RODs

A humongous problem I felt that I was going to run into before I started living keto was the food. I had no idea what I was going to eat, and I felt like once I found a recipe or two that I enjoyed, I would be eating those two meals every other day. Thankfully, with the help of many cookbooks, other bloggers, and Pinterest I have found, and will be sharing my 3 FAVORITE KETOGENIC RECIPES.

You don't want to miss out of my favorite RODs,

or Recipes of the Day!!!

FIRST....

Southwestern Shepherd's Pie

Image courtesy of Keto Delivered

https://ketodash.com/recipe/southwestern-shepherd-pie

(since my belly does not have the patience for my camera to eat first)

Ingredients:

• 4 slices Bacon
• 1 lb. Ground Beef 
• 1/2 medium Green Pepper, diced
• 1/2 medium Red Pepper, diced
• 1 medium Jalapeno Pepper, diced
• 1 tbsp. Chili Powder
• 1 tsp. Ground Cumin
• 1 tsp. Dried Oregano
• 3/4 tsp. Onion Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 1/4 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 cup Tomato Sauce
• 2 large Eggs
• 10 oz. Cauliflower chopped well

• 4 tbsp. Chicken Broth
• 2 1/2 oz. Cheddar Cheese
• 3 tbsp. Butter
• 3 tbsp. Parmesan Cheese
• 2 tbsp. Heavy Cream
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Add bacon to a large pot over medium heat. Cook through until crispy, remove bacon and keep excess grease in the pot. Add diced peppers to pot and season with salt and pepper; cook, stirring, for 6-8 minutes or until soft.
2. Raise heat to medium-high, add beef, spices (including salt and pepper to taste), and liquid smoke; brown for 5 minutes. Mix tomato sauce in and remove from heat.
3. Preheat oven to 375F. Microwave cauliflower with chicken broth for 5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, season with salt, and blend together well.
4. Thoroughly mix 2 eggs into beef mixture. Evenly spread beef mixture into a 9x9 baking dish.
5. Top with the cauliflower mixture and spread evenly.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until lightly browned over the top. Remove, let cool, and serve.

Per serving:

494 calories
42.2g of fat
21.3g of protein
4.4g of net carbs



SECOND...

Ribeye Steak Salad

Image courtesy of Serious Eats

https://ketodash.com/recipe/ribeye-steak-salad

Ingredients:

1 8 oz. Ribeye Steak

1 tbsp. Salt Sisters Steakhouse Seasoning

2 cups Green Salad Mix

1 tbsp. Olive Oil

1 tsp. White Wine Vinegar

Salt and Pepper to Taste

Directions:

1. Prepare Ribeye steak to your preferred temperature using Salt Sisters Steakhouse Seasoning. Let rest and cool completely.
2. Place salad greens, olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste in a large salad bowl.
3. Toss salad lightly until all greens are coated in oil.
4. Slice steak into small strips. Plate salad and lay steak on to salad.

Per Serving:

403 calories

33g of fat

35g of protein

1.5 Net carbs

LASTLY...

Oven Baked Chicken Cordon Bleu

Image courtesy to Keto Delivered

https://ketodash.com/recipe/oven-baked-chicken-cordon-bleu

Ingredients:

3 medium Chicken Thighs (~15 oz.)

2 oz. Ham, sliced

2 oz. Swiss Cheese

2 oz. Pork Dust

1 large Egg

1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder

1/2 tsp. Onion Powder

1/2 tsp. Dried Thyme

Salt and Pepper to Taste

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375F.
2. While oven is heating up season the chicken with salt and pepper, then lay ham and swiss cheese over each chicken thigh.
3. Roll each chicken thigh up and use toothpicks to secure it together.
4. Create a dipping station: whisk an egg into a bowl, spread pork dust in another bowl.
5. Dip each chicken thigh in egg, then into the pork dust to completely coat.
6. Lay each chicken thigh on a wire rack on top of a baking sheet.
7. Cook for 50-55 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and pork dust is crispy.

Per Serving:

419 calories

38.8g of fat

37.3g of protein

1.8 net carbs

For other GREAT, TASTY, FANTASTIC RECIPES, please visit https://ketodash.com for easy keto recipes!!

https://ketodash.com/blog/easy-keto-recipes/

My Cause

As mentioned in my previous post, there is something so contagious about someone acknowledging their lack of self-love for themselves. A movement that is also incredibly important to me, that I came across just entering college is a movement called The Self-Love Movement. This movement targets women with low self-esteem, and encourages a healthy, happy life, with themselves and with everyone around them. 

