Keto Taco Pie

I have a final exam this Friday, meaning that if I know myself (and I do,) I'm going to be studying nonstop, and simultaneously craving comfort food to soothe my aching soul. And by comfort food, I mean heavy, indulgent, savory greasy food.

And here's where keto proves once again to be the perfect diet.

When I stumbled across this recipe, I had one of those moments where it just felt right:

http://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/2014/05/low-carb-easy-taco-pie.html

It's easy, minimal ingredients, maximal deliciousness.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef (80/20)
• 1 packet taco seasoning 
• 3/4 cup water
• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 

Preheat the oven to 350.

First brown the beef over medium heat in a skillet until no longer pink.

Sizzling meat is music to my ears.

Add the taco seasoning and mix, then add the water and let simmer until the sauce thickens a bit.

Meanwhile, add the eggs, heavy cream, garlic, salt into a bowl and mix.

Or do the ghetto version using a plastic tub instead of a bowl. I'm not cooking for the President here ok?

Spread the beef in the bottom of a pie pan. Pour the mix on top and sprinkle the cheese over everything. 

I forgot this time but I would pour the grease out from the beef before putting it in the pan.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

I think taking this out of the oven must be what it feels like to have your first child be born.
Except hopefully you don't eat it after.

I served it with avocado, tomato and sour cream. An amazing experience for all the senses.

Keto Chicken Parmesan

Keto can be so delicious. Keto can be so easy. When I came across this delicious and easy chicken parmesan recipe, I knew that it was another keto miracle waiting to happen. I had never been so right in my life.

http://www.mykitchenescapades.com/2012/07/parmesan-chicken-bake.html

When I tried it earlier this weekend, it was so unbelievably mouthgasmic that I made it again today, doubling the portions for my lunch this week. I will literally be eating this 7 days in a row and I don't anticipate getting bored of it.

I tweaked the recipe a bit, namely using 3 (gargantuan) chicken breasts pounded thin, and playing with the mayo:parmesan cheese ratio. The secret is to have more cheese than mayo, since it's the cheese that gets nice and baked into that beautiful golden crust.

The ingredients:

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (roughly 2 lbs)
1/2 Cup Hellman's mayonaise
5/8 c shredded parmesan cheese
Garlic salt to taste

Optional:
3/4 cup Rao's Homemade Tomato Basil Marinara Sauce
6 oz Fresh Mozzarella Cheese

First I pounded the chicken breast with a meat mallet into thinner, and more even pieces (much to the bewilderment of my vegetarian roommate from India who couldn't fathom why you had to beat a piece of meat even after it's clearly dead.) 
Mix together the mayo, cheese, and salt and spread it evenly over the breasts in a baking pan

Bake at 390 for 40 minutes, longer if the breasts are thicker/not pounded thin. The chicken should be a glorious golden, cheesy color.

You can enjoy as is, but I topped each breast with 1/4 cup of marinara sauce, 2 oz of mozzarella cheese each, and broiled it (500) until the mozzarella was melted. 

The closest thing I've seen of proof that there is a God and that He loves us. He's also probably therefore Italian.

I had mine with a simple Caesar salad. So ridiculously easy, so ridiculously good. 

Each serving of chicken (half a breast) I calculated to be 427 calories and 1.6 net carbs!

Keto Goat Cheese Meatloaf

I don't think there's a better type of loaf out there than a loaf of meat. And goat cheese is one of the creamiest, most savory and rich types of cheese. Together it's a match made in meat heaven.

I use this blog's recipe except without the scallions, cayenne or rosemary:
http://www.wickedstuffed.com/keto-recipes/keto-meatloaf-stuffed-w-goat-cheese-spinach/

It makes a little more than 6 servings, each with around 550 calories and 7 net carbs.

