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Lazy keto is simply only counting your carb intake. There is no need to keep track of macro percentages or grams.
To be in a state of ketosis you will want to keep your carbs under 50 grams per day (source). Some people may need to have fewer than 50 grams of carbs per day. Everyone is different.
A lot of people try to keep their carbs under 20 grams.
This post will be about what this form of keto is, its benefit, a drawback, what to eat, losing weight on it, and a cheat sheet.
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Classic Keto vs Lazy Keto
Classic keto is where the person consumes 4% carbs, 6% protein, and 90% fats from their total calorie intake (source).
Therefore, the difference between classic keto and lazy keto is tracking all of the macronutrients or just tracking the carb grams.
On the classic keto diet, the individual will need to weigh out the foods they eat and keep track of protein grams, fat grams, and carbohydrate grams for the day.
Dirty Keto vs Lazy Keto
Dirty keto is consuming anything that fits into your macros that you are tracking. You don’t have to worry about the quality of the food you choose to eat.
So, the main difference between lazy keto and dirty keto is that you are tracking all of your macros on dirty keto, as you track just carbs on lazy keto.
Losing Weight
You can lose weight on lazy keto. You may read that you can’t lose weight by just counting your carbs, but you can. Check out this story on Women’s Health about how someone lost 150 pounds with this way of keto.
They bring up that you could consume too much protein. Then gluconeogenesis happens, which is a pathway in your body that uses protein and creates glucose for energy.
The fact of the matter is that everybody is different. Ketogenic.com explains in their blog post how people are different on this topic of protein. They explain that if you are more sensitive to insulin (a good thing), then your body won’t easily kick you out of ketosis due to protein levels.
The best way to test your protein limit is to track how much protein you are eating while testing your ketones. Ketogenic.com explains how you can do this in more detail. This requires tracking more than just carbs, so it’s not lazy.
However, you can figure out your protein allowance before going lazy to get an idea of what your daily meals could look like with protein. Then just estimate it when you just want to count your carbs.
If you are not losing weight while eating this way, test your blood ketone levels to see if this could be a possible reason for a weight loss stall. Testing your urine and breath is less accurate than blood to test your ketone levels (source).
If you are still in ketosis, then the protein is not the problem. You could be eating too many calories or something else is the reason for no weight loss.
Lazy Keto Foods
The foods you would eat are all keto foods. If the carbs are low enough, feel free to enjoy these foods.
To help here is a list of the common foods you can eat.
- Meat such as beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and deer.
- Seafood such as haddock, salmon, anchovies, shrimp, and tuna.
- Berries such as blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries
- Lower-carb vegetables, such as lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, zucchini, and asparagus.
- Nuts and seeds, such as brazil nuts, almonds, flax seeds, and walnuts.
Click here for a full pdf list of keto foods.
There are packaged keto foods that you can enjoy as well. When looking at these products check to see how many carbs they have per serving and eat accordingly.
You can even enjoy coffee at places like Starbucks. Make sure you order drinks with sugar-free syrups and use heavy cream and or unsweetened almond milk in place of cow’s milk.
Example of a Lazy Keto Meal Plan
Here is just one day of what you can eat.
Breakfast: fatty coffee (blend 2 tablespoons of butter into your coffee), 2 eggs, 2 pieces of bacon.
Lunch: Cobb salad with avocado, drizzled with avocado oil.
Dinner: Ribeye steak with mushrooms and butter.
For more breakfast ideas, check out my post on Lazy Keto Breakfasts Ideas and Recipes.
The Best Benefit of Lazy Keto
The best benefit is that you only need to keep track of one macronutrient, which is the carbs.
I think it’s hard to overeat protein to kick you out of ketosis. Therefore this takes the stress out of how much meat to eat.
A Drawback
One of the most common drawbacks is not always getting a well-balanced nutrient diet. There are no rules as to exactly what foods you should be eating and not eating, it only matters about the carbs.
Therefore, you could be consuming highly inflammatory seed oils. Or you could be lacking micronutrients such as iron, which is higher in red meat compared to poultry (source 1, source 2).
Lazy Keto Cheat Sheet
Click here to download this cheat sheet to put it on your fridge.
