Keto Diary: Week 1

So let's rewind a little... back to the day Nuri and I first shared our feelings for each other. A little bit after the whole "I like you", "I like you too" bit, he asked me "do you have any dietary restrictions?" I laughed and said nope! Then he said "Oh great, we'll get along just fine!" This was very exciting - this sounded to me like I found my foodie partner! However, this became one of our favorite memories to laugh at many weeks later when we realized that although he appeared happy that I was the kind of girl who ate everything, HE was the one with the dietary restrictions! It turns out that many months before we met, Nuri went on a keto diet. But he broke it right about the time we met because I made him sushi twice in two weeks! The first few weeks into our relationship, he went with the flow - he ate the pancakes I made, he made us pasta because he learnt how much I love pasta... But it didn't take long before he wanted to go back to his old healthy habits. See, a keto diet is a very low-carb, high-fat diet, this involves reducing carbohydrates intake and replacing it with fat.  This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis.  So by carbs, we're talking about sugar - cake, icecream, rice, bread, pasta, potato... Nuri had cut these out of his diet for many months and he was strict on checking the nutritional value of anything he consumed. This was Nuri before we met. So, after a few weeks of spending a lot of time today, he started telling me about his keto diet. I was interested - I thought stopping rice and chocolate was easy. After a few months, I decided to join, but I wasn't so strict. While Nuri went hardcore, I couldn't resist lasagna or fries, and I didn't know how to eat my khoresht without the rice. But I definitely learnt to reduce my portion of carbs, and eat more salad. Yes, Nuri introduced me to the world of salads!

BUT it wasn't all that easy. My philosophy with food has always been "everything in moderation". I always thought eating moderate amount of anything/everything was harmless. Even though I said I'd join the keto diet, I couldn't stay off the carbs for long, and during the time we'd hang out, I found it difficult making my own food separately.  We both agreed that we enjoyed it better when we could prepare something together that we both could eat. I enjoyed some keto food, but sometimes I wasn't satisfied with just having salad for dinner. So to meet half way, he broke his diet a few times, so that we could have more fun. In December we traveled for a few weeks and our diet went on vacation mode too!  When we returned, we decided to go do keto together but keep Saturdays at cheat days.  This worked for a little bit, but wasn't too sustainable. The little problem with this is that on weekends, we would "go all out" with our carbs - I can't count the number of junk-food parties we had to ourselves.  Even though that was just 1-2 days in a week (because for the rest, we ate clean and healthy), it just didn't feel completely right.  Anyways, we fasted in March and sworn off sugar for 19 days and it was pretty easy! And then... marriage and corona happened! Marriage meant we ordered three large pizzas on our wedding night (all to ourselves) and made a chocolate cake to celebrate one week of marraige (all to ourselves) haha! We were just too happy! But we still ate nutritous food - there was always salad, and dices of onions and bell pepper in our meals. But still, a lot of carbs and chocolate too. And I think at some point, our bodies just started begging us to show some mercy. See, what we eat affects our mood, our work efficiency, the way we sleep, and how our bodies feel when we wake up! Corona meant we couldn't go out on walks, get some sunlight... Corona called for a lot of Netflix and chips. So it was time to do something about our health!

Nuri decided to go back to keto, seriously, from next week. I said that this time I will be more supportive because we've been together for a long time now, off and on keto and I believe I now have a better understanding of what this really means and am more aware of the value and effects. Nuri is a big fan of Dr. Berg on youtube. He watches a lot of his videos, and gets a lot of his nutrition knowledge from him. What I've always admired about Nuri is he makes sure he understands why something is healthy or good for you and not just accept it at face value. I can't count how many nutrition lectures he's given me! I've come to learn that Knowledge is, indeed, power! When Nuri was on keto, he would eat strawberries and whipped cream several times a week as a snack! Doesn't that sound like that would be unhealthy?! But no! Apparently strawberries has low carb content and whipped cream doesn't have that many calories which makes it safe! He got to enjoy, in a healthy way!

I have decided to dive into this diet as well. To be honest, I feel a little bit sad that I have to give up pasta and potatoes! But Nuri made me watch these two videos which briefly describe what really happens to our body. So the first video below talks about how our body will change from running on sugar to running on fat as fuel. It really put into perspective the health value of this lifestyle change.

