Go Keto! Where to begin? Start Here!
For people who want to control blood sugar, enjoy heathy brain aging, or lose fat with a low-carb or keto diet.
On this page you will find:
– Two books to help you get started.
– Tips to reduce the sugar in your diet.
– A reasonable whole-food keto diet plan.
– Combining ketone supplements with a low-carb diet.
– Increasing ketones: Exercise & overnight fasting.
– Case Reports: Keto diet, blood sugar, & memory.
– Recommended organizations and diet support.
Learn how the keto approach could help with Alzheimer’s and other brain problems.
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Think better, age better, feel better with a Mediterranean-style whole food keto diet!
Learn about the evidence and find step-by-step instructions and many other tweaks you can make to your lifestyle to enjoy healthy aging.
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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ketones
Your guide to the keto diet. Learn about everything “keto”, what ketones do, history, research, and how to plan and monitor a keto diet. ORDER NOW
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A Reasonable Whole-food Keto Diet Plan
One-Sheet Keto Diet (printable PDF)
SIMPLE ONE-SHEET KETO DIET
The following dietary suggestions are based on, and republished with permission from, Eric Westman, MD, with modifications, as noted, by Dr. Mary Newport. Dr. Eric Westman and his associate Jacqueline Eberstein, RN of Duke University have helped more than 4,000 patients control their blood sugar, reduce medications, and lose fat through a low-carbohydrate dietary approach.
BEFORE STARTING: This is a very-low-sugar diet, and your blood sugar level could drop very quickly. To avoid low blood sugar, monitor your blood sugar frequently and work with your doctor to make any changes in your medications.
ANOTHER NOTE: If more moderate keto diet is desired, or to ease more gradually into the diet to avoid “keto flu”, please look at “Special Carb List” below.
EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WISH OF THESE:
Meat: veal, beef, lamb, pork, ham bacon, any game meat
Poultry: chicken, turkey, duck or any game bird
Seafood: any fish or shellfish, or plain canned fish or seafood in oil or water (not sugar cured)
Eggs: Eat whole eggs, not just the whites.
LIMIT THESE UNTIL YOU REACH YOUR GOALS – But eat vegetables every day!
2 cups per day leafy salad greens, spinach, kale, green onions, sprouts
1 cup of other vegetables that grow above the ground: asparagus, beet greens, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, chard, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, eggplant, green beans, kale, leeks, mushrooms, peppers, spinach, string beans, squash, tomatoes, turnips, wax beans and zucchini
LIMITED AMOUNTS OF: Cheese, butter, oils, heavy cream, mayonnaise, avocado, olives. Dr. Newport suggests limiting hard cheese to 4 ounces per day, soft cheese (ricotta, cottage cheese) to 1 cup per day. Limit oils, butter and cream to about 4 to 6 tablespoons per day, depending on size of person. This category could also include salad dressings (low or no carbs/sugars), and oils could include coconut oil, MCT oil, MCT//143 from Pruvit, liquid coconut cooking oil, olive oil, canola, safflower, etc. (preferably organic, expeller or cold-pressed whenever available). For avocado she suggests one small or one-half large per day—you could add another avocado serving in place of one tablespoon of oil. For olives, limit to about 10 per day and avoid “pickled” olives (more carbs).
SPECIAL CARB LIST: To ease into diet, start with 2 or 3 servings of carbs and drop one serving per week. If mild to moderate, rather than strict, ketogenic diet is desired, add one or two servings per day from the following list. For diabetes or weight loss, after diabetes is controlled or after 2 to 4 weeks if using diet for weight loss, add 1 serving per day each week for the next 2 to 3 weeks (working up to 3 servings per day):
2 cups leafy green vegetables, or 1 cup of the “other vegetables” listed above, or ½ cup whole oats/porridge, whole grain rice or whole grain pasta, 1 slice of whole grain bread, 1 cup whole fat milk or ½ cup plain whole fat yogurt, small handful (about 1 ounce) of nuts, ½ cup strawberries or ¼ cup of other berries. I suggest you eat these foods at meals where you have at least 2 tablespoons of oil/fat to stay in ketosis. If your blood sugar begins to increase or you stop losing weight or gain weight, go back to amounts for the previous week and stay at that level. If blood sugar and weight are stable, you could consider this your maintenance lifestyle diet. (printable PDF of above diet)
Two Helpful Charts (printable PDF) – Macronutrient charts to plan your keto day & meals.
