A low carb diet or a keto-friendly diet is not hard to find. When you are on a road trip or a night out with friends, you often find yourself in a dilemma on how to get foods with low carbs, especially in the fast-food restaurants. It is generally difficult to curb your appetite to eat tasty burgers, pizzas, sandwiches, and other delicacies in any restaurant or fast food joints.
Well, there is good news that you can find restaurants that serve low carb fast foods and also you can combine from multiple dishes to make it low carb. Let’s see how can you do that.
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How to customize for getting a low carb diet?
Don’t be afraid to ask your waiter to suggest some foods that meet your low carb requirements. Nowadays, almost every restaurant, bistros, and cafes understands the importance of working with the customer’s special requests. With veganism, ketogenic diets, and gluten-free foods gaining mainstream, most menus include such diets to attract customers who are looking for healthy meals. So, don’t be shy and let your waiter know what you are looking for.
Before visiting any restaurant or cafe, do online research, as most of them post their menus online. You can look for the choice of your diet in them and make the decision accordingly. If in case you don’t find the menu options, you can call up the restaurant and clarify your doubts.
Guide to low carb diet in restaurants
Now let’s see what should you order to maintain low carbs. While ordering, stick to simple dishes that feature meats, cheese, and veggies. If you order complex dishes, then there is more chance of getting diets laced with sugar and carbs. Stick with green leafy salads and always ask for oil or vinegar. You can also add avocado bacon and hard-boiled eggs to your salad. Avoid bread and crunchy toppings on your salad, and always ask fattier salad dressings. Examples of some fattier salad dressings involve ranch, caesar, and blue cheese as they contain no sugar.
Avoid deep-fried and breaded items like chicken wings and mozzarella sticks as they are coated with wheat flour batter. However, some restaurants provide the option for naked chicken wings, which is a good option for a keto diet.
What to order when at home?
At breakfast, you can order an egg, cheese, and breakfast meat sandwich without the butter and bun. At dinner, you can order a chicken grilled sandwich, bacon burger with the elimination of bun and sauce. Ask for extra lettuce, mayo, mustard, and pickles. This is an excellent keto diet option. While ordering, you can also customize the choice of the burger and sandwich which you wish to eat, take advantage of that option and lace it with above-discussed ingredients.
What to order at Mexican fast-food spots?
Many of us love to have some Mexican fast foods, but most of you don’t know that these restaurants also provide you with tasty keto foods. Some examples of such foods are burrito salads, flavorful meat, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, salsa, and guacamole are some of the satisfying low carb meal.
Some popular restaurants with a healthy keto meal
Chipotle restaurant
It is a famous Mexican restaurant that is famous for quality foods and is one of the healthier fast-food restaurants. One bowl of salad served by this restaurant involves grilled vegetables, meat, and guacamole, which consists of 14 grams of carbs. The carb content has 8 grams of fiber in it. It also consists of high-quality protein, which is 30 grams.
High-quality proteins are good for your gut as well as brain health. It helps you to avoid overeating.
Subway sandwich without bread
Subway sandwiches are one of the high carb foods with 50 grams of it coming from the bread. The best way to make it a healthy keto diet is by eliminating the bread and order your subway sandwich in a bowl. By doing this, you dramatically lower your carb intake. Make sure you tell them to add vinegar or olive oil for dressing.
Grilled chicken of KFC
Whenever you wish to go to KFC, you love to have your mingles bucket or your chicken longer burger along with the sauce. The fried chicken absorbs a lot of oil, and along with that, harmful compounds are released by the vegetable oils when they are boiled at high temperatures. Best is to order grilled chicken as it consists of very low carbs i.e., less than 1 gram.
Chick-fil-A nuggets
Order eight counts of grilled nuggets with salad having dressing of avocado lime ranch. The grilled chicken contains different fillers and has 2 grams per six to eight nuggets.
Panera bread
This restaurant has the majority of breakfast items that are high in carbs, but it’s one item named “Power Breakfast Egg Bowl with Steak” is the best option for your keto breakfast. This breakfast consists of two eggs, steak, tomatoes, and avocado. The nutrient content involves 20 grams of protein and 5 grams of carbs. Another breakfast, namely “Power Breakfast Egg White Bowl with Turkey” contains 25 grams of protein and 7 grams of carbs. This breakfast includes basils, spinach, egg whites, and bell peppers.
Taco Bell
There are two types of food options when you visit this restaurant. First is a mini skillet bowl, the reason this food is considered keto-friendly because of eggs. It consists of eggs, steak, cheddar cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and creamy chipotle sauce. This meal consists of 490 calories, 14 grams of proteins, 6 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of fiber. The creamy chipotle sauce consists of low fats that are recovered by the guacamole and eggs.
Another meal that you can go for is the power menu bowl. It comes with lettuce, shredded chicken, cheddar cheese, sour cheese, guacamole, bacon, and avocado-ranch sauce. Make sure you don’t take sauce with it, instead ask them for more guacamole. This healthy meal consists of 8 grams of carbs and 21 grams of proteins.
