Eating Keto in Beijing and Beyond

Eating Keto in Beijing and Beyond

Brendan Davis
personal

Left: me last Fall. Right: today (Feb 24, 2020), down 60 pounds / 27.2 kilos

Intro:

Since posting about my recent weight loss on a keto diet (-60 pounds / 27.2 kilos in 12 weeks, and counting), I've had several requests for details of my meal plan and strategies for success, so I wrote it all up in a comprehensive but concise way - enjoy (or ignore) as you like. 

But first: I am NOT a Doctor or medical professional / nutritionist. So heed ALL of the below at your own peril. It’s just my experience and what works for ME, in terms of taste, food preferences, etc.

If you’re slim, or just a little bit pudgy, there are MUCH easier ways to get in better shape or drop a few pounds / kilos than keto. It ain’t for everyone, and for many people, it’s HARD to follow.

My version assumes an omnivore diet. There are vegetarian and even vegan versions of keto that can also work, but today I’m sharing what I do. 

The main taste emphasis of this diet is on savory versus sweet, and fat then protein then carbs as the macronutrients stack. 

It’s the polar opposite of the much-maligned (and largely debunked) “food pyramid”.

For some people alone these facts are a dealbreaker.

But especially if you are truly fat (like me) and need to lose a lot of weight, it DOES work.

First, some maxims and axioms...

High-level must-dos:

  • Getting your food macros right is the #1 most important thing to making this work (other than not eating keto-friendly foods, which is a no-brainer)...

  • You MUST get about 70% of your calories from good fats (my choices detailed below), then about 25% of your calories from protein, and only 5% or so of your calories from carbohydrates. No joke. 

  • At first this sounds super hard and maybe gross - “who’d want to eat all that fat?” - but it gets much easier (and is very tasty!) if you choose marbeled cuts of meat, use the oils I suggest below to cook in, and dress / sauce your foods (meat and veggies) with those oils or butter

  • You HAVE TO keep your total carbs in a day below about 25 grams - a measly amount of most foods - and watch for “hidden carbs” in sauces or other places that are harder to track. A keto-friendly barbecue sauce, for instance, is a unicorn.

  • Another “keto killer” is eating too MUCH protein in a sitting. High-protein diets in general are amazing (for most people) for weight-loss, strength building, etc, but if you overeat protein on keto, that can stymie your progress. Fat really is the key here.

  • Try for a balance of these macros at every “feeding”. But skipping carbs completely is fine.

Other important tips / keys / notes / personal experiences / habits:

  • You CANNOT “cheat” on keto and have it work. No “cheat meals” or “cheat days”. It doesn’t WORK like that. You have to GET into ketosis - which can take 24 hours or longer, usually 2-3 days starting out - and then STAY there. Period, end of story. 

  • IF you fall out, get back in as soon as possible. It’s not something you can half-ass for it to work, and if you’re NOT in ketosis, eating this much saturated fat could kill you - or at a minimum, make you MUCH FATTER - in the long run

  • For me, and in general, the most effective way to GET into or get back into ketosis if you screw up is to fast for 24-36 hours

  • The results I’ve had so far (again: down 60 pounds / 27.2 kilos in 3 months) have been almost ALL diet. I’ve been walking more lately back in the US - before I left China, it was freezing, and then the virus scare started to manifest, so I stayed mostly homebound - but diet is key. Exercise can only help (and I’m going to amp it up as I drop more weight and get more comfortable with the exertion required) but if you master your food, you’re most of the way there.

Now, a few typical meals I’ll eat (details of each below) are:

  • eggs - cooked in butter or a good oil, with cheese, or with avocado on the side if hard boiled or I’m out of cheese. Pro tip: don’t run out of cheese!

  • a meat with a side of green veggies and some cheese (if there isn’t a lot of fat in the meat or not enough from the cooking methods used)

  • bacon and more bacon (I don’t make much of it but I love it and it’s super keto, so I get it when I can)

  • a charcuterie platter of salamis and cheeses (no bread, of course)

  • baked meatballs or chicken with pesto sauce and cheese and extra olive oil or butter

  • fish: baked or pan fried, with lots of butter or good oil, with a side of veggies

A note about intermittent fasting (IF):

I only eat between 2-8PM most days. By choice, not because I’m trying to starve myself - I’m not hungry otherwise - but that’s a result of many factors...