Nuri made me watch asecond video to assure me that it will be hard the first few days and it's completely normal because your body is adapting to changes, but you will push through. It's very comforting knowing this.

One evening Nuri and I came up with our weekly keto dinner menu. He has done this many times in the past two years, and he knows his stuff very well. But this will be new for me, so he will be here to guide me. I thought it would be nice to write about this experience. I love looking back at these things, and also it would be helpful for when I want to recommend this to others in the future. So here goes!

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Day 1 - May 10
Last night, when I told Nuri that I'm planning to keep a diary for this, he decided to join in and keep track by making voice notes! This morning we both woke up early - around 6am and all of a sudden, he felt like going out for a jog! He came back from his jog very excited! He said it really woke him up, he felt so good and energetic! (Oh by the way, three days ago our government toned down some of the policies. For a long time we were limited to 100m and then 500m walks from our home, but there's no limit now. Yesterday was the first time we went out for a walk!)  In Nuri's voice note this morning, he said that if you're starting a diet and planning to work out, don't do both at the same time. Start with eating healthy, then maybe after a week you can start working out, so that it's a gradual process. So his jog today was just to boost his energy. I will let you know when I am able to miraculously get up early to run with him too!

It's 1pm and I haven't had lunch yet. Until now, I've only drank four cups of water. I'm not yet hungry! An hour ago, Nuri came over during his lunch break. We went for a short walk outside - to go to a place where we could weigh ourselves! I was surprised with my weight - I've been this exact same kg for many years now. It made me happy to know that corona didn't inflate me but I decided to set a weight goal for myself which I'd like to reach over the next few months. Nuri, on the other hand, does not have a dream weight, but he's calling his voice notes project "Road to Six Packs!" Our little walk in the sun a while ago was very good. But let's go back to talking about goals. I've never been the diet kind of person. I'm not doing this to get in shape (but I happily accept it as an extra). I'm doing this because I want to learn to eat healthy - in the long term. I tried keto a few times here and there over the last few months and like I said earlier, I was very happy that I finally learnt to eat salad. But now I want to learn to be completely satisfied with only eating salad for dinner. When I start to crave for mid-day snacks, I want to automatically reach for a glass of water because that can work too! I've seen Nuri over the past several months and the way he LOVES his vegetables. He snacks on tomatoes and bell peppers! He snacks on peanut butter and nuts. He wasn't always like this! He started reading about nutrition on his own, less than two years ago, and that knowledge empowered him to make better eating choices. I remember how I always opted for orange or lemon juice during our lunch breaks, and I'd tell him it's my daily dose of vitamin C, but when he told me that you can get three times  more amount of vitamin C from bell pepper, I totally dropped the juice!

So, until now I've been writing too much! If I keep this up, this blog will be too long! Anyways, it's also just the first day, so I have a lot to say. But now, something I'd like to share everyday is what we're eating!

My first meal at 1:45pm (salad + grilled pork ribs)

At around 5:30pm, I felt a little headache. I'm not sure why, but I just drank more water. For dinner, Nuri and I spiralized some zucchini (first time!) and used last night's left overs (ground meat pasta sauce - tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic). We were done eating at 8:30pm.

Dinner (zucchini pasta + meat sauce)

Day 2 - May 11
Half way through dinner last night I suddenly felt so tired! My energy dropped. I didn't understand why I was feeling so. I also got out of bed pretty late today. Nuri and I went for a 45-minute walk in the sun this afternoon. I felt weak! But we spent most of our walk talking about keto recipes. Nuri has been very excited discovering interesting new keto recipes we could try.  He also said that I might be feeling weak before my calory intake yesterday was pretty low. So he reminded me of all the keto snacks I can have during the day. This will definitely take time to get used to because I'm generally not a snacker. He also said I should increase the fats in my food, so for my lunch today I had the same amount of salad as yesterday but just doubled the cheese and mayo. Nuri also told me to take it easy. He reminded me that he failed 6-7 times when he started keto in the beginning. First day would be good, second day he'd cheat...a few times until he finally got a hang of it.

