Fast Food Options During Keto Diet

One of the most difficult things about being on a Ketogenic diet is that your food options are a little bit limited. Many of the foods that you ate before, like fast food and other foods that are high in carbs, calories, and fats will become difficult to enjoy because they could prevent ketosis or otherwise have unhealthy implications. Many people eat fast food on a daily basis and it cannot be understated how bad that can be for you. The mixture of high carbs, unhealthy fats, and other bad elements of fast food can really damage your overall healthⁱ and most certainly your eligibility for ketosis.

However, there are exceptions. If you do the proper research and stick to your Macro nutrient ratio, there are some fast food items that you can eat on Keto and still maintain eligibility for ketosis and its fat-burning qualities. Though your options are limited, you can find fast food menu items for your order that are high in things like protein, fat, and carbs to the right amount so that it doesn’t damage your body. We’re going to tell you what fast food places you can eat at in 2019 and beyond, what items you should aim for, and how to structure a diet around some fast food options.

How Do You Eat On Keto

The Ketogenic diet is one of the most popular diets of the year, and has taken the dieting world by storm {1}. The Ketogenic diet revolves around the main goal of having your body enter a process called ketosis {2}. This is achieved through managing your Macronutrients intake and making sure that you adhere to a well-balanced diet. The Ketogenic diet is very strict and for some, it can be very difficult to commit to. You will definitely experience more success if you have a plan. If you don’t have a good diet plan, you can find yourself unprepared and not equipped to adapt to any situation that you are in and you need to eat a Keto-friendly meal.

You may have heard a lot about the Ketogenic diet, but you may not know how it works, what the goal is, or how to accomplish it. To many, it just sounds like a fad that doesn’t work. However, if done correctly, the Keto diet is a very effective weight-loss technique that is utilized worldwide by everyone from high-performance athletes to everyday people like you and I. Before you enter into a Ketogenic diet plan, you should fully understand how Keto works and what you need to do to maintain a Ketogenic lifestyle. It’s not just a diet plan, it most certainly is a way of life and to do it correctly you’ll have to make some pretty large adjustments.

What Does A Ketogenic Diet Entail?

The answer to this question is going to change depending on who you are, how active you are, and what your goals are. That’s the beauty of the Ketogenic diet. Your personal experience on Keto will be different from others. The diet plan is unique to people and you need to adapt your eating habits based on what your life is like. Someone who sits all day at a desk will have a different Macro ratio goal than someone who is a high-performance athlete {1}.

Though the specifics change from person to person, the main goal of a Ketogenic diet is clear: enter ketosis by lowering the amount of carbs that you eat and replacing them with fat {2}. Carbohydrates are one of the best sources of energy that your body can draw on. They are easy to burn and quickly convert into energy when needed {3}. However, if you eat too many carbohydrates and your body doesn’t burn enough of it, it gets stored in your body as extra fat. Carbohydrates are largely responsible for the increase in obesity in America over the past couple of decades.

Because of the high intake of carbs, your body won’t be able to burn through them quickly enough. This is why the Ketogenic diet aims to reduce the amount of carbs in your diet. By reducing the amount of carbs in your Macro intake, your body will need to find different sources of energy as fuel for your body. This is where you start to experience results.

By creating a carbohydrate deficit in your body, you will burn other Macros to fuel you on a daily basis. The next thing up is Fats. Fats are also a great source of energy, and they are often stored in your body as body fat. Your body fat amount will increase if you eat more carbs and calories than your body needs. This excess energy is stored in your body fat and is the reason that you experience weight gain.

What Happens When I Change How My Body Uses Energy

The result of changing what you eat is a change in how your body uses energy. By entering a Ketogenic diet plan, you’re retraining your body to use Fats for energy. When your body doesn’t have enough carbs to burn, it also forces your body into something called ketosis. Ketosis is a process that helps to burn fat in your body through the production of ketones. Ketones are produced during ketosis and are used as a secondary source of fuel for the body and are particularly helpful for brain function and health {1}.

Ketones have been proved to be very effective in treating a variety of neurological disorders including epilepsy. A Ketogenic diet is still used today by many incredibly reputable healthcare providers as a treatment of epilepsy, particularly in children {2}.

It’s clear that ketosis is an incredible process during which your body can experience many health benefits that are both immediate and long-term. Ketosis has been linked to weight loss, improved brain function and health, and reduced risk for several diseases that are also associated with obesity and high carb intake.