Creator Alana Avanitis had this to say about her rising movement:

"Live with an open heart and bathe in a sea of self-love. It is not selfish to love yourself unconditionally. In fact, it is absolutely necessary! Your entire world is reflective of the relationship you have with self. It’s time to nourish and nurture this connection and watch your life begin to magically blossom through the power of Self-Love.Self-Love is the act of putting your own happiness & well-being first, something that is lacking within our current society.

It all starts with SELF."

Before incorporating a diet that I knew was going to beneficially change my lifestyle, I realized that I needed to love myself before I could change myself. I had to determine what I loved about who I was before I could begin this new lifestyle.

I am more than an athlete, I am more than a student. I am more than a server at a restaurant. I am human and I make mistakes. But one thing I knew for certain was that I was my biggest critic. Coming to terms with that was the biggest uprising of self-esteem I could have given myself. 

For more information of the Self-Love Movement, check out their website at:

http://theself-lovemovement.com/

The Keto Community

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out my first post with helpful links and tips regarding all that is Keto, from recipes to healthful tips on maintaining the Keto Zone!

Something super important to me, that I never knew I would be able to establish on my Keto journey so far, is a bond and topic I could really relate to with my mom. The Keto Diet is one of the only diets I have seen truly have an effect on my mom, both physically and mentally.  She has been 'living keto' for close to a year now. She exercises regularly, at least twice a week and even though I am a collegiate athlete, she has truly inspired me to create a better and healthier lifestyle for myself.

There were many phone calls talking about things I had no knowledge about whatsoever, like ketones, and magnesium, and collagen, and blood pressure zones, and painfully so many more. My mom thinks our family thinks shes crazy, but I found it so inspiring that she was not only able to find a community that benefited her health but also a community she felt like she belonged to. It was so inspiring because it was a side of my mom I always knew was there, but had never seen it before.

She and I have a very similar physique. Very short, 5 foot 2', blonde hair, slight hour glass figure, and muscular. But she never saw herself like I did. She was a collegiate cheerleader herself, she was also a member of many collegiate dance teams so she held a great, healthy body shape her whole life. She started a family with my older sister first, then myself, and lastly, my little brother. Having three kids, putting them through school, and putting your family first before yourself always can become very overwhelming, it is though she forgot about herself and the things she loved and needed for herself.

Through the Keto community, she found belongingness. She found something in her that made her strive for self-betterment and self-love. She did this for herself, and just like college athletics, I'm following her foot steps.

That is why I am living keto.

What is "Keto"??

My name is Hanna Crist. I am 21 years old, and I am taking on the Ketogenic diet.

Throughout my life, friends and family of mine would agree that I am an active, athletic person. However, after my retirement from college soccer at my university, I had decided that now was a great time to start eating healthy and finding ways to compensate for my decline in top-notch daily exercise, in hopes of finding a diet that was easy to obtain, enjoyable, and relevant to my lifestyle. Then, my lovely mother introduced me to a diet she had just started called the Ketogenic diet: a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. This low carb diet produces ketones in the liver to be used as energy. The end goal of a properly maintained keto diet is to force your body into a metabolic state of ketosis, a natural process adapting the body to be able to thrive when food intake is low. During ketosis, the body produces ketones which breakdown fats within the liver. Ultimately, the goal is not to starve our bodies of calories, rather starvation of carbohydrates.

And the best part? **MOST OF THE KETOGENIC FRIENDLY RECIPES CAN BE EASILY MODIFIED FOR GLUTEN AND DAIRY ALLERGIES!!!**

The Ketogenic diet has an unlimited amount of health benefits to offer. Many of those benefits include weight loss, controlled blood sugar, mental focus, increased energy, normalized hunger, control of epilepsy episodes, cholesterol improvements, insulin resistance, and acne improvements. The diet also has an abundance of research to back up that the diet is also helping people suffering with:

• type 1 & 2 diabetes
• alzheimer's 
• parkinson's
• chronic inflammation
• obesity
• polysystic ovary syndrome
• fatty liver disease
• cancer
• migraines

IT LITERALLY HELPS IMPROVE ALMOST EVERYTHING WITHIN THE BODY!! What's stopping you from giving your body what it deserves??

This is not by any means, a blog persuading you that this diet is the best diet there is. Everyone's body is going to respond different to diets, depending on your lifestyle and your drive towards achieving your goal. This blog is here to document my attack on a healthy lifestyle and to show you guys all the physical and mental benefits there are to living keto!!

For more resources, the most useful sites I have found are:

https://ketodash.com/ketogenic-diet (detailed explanation of a keto diet)

https://ketodash.com/food (full list of foods and substitutes that are keto friendly)