How do you stay low carb or keto when you don’t want to cook? What do you do when you come home late, tired, or you’re simply unprepared?
Below, find our best ideas for how to stay low carb when you don’t feel like cooking at all or don’t have much time to cook.
1. Drink tea or coffee
A soothing cup of tea or coffee may be just enough to curb your appetite, especially if you add some heavy cream or melted butter.1 This may take you to your next planned meal, with no cooking.
Fill your pantry and fridge with low-carb essentials so you can quickly make a platter with one or more of these low-carb snacks instead of cooking. Be sure to include at least one protein source.
Get in the habit of making double or even triple meals and vegetables. Freeze the leftovers. A meal is waiting, ready to reheat, when you don’t want to cook. Leftovers are superb for lunches too. Check out our planned leftovers worksheet for ideas.
Boil an egg.3 Fry a steak or buy a hot cooked chicken (without bread stuffing or sweet sauces). Add a bag of salad, a selection of cheeses and homemade mayonnaise. Dinner can be ready in 10 minutes. Get creative with salads and use your low-carb pantry essentials.
You can also use our simple keto plates. Here’s some inspiration:
If you know you’ll be home late but have time in the morning (or even the night before), use your slow cooker. Slow cookers are a fabulous way to transform cheaper cuts of meat into satisfying comfort meals. This is easy ‘set and forget’ cooking.
What can you prepare in your slow cooker? Here are some great ideas to cook up:
Are you really hungry? Learn to understand your appetite and eat only when hungry. This may not be an option for a family but is great for individuals. And there is no faster (pun intended!) or simpler option.
Try to be prepared so you’re not in this position too often: planning meals for the week or even a few days at a time will help a lot. Try to set time aside each evening to cook, or batch cook once a week.
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The meal plan below is available through Diet Doctor Plus. Not a member? Sign up for a FREE 30-day trial to get our no cooking meal plan and many other membership benefits. After the free trial ends, it’s only $9.99/month or $99/year.
Want a week off cooking? Kitchen renovation, traveling, or heading on holiday – whatever the reason, we have you covered!
This week’s meal plan is crammed with no-cook, yet deliciously tasty meals, that are perfect if you’re looking to spend less time in the kitchen. With the exception of boiling a few eggs for the week, you won’t need to cook, heat, or warm anything this week. We’ve also helped speed up your mornings, with simple-yet-deliciously-filling butter coffee for breakfast on your weekdays.
This meal plan will keep you below 19 g net carbs per day. How great is that?
Are you concerned that butter, cream, cheese and other foods foods high in saturated fat are unhealthy? In all likelihood, you don’t need to be.
Although still considered controversial by some experts, several large systematic reviews of clinical trials have found no evidence that eating foods high in saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease, early death, or other health problems:
Meat is a high-quality source of protein and other essential nutrients. The evidence linking it to heart disease, cancer, and other health issues is very weak: Guide to red meat: is it healthy?↩
Eggs are an excellent source of protein. Although they’re high in cholesterol, eggs don’t seem to raise cholesterol levels much in most people, and they may even reduce some heart disease risk factors:
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