My lunch at 1:15pm

Second day in a row that I'm having lunch pretty late. So, if you watched the first video, you would see that we're also taking up intermittent fasting. I'm not going to be so strict though - I'm just following Dr. Berg's advice to not eat for as long as you can. Nuri on the other hand is going to take the 20-hour intermittent fast seriously. This means that he'll have his first meal at around 4pm and last meal at 8pm, and within those 4 hours he can eat/snack etc. then fast for the remaining 20 hours. He's done this many times in the last few years, so he feels this should be easy.  Because I felt really fatigue this afternoon, I took a little nap and then made myself a small cup of coffee. For dinner, Nuri and I went for eggs! He made himself a fancy omelete with a lot of veggies, while I opted for a simple sunny-side up. This is what I had:

3 eggs, hotdogs (I ate twice what's shown here), two avocados and some cheese

Honestly, this was filling...but I didn't love it! Although I say I eat everything, but there are some things I'm just not a big fan of. I generally don't like eggs and avocados. I usually eat avocados as a dessert (with condensed milk), and eggs - well, I don't like the white part, so when I make scrambled eggs/sunny-side up, I make sure to break one egg and mix with the white of the other egg (as you can see in this photo...hide the white! haha!) Nuri said keto might not work for everyone, and why it works for him is he loves what he eats. But for me, I'm not kidding when I say I only started eating salad when I met him last year! But I want to learn to like this. I mean, I don't dislike it. I'm just not used to it...yet. I understand that these are all healthy fats that my body needs. It's funny when you think about it - how keto stresses on having lots of fats in your diet. We grew up on the notion that "fat is bad", but now we know it is one of the sources of fuel for our body, and it's good because it keeps you feeling full for longer and cuts down on your overall eating throughout the day. You just need to really understand what are good fats (or else you might mistakenly think you can run on fried chicken everyday!) Here's one of our reference sheets - it's Dr. Berg's list of foods you can eat, and what you should avoid. (link here) This will help you tell the good fats from the bad fats. You'll see that there's so much you can eat! Once you know these things, it will hardly feel like a diet because whenever you crave something you can't eat, you can easily find a substitute from the list of what you can eat (at least that's what we do!) It's actually funny, the list of what to avoid is a lot shorter than the list of what you can eat. But then again, I do admit that a lot of the things we love more are on the naughty list!


Day 3 - May 12
I felt a lot better this morning. I got of our bed on time and had energy! Nuri says I really needed those fats from last night's dinner. Around 11/11:30am, I decided to eat two teaspoons of pure peanut butter. Don't ask why! Well, I know peanut butter is a terrific source of fat for the keto diet, but I've also always seen Nuri snack on it. I decided to give it a try, to see if I like it so that I have another snack option. And it was good!

My lunch at 1pm: three sticks of beef kebab, and a smaller portion of salad

These last three days, me and Nuri's conversations have been mostly about keto! Even during work, he sends me keto videos, and during our walks we talk about it! Today, Nuri asked me what my favorite vegetables and meats are, so he could look for recipes around them and make this easy for me. He also sent me an interesting video called "Keto for women". It's giving both of us a new perspective - it talks about how women go through things like menstruation, hormonal imbalances, pregnancy and these often come with carb cravings. It says that women generally need a little more time than men to adjust to low carb. I went straight in, which is probably why the fatigue and headaches the first two days.

I really liked today's lunch. The kebab was very dense and filling that I wasn't even hungry at dinner time, which is why I ate very little:

Dinner: 1.5 sticks of kebab, two mushrooms, cauliflower bread, salsa and cream cheese

I want to tell you about this cauliflower bread Nuri and I have been making for many months now. Before, we would make keto pizza: the crust consists of grated cauliflower mixed with egg and mozzarella cheese. You bake it for a bit, then take it out and you add the toppings (cheese, pepperoni, tomatoes...) and then bake some more. This cauliflower bread is simply just the crust! We mixed two cups of grated cauloflower, one cup of mozzarella and one egg. Spread it thin on a baking tray and bake until golden brown. Nuri made a very nutritious salsa - he blended tomatoes, bell pepper, ginger, onions, jalapenos, leek. We ate the cauliflower bread with the salsa and some sour cream (sort of like what we would have done with nacho chips!) Generally it was a very good day - no headache, fatigue, no hunger, no cravings.