TIP: Keep a food journal for best success and track your macronutrients
My Favorite Book to Track Fat, Carbs, and Protein Grams –
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Combining ketone supplements with a low-carb diet
Article: Combining Ketone Salts with a Low-Carb Diet by Dr. Newport
TIP: Ketone salts, ketone esters, and ketone mixtures can help boost ketosis, suppress appetite, reduce inflammation, and encourage quicker fat loss. A keto diet combined with MCT/coconut oil plus ketone salts, ketone esters or ketone mixtures is the quickest way I know of to lose fat and control blood sugar in a fast and healthy way. I lost 34 pounds in 3 1/2 months with this approach!
Learn more about ketone supplements.
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More Helpful Tips: Free printable articles
More Ideas for Simple Keto Diet and a Few Recipes (print PDF)
How to avoid the “keto flu”
– Learn about keto-adaptation AKA “keto-flu” a common side effect when starting a keto diet & how to avoid it.
Monitoring ketone levels
– Must you monitor ketone levels on a keto diet? Probably not, however, this can provide positive reinforcement to ensure you are in ketosis with your diet or see how your exogenous ketone supplement affects your ketone level. Check blood ketones just before and 30 and 60 minutes after taking exogenous ketones to determine the peak level and repeat at 2 to 4 hours after to see what happens over the next few hours.
Monitor blood ketone and blood sugar levels with one meter – BUY HERE
Graph by Joanna Newport
– A ketone breath analyzer can help you track trends in your ketone level without sticking your finger!
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For more information email us at “Ketones08@gmail.com”
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Case Reports: Keto diet, blood sugar, & memory
Case Report (2019): Diabetes, Memory, and Keto Diet
68-year-old active but morbidly obese man with type 2 diabetes and “brain fog” returned fasting blood sugar, HbA1C to normal levels, improved on memory testing, improved triglycerides and all cholesterol results and lost 15 pounds with 10-week ketogenic diet, exercise, and brain-training! The author shared with me that his average daily ketone level was 1.0 mmol/L considered to be in “mild nutritional ketosis” range!
Most people could achieve this by eating less than 50 grams of carbs per day and about 50% or more of daily calories as fat (6.5 tablespoons per day equivalent of fats and oils on an 1800-calorie per day diet). Coconut and MCT oil as part of this fat can help achieve and sustain this level of ketosis. Clinical trials using ketogenic diet to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s are underway in several locations.
Another Case Report (2019): Metabolic Syndrome, Mild Alzheimer’s, and Keto Diet
71-year-old female ApoE4 carrier with mild Alzheimer’s and metabolic syndrome with insulin resistance treated with a ten-week ketogenic diet and had remarkable improvement in fasting blood sugar, HbA1C, cholesterol and triglyceride profile, and her MoCA test for memory improved from 21 (mild Alzheimer’s) to nearly normal score of 28 of 30 points!
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Recommended Organizations and Diet Support
The Charlie Foundation –
– For Cancer, Epilepsy, Autism, GLUT 1 Deficiency and other rare syndromes requiring strict ketogenic diet
Ketodietcalculator.com
– Great help through your dietician to calculate your keto ratios and plan meals.
Ketogenic.com
– Recipes, education, and more!
Macros by Myogin
– Great recipes and educational information
Ketogenic Diet Resource – Help from Ellen Davis MS Applied Nutrition author of Fight Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet.
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