The very easy ingredients:

• 2lbs of 80/20 ground beef 
• 2 whole raw eggs
• 1 large yellow onion (chopped)
• 3 cloves garlic (minced)
•  4 cups raw spinach
• 8 oz of goat cheese (get the long roll and you should be good!)
• 1 can tomato paste

Seasonings:

• Dried oregano
• Salt
• Pepper

First mix the ground beef with the raw eggs, then add the diced onions and garlic.

You can probably stand to use less onions but at this point I was like what's done is don(ion).

Then add the seasonings. I used pretty generous portions of dried oregano, salt, and pepper. 

Then put some plastic wrap down on the table and roll the meat mix out into a rectangular shape. 

Spread the spinach and goat cheese evenly out on top.

 After spreading everything out, use the plastic wrap to help you roll everything into a loaf shape before

spreading the tomato paste on top.

Sometimes it tends to fall apart but just pat everything firmly into place the best you can. The

taste will make up for how shitty it may look.

Bake it in the oven at 425 for a little less than an hour.

End product!

The savory meat is perfectly complemented by the creamy cheese and tangy tomato paste.

This was my whole week's lunch plus a dinner and I never got sick of it!

The Ketogenic Diet, An Introduction.

Its moniker should be "the magic diet" or "the closest thing we have to proof that God exists diet." I will swear on my life itself that this diet works and I am not sponsored by any company, I promise.

The goal of the keto diet is to eat as few carbs as possible, or maintain a high fat, moderate protein, low carb ratio. In a (high fat low carb) nutshell, your body generally uses carbs as its main fuel. Your brain, heart, kidneys, muscle all break down carbs into glucose/fructose which are broken down further to be converted into high energy particles to run on. However if your body doesn't have enough carbs, it will have to use something else to use as fuel. If you hadn't figured it out, that is fat. By restricting carbs, you basically forces your body to start breaking down fat into molecules called ketones to use as energy instead, and so you are preferentially losing fat on this diet. This is obviously psychologically very appealing, but personally I've found that the main way keto works is that by eating mainly protein and fat, I am able to stay full for much longer than from eating carbs, and end up very easily maintaining a caloric deficit. I get to eat delicious meat, vegetables, and other fatty foods, know that I'm burning fat for a fact, and feel fuller for much longer, thereby losing weight. It's nothing short of scientific magic.

As with all things in life that sound suspiciously too good to be true, there are some cons to this diet. First, you must be VERY strict. Eating just a few too many carbs will kick you out of ketosis (the state of breaking down fats into ketones) since your body sees the carbs and is like Oh so we're back in business with the getting carbs thing? Well fuck you, fat, this is much easier to use! And that's it, you're not on keto anymore. Staying strict is by far the hardest part; no bread, pasta, potatoes, cereal, or SUGAR of any kind. That also means no desserts, fruits, or juices, as they are all high in sugar (which contain sucrose, which breaks down into fructose/glucose so you might as well be eating bread.) This is not something everyone knows: sugar is sugar. The carbs you get from a cookie end up breaking down into the same basic units as the carbs you get from an apple, despite the apple being seen as healthier considering its vitamin/fiber content. In keto eyes, they're both the same kind of evil. Another issue with the diet is that since you're eating so much protein, it is better to drink shittons more water. For someone who is on the diet longterm, eating tons of protein and dehydrated, all that protein will fuck up your kidney. But I don't think it's common. That's basically it. You have to be strict, no cheating, and drink lots of water.

People think Oh my god I could never go on this diet, what would I do without my toast every morning/pasta/potatoes/etc? How could I never eat cake/cookies/brownies/candy, not even a bite? For people who mainly subsist off carbs, yes this would be a very difficult change. But I have always preferred meat/savory foods to sweet foods. I do love certain carbs, but there is an immense variety to this diet. Your proteins can come from steak, chicken, fish, beans, eggs (which have their own endless ways to be used). I end up eating tons more vegetables than I would normally, I've made delicious broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Swiss chard, and spinach dishes. The best part is that this diet is meant to be high fat, meaning you can eat much more bacon, butter, sausage, and fatty nuts like walnuts, cashews, almonds, and macadamia nuts than allowed on a diet based solely on caloric restriction. And by using almond flour or coconut flour, there are tons of recipes to make bread, tortillas, and countless desserts if you are hoping to replace your normal carbtastic items.