Day 4: May 13
I'm feeling great today, energy-wise! This morning I prepared a jar of water+mint leaves+lemon, and another with lemon+ginger. Nothing keto-related; I just thought since I'm drinking a lot more water now, I might as well play around with it! I had maybe 6-7 pieces of cashew nuts before lunch, not because I was hungry but ...okay, I really don't know why I ate them. I'm not a nuts person, but if there's one kind of nuts that I don't mind and like just a little - it's cashew nuts! And I found a packet just lying around. For lunch, I took subtracted bell peppers from my salad (same as yesterday). I'm starting to feel that I don't like too much of it. So to make up for this, I drenched my salmon in lots of lemon juice! This is my plate before I added ranch sauce on the salad. Salmon is one of the keto-friendliest meats to eat. It has plenty of healthy fats, a great source of B12 and Omega 3 fatty acids (Dr. Berg mentioned in the second video above that we need these, especially when we're starting out the diet).

Lunch at 1:45pm: Salad, baked salmon, steamed greenbeans

Around mid-afternoon, I made myself a small cup of cold coffee (black coffee, zero sugar/low-carb coffee creamer, topped with some whipped cream and dark cocoa powder). Apparently, chocolate is okay for keto as long as it has more than 85% cocoa. I had this drink because normally after I eat fish, I like to have something sweet to wash the taste away, so I thought of this keto-friendly drink.

In the evening, Nuri and I prepared ourselves a nice little dinner. At first, we were going to have only veggies, but I needed meat! I'm always craving meat during this keto period. So I brought out some bacon. This is what our romantic keto dinner looked like:

Nuri had some salmon and bacon, and he also made some chutney! I don't like chutney so much but he basically blended garlic, mint leaves, coriander leaves, lemon juice and jalapenos. We shared some veggies (carrots, bell pepper, cucumber, kale) and leftover cauliflower bread with dips (sour cream, hummus, leftover salsa). I made myself a little something extra:

I baked four large mushrooms wrapped in bacon!

I discovered that kale dipped in sour cream or hummus is amazing! I also spread some sour cream on the cauliflower bread, and put slices of the mushroom and bacon on it and ate it and that was divine - felt like a little sandwich. It was a pretty light dinner, but very filling. My mental and physical energy today was GREAT! It means I'm getting a hang of this, and quite sooner than I expected! After dinner, Nuri and I excitedly prepared some fatbombs! I'll tell you about that tomorrow.


Day 5: May 14
So after reflecting on my first few days, one thing I realized is that during the first two days -which is when I had headaches/felt very tired- I was keeping myself hungry. I don't know why I kept imagining that I'm fasting for the whole day, or that I shouldn't eat until I'm really really hungry. So I thought to myself, maybe I should snack on something small. I coudn't think of anything at first because generally I'm not a snacker. When I do feel like snacking, I'm happy with a cup of sweetened coffee, maybe a small piece of pastry or some chips and yoghurt and this would happen around 3-4pm.  When I talked to Nuri about this, he reminded me of all the keto snacks possible, and the next question was - which one do I find appealing?  So I'm planning to try a few different things over the next few days until I figured out what do I like. This visual guide helped me!

Last night I made a simple chia seed pudding - 2 cups of almond milk, 4 spoons of chia seeds, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract all mixed in a bowl and soaked overnight. I had around 10 teaspoons this morning. I guess I broke my intermittent fasting with that, but it's not that I was hungry - I just wanted to try it! It tasted very good! Apparently chia seeds is great for keto because it's rich in fibre. I normally get my fibre from bread and pasta, but since we're not having any of that, chia seeds comes to the rescue! I'll take a photo of the pudding next time I make it more fancy - I'll try to add berries next time! Since I felt that I already broke the fasting, I made myself a little bowl of olives and cheese:

Morning snack at 10:45am - black olives, cheddar cheese and cream cheese

My lunch was exactly the same as yesterday. However, I didn't add cheese to my salad because I already had a lot with the olives earlier. When I was pouring my ranch sauce, I was thinking - does this have sugar? Nuri's the one who always checks the label. I have not yet reached the point of calculating calories. These days I tell Nuri what I've eaten and he autmatically estimates how many calories that's given me. His voice notes keto diary is very detailed, with how many grams of this and that. I'm not yet there! But for now, I'm not going to worry too much and instead, rely on him :) But I like how this diet is really making me think about everything I consume. Ketchup, for example contains added sugar. Incase I find out that the ranch sauce I use has sugar too, well I will continue to use it until it's finished (small amounts every now and then just because I don't want to throw it away) and when it's finished, I'll learn to make my own ranch sauce!

