The Best Keto Thanksgiving Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How do you survive Thanksgiving on keto? ›

A few general tips for making your Thanksgiving keto-friendly: Swap out mashed potatoes for mashed cauliflower, nix adding any flour to thicken recipes like green bean casserole or creamed spinach, and load up on the low-carb veggies like Brussels sprouts, spaghetti squash, and mushrooms.

A lazy keto diet consists of low-carb foods like meat, fish, full-fat dairy and non-starchy vegetables, but limits high-carb foods such as bread, potatoes, sugary snacks and some fruits. If you've tried the keto before and found it too tedious, lazy keto could be a good compromise.

There Are Plenty of Conscious Ways to Have a Keto Cheat Day

Or, if it's Thanksgiving, don't offer to cook green beans or turkey (which are already keto-compliant). Instead, bring a low-carb pumpkin pie or make mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes.

Cutting carbs cold turkey means there's suddenly an overload of insulin in the blood. This can lead to physical changes, such as headaches and shakiness, and emotional changes, such as irritability and depression.

The basic rules of keto are eating few carbohydrates and emphasizing fat with a moderate intake of protein. In order to be in a state of ketosis, you will likely have to track the amount of carbohydrates you eat by weighing out your food.

Without tracking the amount of fat you're taking in, you're unlikely to get your body to make the transition. Possible weight gain. Since there is no calorie restriction on the lazy keto diet, it is totally possible to binge and actually gain weight on this diet.

However, a low carbohydrate diet can be beneficial for weight loss, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk, even if a person does not enter ketosis. By requiring people to limit carbohydrates to 10% or less, the lazy keto diet may help them avoid heavily refined foods and added sugars.

The bottom line. You should avoid cheat meals and days on the keto diet. Consuming too many carbs can kick your body out of ketosis — and it takes several days to 1 week to get back into it. In the meantime, your weight loss may be disrupted.

Keto-friendly alcoholic drinks

Many low carb alcohol options are available if you follow a keto diet. For instance, pure forms of alcohol like whiskey, gin, tequila, rum, and vodka are all completely free of carbs. You can drink them straight or combine them with low carb mixers for more flavor.

How do I get back into ketosis after Thanksgiving? ›

Even if you enjoy a bit too much turkey, stuffing, potatoes or pie, there's no reason to fret, says Jamie Kandora, clinical nutrition manager for Tidelands Health. The important thing is to not let one day of overeating deter you from your long-term health goals.

People following the keto diet should be eating foods like fatty fish, eggs, dairy, meat, butter, oils, nuts, seeds and low-carb vegetables. “Fat bombs” like unsweetened chocolate or coconut oil can help people reach their daily goals for fat intake. Keto-compliant foods like red meats and nuts can be costly.

It's important that you do not just fall back into whatever old eating patterns you had before going keto! This could no only result in nasty side effects, but also, weight regain. Weight regain after restrictive diets like this is SO common it's almost textbook.