which is usually made from soy or nuts, is a great alternative when on the keto diet. Reach for soy yogurt or milk, almond milk, vegan butter, cashew cheese, and more. Just keep an eye on the labels to make sure there isnt any added sugar or sneaky carbs!
Keto and Gluten-Free Diet
Working Of A Ketogenic Diet:
When you are on the ketogenic diet then your body is forced to burn the excess fat in the place of carbohydrates to get the required energy.
Therefore your body goes into the state of ketosis. Your body starts using an alternative source of fuel i.e. ketones.
Ketones are the product of fat metabolism which is used by almost all cells in our body instead of glucose as an energy source.
These ketones are a kind of fuel that helps the body to burn fat instead of using glucose from carbs.
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Vegan Alternatives For Eggs And Dairy
There are plenty of keto-friendly vegan alternatives that you can use to cut down on your cheese and egg consumption. Here is a brief overview of some of your options:
- Replace Heavy Cream with Coconut Cream.
- Instead of Butter use Coconut Oil or Vegan Butter.
- Replace Dairy-Based Cheese with Vegan Cheese.
- Instead of Cream Cheese have Vegan Soft Cheese.
- Replace Yogurt and Sour Cream with Nut-Based Yogurt.
- Instead of Eggs use The Vegg or VeganEgg.
For more details on how to find and use these vegan alternatives, read through our vegan ketogenic diet guide.
When it comes to buying keto-friendly vegan options, make sure you are not getting any extra added sugar, hidden carbs, or unhealthy ingredients like hydrogenated oils. Also, pay attention to their fat and protein content. These vegan replacements will not contain as much fat or protein as conventional dairy and eggs. Make sure you are taking this into account when you are using these alternatives in recipes and tracking your macros.
You also have to consider that eggs and dairy contain many nutrients that are not always present in the vegan replacements. So when cutting out animal foods altogether, you may have to supplement certain nutrients. You find more information about this in our vegan ketogenic diet guide.
Vegetarian Keto Meal Plan
If youre vegetarian, you may be wondering, How can a vegetarian keto diet possibly work for me?
Were here to tell you that it can, and we have some awesome recipes for you to try. Weve put together a meal plan that provides the high-fat, high-protein, and low-carb combination you need to get you into ketosis all without a single piece of meat. Weve done this using plant-based products like nuts, seeds, coconut oil, and goat cheese that are packed with both the macros and micros you need.
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How To Buy The Highest Quality Eggs And Dairy
In the opening of this article, we briefly mentioned how eggs and dairy production have a particularly low environmental impact compared to meat, farmed fish, and poultry.
Unfortunately, most of the dairy and eggs youll find in the supermarket come from dairy cows and hens that lived under horrid, torturous conditions. Each purchase of these conventionally-grown animal products casts a vote for nutritionally inferior foods and supports environmental pollution and animal abuse.
This is why it is important to look for eggs and dairy produced by sustainably-raised animals. To do this, we must shift our shopping strategy.
Instead of looking for the cheapest animal products with meaningless marketing terms like cage-free or vegetarian-fed, search for dairy and eggs that come from local, pasture-raised animals. Before you buy, research the company or farm behind the product to make sure they are raising the animals in a healthy, sustainable way.
If your local grocery store doesnt have high-quality options, you can get high-quality eggs and dairy delivered to your house by ordering from these trustworthy sources:
- US Wellness Meats for 100% grass-fed pasture-raised cheese and butter.
- Udder Milk for all your high-quality dairy and egg needs.
- White Oak Pastures for the best-pastured eggs.
On the other hand, if you want to limit your dairy and egg consumption altogether, feel free to use the following keto-friendly dairy alternatives instead.
Stay On Top Of Nutrient Deficiencies
While it is entirely possible to eat a vegan diet and be healthy, you should be mindful of certain nutrient deficiencies that may occur.
The main ones to keep an eye on are vitamin B12 and vitamin D , along with omega-3 fatty acids, plus minerals like iron, zinc, iodine, and calcium .
You can cover your bases to a degree by eating a variety of nutrient-dense, colorful whole foods, but it’s also important to stay on top of blood work and supplement where necessary.