Over the course of the first month and a half, I lost probably 10 pounds. Nothing I had ever tried had had any results before, and I had been converted into an unshakeable believer. Then I became lax, started cheating once a week or so and lost another 10 pounds over the summer, slowly. I was at my lightest (153) around early September of this year. Then school started picking up, and I got into a month long stretch of school/tests stress plus a mentality of "I'm going to restart keto soon so I should eat anything and everything delicious before then" and over the course of a month and a half, put on almost 10 pounds. It was pretty devastating. I for some reason hadn't thought it a possibility to put on that much weight after tasting the glory of actually feeling thin for those amazing weeks. So now I'm on keto again, and have dropped 6 pounds, mostly from water weight tied up with glycogen (how your body stores extra carbs.) I'm pumped up and motivated, hoping to hit at least 150 by Thanksgiving. I've done great this past week and plan to not cheat the next five. Coming up next: one of my favorite keto recipes, goat cheese meatloaf!

BMhIgh, A History.

In my sophomore year of high school, I went to Jamaica for a week on a family vacation. It was beautiful and gorgeous and full of vacationey stuff, namely sitting on our asses and eating too much at every meal. When we got home, that was the first time I remember stepping on the scale and noticing my weight. I still remember what it was: 137. I don't think I was technically overweight then, and it wasn't long after that I slowly started putting on some weight, just randomly maybe after holidays. I wasn't huge (maybe on the heavier side of a healthy BMI) but throughout high school I did imagine wistfully once in a while how nice it would be to look like my thinner friends.

Then college happened. Starting out college I wasn't completely happy with how I looked. I think I was hovering at around 151, technically bordering a healthy and "overweight" line at 5'5". I think my last physical showed normal values except for an elevated triglyceride. But I started dating my boyfriend at the time and all thoughts of losing weight went to shit. We ate out, celebrated small things with deliciously fat filled treats, comforted ourselves in times of stress, and since I was in a relationship, I felt comfortable being who I was. I wasn't trying to impress anyone, as long as Austin found me attractive, who gives a care? I probably gained at least 15 pounds the first two years of college. When we broke up junior year, I started going to the gym more in a half hearted attempt to make a change, but my diet stayed roughly the same and the weight was maintained. I felt fat, but not altogether unattractive. Boys still expressed interest here and there so I didn't altogether feel horrible about myself. I tried counting calories once but didn't do it very seriously, and I basically stayed the same size.

Cue the start of med school. Tons more work and stress and no time to think about wooing boys plus months of cold, Buffalo weather and no exercise resulted in a roughly 8 pound weight gain over the course of the first semester. I looked fat in the mirror; I would avoid looking at myself when I showered. But I had school to worry about and it just wasn't a priority. I had been going to the gym more so I wasn't ridiculously out of shape, just straight up fat. My mom had been trying to get me to lose weight, for both health and cosmetic reasons for the past couple of years but it had just been kind of background nagging. My dad who never had an opinion had started to agree with her over that past year, saying shit like "fan hou liu yi kou", meaning every meal should have a bite leftover. He would take care to reiterate often that I should always be feeling a little hungry, that's how he maintains his weight. I didn't altogether disagree with them, I just hadn't found the motivation to lose weight seriously.

After an emotional conversation with my mom on her birthday weekend this past February, during which I admitted I felt a lot of stress at school, turned to food for emotional comfort and felt ugly and fat, I finally felt the motivation to make a real change. I decided to go on the ketogenic diet, basically cutting out almost all carbs. I have been following it on reddit and since I have always been a carnivore, it didn't seem too ridiculous. I was finally tired of feeling fat, unattractive, and hyper aware of how fat I looked in pictures. It was finally time to really do something, and that something was the start of my new religion, my keto journey.