​The most common question people ask about doing Keto is what should I eat? Most of your calories should come from fat, followed by moderate protein, and a few carbs. Your macronutrient ratios should be very close to 70/20/10 – fats/protein/carbs. Be careful not to eat too much protein because our bodies convert excess protein into blood glucose, thereby defeating Keto. Eat too many carbs and your body will not become fat adapted. Adapting to fat as your primary fuel source, is the whole point of Keto. Eating too many carbs elevates blood glucose, which is inflammatory and leads to non-infectious disease. When you put yourself into a state of nutritional ketosis, you do not elevate blood glucose, but instead fuel yourself with anti-inflammatory ketones.
Keto will help you improve your body composition in the short run. More importantly, Keto will improve your long-term health. Keto has been proven to reverse type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Keto is also use to treat Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy.
You can track your progress getting into and maintaining nutritional ketosis with our free algorithm, Keto Score at https://www.ketonescore.com/
Putting a well formulated keto diet into practice is not difficult. Choose a lot of high fat, moderate protein foods, and eat very little carbs. Below is a general list of foods you should and should not eat.
Keto Friendly Foods

• Whole eggs
  • Preferably pasture raised organic. There’s a big difference in the amount and quality of the omega fatty acids. Industrialized eggs are inferior.
• Butter
  • Look for grass fed organic. Like eggs and other dairy, the quality and amount of nutrients depends largely on how the animal lived.
• Whole Fat Dairy
  • Read the label and buy nothing with added sugar. Also, never buy fat-free or low fat. Saturated fat is the good fat.
  • Whole fat dairy contains lactose (a form of sugar) so should be eaten in limited quantities.
  • Whole fat dairy includes whole fat milk, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, and sour cream.
• Avocado
  • About 75% of the calories in an avocado comes from fat. The only fruit that provides substantial amounts of monounsaturated fats.
  • Rich in vitamins C, E, K, and B-6 as well as riboflavin, niacin, folate, magnesium, and potassium.
  • Avocados are also a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids.
• Coconut Oil
  • The saturated fats in coconut oil increases your HDL/LDL ratio
  • Rich in medium chain triglycerides (MCT) that can increase 24-hr energy expenditure by as much as 5%
  • The digestion of MCTs by the liver creates ketones
  • The MCTs in coconut oil curb appetite
• Olive Oil
  • Rich is both monounsaturated and saturated fats
  • Contains anti-inflammatory oleocanthal
• Cold Water Fish
  • Rich in omega-3 fatty acids and high concentrations of DHA, the omega-3 that provides the greatest benefits to our brains.
  • Includes salmon, anchovies, mackerel, sardines, and trout.
  • Preferably antibiotic free, wild caught, as opposed to farm raised for better nutrient density.
• Shellfish
  • High in omega-3 fatty acids
  • Loaded with mineral including zinc, copper, iron, magnesium, and potassium
• Poultry
  • Dark meat chicken and turkey are preferred over white meat for their higher percentage of essential fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6
• Red Meat
  • Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the fatty acid CLA, vitamins B3, B6, B12, A, and E along with iron, zinc, selenium, creatine, and carnosine.
  • Look for grass fed organic beef, lamb, and pork raised without drugs and hormones
  • Avoid mass market or factory raised red meat. It’s grain fed, treated with nitrates, preservatives, and other chemicals.
  • Avoid mass market red meat, typically raised with growth hormones and injected with anti-biotics in the feed lot. 
    • Anti-biotics and growth hormones in the meat pass through to the consumer
• Vegetables grown above ground
  • Especially green leafy veggies including kale, chard, and spinach
  • Veggies including asparagus, bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, zucchini
• Nuts and Seeds
  • Rich is both monounsaturated and saturated fats
  • High in fiber, protein and minerals
• Berries
  • The fruit with the lowest glycemic index
  • Loaded with micronutrients like vitamin C, folate, and potassium

Not Keto Friendly Foods

• Sugar
  • Raw sugar, cane sugar, honey, agave nectar, maple syrup, high-fructose corn syrup

Sugar, the true villain in our human story deserves a more detailed explanation. When we use the term sugar, what do we mean? There are many types of sugar. White table sugar is sucrose. Fructose is a sugar that naturally occurs in fruit. Lactose is a sugar that naturally occurs in milk. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants. They occur in enough concentrations in sugarcane and beets for efficient commercial extraction.
The Truth About Net Carbs
All sugar enters your bloodstream quickly and elevate your blood glucose (blood sugar). Other than a few indigestible fibers, all dietary carbohydrates are eventually broken down into blood sugar. Whole grains and other low glycemic complex carbs are converted to blood sugar. With very few exceptions, all the carbohydrates you eat eventually become sugar. Clever marketers of processed foods recently invented the concept of net carbs. What are net carbs?
Net carbs is a processed foods marketing gimmick. They’ve jumped on growing public awareness of the health benefits of low carb diets. Processed food manufacturers would like for you to believe net carbs. Don’t. They subtract the fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbs and then call the remainder net carbs. It’s true that some indigestible fibers pass through us and some sugar alcohols have little effect on blood sugar. But in in fact, those quantities are barely measurable. It’s true that different carbs have different glycemic indexes. For example, table sugar has a high glycemic index while whole grain oats have a low glycemic index. The glycemic index is simply the rate at which carbohydrates are broken down into blood sugar. All carbohydrates are broken down into blood glucose. Don’t believe the net carbs marketing gimmick. All carbs elevate your blood glucose.