The Macro Ratio

When you are on a Ketogenic diet, there are some basic guidelines that you need to follow when it comes to the intake of carbs, protein, and fat. Regulating your Macro levels is the key to Keto, and your success on Keto will likely hinge on your ability to plan out meals that are Keto-friendly, low in carbs, and well-balanced. A failure to do this will disqualify you from ketosis, which is the main goal of the Ketogenic diet and will result in a very low success rate.

That being said, there are tools out there to make it easier to eat on a Ketogenic diet. One of those handy tools is the Macronutrient intake ratio. This is a handy ratio that tells you how much of your calories should come from each of the three main Keto Macronutrients on a daily basis.

Before you do this, you should know how many calories you should be eating each day. On Keto, this is less important because the goal is just to lower carbs and maintain the ratio for Macro intake, but if you want the best effects, you should know how many calories you want to eat each day. The regular woman can eat around 2000 calories a day while the regular man needs about 2500. There is a specific portion of these calories that should come from each of the three main Keto Macronutrients.

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Fats

Fats are one of the three main Keto Macronutrients and they should account for a large part of your daily caloric intake. Fats should be responsible for 60-75% of all the calories that you eat in a day. Remember that the important thing about Keto is that you reduce your grams of carbs intake and replace that with fats, to retrain your body to burn fat instead of carbs so that you can enjoy the many health effects of the processes that result, including weight loss. This ratio means that if you eat 2000 calories in a day, 1200 of them should come from your fat consumption.

Proteins

The next largest part of your Macronutrient intake in the Macro Keto ratio are proteins. Protein is a vitally important part of your diet and should make up 15-30% of your daily caloric intake. That means that if you eat 2000 calories in a day, about 300 of them should come from the grams of protein you eat that day.

Carbs

Finally, carbs. It is the main goal of the Keto diet to drastically reduce the grams of carbs in your diet so that you can enter ketosis and burn fat more easily to lose weight. For that reason, carbs should be responsible for a very small amount of your daily Macro intake. About 5-10% of your daily caloric intake should come from the carbs that you eat. That means that on a 2000 calorie diet, only 50 of those calories should come from carbs.

Obviously, all of these numbers are on a sliding range so as long as you follow that ratio you should be able to successfully enter ketosis. You will most likely find yourself adjusting these numbers as time goes on based on what you have experienced success with and what has set you back. For example, if you are eating 10% carbs in your daily diet plan and are not experiencing weight loss, you may want to take it down to 5% to see what the effects are. Likewise, if you are an athlete you may want to adjust these numbers to a ratio that works for you and gives you enough energy to get through athletic events or workouts.

That is, in a nutshell, how you eat on a Keto diet. You should be carefully monitoring your Macro intake to make sure it adheres to the ratios specified and if something isn’t working, you can always adjust your diet to try and meet your goals more quickly.

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What Fast Food Can You Eat On Keto?

The short answer to this is that you can eat whatever fits into your Macro budget for the day. This is much easier said than done, so you should do some very diligent research into each fast food menu and what items are on it and what their nutritional value is. After determining items that are eligible, you still need to make sure that they fit into your diet for the day. That is why meal prep and planning is so vital.

If you know that you are going to be traveling and away from your kitchen but you will need to eat, you should bring some Keto-friendly meal prep along with you, or at least some low-carb snacks. Going to fast food places is a tough thing for Keto dieters because often that isn’t something that’s in our meal plan for the day. We are then forced to adapt and find some suitable solutions that still allow us to go into ketosis or don’t kick us out of ketosis. Luckily for you, we’ve done hours of research into fast food places and what options they have that could work for Keto dieters in a bind.

First and foremost, you want to remember your goal. Low-carb, high fat. This is going to shape your menu options and narrow it down to a few different options. We have some suggestions for what to look for on a fast food menu in terms of options for Keto dieters, since you could be at literally dozens of different fast food restaurants and we want to make sure you know what to look for on a broader point of view. After that, we will go into more specifics and particular menu options from some very popular fast food restaurants.

General Foods To Include

In general, when trying to order Keto-friendly at fast food places, you should steer towards meats, cheeses, eggs, and low-carb vegetables. You should be avoiding anything that is breaded, contains rice, or has potatoes. These items are high in carbs and counterproductive to the goal of the Ketogenic diet, which is to reduce carbs and achieve a balance of Macros. As a bonus, eggs are widely considered to be a super food, so you should eat as many eggs as your diet allows! Eggs are great for Keto!

