Tired of eating eggs?

“I’m tired of eating eggs for breakfast!”

A friend was venting to me about her husband’s grumbling about what to eat. An excellent cook, she was able to offer him keto or low-carb versions of bagels, toast, and even waffles. Still, he ate eggs.

We giggled about husbands and picky eaters, listing many great options we enjoy and musing that there’s no need to ever be bored or frustrated while eating keto. Yet, people are.

Just two days earlier, another friend was telling me how she struggles to figure out what to eat while staying keto. She was bored eating the same foods each day and wasn’t sure what else to eat. She had been subsisting on deli meat, cheese, pepperoni, and a baked chicken dish. Even I will agree that isn’t enjoyable or sustainable every day!

We began to brainstorm what she liked to eat, her hectic schedule, and her limited cooking skills. Before long she was making lists — meal ideas, recipes, and shopping lists. More importantly, she was getting excited.

“I think I can do this now! Not gonna lie, was thinking how my old eating habits were a lot easier. I was one more breakfast of eggs and bacon away from heading to the drive-thru breakfast shop!”

Her words came back to me as my friend vented about her husband. He had options, delicious options right at his fingertips. Not everyone does. How easy it is to simply slip back into those old, convenient, familiar meals, especially when life gets hectic or our taste buds become bored.

I had told my struggling friend, “You’re creating new habits now. This is the hardest part. You’ve been doing keto for a month and it’s no longer shiny and new. The honeymoon is over. The demands of daily life are competing for your time and attention. Keep making new habits, so that the familiar, easy options are the healthier ones.”

That message is important:
Make keto options familiar.
Make eating this way a habit.

My keto life is easy now after nearly 7 years of creating new habits. Making low carb meals comes as naturally as driving the familiar route to my son’s school, but I, too, had to learn.

If you’re struggling with what to eat and how to create new habits, I’d encourage you to follow a few simple steps.

1. Start with low carb or keto-friendly foods that you enjoy. Write them down! Use our Diet Doctor visual guides and shopping lists to help give you ideas. If you don’t like eggs, don’t eat them! Avocados no Bueno? No problem! Focus on good sources of protein that are also low carb and prioritize veggies that are high fiber, easy to prepare, and that you and your family really like. Veggies can be great vehicles for fat, so cook them in butter or make our easy Hollandaise sauce or use our zippy Ranch dressing.
2. Now that you have a list of favorites, consider how to use them. Grill, roast, or fry meats and pair them with a simple salad. Can you batch cook on the weekends? Use a rotisserie chicken from the deli for chicken salad? Use the Diet Doctor recipe search function or filter to find meal ideas with specific ingredients such as chicken or ground beef.
3. List meals you can make or recipes you want to try. Then commit to making them. Remember that you’re creating new habits. When I started, I committed to making at least two new recipes per week even if it was only a quick salad dressing or a meal made on the weekends. Get inspired by looking at the hundreds of kitchen tested and approved recipes here at Diet Doctor.
4. Make note of your favorite meals and the favorites of your family. I made notes on recipes about what we enjoyed or what I might change when I made the recipe again. Doing so also helped me to later learn to develop my own recipes as I noted our likes and dislikes.
5. Create your own shortcuts. Can you toss a recipe into the crockpot? Make it faster using an electric pressure cooker (Insta pot)? Perhaps you could prepare meals to store in the freezer or brown meats ahead of time. Maybe buy small quantities of veggies from the grocery salad bar since those are already washed and chopped.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until familiar. Then repeat them again.

Making keto or low carb sustainable means making it fit into your lifestyle. We won’t do something we don’t like for very long, especially when it comes to food. That’s one of the reasons why I failed so miserably at calorie-restricted diets.

Let’s make low carb simple because being healthy and happy should be a familiar, easy, and delicious habit for us all!

/ Kristie Sullivan, PhD