Carl’s Jr
In Carl’s Jr, go for the thick burger (½ or ⅓ pound). Note: No bun, eat it with lettuce wraps. ½ pound thick burger consists of 39 grams of proteins and 9 grams of fats, whereas ⅓ pound thick burger consists of 9 grams of carbs and 25 grams of proteins. This restaurant specialty is it uses butter lettuce, which is fat or beefy lettuce, which can be considered as a substitute for a bun.
Another good option for you will be “Famous star lettuce wraps” (no buns), it contains 20 grams of protein and 9 grams of carbs. “ Grass-fed all-natural burger” (no bun) is also a good choice. It contains 7 grams of carbs and 23 grams of proteins.
Some low carb snacks
Olives
Olives are available in almost every supermarket and convenience store. They are full of heart-healthy fats with minimal carbs. In case you buy jarred olives, be sure to go through its nutritional content.
Pork rinds
Since potato chips are a strict no on a keto diet, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat any crunchy snacks ever. Pork rinds are one of the healthy crispy snacks which can be included in your keto diet. Make sure you only buy the brand, which only makes this ingredient with pork rinds and salt.
Nuts
Some nuts have more carbs than the other ones. Macadamia nuts have a high content of monounsaturated fats and low omega-6 content. Nut butter made with almonds, pecans, and macadamia nuts is also a good choice.
Dark chocolate and cacao nibs
Chocolates, which consist of 80% of cocoa content, is a healthy choice. Cacao nibs, when added to nut butter, is a good option. You can also make keto-friendly snacks at your home, as it will help during the sweet cravings.
Avocados
Cut a raw avocado and lace it with salt and pepper. This snack is tasty, healthy, and keto-friendly. You can also smash it and mix it with mayonnaise and your favorite dry herb.
Cheese
Combine high fat low protein cheese such as mascarpone and cream cheese with keto snacks such as pork rinds and nuts for a healthy keto treat.
Pickles
Sugar-free pickles are a great alternative if you want some salty and sour touch while eating your keto meals. They also have low calories.
Some low carb foods
Lettuce burger
As discussed earlier, customize your burger by eliminating its buns and wrapping it up with lettuce. This type of burger has no carbs and is laced with high proteins. You can find this burger on every fast food joints. In addition to this, there are plenty of low carb toppings available too. Such toppings are Cheese, Bacon, Mustard, Mayo, Onions, Tomato, and Guacamole. Each of them has less than 1 gram of carb content.
Try egg combinations
When it comes to low carbs, eggs come first. Eggs have no carbs and are a package of healthy proteins. Try eggs with different veggies such as tomatoes, spinach, avocados, etc.
Bacon, sausage, and eggs
The combination of sausage, bacon, and eggs are the most common breakfast options in most of the fast-food restaurants. This combination has low carbs and helps in achieving the fullness of the stomach resulting in reduced appetite. They also help in lowering your blood sugar. But stay away from cured bacon and sausages, as they come under the category of processed meats and are a risk for your heart health.
Self-cooking keto guide
If you want to cook keto foods, then here is the comprehensive guide for it. Here we will discuss what ingredient you can add on your day to day foods while cooking that act as an excellent keto meal. Also, you won’t have to start from scratch as the majority of them you have been using it unknowingly or are easily available on the market.
Fats and oils are a big part of the keto diet. However, some fats must be avoided. Saturated fats such as butter, ghee, coconut oil, tallow, and lard can be freely consumed. Use them for frying and sauteing the foods or mix them with your meals. Monounsaturated fats like cold-pressed olive, flax, avocado, and macadamia nut oil can also be consumed whenever you want. You can add them to sauces, dressings, or drizzle at the top of the other foods.
Naturally occurring polyunsaturated fats such as animal fats and fatty fish are very nutritious. However, stay away from processed, polyunsaturated, and trans fats.
One of the key things to maintain while on keto is to balance your omega-3’s. Foods such as salmon, tuna, trout, and shellfish must be consumed for maintaining proper levels of omega-3. Beware of nuts and seeds based foods as they have omega-6 proteins. However, other seafood such as lobsters, oysters, crabs, scallops, squid, etc, also have proteins, but some contain carbs, so beware of that.
The whole egg is one of the versatile protein sources. An egg consists of 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat. Make them hard-boiled, scrambled, and fried. In case you are a pork eater, make sure you consume fattier cuts of ground pork, pork loin, pork chops, tenderloin, and ham. Bacon is keto’s favorite source, but while purchasing it, make sure it doesn’t contain added sweeteners such as brown sugar. Go for dark meat over white meat when buying poultry like chicken, duck, and quail.
Butters is a nonmeat source of proteins, but make sure you choose the unsweetened natural source of proteins. Go for the ones that have fats such as almond butter and macadamia. Nut and seed flours are commonly used ingredients for keto baking, but make sure you consume it moderately.
For vegetables load up with the above-ground veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, swiss chard, romaine lettuce, and spinach. However, you must limit your intake of high carb veggies such as mushrooms, squash, beets, garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, etc.
Citrus fruits must be consumed moderately, and sweet-starch produce such as bananas and sweet potatoes must be avoided altogether.
Author Bio:
Henna is a wellness lifestyle writer. She loves sharing her thoughts and personal experiences related to natural remedies, yoga, and fitness through her writing. She currently writes for How To Cure. She can connect with others experiencing health concerns and help them through their recovery journeys through natural remedies
