Living a Keto Life

The classic ketogenic diet journey hasn't been an easy one for us, and we are only now starting to really get the implications of what it means to live a high fat, low carb diet.

As you know (or if you don't - do now) it's not a pure lifestyle choice. Without getting too much into it, the only accepted partial treatment for Glut1DS is a medical Ketogenic diet. Which is a bit different from what is considered to be popular keto on the media and even with supermarket food: that is technically called Modified Atkins Diet, MAD for short (yeah), and the guidelines for MAD a bit more lax.

Food on a spreadsheet

Everyday, for everyone of Georgia's meals, we open a spreadsheet supplied by Stanford University, and engineer her meals so it has the exact amount of macro, all at exact ratio.

The ratio definition also varies depending on the person. Georgia is on a 2.5:1 ratio for her morning and evening keto formula, 1.5:1 ratio for lunch, and 2:1 ratio for morning tea, afternoon tea, and dinner. It took us months to fine tune this, aided by a team of medical professionals. What is the ratio about?

For every 2 grams of fat, Georgia can have 1 gram of protein + carbs. So we are talking food macros. It doesn't end there: she shouldn't go over 4 or 5 grams of carbs per meal, or she could get knocked out of ketosis (and that is dangerous), but not too little, or she could plunge into hypoglycaemia.

So that was a lot of fun to learn!

No but seriously, thankfully both Georgia's parents are massive nerds... once we got over the initial shock of what our everyday needed to look like, we dove right into it.

We can do hard things

The saving grace of all this is that Georgia got introduced to a keto life as she turned 2 years old - well before she experienced any sugar or fast food. In a way, she doesn't know what she is 'missing out on'.

Georgia is also reasonably easy going, and will eat the vast majority of the foods we put in front of her - special mention to Sardines, olives, and hot spices!

We needed to learn how to navigate giving her the right kind of fats, as cholesterol isn't just a threat for older people, and had to overcome the challenges of adding enough fibre into her diet without the aid of complex carbs.

Now that she is old enough to eat nuts, we feel like it's gotten a bit easier.

Macadamias, Brazil nuts, walnuts, pecans, and almonds are amongst the foods she snacks most on.

Baking is still very challenging, especially when it comes down to consistency, but we are getting there.

We discovered the threat of sugar alternatives, and how they can give you the shits without any of the giggles. We get away with some of it as it's added fibre Georgia could do with anyway, so we just need to monitor closely that she doesn't eat a lot of it.

Avocado, olives of all kinds, fresh heavy cream, cream cheese, almond meal (lower carbs than almond flour) are amongst our most precious allies together with nuts.

Berries! Thankfully there is lots of fruit out there that is low in carbs enough that she can have a decent amount of - especially raspberries and strawberries.

Recipes

So, in case you are wondering, the recipes we will post here are designed for a toddler, and trying very hard to keep her foods as fresh and whole as we possibly can to counter the high fat needs.

All recipes have the Georgia seal of approval!