I am going to tell you about my favorite healthy keto recipes, but first, let’s answer a few common questions people have about it. I tell people when they ask how I recently lost weight, by eating more of the right stuff!
So What Do We Eat?
Rib-eyes and broccoli are a great combination for dinner. It’s one of the easiest healthy keto recipes you can have. Since it’s just the two of us eating dinner, we often cut a ribeye right down the middle and then let the other person choose which side they want. It works well for us and is a quick meal that just requires me to heat the grill pan and press, cut up the broccoli and steam for 2 minutes 30 seconds.
If you don’t like the taste of the broccoli or the meat, add salt! Get a good sea salt instead of the table salt that has all the additives. Your body will need a certain amount of salt while you are living a healthy keto lifestyle because whole foods don’t come pre-salted like processed foods do.
There are more recipes below!
What is Healthy Keto?
Healthy Keto is a diet based on whole foods that are naturally low in carbs and high in fats. It’s not just a fad diet that comes and goes where you end up gaining back all the weight you lost, and then some. It is a lifestyle change where you cut out the majority of your processed foods and grains. It doesn’t mean that you have to go hungry all the time! There are many healthy keto recipes you can eat while enjoying the healthy keto lifestyle. After you teach your body and brain to run on ketones, a body will find itself satisfied with the healthy keto meals eaten.
What We Eat When We Need A Snack
The foods we eat the most around here for snacks are, real fruits, dairy, and nuts. If you are going to eat something sweet like an apple, pair it with something high in fat like peanut butter. When we eat strawberries or melon, we add in a half cup of cottage cheese so that our bodies are still getting the healthy fats we need.
I will often find myself nibbling on a piece of cheese with a couple of pecans. Warning with pecans, they are such a nutrient dense food that they have lots of calories. If you are trying to stay in a calorie deficit, measure them out before just eating them. Just 1/4 cup has 200 calories, 20 grams of healthy fats, and 3 grams of protein, making this a perfect healthy keto snack.
What is the Difference in Keto and Healthy Keto?
While keto and healthy keto are similar, they do have their differences. Some people who do the hard core keto diet may consume 0 carbs per day by following a carnivore diet of sorts. Healthy keto follows a diet of high fat and low carb. Usually 50 or less per day. Some days I go over by 20 or so, but somedays I also only have a few. I figure in the end it all averages out for me.
What we have found from past experiences, is that doing hard core keto based on proteins and not fats, the weight always comes back once you start consuming vegetables again.
With either, it’s important to stay away from grains in breads, and seed oils, like your favorite vegetable oil. They all are made with solvents to extract the oil. Making the switch to cold pressed oils is a much healthier choice. You can even deep fry in Avocado oil. It has a smoke point that is much higher than anything you could ever cook.
Mary’s Favorite Healthy Keto Recipes
Chaffles are a combination of an egg and cheese making it extremely keto friendly. You will find lots of variations of the original chaffle so that you always have a new recipe to try.
This chicken broccoli casserole is my absolute favorite of all the healthy keto recipes I’ve ever tried. It uses mayo instead of a can of soup, making it keto friendly. Because the main ingredient is chicken and broccoli, all you need is to add a healthy fat to make it fuel you for hours. I do this by making my own homemade avocado oil mayonnaise. The flavors of dill and garlic in this easy casserole really pop when you incorporate it all together! Give it a try and let us know what you think! I could eat this every day for the rest of my life!
Homemade sauerkraut, or fermented cabbage, is always available to use as a side or condiment for a meal. The vitamins and minerals you can get from eating this is fantastic when on a healthy keto regimen. I haven’t even mentioned the probiotic benefits for your gut health. The best part is, you need no special equipment to make this in your own kitchen. It’s easy and you can just need to make a jar at a time. There’s no canning involved as that interferes with the probiotics.
We eat lots of wild-caught salmon. I try to feed it to us at least twice a week. While it is a pricey, I find it on sale in the freezer section and can often get us 3 meals for the 2 of us for only $10-$13. I’ll do that for the health benefits of eating salmon. It has all the good Omega 3 fatty acids that our body’s need.
Recipe for frozen salmon:
- From frozen, they come individually wrapped, remove the wrapper, rinse and dry the salmon fillet.
- While doing this, heat a heavy skillet to med-high and add a little butter or olive oil.
- Place the salmon in the skillet on the flat side and season the top well with salt and pepper. This will cook until you can see a color change on the side of the salmon that rises to the middle of the filet.
- While it is cooking, you can get 2 cloves of garlic and mince or chop it up fine. We will add it right at the end.
- Flip your salmon and about 2 minutes before you think it will finish cooking, add the garlic to the oil or butter left in the pan. It just needs to cook for a minute or two to take the bite out of it.
- When your salmon reaches 145 degrees F at the thickest spot in the filet, it’s done.
- Once it does, remove it to the plate and pour some of the butter or oil with minced garlic onto it like a sauce.
Now pair this with any cruciferous vegetable like cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower and if you need a salad, make it an arugula salad with an olive oil dressing. For a real treat, pour the butter or oil from the hot pan onto your salad greens to have a wilted lettuce experience flavored up by the garlic and salmon.
- I will continue to add healthy keto recipes above as I think of them. These are just my favorites off the top of my head.