My lunch at around 2pm: baked salmon, salad and some steamed green beans

A few days ago, Nuri told me about fat bombs, and I had to look it up! Fat bombs are basically snacks for those on a keto diet - they're usually made from a combination of ingredients such as butter, coconut oils, nuts. Fat bombs are pretty much like our version of energy balls or bars. As the name implies, they're high-fat. So last night, Nuri and I prepared some peanut butter balls! We made two kinds: 

left: keto cheesecake balls; right: peanut butter cups

I made keto cheesecakes - it's simply 115g of cream cheese, 1/4 cup pure peanut butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract! Mix it all together, then scoop and make little balls. I also sprinkled some dark cocoa powder on top, then freeze. Nuri made what tasted like Reese's peanut butter cups (but with dark chocolate!) His process was: melt dark cocoa powder with coconut oil. Pour a little into silicone moulds. Then for the filling - it was just natural peanut butter combined with almond flour. Put it into the mould and then cover up with more chocolate syrup, and freeze. I'm not sure about his measurements because we were both making ours at the same time. 

Right after lunch I had one of Nuri's and one of mine and I LOVED IT! I downed these with a small cup of cold coffee and a little whipped cream. I'm not a big fan of dark chocolate, so I liked the one I made more because I love cheese and this tasted like cheesecake! The cheese made it creamy, and the peanut butter made it a little thick, almost had that crushed graham crackers taste. Nuri loves his dark chocolate, in fact there was some chocolate syrup leftovers and he poured it into another mould and now he has so many mini cubes of real dark chocolates to snack on! We had a lot of fun making these very simple and quick recipes! 

In the evening we went out for a little walk, and then we skipped dinner. I didn't feel hungry at all. But between 6-9pm, I had around 7 thin carrot sticks with hummus and 3 teaspoons of chiaseed pudding. I'm learning that the high-fat meals keep us feeling full much longer, and keep us from overeating/excess snacking. I'm loving this already!


Day 6: May 15
Last night, Nuri wanted to follow a keto "cloud bread" recipe but it didn't work. In one bowl we had the egg yolks mixed with cream cheese and in the other bowl we had the egg whites which we had to beat until stiff, but it just wan't happening! So instead of throwing it all away, I mixed the two together, tossed in some almond flour and cinnamon powder and I've decided to make keto pancakes out of it!

keto pancakes: cream cheese, eggs, almond flour, cinammon powder, vanilla extract

The pancakes came out really thin. I didn't really enjoy it plain because it really tasted very plain. I think it was a mental thing - see, I'm used to eating pancakes with honey or nutella, but even the plain normal pancakes would taste a little sweet. I had one piece with whipped cream and I didn't enjoy it so much, but then I tried it with pure peanut butter and it was so much better! I ate maybe 5 pancakes! 

I had three leftover yokes from last night's experiment, so I decided to bake them in avocadoes! I've done this a few times in the past. Instructions: Slice an avocado in half, remove the seed, pour an egg into each hollow (in this case, I only had egg yokes), then sprinkle what you want on top! I went with salt, pepper and mozzarella cheese. Bake and enjoy! 