A big one is that my hours are weird. I’ve organized my life to better accommodate calls and messages with business partners and friends living and working in lots of different time zones, and also to allow me to follow my own biorhythms which make me WANT to sleep between about 2-10AM - so adjust as needed for your own schedule. 

I work for myself so that makes it easier, but it’s doable on any schedule just as long as you keep the principles intact.

I wake up around 10AM, freshen up, and then it’s coffees and water for me until I’m legitimately hungry - which is around 2-3PM most days.

Then I eat a second meal around 7-8PM, but again - only if I’m hungry. Sometimes I make a big meal for my late lunch, and then I’m good for the rest of the day.

But one other key is to NOT eat within about 4-5 hours of sleeping. For most people, this means finishing your last meal by around 7-8PM. And then don’t eat for as long as you’re comfortable in the mornings before your stomach and body tells you otherwise - not your conditioned brain, or any external “we all must eat now!” pressures dictate. 

Everyone in your office “must” eat at noon? Screw that. Be the captain of your own ship. Go be social with people at lunchtime if that’s culturally important, but drink a water or coffee with them instead of the crap they’re eating. Then take a short break and eat food you’ve brought to work a little later, when YOU need to eat.

To make ANY diet, or lifestyle change in general, work, you MUST take control of yourself and learn to chart your OWN course. There is literally no way around this.

Alright. Those are the basics. Now for details about each food category. Note that I wrote this originally for some friends back in China (where my home has been for four years) who asked for details on what I have been doing, so I reference some Beijing-local stores or restaurants here and there. Some of the things I eat are not as much to local tastes in China, and therefore more expensive and/or harder to find. But in the US, you can easily find anything I mention below at a Whole Foods, Costco, Publix, Ralph’s, etc. Many more brands and options, and it’s cheaper, too.

Proteins:

  • eggs (quality is key - organic if possible - cooked every way imaginable: boiled, fried, scrambled, frittatas with peppers and onions and garlic, baked in a dish…)

  • steak (get AUS or NZ beef if possible, somewhat marbled - my buddy Justin works for a high-end supplier in Beijing that runs deals all the time, and they deliver with a decent minimum order - I can connect you if you want)

  • pork (find good quality at April Gourmet / Jenny Lu’s): good / real bacon, or pork chops

  • fish (salmon for me; either smoked, raw to bake or fry - good grocery stores have options, plus IKEA’s salmon is pretty good too - it’s easy to keep a bunch in the freezer)

  • chicken (not much fat on a chicken, but baked in olive oil and butter, or pesto sauce, is so good)

  • IKEA meatballs (also super handy to keep a bag or two in the freezer and prepare from frozen: bake as with chicken and bang - killer)

  • lamb is also fine but I don’t cook it much - would rather eat it in a good Chinese restaurant! 

  • salamis and other quality sliced meats. Avoid processed lunch meat (for lots of reasons, keto being only one of them) but a charcuterie platter of salamis and cheeses (minus the bread) is a regular meal for me

Vegetables (carbs):

There are actually a lot of choices here. Personally, I am really partial to green vegetables. They are also usually the most keto-friendly, including:

  • spinach

  • broccoli

  • asparagus

  • lettuces / cabbage / bok choy - since these are usually cooked in commercial-grade (i.e. bad) oils in Chinese restaurants, it’s an easy adaptation to make a familiar side dish at home of fried cabbage or bok choy, just using olive oil. This tastes WAY better and will keep you on the keto path

  • peppers (hot, ultrahots, bell, Shishito, etc - go crazy)

With the above, you can eat about as much as you’d possibly want to, and stay in ketosis. 

With vegetables in general, though, the hardest thing for many people to get right is that SOME vegetables that are otherwise hearty / healthy / delicious are super starchy / high in carbs / calorie-dense, and must be avoided at all costs. The NO! list includes things like potatoes, carrots, etc. 

