keto Jamaican – Here's What I Think…

Kelly Does Greece: THE FOOD!

I was blessed enough in 2022 to be able to strike “Visit Greece and eat all the food” off my bucket list. It almost didn’t happen at the 11th hour (Kelly Does Greece: A Dream Come True) but it did, and I shared what we did there in Kelly Does Greece: My Week In Paradise. This final of three posts is dedicated to The Food. It was MORE than I ever thought it would be. Seriously. What follows is a photo essay, where I share photos of the food we enjoyed. Ready? Let’s dig right in!

Keto Caribbean Christmas Dinner: Yes We Can! Updated Edition

Back in 2018 I did a post showing how we can totally maintain our Caribbean tradition of a huge, delicious Christmas dinner AND remain on track eating low-carb or keto. Four years and several more low-carb Christmas dinners later, I thought an update was in order. I have added some family and friends favourite dishes to my Christmas dinner repertoire and I’m happy to share my recipes and ideas with you here.

My 2018 post was a pretty good one, if I may say so myself! You should check it out. I looked at all of this:

Christmas meat dish options
Low-carb side dishes to replace the traditional crab heavy mac n cheese, rice npeas, etc.
Keto breads to add interest and keep things jiggy
Keto desserts (for what is a festive feast without a dessert table!)
Keto cocktails (yes, we can keep our spirits high should we so choose)

Keto Worked for Me, but I’ve Fallen Off & Can’t Get Back On!

I’ve done this. I’ve seen this with a number of persons I’ve had the privilege of coaching. I’ve seen the stories members of our Caribbean Keto Tribe have shared in our Facebook Group. You start off with a fervent desire to lose weight and improve health and your energy matches this desire. Meal prep is done with gusto. You press through the initial uncomfortable days of the “keto flu” and you celebrate with joy & relief with the first 8 pound loss.

Woo-hoo! Your clothes are fitting better and your energy is through the roof, you feel positive and you just KNOW that you’ve found your key to losing weight and feeling good. Then after a few weeks, sometimes it is even a few months, you come off plan for any variety of reasons.

…And then that one cheat meal becomes a cheat weekend, which becomes a cheat week, which becomes a cheat month and before you know it, despite your most fervent desire to return to the heady glory days of your first experience with keto, you remain stuck. You remain unable to consistently eat low-carb even though the weight is creeping back on, even though your energy has dipped, even though you KNOW eating low-carb really and truly worked for you.

First of all, you are not alone!

She Lost 78 Pounds and she’s 68! LaRonda’s story.

I’d like to introduce you to my friend, LaRonda Robinson. We met on Twitter a few years ago. LaRonda is a very interesting woman, and a single blog post will never cover her many facets. The purpose of this particular blog post is to share a part of her story that she’s graciously consented to share. I have been intrigued by this part of her story and have wanted to document it for some time now. So here we are! Let me present the executive summary, and then I invite you to dig in for the details. LaRonda is a 68 year old great grandma who has lost 74 lbs over the last two years. Yes, 78 pounds! What follows is HER story. Are there learnings we can take from LaRonda’s journey? See for yourself!

Meal Prep for Keto Made Easy! Tips and hacks for even non-cooks.

It’s still not a low-carb world, but with a little planning and a little effort too, you can stick to your desire to eat low-carb and improve your health and your life. Recently, a friend who had lost 30 lbs on keto, asked me for help. He said that he is bored with his food. That he feels stuck rotating the low-carb foods that he has been eating for the past year or so, and that on the road, his options are so limited. He knows he doesn’t want to go back to the bread and rice, so he finds himself not eating. Someone else in his position is likely to find themself eating those unhealthy foods again. No bueno. Food is good. I believe we were meant to enjoy food (function AND pleasure). And we need to nourish our bodies. Sleep and nourishing food are critical to optimizing weight and health. I already shared my own hacks for Eating Keto on the Go in Jamaica. In this post I share my hacks for making meal prep easy and tasty!