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Good Carbs And Bad Carbs Whats The Difference
In terms of losing weight, the only thing that matters in the ketogenic diet is the number of carbs you consume. However, for purposes of overall health, vegetarians should distinguish between good carbs and bad carbs.
Good carbs are foods that are high in fiber, and nutrients because they are either not processed, or only minimally processed.
Bad carbs are heavily processed foods that are high in carbs. These foods enter the bloodstream faster than good carbs because they are converted to sugar faster.
What Foods Can You Eat On A Vegetarian Keto Diet
The keto part of this practice emphasizes high-fat food options which ultimately kickstarts the bodys metabolic process, called ketosis. Ketosis occurs when the body burns fat for energy because it does not have carbohydrates in turn, the liver produces ketones which ultimately burns more fat.
But that doesnt mean you get a free pass to eat all the fast food you want. There is a caveat here: just because the keto part of this practice emphasizes high-fat, that does not mean you should eat items packed with trans fats like fried foods and baked goods, Dr. Kara says. Instead, you should opt for items packed with healthy fats, like avocado, chia, dark chocolate, seeds, and nut butters.
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And as always, the best option while following the keto vegetarian diet is selecting organic, ideally locally-sourced food options in order to ensure that you are eating foods that are nutrient-rich and provide the most health benefits, he says.
With that in mind, I headed to Whole Foods to pick up ingredients that would help me go keto while staying vegetarian.
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Vegetarian Keto Diet Meal Plan And Food List
If youve kept abreast of the latest trends in health and nutrition for the last few years, then youll have inevitably stumbled upon the ketogenic diet. This high-fat, adequate-protein and low-carb diet is most times rife in animal protein, so how can the average plant-based eater be able to adapt this diet to meet their lifestyle needs? Well, if youre vegetarian and looking to give a vegetarian keto diet a go, then youre in luck because we at 8fit have you covered.
Often a vegetarian diet is perceived as one packed with carbohydrates and twinned with the struggle of eating enough protein, so its normal that some vegetarians may feel trepidation when encountering the ketogenic approach to nutrition. Is it possible to enter a state of ketosis and get the same results on a vegetarian keto diet as someone on an omnivorous diet? The answer is yes especially if youre still consuming some animal-sourced products as a lacto-ovo vegetarian.
Benefits Of A Vegan Keto Diet
The main purpose of a Keto diet for Vegans is to make you lose weight. There are several other benefits that it can provide to your body as well. So, lets dive right into the several benefits provided on a keto diet for vegans:
CHAPTER 2
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What About Vegan Keto
A vegetarian Keto diet can quite easily be achieved by replacing traditional protein sources like meat and fish with eggs, dairy products, nuts, seeds, and tofu.
But what about fully vegan Keto?
Functional medicine practitioner Dr. Will Cole pioneered the Ketotarian diet, a primarily plant-based version of Keto that offers a fully vegan option. This typically means relying more heavily on plant-based protein sources like tofu, nuts and seeds, and even tempeh in moderation.
Although it can be done, fully vegan Keto does come with its challenges. Heres how to stay on top of them:
What Is Ketogenic Diet
A ketogenic diet is a low carbohydrate, high fat and low to moderate protein diet that can help with weight and fat loss. By drastically reducing carb intake, your body is put into ketosis where fat is burned for energy instead of carbohydrates and sugars.
In a traditionally healthy, balanced diet for an average human being, their diets should comprise 45-65% carbohydrates, 10-35% protein and 20-35% fat. With carbohydrates being the most significant part of your diet, you consume carb-rich foods like bread, rice and starchy vegetables. Your body breaks down these carbohydrates into simple sugars/ glucose which provides energy for your cells, organs and tissues.
While following a standard ketogenic diet, your diet comprises of 70% fat, 20% protein and only 10% carbs. To explain the science behind a ketogenic diet in simpler terms, your body burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates and this process is called ketosis. This shift to burning fat usually takes place after 2-4 days of consuming 10% carbohydrates per day but this is a highly individualised process that depends on many different factors.
Now that you understand what is ketogenic diet and how it works, let’s discuss why keto is one of the best Indian diets for weight loss.
