As I type this I am sitting on the plane on the way home from Las Vegas. I love Vegas. I love the lights. I love that the city never sleeps. I love that there is so much to do you are never bored. I love how easy it is to fulfill my step count. But after 3 or 4 days I am always so happy to leave. It’s exhausting. And my feet hurt.
When I pack for Vegas I always pack pretty shoes for when we go for dinner and a show. The reality is I have never, in the 4 times we have been, worn them. It’s just too much walking to wear anything other than a pair of Sketchers or my trusty so-well-worn-in-they-are-falling-apart boots. But I continue to pack them. Maybe one day I’ll actually wear them.
In October my Dr. found some really high liver enzymes on some bloodwork he ran so he put me on a low carbohydrate diet. I have a friend who is also a Dr. and I did the bad friend thing and asked her for advice as well (my family Dr. is new and I wasn’t sure yet how I feel about his recommendations!). She suggested I make a switch to a keto diet and check out www.dietdoctor.com I fully trusted her advice however the thought of switching to a diet that is 70% fat went against everything I had ever known. So after some research I settled on the Paleo diet instead, which is grain free, sugar free, dairy free.
I didn’t find the switch too difficult as we don’t eat breads, pastas or potatoes very often. In the following few months I lost about 20lbs and I actually felt so much better. A lot of my bloating was gone, I had more energy, I wasn’t hungry. As much as I liked the Paleo diet I knew there was something else out there that was similar but had a few others tweaks that would better suit me and my body. After A LOT of research I decided I would give Keto a try. I follow a few keto lovers on Instagram and @ketoincanada totally inspired (and continues to inspire) me!
The Ketogenic diet is low carb (less than 25grams/day in most cases), moderate protein, and high fat. 70% of your day is fat. Bacon? A terrible idea on most conventional diets, a perfect food on Keto? Hmmmm, maybe these people are onto something. So during the first week of February I made the switch.
I tried the Atkins diet years ago when it first came out and it’s quite similar to Keto. I didn’t enjoy it the first time round, I kept cheating. But that’s the thing about the keto diet, if you cheat, it doesn’t work (although that’s true for most diets!). Eating low carb and high fat trains your body to find it’s energy supply in your fat instead of glycogen (which your body gets from carbs and sugars). Your body becomes a furnace and burns your body fat, even when you don’t exercise (of course exercise is essential, and so therapeutic!). Once your body is in ketosis and burning the fat it’s a pretty low maintenance system. You have more energy, your skin becomes so much smoother, there’s no bloated feeling after eating and, honestly there is TMI coming here, my bowels have never worked better. I have struggled my whole life with my guts. They seem to bloat and get that ugly, uncomfortable feeling no matter what I ate. Until I went Keto.
I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I’m not saying everyone should jump on the Keto wagon (although there are a lot more people taking that plunge now!), I’m just saying this is working for me! I feel 100% better. So much so that my husband has committed to making the switch as well.
Vegas is a difficult town to eat well in but, other than a few meals that I intentionally catapulted myself off of the wagon, I managed to keep it Keto. It’s actually much easier than I thought it would be. I have always been one of those people who hated to ask for foods to be prepared differently, or substitutions made, but I did it this trip.
And you know what happened?
Waiters, waitresses, and baristas were all more than happy to oblige and not one of them rolled their eyes at me!
I kept track of what I ordered and consumed at each meal as I thought a few of you might be curious. If you don’t care what I ate during my week in Vegas just skip ahead. I promise I won’t be offended!
Monday – this was a travel day for us, we had an hour drive from our house to the airport, an hour flight from Prince George to Vancouver. Then a 3 hour layover in Vancouver before another 2 1/2 hour flight to Vegas. When we got to Prince George our first stop is always Starbucks. This was a hard one for me. I don’t like my coffee black, although it’s growing on me, but over the last few weeks I have researched on what I could have and have settled on a Grande Blonde Americano with 2 pumps of sugar free cinnamon dolce syrup (0g carbs!) and a splash of heavy whipping cream (also 0g carbs!). We had lunch at Red Robin before we went to the airport and I had a Wedgie burger, which is a burger patty with cheese and avocado and regular fixings inside of a lettuce wrap instead of a bun, and a side of broccoli.
On the plane was difficult but I settled on a cheese plate. There were 3 different types of cheese, a package of crackers, a little bag of trail mis made with sunflower seeds, dark chocolate, and dried cranberries, and a couple of apple slices and grapes. I ate the cheese, gave the crackers to my husband, picked the cranberries out of the trail mix as they were sweetened with sugar, and ate the fruit. Less than ideal but a drastic improvement over what I would normally have consumed!
