High Protein French Onion Soup

This is one of our first and easily one of our favorite all time recipes. This highly nutritious high protein french onion soup is packed with protein from beef bone broth. Not only is this a great source of protein, but it’s also a great source for other micro nutrients that can be beneficial for tendon and bone health as well. Best of all, this recipe is EXCELLENT during the holidays (or any time!), it stores and warms up well making it an excellent meal prep option, and is delicious, rich, and decadent enough that no one will ever know it’s even healthy for them.

High Protein Chicken Needle Soup

One of the classic, delicious and brothy soups. Everyone loves chicken noodle soup, it’s incredibly satisfying, and everyone has a fond memory of eating it on a cozy rainy day in their child hood. In it’s normal form, it’s practically high protein already. We’ve made some awesome tweaks to this recipe to make it even MORE athlete friendly. Nutritious vegetables, pasta, and lean chicken make this a potent meal that’s great post-workout, pre-workout, or any time.

High Protein Chicken Tortilla Soup

An exceptionally delicious and flavorful soup that’s also jam packed full of protein. Featuring beans, chicken, and bone broth, this soup is getting protein from 3 major sources and best of all, it’s extremely high in fiber. One bowl, if eaten with an avocado, can count for a quarter or half of your daily dietary fiber needs. It also happens to be incredibly delicious and hearty, and will leave you filling full and satisfied!

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This high protein chicken noodle soup is great for athletes, bodybuilders, meal preppers, or anyone who just wants a delicious and nutritious meal. It keeps well, freezes well, and is an excellent way to prepare bulk high protein meals ahead of time.

BULKING TIPS

If you are bulking and want to increase your calories, you can do this pretty easily by substituting lean chicken breast with a fattier cut of chicken, like chicken thighs and legs.  It also goes great with a nice hearty bread.

Cutting TIPS

It’s tough to remove calories from this dish as it’s so simple and low calorie already.  It’s basically chicken cooked in chicken broth with various seasonings.  You could possibly remove the noodles/carbs from this dish to help make it low carb, leaving you a delicious keto-friendly broth full of nutritious chicken and vegetables.

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This dish is excellent for multiple reasons.
1) Everything is cooked in the same slow cooker at the same time, meaning no excessive messes.
2) High in protein AND in fiber
3) Highly nutritious, yet low in calories. This dish is less than 300 calories per serving if it’s prepared the way we recommend in the directions below.
4) While it’s low in calories, you can easily modify it to make it a bulkers dream dish (see tips below)
5) Stores great for several days, and is an excellent choice for meal-preppers
6) An excellent dish in the colder months, as the broth and the spice from the soup will make you feel warm, full, and satisfied.

BULKING TIPS
One of the great things about this dish is how great it can be for cutting, but also how it easy is to make it an excellent bulking meal. For example, you can slice an avocado and garnish this soup with it for an easy additional 234 calories, 21 grams of healthy fat, 12 grams of carbs, and 3 grams of protein.

You can also garnish this high protein chicken tortilla soup with a cheese. For purposes of taste, we recommend a complimentary crumble mexican cheese like Cotija, but a shredded Monterrey jack or even cheddar would also go great and could easily add another couple hundred calories to the bottom line.

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What is keto-friendly?

Keto friendly essentially means limiting your carbohydrates to 20-30 grams or less until your body hits a state of ketosis.  Long story short, you burn fat a bit faster than you would otherwise.

Without further adieu, here are 3 keto-friendly Thanksgiving recipes you can use this holiday season, or any time!

Keto-Friendly Thanksgiving Turkey Wraps

These delicious turkey wraps will serve as an excellent side dish to your main course.  They are a breeze to make and involve no real cooking!  You take a few ingredients, slap em together, and you’re out of the door.

Each one of these comes in at 127 total calories, for 8 grams of protein, 10 grams of fat, and only 4.5 grams of carbohydrates.   You could easily fit two of these into your Thanksgiving meal and still have room for a low-carb dessert.