Add Fats Where Possible

When ordering, you should keep in mind that you have room to add extra grams of fats in your diet and you should try to include them. To achieve this, you can add sides that are high in fats like bacon, fatty dressings, or extra butter. This will increase your fat intake without increasing your carbs, generally speaking. You should be cautious of some dressings and sauces. These can often contain hidden carbohydrates and can also be high in sugar, which is something that you want to avoid. One example of this is ketchup.

About Salads…

When ordering at fast food places, you should be wary of salads. Yes, salads sound healthy and in general they are healthier than other fast food options, but many contain a lot of harmful things in them. Some of them are seasoned with things like honey or croutons. You should avoid these and instead steer towards dressings that are high in fat and you can also add some protein in there.

Beverages

When it comes to beverages, you should order water or diet sodas. Obviously, water is best but a diet soft drink often has zero carbs and calories. You can also get unsweetened coffee or tea. Something that a lot of people do is bring sweeteners to put in their water that they order at fast food places.

All of these are great small tips that you can use to achieve more balance in your diet and stick to Keto when eating at fast food places. The most important thing is that you know what you are eating. So, whatever you decide on, you should know exactly what its nutritional value is and how it fits or does not fit into your Keto diet.

What Can I Eat At Taco Bell On Keto?

We’ll be honest, eating Keto at Taco Bell can be very difficult, but it can be done. The main thing that makes it so hard is that so many of the items have tortillas and fried taco shells. These items can be high in unhealthy fats and carbs, and be detrimental to your health and ketosis. There are some items on the Taco Bell menu that are high fat, low-carb, and can be eaten on a Ketogenic diet. However, you’ll need to be open to making customizations to the items. This means that you’ll have to take out some ingredients and add in some others that are more friendly to Keto.

Here are some great options that you can eat at Taco bell while sticking to your Ketogenic diet:

- Power Menu Bowl

You’ll want to subtract the rice and get more romaine instead in this dish. You also want to ditch the black beans and substitute for more grams of chicken, steak, or avocado.

- Fiesta Salad

Instead of a fried shell, get it in a bowl and subtract the rice and black beans. Get some more protein and avocado and you’ve got a Keto-friendly fast food dish. You can also get extra grams of sour cream, Pico de Gallo, cheese, and veggies.

- Beefy 5-Layer Burrito

You’ll need some pretty major adjustments to make this one work. The first would be to get it in a bowl instead of a tortilla shell. You can eat it like that, but it might be a little plain. Turn it into a salad by adding some lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and whatever other low-carb veggies you want to include.

- Grande Scrambler (Breakfast)

This is a great option for Keto at Taco Bell. All you need to do is get it in a bowl instead of a tortilla shell and subtract the potatoes and it’s a great Keto breakfast.

So, you may have to be a little picky and make some modifications, but you can most certainly eat Keto-friendly at Taco Bell.

What Can I Eat At McDonald’s On Keto?

McDonald’s, like Taco Bell, has a few different things that you can eat on Keto, but you’ll have to modify most of them. You can eat most of the burgers and sandwiches on the menu as long as you remove the bun and just eat the contents of the burger. The buns are high in carbs and not good for a Ketogenic diet, and you should not eat the burgers with the buns.

As far as breakfast goes, there are a few options:

- Sausage Patty
- Bacon as A Side
- Steak Patty
- Round Eggs
- Folded Eggs

These items are low in grams of carbs and they can help increase your fat intake as well. For condiments, you’ll want to stick with mayo and mustard. These toppings are perfect for Keto.

The salads at McDonald’s are relatively harmless if you remove the dressing. Salads are great to eat on Keto because they typically don’t have many carbs. These salads include the Side Salad, Bacon Ranch Grilled Chicken Salad, and Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad. As for sides, you can always enjoy Apple Slices, Yoplait GoGurt, or a kid’s size French Fries. The same principles affect the drinks. You should mainly stick with water, but you can also expand to diet beverages or iced coffee with sugar free vanilla.

What Fast Food Cuisine Is Keto Friendly?

You can eat at almost any fast food restaurant as long as they have customizable options on their menu items. You want to remove anything that is high in carbs. The best restaurants for Keto in 2019 and beyond are those that have plenty of healthy ingredients on their menu like Subway and Jimmy John’s. You can easily skip the bread and eat it as a salad at these places and the ingredients are usually fresh and healthy. You can up the fat content by adding in ingredients like bacon, cheese, and sour cream. With this knowledge in hand and a little research beforehand to find out what ingredients they have on the menu, you can very successfully eat a Keto-friendly meal with the available options. Now that you know the basics, you can jump right in and share your fast food Keto finds with the community!