Essential Ways to Battle the “Quarantine 15” on a Ketogenic Diet, and Other Helpful Hacks, to Promote Healthy Weight Loss

Here are some keto-friendly snacks that we love that you may want to incorporate into your keto snack pack:

• Moon Cheese
• Fat Snax
• Rebel Ice Cream
• Whisps Cheese Crisps
• Beef Jerky (Jack Links, zero sugar)
• Low Karb Blueberry Granola
• Keto and Co. Baking Mixes
• HighKey Mini Cookies
• Smart Sweets (low-sugar gummies)
• Evolved (Keto Cups)
• Epic Pork Rinds and Cream Cheese (Onion & Chive)
• Lily’s Chocolate Bars
• HighKey Keto Cereal

In addition to allowing for a few extra foods that provide an immediate payoff in gratification, because they’re fatty and calorically-dense, here are some excellent low-caloric and nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables to enjoy on a keto diet:

Fruits

• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Blackberries
• Avocados
• Raspberries
• Lemon or Lime
• Coconut Meat or Butter
• Tomatoes

Vegetables

• Asparagus
• Green Beans
• Kale
• Spinach
• Zucchini
• Olives
• Cucumbers (and pickles)
• Kim Chi
• Bok Choy
• Spaghetti Squash
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Sauerkraut (also excellent to boost gut health)
• String Beans
• Eggplant
• Seaweed (e.g., dulse, kelp, etc.)
• Bell Peppers
• Onions
• Mushrooms

It's also essential to eat an abundance of healthy whole food fat sources and high-quality protein, whether animal or vegetable derived, in addition to eating fruits and vegetables to ensure that you provide your body with a well-rounded nutritional spectrum.

Whether you're looking for tips to start keto, or have followed the diet a while and in search of new recipes to try, along with more keto-related information to achieve sustainable results—even during the quarantine—you've come to the right place.

Consider Making Keto Smoothies

If you find yourself slacking on getting in your greens and micronutrients because you're working to manage a packed schedule, consider adding a full-spectrum supplement to your keto nutritional plan.

Understandably, managing perfect micronutrient intake may prove more challenging at this time, but we still need to keep our immune systems pristine and fortified—probably more so than ever.

We wanted to bring you guys a standalone greens mix to provide dense nutrition but take less than a minute to make and gulp down—so consuming it is efficient and effective.

So, we developed our Supreme Greens Superfood all-in-one powder to provide your body with ample premium nutrition, sourced from a powerful blend of dark leafy greens, to fuel your day and support strong immune health.

Whether you're so busy that you can't seem to get in enough dense nutrition or dislike the taste of certain fruits or vegetables, our greens blend offers a pleasant flavor that's a cross between green apple and mint—a refreshing and vitalizing way to begin the day.

We'll share more information on delicious fat-burning recipes to eat below, but now more on amping up your daily fitness, regardless of whether you have access to a local gym or need information on how to turn your home into a makeshift workout space, with minimum equipment.

Here are a few excellent ways to burn extra calories and elevate your heart rate throughout the day as you complete routine tasks:

• Housework: Daily household maintenance is a great way to burn calories while keeping your living space in order. Housework burns many calories and provides a feeling of satisfaction in completing needed tasks to maintain order in your home.
  
  

  You can count all the activities below in your movement column when tracking caloric intake versus activity output to achieve the caloric deficit needed for weight loss.

• Mopping Floors: This mundane yet vital task burns up to 170 calories per hour.
• Sweeping: Do this step before mopping, and it may burn up to 156 calories per hour.
• Cleaning: Detailed and surface cleaning can burn up to 136 calories per hour.
• Vacuuming: You can burn up to 170 calories an hour by vacuuming, and the white noise can block out the mind-numbing sound of the kids bouncing off the walls in the other room.
• Ironing: Get ahead of the game and press your clothes for the week at once; it shouldn't take long since we're all wearing sweats right now—but in theory.
  