• Starch
  • Pasta, bread, rice, grains, French fries, potato chips, porridge, muesli
  • Grains such as wheat, barley, oats, rice, rye, and millet
  • Brown rice and quinoa
• Root Vegetables
  • Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, yams, beets
• Starchy Vegetables
  • Corn, peas, parsnips, beans, legumes
• Fruit
  • Oranges, apples, pears, bananas, pineapple, grapes, mangos
  • If you must; blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries
    • Eat in very small quantities
    • Best of only source of carbs for the day
• Alcohol
  • Beer, wine, and spirits
    • Your body treats alcohol as a toxin
    • Your body stops burning fat for fuel as it processes alcohol

In summary this Keto Friendly Food Guide covers most of what you’ll need to know about eating Keto. For more information please visit Keto Score where you can ask any question on our Keto Coach Forum at https://www.ketonescore.com/
Yours in Health and Fitness,
JD Griffin, Keto Score Founder 

A little over 4 years ago I began following a low-carb high-fat nutrition plan. I thought I was doing a ketogenic (keto) diet and told people I was doing a keto diet. I was wrong.

After believing I was following a keto plan for nearly 2 years, I finally bought a blood testing meter and tested my blood ketone levels. I was disappointed to learn that I was not in a state of ketosis. Sure, I’d been eating very low carbs and a lot of fat. But I’d made the same mistake that many people make who think they’re doing keto – and I know now that it’s also the most common mistake: I’d been eating too much protein.

Through a process known as gluconeogenesis, our bodies convert excess dietary protein to glucose in much the same way we convert dietary carbohydrates to glucose. A true keto diet requires you to eat only moderate protein, not high protein. Too much protein and you’re defeating the whole point of keto.
Believing that a keto diet is a high-protein diet is indeed a common misconception. I often hear comments like, “I could never do keto because I could never eat all that protein”, or “I tried keto but didn’t like eating so much protein”, even “I would never do keto because I don’t eat red meat.” None of these statements are accurate because you don’t need a lot of protein and you certainly don’t have to eat red meat. Getting about 20% of your daily calories from protein isn’t difficult at all. Additionally, there are plenty of non-red meat protein sources including whole eggs, salmon and other cold water fish, dark meat poultry, and whole fat dairy products like cheese, Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. If you’re vegetarian, you can even assemble the essential amino acids for a complete protein with plant sources. Let me re-emphasize that point: the ketogenic diet is not a high protein diet, and it doesn’t require eating meat.

Let’s get back to my path towards getting on an actual keto nutrition plan. After testing my blood ketones 2 years and discovering I wasn’t in ketosis, I tweaked my diet. I reduced my protein and added more fat. Within just 2 weeks, my blood ketone levels bumped up enough to confirm that I was actually in a state of nutritional ketosis. I had been close but in reality, was still fueling myself with glucose. I was not producing ketones as my primary energy source. You may be asking, what does that mean?

The vast majority of people walking around on planet earth today are fueling themselves with blood glucose. Elevated levels of blood glucose trigger inflammation. Inflammation is closely linked to obesity and metabolic syndrome and inflammation is the root cause of many non-infectious diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and the link between inflammation and metabolic disease is being investigated in neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease. If that weren’t enough, there is a proven link between inflammation, obesity and diabetes, and many forms of cancer. Prior to the domestication of agriculture, these modern afflictions were nonexistent. Sadly, their prevalence has accelerated dramatically in the last 100 years since the industrialization of agriculture and the increased consumption of highly processed foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates. We’re in the midst of a global health pandemic.

You don’t have to succumb. Instead, you can stop elevating your blood glucose with inflammatory carbs and go keto. Your body will then switch from relying on glucose as your primary fuel source to instead producing and burning non-inflammatory blood ketones. Ketones are the alternative fuel your body produces by breaking down fats, and have a wide number of health benefits, including reduction of inflammation.  You can achieve ketosis and run your body on ketones by eating a low carb, moderate protein, high fat keto diet. But, achieving true nutritional ketosis can be challenging because you may be eating too much protein or hidden carbs that can elevate your blood glucose levels and keep your body from achieving ketosis. There is only one way to know if you’re in ketosis:  You’ve got to test your blood ketones. It’s also highly recommended you test your blood glucose. How do you do this? Well, there’s a great new tool that combines these measures into an easy to understand single value. It’s called Keto Score, and It’s free –  anyone can sign up at https://www.ketonescore.com/user-register/

Keto Score. Measuring your blood ketones is the only way to know whether or not your body is in a state of nutritional ketosis. Urine ketone sticks (“pee sticks”) are popular and easy to use but can be wildly inaccurate. By definition, urine carries waste from our body. Peeing on a ketone stick can only tell you what you are not using – it does not tell you what’s actually circulating in your blood stream, which is the key to knowing if you are in ketosis. There are three ketone bodies; Beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, and acetone. A lesser ketone body, acetoacetate can be detected in urine. The pee stick manufacturers claim that when your blood ketones are high some of it “spills” over into your urine. Maybe, but even if this is true, it says nothing about the actual level of your blood ketones. Pee sticks are in no way accurate. If you want accuracy and want to know if you’re truly in ketosis, then you have to test your blood with a finger prick and blood glucose and ketone meter. It’s super easy – just ask any diabetic person you know who does this many times a day in order to monitor their blood glucose levels.

If you want to know if you’re really doing keto then test your blood. If you want to take advantage of a free online tool that will help you get into and maintain ketosis then got to https://www.ketonescore.com/ and start generating our own personal Keto Score.

Yours in Health and Fitness,

JD Griffin
​Author, Get Fit Lean
Founder, Keto Score