Once we arrived in Vegas and got checked into the hotel it was 10pm and we needed some supper. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe and I had chicken fajitas with lettuce wraps instead of tortillas. Fajitas are a decent choice as they come with lots of extra fats in the form of guacamole and sour cream! Yum! Because it was supper time and I was in Vegas I wanted something other than water to drink so I had a club soda with a couple of limes. It’s my favorite go-to drink when I want to feel fancy. And it’s 0g carbs!
Tuesday – we usually stay at New York New York and there are lots of good restaurants in our hotel. One of them has a buy one breakfast, get one free for hotel guests so we went there (more money for the slot machines!). All of the breakfasts came with fresh, warm homemade bread and fried potatoes and onions but I did the responsible thing and ordered 2 eggs soft poached, with sausage, and told them no potatoes or bread! Oh, and I added a side of hollandaise sauce cause that’s how Keto rolls! It was really good and kept me going for hours. Then another stop at Starbucks before hitting the Strip.
For lunch we went to Bubba Gumps. I had never been to one before! I loved it! And I scored 100% when our waitress quizzed me about Forrest Gump trivia. I ordered shrimp kabobs (which was just shrimp, peppers, and zucchini), and a side of broccoli. It was really really good! I would highly recommend, even if you’re not on a Keto diet!
Supper was back at our hotel in a really good Asian restaurant called Chin Chin. I had wonton soup for starter but gave Rex all of the wontons (yep that pretty much means I had a bowl of broth with a few chunks of chicken but it was really good!). Then I had lettuce wraps for supper. They were also really really good. I would definitely have it again! I had club soda with limes and a lemon just to mix it up a bit (or cause Rex threw his lemon in!).
Wednesday – breakfast at our hotel again. This day I had eggs Benedict without the English muffin and potatoes, with a side of bacon. Then Starbucks again (I have a Starbucks problem!). We love to road trip so we took this day to rent a car, get out of the city, and do some exploring. It was a beautiful day and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Rex has been on the lookout for a Claim Jumper restaurant for the last few years and we found one in Laughlin. For lunch I ordered a chicken club wrap without the wrap. I will confess I got a funny look from the waitress for this one but I just asked her to pile it all on a plate and they did. I got a big bowl full of diced chicken, bacon, lettuce, cheese, avocados, and ranch dressing. I had Thai peanut slaw on the side which, to be honest, I suspect had sugar in it but I ate it anyway. Then the day went south…Golden Corral. Golden Corral has been a favorite of ours since that first fateful day about 5 years ago when my in laws took us when we visited them in Arizona. I don’t know why but we LOVE Golden Corral. We had no intention of misbehaving but obviously the Golden Corral gods heard we were in town and they sucked us in. When it was merely a suggestion I had full intentions of eating Keto there. It’s definitely possible. But then I walked through those doors and that was that. But don’t worry. I suffered. I suffered all night long. Did we learn our lesson? I’d love to say yes but honestly I doubt it. Good thing we’re usually only south of the border once a year!
Thursday – after a long, uncomfortable night from our pig-out neither one of us wanted a real breakfast so we just each grabbed a cheese stick at Starbucks to eat with our coffee. We had booked a tour for this morning so we walked to the Rio for pickup which is 2 miles. We could have taken a cab but it was our redemption for the prior evenings pig-out. Part of our tour was lunch at Danny “The Count” Kokkers restaurant Vamp’d. I had a buffalo chicken salad (no breading on the chicken) and it was really good! I’m going to try to recreate it at home! Danny Kokker also has a tattoo shop in the Rio so we went to have a look and I ended up getting a bright colourful water-colour tattoo down my whole forearm so that took all afternoon! After I was done we had a few hours to kill before our show so we headed to Outback for supper. Rex had never been to an Outback and he wanted to try it. I had parmesan crusted chicken with broccoli. It was pretty good and pretty keto compliant but the blooming onion we had as a starter most definitely wasn’t. It was at this point that I decided I was getting serious when we got home and if I had already thrown myself out of ketosis I should at least enjoy a hot fudge sundae one last time. So after our show that’s exactly what I did. Sorry there is a noticable absence of photos from today, not sure what happened!
Friday – our travel home day. We had breakfast at our hotel again, I had 2 poached eggs and sausage. Then one last Starbucks for a while (the closest one to us is an hour away). On the plane I had a Baja bowl which was chicken and veggies with salsa and sour cream. There was rice in it but at that point I couldn’t pick it out so ended up eating most of it. When we finally arrived back in Prince George it was 8pm and we were starving so we hit Earls and we split an order of Dynamite rolls and I had a California chicken burger without the bun with a field greens salad on the side. Again, no photos from today’s food. Wow, 2 out of 5 days with no photos, I really failed lol!
So as I sit here in this plane seat, the guy in front of me who has his seat reclined all the way and the guy behind me who keeps slamming his tray and kicking my seat, politely turning down the flight attendant every time she tries to offer me something to eat, I am planning our meal plan for the next 7 days and thinking about how much better we will both feel.