Keto Cauliflower Puree

This keto cauliflower puree will serve as another excellent, low carb side dish during your Thanksgiving lunch or dinner.  With a light hint of rosemary and garlic, it always a hit at holiday lunches and dinners. Goes great by itself or with any other keto friendly dippers like Parmesan chips, broccoli, asparagus, or carrot sticks

One serving comes in at 140 total calories, for 7 grams of protein, 10 grams of fat, and 6 carbohydrates, making this an ideal keto-friendly Thanksgiving side dish. Use it to add a ton of flavor to otherwise boring vegetables.

Keto Holiday Pumpkin Mousse

Last but certainly not least is our dessert entree this year, a delicious pumpkin mousse with a hint of chocolate.  An excellent ending to any high-protein Thanksgiving lunch or dinner, and if you played your cards right during your meal, you can still come out of this thing in complete ketosis!

Coming in at 290 calories per serving, it has 3 grams of protein, 28 grams of fat (hey, it’s a dessert after all!), and 7 grams of carbohydrates.

The fantastic news here is that you could eat a serving of each one of these over your holiday meal and still be well within your carbohydrate limit for the day, with a bit of room to spare.  This Thanksgiving spend more time with family and friends, and less time worrying about your macro’s for the day.  Though, if you got to because you are an athlete preparing for a contest, meet, or what have you,  be sure to supplement your Turkey intake with the two side dishes and dessert above and you will stay full, satisfied, and lean without sacrificing flavor — and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of bringing your own solo dish as these are great enough to share with the family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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That said, anytime you make a “healthy” version of something that’s delicious and high-calorie, you will almost certainly end up sacrificing some flavor. To compensate for that, instead of reducing or removing things (like a traditional dough) that give delicious flavors, we’ve replaced them with something that will produce a delicious flavor all on it’s own. So while these keto-friendly pizza pies will never replace a classic large from your favorite hole-in-the-wall up the road, this will make contest prep a hell-of-a-lot easier. At the end of the day, it’s nice to know that you can diet and prepare for a contest without needing a traditional “cheat meal” or the extra calories that come along with it when you can have a delicious low carb version that will satiate you until the contest is over and you can splurge again!

This is our first pizza-entry and for sure we will try out different versions. If you have any similar low carb or keto pizza recipes you’ve enjoyed, or have an idea on how you would modify this one feel free to leave a comment and tell us about it!

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This protein packed keto Christmas recipe is exactly what you need to make it through the holidays.  Chicken can be boring, but we’ve taken it to a whole other level with this twist on the classic muscle meal staple.  We’ve taken a Chicken, which is low in calories and high in overall protein, and packed it full of highly nutritious things like Almonds and Hazelnuts, which are full of good fats, and full of Cranberries which are full of healthy vitamins and provide a great holiday flavor!

The end result is a highly satisfying protein packed flavor bomb that will leave you full for hours!

BULKING TIPS

If you are bulking, need, or want to add calories to this amazing Christmas keto chicken dinner, you can mix the stuffing ingredients with cream cheese.  This will change the flavor profile somewhat, but the cream cheese will be full of great calories (protein and fats) while also positively complimenting the flavors that are already present.  I would add 4 ounces and fully mix it with the stuffing, and you can easily add a few 100 calories.  You can add more or less to taste and depending on your own personal nutritional requirements.

CUTTING TIPS

If you want to still enjoy this dish and cut some calories, there are some ways you can do it, but it will lessen the flavor.  You could start by halving the amount of almonds and hazelnuts and cranberries that go into the stuffings.  This will save you significant calories in the fat and carb department.  If you needed to go lower, you sacrifice losing a bit of protein by switching from Chicken bone broth, to a regular Chicken broth, and while you will lose some calories in the process, you will maintain your flavor.

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What is “Keto”?