Keto Caribbean Style? Yes we can!

So keto is in the news these days, all over it. And for those of us living in the Caribbean I can understand why some would dismiss the benefits of this diet and ignore the success stories by labeling it as “another north American fad.” Well, I live in the Caribbean, Jamaica to be precise, and I’ve been keto since end August 2017…and counting. And I’m not alone! There’s a small but growing community of us right here in the Caribbean and the diaspora who are living the keto lifestyle, eating the delicious high octane food that characterises our region. In my latest podcast episode I cover the following topics to show how we rock keto Caribbean style

10 Tips for Staying Keto in a Non-Keto Household

One of the members of our Caribbean Keto Tribe reached out to the group with this question: “How do you stay on track with keto when there are people in the house who eat carbs?” It’s a very valid question. When you’re trying to change the way you’ve eaten all your life, and those same (delicious) carbs are all around you, the task can seem daunting. It becomes trickier when you’re the one that prepares most of the meals too, right? You figure that if you lived alone or if everyone else was doing keto, you could easily make a salad with grilled chicken or some cauliflower rice and curried goat and keto on. But the presence of bread in the house, that ice cream in the freezer, that box of breakfast cereal in the cupboard, the crispy snacks that you buy for the kids and the mac and cheese you’re making to go with dinner test your best resolve.

NOTE: This post was first written when I was 1.5 years into my own keto journey. I’ve since updated it and changed it from “8 tips” to “10 tips” based on my experience 6.5 years later!

How I Changed 5 Habits in order to Lose Weight on the Keto Diet

I’ve been on the keto diet for over a year and a half now. If I had a dollar for every time someone remarked to me “Wow! You have so much willpower!” I wouldn’t need to sell another low-carb bread or quiche! I don’t think that willpower has been the critical success factor for me on this journey. I have simply created some new habits that have now become my default position, the way I simply live today. I have discovered that so much of what we eat, how much we eat and when we eat, is not driven by our physiology or some biological need to survive. We do these things largely out of habit! That’s how we’ve always eaten. We always eat breakfast! Right? As I coach people in their own weight loss journeys, I’ve become interested in this whole subject of “habit” and “addiction” and change. People can and do change their habits. Sure, it takes some effort, but understanding exactly how habits work can help you target your efforts and make them count. Yes you can!

Getting Back on the Keto Track in 4 Easy Steps

The holidays, Easter, Christmas & Thanksgiving, see so many of us straying off plan. If you’re like a lot of people, your healthy lifestyle typically takes a back seat. Between the parties, get-togethers and endless treats that characterize whatever the season is (think cake and bun and cocktails) you know you’ve a gained a few and you probably feel a tad lethargic and plenty guilty. What’s done is done. You now have a chance to pick up where you left off. Here are my suggestions for getting back on track.

Don’t Sabotage Your Keto Journey by Too Many Changes All at Once.

When most of us decide to embark on (yet another) weight loss program, we attack Day 1 of The Change with gusto! “I’m going keto! I’m going to lose weight and my life will change!” We go to the gym, we pack our salad for lunch, we come home energised and eat air pie and breeze pudding (ok maybe we eat another salad) and feel great! “I’m gonna do this (this time)!” we shout to all who’ll listen. Day 2 is a repeat of Day 1. Yippee! Day 5: Let’s skip the gym today. I’ve been good all week. And I’m totally going to have a slice of cheesecake today. Let’s call it a cheat day plus I’m sooo worth it. Two months later the scale hasn’t budged, your friends and family are gently teasing you about the grand announcements you made about turning your life around with weight loss and deep down you feel like a miserable failure even if you never say it aloud, and your self-esteem takes a battering. You’ve failed. Again. You’ll be fat forever. You’re weak. You’re greedy. You’re not disciplined enough. You lack willpower. Those are the LIES seeking to condemn you to an unhappy state. Continue reading Don’t Sabotage Your Keto Journey by Too Many Changes All at Once.