Message #23948

[mccoy]

Kingfisher, it would not be impossible, although sure pretty restricting, to go over a vegetarian keto diet.
That's an extreme diet probably better left to extreme cases and I agree that it is not the best conceptual solution for a vegetarian.
Anyway, if Steve wants to try, I can help put up a daily schedule. I recently went thru a low-carb regime (non-ketogenic) myself and have ben researching nutrition for the latests months.
Of course not all the reports of ill effects of keto diets coming from medical sources, listed in the previous post,  are correct.
Some of them are downright ridiculous, such as the 'growth retardation because of protein deficiency'. It is well known that a keto diet tends to be hyper-proteic, not hypo. They confound maybe raw vegan with ketogenic.

Anyway, Steve, if you'd like to try we can build up a schedule. In the other thread I suggested you the Valter Longo scheme because it's based upon a vegan diet with pulses and cereals.

What you can eat on a keto-veg diet:

All pure fats you wish: EVOO, butter, vegetable oils
Lots of eggs
Lots of cheese (hard, without sugar)
Lots of tofu and unsweetened soy products.
Lots of olives, providing they contain no carbs in dressing (pls read the labels always).
One pound per day of tossed salad with whatever unsweetend dressing
Or
10 ounces per day of vegetables grown above the soil, like spinachs, broccoli, cabbage, kale, again, with lots of unsweetened dressing
You can eat moderate amounts of nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds): 2 ounces max
You can eat avocados, tomatoes (one pound per day max)
Tea, coffe, unsweetened or sweetened with a little stevia

What you can eat very sparingly:
milk and yogurt, because they contain carbs.
Some kind of nuts like cashews, because they contain carbs
Some vegetables grown below ground, because they contain more carbs
Berries, but no more than an ounce per day or twice a week
One tablespoon unsweetened soluble cocoa powder

What you cannot eat:
All fruit, fresh and dried
All cereals, bread, rice, potatoes
All simple sugars even if natural, that's a no-no
All sugars contained in processed food and dressings

A threshold posed to protein consumption is the gluconeogenesis threshold: too many proteins turn into glucose via hepatic metabolic paths. As a very approximate estimate, your threshold might be 80 grams of proteins per day.

That is: 10 eggs, or about 15 ounces of cheddar cheese, plus the proteins from vegetables and nuts.
This diet requires to eat lots and lots of fats, to reach satiety.
Also, a keto diet requires a larger amount of salt, that is important.