To put it simply: the ketogenic diet is a diet that puts an emphasis on getting your calories from protein and fat, while keeping your carbohydrates under a very strict number.  The reason they want you to keep your carbohydrates low is that your body will enter a state called “ketosis” once it has been deprived of carbohydrate based energy sources, which is a state in which your body will start producing (burning) more of it’s energy from fat stores instead of carbohydrate based sources.  Meaning, your body is using your fat directly to fuel your body.  Once your body begins burning this fat directly, it produces a by-produce called “ketones”, hence the name keto.  Typically this process takes 2-5 days of consistently keeping your carbohydrate intake low.

How many carbs should I eat on the Keto diet?

How many carbohydates you can eat per day and maintain your ketosis is dependent on a ton of variables.  Typically, the range is 20 to 40 grams of carbs and after a few days, your body will have entered into it’s super-charged fat burning state.

Is it possible to tell you’re in ketosis?

While the amount of carbs you can personally take in varies from person to person, the great news is that we can dial this in precisely.  Using ketone strips, you can test yourself and see in seconds if your body has successfully entered into ketosis or not.  This is a highly effectively and cheap way to tune in your dieting.  We recommend starting on the higher spectrum for a few days, around 40 grams or so, and every 5 days dialing back another 5 grams or so until you finally hit the magical number that will send our body into a fat burning frenzy.  We do recommend retesting every so often, but usually this number will stay consistent.

Does the Ketogenic diet work?

Taking a look a look at the scientific data on the subject, a few studies stood out as the most-cited:

Long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients
Ketogenic Diet for Obesity: Friend or Foe?
The Three-Month Effects of a Ketogenic Diet on Body Composition, Blood Parameters, and Performance Metrics in CrossFit Trainees: A Pilot Study.

They all come to the basic conclusion that a ketogenic-based diet that is low in carbohydrates is, calories being equal, more effective at burning fat and improving body composition over a traditional diet.  Long-term effects seem also include a dramatic reduction in cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

Typically the studies suggest running your diet for at least 2-3 weeks, but studies indicate this diet could be followed long-term for months and potentially years successfully.

Will the Keto Diet work for you?

On a final note I wanted to say the best diet will always be the one you can stick to.  While the keto diet can improve your fat burning capabilities, long-term it will all even out if you aren’t able to stick with it very long.  Fortunately, this diet is very friendly to very delicious foods like: hot wings, bacon, cheeses, steaks, dips, bacon, seafood, and did I mention bacon?  Since this diet is low in carbohydrates, you have to make those calories up in fat, which means you can indulge more often in some items you otherwise wouldn’t on a traditional diet.  So if you are worried about this diet limiting you to boring meals, don’t worry, you are going to be a frequent guest to flavor town!

Keto Recipes

We couldn’t leave you to start your keto-journey without a bit of assistance, could we?  Here are some of our favorite ketogenic friendly recipes that can help transition into your new diet.

Keto-friendly pizza: Coming soon

Keto-friendly hot wings with blue cheese dip: Coming soon

Keto-friendly cookies: Coming soon

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One of the toughest things to deal with at Thanksgiving and Christmas is the trays of sweets: puddings, cookies, fudges, the list goes on.  For someone on a low-carb diet, or someone looking for keto-friendly Thanksgiving side dishes or keto-friendly Christmas desserts, having something to cure your sweet-tooth when the desserts start being passed around will be critical to surviving your diet over the holiday season.

This Keto Holiday Pumpkin Mousse is the answer to your sweet-tooth prayers, and also gives you a chance to savor the flavors of a fall Holiday classic: Pumpkin.  With hints of chocolate, this low-carb mousse can almost feel too decadent, but trust us — we ran the numbers, have tested many batches, and works out!

Bulking Tips

Your bulking, why are you eating keto foods?

Cutting Tips

Want to cut extra calories?  If you are okay with sacrificing flavor, you can switch to a low fat cream cheese, or you could also swap your heavy cream for half and half.  Both will sacrifice flavor, but you can shave off several grams of fat.  In my opinion though, if you are making this for a holiday dish, it’s already keto-friendly, so just enjoy it the way it was intended!

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