  

  Making sure your clothes are crisp and ready, even if you have nowhere to go, can burn up to 80 calories an hour.

• Walking: Get out for a socially-distanced brisk walk to burn some calories with low impact on the joints.
   
  
• DIY Projects: Take time to paint that room you've been eyeing for months, or tackle the task of assembling a storage shelving unit to organize your kitchen and pantry better.
  
  

  We love this option because you are physically active and then rewarded by your project's end result and multi-faceted utility.

• On-Demand Fitness Programs: Lucky for us, we have access to many online fitness sources, including YouTube, despite the pandemic.
  
  

  Whether you source and compile workout playlists to cycle through or go with a paid exercise portal like Daily Burn, you can conveniently maintain your workout aspirations from the comfort of your home.

• Clean the Bathroom: It may not be anyone's favorite job, but we must do it regardless. At least you can feel good about burning up to 360 calories an hour while getting your surfaces and mirrors sparkling clean.
   
  
• Declutter Your Closets and Pantry: Many of us are home more than ever, and knowing where ingredients or needed cooking equipment is at all times can save time and add a chic touch to any home, even on a budget.
  
  

  Plus, organizing your space can prove relaxing and cathartic, being something you can control and that contributes to taking care of yourself and your family while burning around 85 calories per hour.

• Urban or Rural Modern Homestead Gardening: Whether you have acres to cultivate or need innovative ways to maximize your growing space in a smaller, big-city apartment: gardening herbs, vegetables, or flowers can be rewarding and elevate the taste of homemade meals.
  
  

  Also, nourishing the body with homegrown plants is an excellent way to curb your grocery budget, and tending to their upkeep can burn up to 250 calories per hour, as well!

• Rearrange Furniture/Decor: Spending so much time at home can highlight areas in your house you may want to spruce up or rearrange to add a fresh touch to your environment without breaking the bank.
  
  

  Depending on your level of exertion, whether you're moving heavy furniture or otherwise moving non-stop for an hour sprucing up your place, you could burn as much as 450 calories per hour—not too shabby!

• Cooking Dinner: Whether you're a fan of large-scale food prep days or enjoy making meals with your loved ones throughout the week: cooking meals can quickly burn at least 150 calories an hour.
  
  

  Plus, you can serve meals with confidence, knowing the level of quality of the foods in your meals.

• Do the Laundry: This critical activity, especially at a time when we're sanitizing and cleaning everything more than ever, requires a fair amount of energy expenditure—between loading and unloading the washer and dryer, folding, and putting clothes away—you can quickly burn several hundred calories in a single hour and have clean clothes set to go for the week to boot.

• Play with the Kids: The chasing of your children during quarantine may usually be inspired by keeping them safe or getting them to get dressed—we get it, we're home, and putting on a lot of clothing seems pointless, especially considering the heat.
  
  

  However, a quick game of chase, carving out time to read a favorite book or making kid-friendly recipes with the little ones is an excellent way to keep them engaged and away from mischief.

• Grocery Shopping: Many now utilize grocery or meal delivery services to supplement whatever they're making to eat during the week.
  
  

  However, if you get out to the grocery store in-person, and briskly collect the items noted on your prepared list with urgency, it's possible to release up to 450 calories an hour!

  In addition to helping to create a caloric deficit to encourage weight loss, you may even walk away from your shopping trip with a couponer's high, if you're able to snag some great deals to further stock your immediate and long-term food supply!

Now, there's no need to worry about going to the gym if it's still generally wise to stay home. There are so many activities you can engage in without leaving the house that can help you reach your wellness goals, no need to derail your fitness efforts because you’re homebound.

In addition to the equipment-free options mentioned, you can also use household items to burn some calories. For instance, walk around with two full gallons of water for weights, and make some lunges along the way to boost lower-body strength.

Or add to your fitness circuit's intensity by doing some tricep dips, using a chair, to create a calisthenic workout routine that's excellent at burning body fat while toning.