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Is Vegetarian Keto Better Than Regular Keto
While a vegetarian keto diet is healthy, its not necessarily better than regular keto. In fact, a vegetarian keto diet can be more restrictive in that it eliminates animal foods on top of cutting carbohydrates. With proper planning, a keto vegetarian can avoid nutrient deficiencies and maximize this diets benefits.
How Many Carbs Should You Eat
There are no precise ranges as to what constitutes a low-carb diet. The amount of carbs a person can consume varies by your goals and diet plan. Each individual must find a diet plan tailored to their specific needs and objectives. Before making any significant dietary changes, you should consult with a dietician. A healthcare professional will assess your current health and recommend whether or not a low-carb diet is appropriate for you.
The daily targets for a low-carb diet for the average adult male or female can be broadly classified as follows:
- 100-150 grams per day is a good maintenance range for people who exercise frequently.
- 50-100 grams per day should result in automatic weight loss and is a good maintenance range for people who do not exercise frequently.
- 20 to 50 grams per day should help you lose weight quickly without feeling hungry with this low carbohydrate intake. However, this carbohydrate range has the potential to put you into ketosis.
Vegetarian diet could easily fall into the lowest range, but vegans would find such a diet impractical. Hence, vegans should stick to the 100-150 grams range.
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Does A Vegetarian Keto Diet Work
Earlier we touched on this very question and now that youre up to speed, lets shed a bit more light on whether a vegetarian keto diet works. A vegetarian ketosis meal plan is in short an adapted low-carb vegetarian diet.
As meat doesnt play a role here, the focus lies more on your fat intake. Weve got a handy list of vegetarian ingredients that you can add to your fridge and pantry, which are easy to cook and will offer you more than enough meal options.
That said, a recurring mistake among vegetarians who go keto is incorporating too many vegetable-based carbohydrates, without even realizing. Youve got to be quite vigilant of all your carb and protein sources following a vegetarian keto diet meal plan, as most vegetarians tend to source their protein from foods like legumes and grains, which arent supported on the vegetarian keto diet. If youre following a diet thats strictly plant-based, then youll have to be even more mindful.
What Will You Obtain From A Custom Keto Diet Plan Meal Strategy Diet Plan For Vegetarians
After purchasing the Customized Keto Diet, you will instantly receive an e-mail consisting of the total arrangement of the eating routine. You can read it from your mobile phone or print it.
The main point you will discover in the program is a foreword to the Keto diet plan. Finding out how it works is vital to preparing your brain to incorporate into the lifestyle.
You will end up being more familiar with the summary of the advantages of the keto diet plan. An area also looks at the connection in between blood pressure and a keto diet.
Significant information will make you understand the method and keep it the most ideal method. Youll also discover many essential keto ideas and tricks that will tell you what to do in case youre not hungry or do not have some essentials available.
Custom Keto Diet plan also comes with a lots of benefits for their readers, consisting of the following:
- Keto peanut butter deals with
- Keto 101 Video and Book
- Keto Party Appetizers
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May Lower Your Cancer Risk
Vegetarian and keto diets have been associated with a reduced risk of cancer. Both diets reduce excess body weight an important factor in many cancers .
Research also suggests that a keto diet helps to prevent or treat cancer by starving cancer cells since cancer cells need lots of glucose for energy . While treating diabetic patients with cancer in 1921, A. Braunstein noted the disappearance of glucose from the patients urine .
What Is A Vegetarian Keto Diet
I spoke with Mahmud Kara, M.D., to learn more. Dr. Kara, who has spent the past 30 years working in functional medicine, offered me some great insights. The vegetarian diet has been around for centuries, while the ketogenic diet is relatively new, he says. Studies have demonstrated that vegetarian diets are rich in essential nutrients like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and magnesium and are usually low in certain fats which can contribute to low body-mass index , lower cholesterol, and less risk for heart-related diseases.
On the other hand, research regarding the ketogenic diet has demonstrated that low-carbohydrate diets can lead to increased weight loss and less risk of glucose related issues, such as insulin resistance, in the body, says Dr. Kara, who suggests that vegetarian keto has the potential to offer the best of both worlds: It eliminates meat, poultry, and fish while still focusing on healthy sources of fat instead of carbohydrates.
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