Also, eat NO (regular) pastas or rice or other grains. Ever. There are so many “keto” versions of pasta that some of them must be good, but I haven’t ventured there yet. Likewise: NO BREAD. I miss pizza, and there are some cauliflower-crust pizzas out there, but until I hear of one that people say is amazing, I’d rather eat the other stuff that’d go on top of it, just on a plate.

Search online for “keto-friendly vegetables” for countless lists of choices, ranked by how much of each you can safely have without kicking yourself out of keto. The same thing goes for fruits, most of which are super sugary, some are starchy, and will wreck your keto with just a few bites. NO bananas, apples, I’d avoid oranges…I miss oranges more than Vanilla Cokes, and that’s saying something. 😉 

Fats:

  • cheese (some of the conventional wisdom on keto says “soft cheeses are the best”, but I like sharp / hard / really savory cheeses like cheddars, goudas, and parmesans, among many others, and my success is based on eating almost exclusively those)

  • animal fats from meat / fish

  • avocados

  • oils 

  • butter

All cooking in:

  • olive oil

  • coconut oil

  • avocado oil

  • butter

Snacks:

  • macadamia nuts (damn near a perfect keto food; if they were half the price I’d eat them twice as often)

  • almonds

Fruit / sweets:

  • raspberries

  • strawberries

  • blackberries

Condiments / sauces / flavorings / etc:

  • lemon juice

  • hot sauce (!!!)

  • sea salt

  • pepper

  • GARLIC (all caps because it’s GARLIC, and it’s awesome)

  • pesto sauce (Annie’s in Beijing makes a great one, and April Gourmet carries a good one too)

  • Angostura orange bitters (in whiskey drinks or occasionally an iced coffee)

Main drinks:

  • water

  • coffee / espresso (usually iced Americanos made with fizzy water. Always with no sugar, very occasionally with a little half & half or heavy cream - skip actual lattes)

  • “fizzy water” (San Pellegrino, Perrier, Schweppes soda water, calorie-free “fruit essence” waters like Hint or La Croix)

Small amounts of whole milk or half & half are okay, but adults don’t really need milk (sorry, milk industry) and what you get in most stores is usually crap even if it IS safe these days. ONLY get great quality, at a Jenny Lu or April Gourmet if in China, and even then, only use a very little. A tiny spot of real heavy cream (which I have NEVER found in China, sadly) goes a long way to making coffee more awesome, but if you can learn to not love it, you’ll be better off.

Bottom line: drinking your calories is a bad move on ANY diet, and milk doesn’t get a free pass just because your grandmother drinks it and she’s lived to be 98 so far.

And last but not least:

Alcohol:

I rarely drink, by choice. Being the adult child of an alcoholic will do that to you (if you’re lucky, like me). Wines and beer are a giant NO (and when I DO want a drink, I love both, sadly). But many spirits are okay, in serious moderation:

  • Vodka is many people’s keto go-to tipple

  • a little rum or tequila is okay (but watch the sugar content of some of them)

  • but for me...

  • A good whiskey is my favorite. 

I like it straight, on the rocks, or as a whiskey soda (whiskey + fizzy water on the rocks). 

Brand depends on my budget at the moment, but I especially love ryes, in particular Basil Hayden’s Dark Rye (moderately pricey but super nice), Michter’s Rye (even more pricey but really worth the splurge once in awhile), Knob Creek Rye (100 proof! And a great value), or the Jim Beam Pre-Prohibition Style Rye (the very best bang for the buck, IMHO - a bottle of that is only about $15 USD most places, and you can even get it at 7-11s in China for about 100RMB; it’s pretty great)

Wrapping up:

Okay! Thanks for reading my keto Ted Talk. I hope this was helpful, or interesting. Feel free to ask questions. But I’m not here to defend this or debate about it. It’s presented by semi-popular demand about what works and has worked for ME, not because I think I’ve discovered the Rosetta Stone or something. Happy eating!