Baked avocado eggs

This was a filling breakfast meal which we had for lunch. This was our first meal, at around 1/1:30pm. Later in the afternoon, we went to the clinic. So, something I haven't shared is that since three days ago I've been feeling a new and unusual pain in a certain part of my body. I shrugged it off, believing it might be hormonal. But today during lunch, I couldn't stand the pain anymore! It was getting out of hand, so we went to a clinic to get some tests. And it was what we suspected - an infection. While waiting to see the doctor, I looked at the test I took and they were written in codes and Nuri and I used Dr. Google to try to understand what it meant. One of the test results was "ket", and we found out it meant ketones. Apparently I had a high amount of ketones, among other things, so we quickly did a google search to see if this keto diet had to do with this infection, and we couldn't find anything. When I went in to meet the doctor, I decided to tell the doctor that I was doing this diet. He didn't know about this keto diet, so when he asked what I'm eating, I said "lots of fats and protein". He asked why fats? I said "well, fats like cheese, avocadoes and eggs" and he nodded saying aha, aha. He said he doesn't think this diet has anything to do with this infection, and he said it was okay for me to continue. So I'm happy to say, it's not keto's fault! But after we left the clinic, Nuri reminded me that "keto is really about all these nutritious vegetables you're eating too". And I realized yes! I didn't introduce keto the right way - see, if someone hears that keto is all about high-fat, they might think yey fried food, why not! But it's not at all (long story short - when you deep fry food, they gain transfat which is harmful.) Veggies are RICH in vimatins and nutrients, and have very low calories, some nearly zero - though not all veggies are keto-friendly:

Anyways, I was able to get some medicine and the pain subsided. In the evening, Nuri and I weren't hungry but we still decided to eat some salad because Nuri wanted his nutrients for the day, and I needed to eat dinner before taking the medicine.

My early dinner: lettuce, kale, tomatoes, bell pepper, cheddar cheese, mayo

Day 7: May 16
I feel super great today! The pills for my infection is working, so no pain! My energy is great! For lunch, Nuri and I made our favourite thing to eat on Saturdays - sinigang soup! It's a Filipino soup, but we don't add the sinigang powder. Here's how our sinigang is made: fry some onion, garlic and ginger, then add chopped pork spare ribs (or shrimps or fish - another two great choices!). Let is brown, then add lots of water (it's up to you how much soup you want), and once it comes to a boil, add around 2 chopped tomatoes (chopped into 6 pieces). Then you can add any vegetables of your choice - we often add leek, jalapenos, sometimes some eggplant. Instead of salt, use fish sauce - add until it tastes the way you want. And in the last five minutes, add some chopped bokchoi.  

I always eat this soup with some rice, so a part of me wasn't sure how I'd enjoy just having soup. Then Nuri told me about cauliflower rice. First we blended half a cauliflower (until it's in tiny pieces), then he fried some onions, and added the cauliflower. He seasoned it with some black pepper and thyme. While all this was happening, Nuri made a sauce (kind of like a salsa) he LOVES making. He makes different variations each time, but for today, he chopped the following veggies into very tiny pieces: onions, garlic, ginger, cabbage, bell pepper, tomatoes, leek, jalapenos and chives and cooked all together with some black pepper, cumin seeds, corriander powder and garam masala.  His ideas was to add this to the soup on our plates, just for extra taste. And indeed, when we mixed all these three things in our bowls, it was AMAZING! I must say I was very impressed with the cauliflower rice! It was soft, and tasted like couscous. It was filling, and I was very happy to know that I could enjoy something I've always enjoyed, but in a healthier way. Honestly, when I look at everything we've been eating on this keto diet, it's been nothing but healthy! All these vegetables! Sometimes these veggies don't taste good on their own, but you have to find a way to cook them, mix them, until you find a recipe that works! It's been an experiment-filled week and I truly love it!

Cauliflower rice

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Pork sinigang

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Salsa a la Nuri  

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We had an early dinner (around 7:30pm). We cooked some remaining pork spare ribs into another of our favourite Filipino dishes - adobo, which is as simple as frying some pork (you can do this with chicken) in onion and garlic, then adding some soysauce! We often add bits of garlic and jalapenos to the sauce while it's cooking. While I did this, Nuri made another serving of cauliflower rice, but this time he added little bits of bell pepper and mushrooms. This tasted very good! I'm still mind-blown with how perfect cauliflower is in substituting rice! Now I can eat my favourite khoreshts! 

Dinner: pork adobo and cauliflower fried rice

And salad, of course

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So this wraps up my one week on the keto diet. It helps a lot that I'm doing this with Nuri who has months of experience doing this diet, and is the one who is always eager and excited to find new recipes! Right now I plan to do another week of keto diary blogging. I don't know how long I plan to blog this journey - maybe until it no longer feels new. Let's see how this goes!