You can also go back to basics and do a series of crunches, leg lifts, arm curls, or plank moves for a quick 30-minute circuit that produces fantastic fat-burning results, especially when paired with a high-fat, ketogenic diet.

Here are some useful workout tools that require minimal storage space yet help you vary your workouts’ intensity and routine to keep the process interesting:

• Jump Rope
• Trampoline
• Tension Bands (toning)
• Fitness Tracker or Heart Rate Monitor (e.g., FitBit, Polar Watch, etc.)
• Wrist or Ankle Weights
• Free Weights
• Large Fitness Ball (for stretching)
• Music! Blast your favorite tunes and dance away the day's stress while torching calories, as well.
• Yoga Mat: There are many yoga tutorials published online that you can use to create a fitness and meditative practice that works for you while at home. Plus, along with its physical benefits, yoga can improve holistic health—aiding in enhanced physical and mental health.
• Take the Stairs: Whether climbing up and down the stairs with laundry or mounting staircases while commuting, every step up counts to get the blood flowing and burn calories.

Along with completing multi-purposed tasks, like vacuuming and burning calories, or redesigning your currently cluttered pantry into something pristine and highly-functional while burning body fat is always a win-win proposition.

Carry your baby around with you while completing daily tasks. Close body contact with little ones is an excellent way to keep them calm and you can leverage their added weight to increase your fat-burning potential as you work.

Spend some extra time with your little one while you continue eliminating calories as you crush your to-do list like a champion—even if you don't shower until afternoon on a super-busy day. Hey, you're human.

It's probably clear that we consider nutrition and fitness a perfectly paired team. So, in addition to the detail shared about easy exercises to do at home and resources to find more options that interest you, here are some delicious keto-friendly recipes to fuel your workouts and help to eliminate sugar or carb cravings:

• Cajun Parmesan Salmon: Marinate the salmon as long as possible and enjoy this simple and satisfying dish any time of day.
• Cheesy Spinach Keto Cups: These savory cheese cups are easy to make ahead and reheat at any time for a light but filling keto snack.
• Creamy Keto Pumpkin Soup: An oversized mug filled with a savory and mildly sweet option like our Creamy Keto Pumpkin Soup is a fantastic choice and convenient to have on-hand if made during meal prep and refrigerated.
• So Keto Kimchi Salad: Fermented foods, like kimchi, are tasty and also aid in promoting the healthy proliferation of good bacteria in the gut that helps pre-digest and assimilates the nutrients in foods.
• Can't Believe it's Keto Bread: Keto is an eating style that occasionally relies on elaborate recipes. Still, sometimes you want a simple, hearty keto-friendly bread to make a simple sandwich with a side of pickles—without too much fuss.

If this powerful craving for keto-friendly bread alternatives mentioned above sounds familiar, this recipe is the one you want to make!

• Avocado Chocolate Keto Pudding: Some figure it's necessary to eliminate decadent and sinfully sweet desserts on a ketogenic diet, but that is entirely untrue. Let this recipe serve as exhibit A.
• Creamy & Keto Broccoli Cheese Soup: The combination of broccoli and cheese is comforting and easy to reheat whenever wanted if you make a large batch and preserve it in the fridge or freezer.
• Keto Ridiculously Loaded Radishes: You may not think of radish as your first choice of veggies on keto, but it brilliantly holds this recipe together and is certainly worth trying.
• Golden Keto Cauliflower Bake: This is a comfort food recipe that will especially please lovers of mac & cheese—great to get the kids to eat more veggies. Face it, cheese makes everything taste better.
• Quick N' Easy Breakfast Sausage Keto Quiche: A flaky crust, savory sausage, and cheese are always an excellent choice on keto, and this recipe is easy to prepare—plus, it tastes better day by day.
• Keto Pizza (the whole family will love!): Making or ordering pizza is an excellent way to get something that everyone in the family will enjoy served up swiftly. However, you can ensure you keep carbs low, without compromising flavor if you make our keto-friendly recipe.
• Fat Burning Keto Cookie Recipes: A cookie here and there, especially if it helps burn stubborn fat, is a hard yes for us. Keep some made and dough sealed in the freezer to make it easy to bake some ooey-gooey keto cookies at a moment's notice.
• Konscious Keto Strawberry Green Goddess Smoothie: We know it can sometimes become a challenge to consume enough nutrients, particularly if you’re sleep-deprived, stressed, and in need of a quick and delicious nutritional boost.

No worries, you can also pump up the dense nutrition of a smoothie made with living foods to higher heights with the addition of our easily dissolvable super greens all-in-one organic blend. Click here [insert link] to learn more about our vitalizing mix.

• Amazingly Avocado Keto Buns: Life is busy and more demanding than ever, and just getting all that's required completed probably feels like a workout in and of itself, and it is—and that is OK, we can use our time as best we can to tackle multiple goals at once.

Our recipe suggestions mentioned above are excellent and straightforward options, even for beginners in the kitchen, and all are brimming with healthy fats to help you feel fuller longer.

Try and enjoy any or all of the recipes shared; we love them all. We also get that some of you prefer more structure to your daily, keto weight loss meal plan. Our quick and easy 30-second keto quiz is a great tool to use to receive immediate access to your personalized keto meal plan for weight loss, today!

Plus, staying connected with our Konscious Keto community online, like our Facebook group, is a great place to share and exchange keto experiences with others along your keto journey.

We have also covered a few other topics related to eating a keto diet with ease and intention during the quarantine that may prove helpful. The following articles may cover issues that prove especially beneficial right now:

• Meatless Keto Meal Ideas During Quarantine (and Beyond)!

• Keto-friendly Beverages to Maintain Ketosis

• Keto Meal Prep for Weight Loss

• Family-friendly Keto Freezer Meals

Additional Keto Weight-Loss Hacks:

In addition to eating a clean diet, including super greens, following a personalized meal plan, and staying connected to a community of like-minded people—like the members of our thriving Konscious Keto community—with similar goals, will all aid in your success.

Also, here are a few simple hacks to utilize to maximize results on keto, even during a pandemic:

• Keep Keto Simple: Life is full of unexpected and uncontrollable challenges. Especially at this time, it's best to keep life as simple as we can—no need for added or unnecessary stress—there’s nothing wrong with eating bacon and eggs or a tasty low-carb stir-fry, simple and delicious.
• Take It Easy: Yes, we all want rapid results when attempting to lose weight, but don't stress yourself too much. The weight will shed steadily and is likely never to return if you keep carbs and calories in check—much more precious than fast results alone.
• Add MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) to your diet: The addition of either MCT oil or powder to your diet can enhance the body's ketone levels, improve energy levels, and help facilitate the body’s fat-adaptation process.
• Leverage Intermittent Fasting: Switching your body's primary fuel source from glucose (sugar) to fat and ketones will naturally suppress the appetite and prevent overeating without much effort—a fantastic benefit to those following the dietary protocol to release body fat. Also, you'll probably notice that you may forget to eat or skip a meal on a high-fat diet unintentionally once well into metabolic ketosis; you'll stay fuller and satisfied longer on keto.

However, some opt to intentionally time eating and fasting windows to stimulate a thermogenic, fat-burning effect. Here are some additional tips to follow to maximize your keto experience:

• Plan for Success: Access to a well-stocked pantry, refrigerator, or freezer—along with a backup generator, hopefully—are excellent ways to maintain your food security. Also, consider food preservation methods like canning, fermenting, or pickling to boost your home-based nutritional stockpile. Also, having a sizable amount of food stored up helps fill the gaps if local food shortages occur due to many possible simultaneous crises. Consider rotating a variety of long-term meal options like freezer meals, canned or cured meat and seafood, veggies, and fruit, seasonings, partially-prepped meals, or something you can heat and eat on-demand.
• Stock up on LCHF Snacks: You will inevitably experience cravings for sweet or salty and savory snacks you used to love before carb limits were a consideration along your keto journey. Don't worry; there are many excellent and delicious keto alternatives for everything from ice cream to chips, cookies, cake, or bread, and about anything in between. Check out many of the beginner-friendly keto recipes on our site for meal ideas or access a fully personalized keto weight-loss meal plan by taking our brief, 30-second quiz.
• Set Realistic Goals: The hormonal spikes and deregulation triggered during periods of prolonged or heightened stress releases cortisol, a fat-storing hormone, which may hinder or halt weight loss even if you're making the right dietary and fitness choices to achieve results.

Focus on eating the highest quality and most densely-packed nutrition you can and keep extra food stores on-hand at home always to have the ingredients needed to make or add to meals.

Summary

At first, it's easy to see how our lives turned upside down within the last six months initially caused a spike in weight gain due to a likely combination of stress and emotional eating.

However, many of us have re-committed or made the initial decision to reclaim our health using the undisputed effectiveness of a ketogenic lifestyle.

Use your daily chores as a way to remain physically active throughout the day. Between meal prep, homeschooling, work, and keeping in touch with loved ones, there is always something to tackle.

So, do your best to carve out time for vital self-care, but be kind to yourself, as well, and rest if that’s what’s needed.

It’s easy to incorporate more activity into your routine. Make a few dip lunges while putting away the groceries or knock out some leg lifts while binge-watching a favorite series. Whatever form you prefer, including more physical activity into daily life, can be simple and effective.

Also, getting other family members involved in your wellness journey may prove helpful so everyone can hold each other accountable to ensure that all hit their target goals.

Plus, tracking your calories is a breeze if using a free site/app like MyFitnessPal and documenting energy output with the help of a tracker, like FitBit, which can give you an idea of which weekly habits best service to achieve your wellness goals.

But aside from data tracked, you'll also recognize the increased vitality and sharpness of mind experienced with increased activity and eating mindfully.

Plus, focusing on improving your health is well worth the time invested in discovering which balance of the low-carb, high-fat eating protocol works best for you. The ketogenic diet is as flexible as it is effective, so you’ll surely find the version of keto that suits you best with a little experimentation and creativity.

Sources

• Ansari, S., Fatima, S., & Fahamiya, N. (2019). Low Carb Diet Outranked a Low Fat Diet in Weight Loss. Middle East Journal of Rehabilitation and Health Studies, 6(4). doi:10.5812/mejrh.96547
• Antony, F. (2018). How to deal with obesity with lifestyle modified diet. Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy, 08. doi:10.4172/2165-7904-c8-077
• Ansari, S., Fatima, S., & Fahamiya, N. (2019). Low Carb Diet Outranked a Low Fat Diet in Weight Loss. Middle East Journal of Rehabilitation and Health Studies, 6(4). doi:10.5812/mejrh.96547
• Bhargav, K., Lavanya, S., & Ram, N. (2019). The ketogenic diet for weight loss. Journal of Clinical and Scientific Research, 8(4), 211. doi:10.4103/jcsr.jcsr_113_19
• Lomangino, K. (2008). ADA Recommends Low-Carb Diets for Weight Loss. Clinical Nutrition INSIGHT, 34(2), 7-9. doi:10.1097/01.nmd.0000311965.01818.f8
• Ryan, K. M. (n.d.). Intentional Weight Loss among Healthy Women. doi:10.31979/etd.ek9v-tbx8
• Sullivan, L. (2009). Use of Meal Replacement Products Increases Weight Loss. Internal Medicine News, 42(12), 16. doi:10.1016/s1097-8690(09)70430-5
• Bergman, K. (2018). Effects of mindfulness on weight loss. Obesity Reviews, 19(9), 1309-1309. doi:10.1111/obr.12696
• Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy. (n.d.). doi:10.4172/2165-7904