My Ketogenic lifestyle has invariably become a conversation topic everywhere I go. After politely passing on appetizers and carefully leaving most of the carbs on my plate, I'm bound to get questions. And after the usual LowCarbHighFat intoduction, I invariably get the questions I dread: what do/can you eat?

I have a love hate relationship with these questions for two reasons. I love them, because Keto has become my favorite topic. But I hate them because I don't eat the way I could and because it throws my own former ignorance back at me.

Let's have a look at those two sequentially:

  1. My diet right now is pretty monotonous by choice. Keeping things simple is the best way I found to really have my nutrients under control: < 20g of carbs & < 100g of protein per day. I want to retain this control to shed a few more kilogramms of fat and finally reach my goal or weighting less than 76kg and have less than 18% fat. So my current answer to the question "what do you eat?" is almost certainly going to scare people off. My current diet consists of cheese plus one of the following in rotation: salad, meat and green vegetables.
  2. But I also dislike those question, because they reminds me of my own ignorance. I have been eating for 35 years without any idea of what I was putting into my mouth. Which of the following have more carbs / sugar? Potatoes or rice? Pasta or bread? Tomatoes or carrots? Lentils or quinoa? Milk Chocolate or Gummibears? Peanuts or cashews? Until a few months ago, I would have been unable to answer any without guessing.

In my research I discovered the website DietDoctor which has a whole bunch of  are very handy infographics like the following:

Low carb vegetables

I also particularly like the 20g comparison:

If you want to look after your carbs, I really encourage you to go through all the visual guides and save them somewhere. This is the best way I found to answer those questions: pull out my phone and say "plenty of stuff actually, look"!

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash