Half Keto

My family is really only half keto. My son and my mother-in-law, Helen who lives with us, are not following a low carb diet. My son doesn't need to, he needs the opposite, and my MIL sadly has dementia and doesn't need to loose weight at this point. Besides I'm NOT going to tell her she can't have her toast in the morning nor her daily ice cream bar!

But my father, who also lives with us, and my husband and I are following the easy keto life. My father moved in with us in March when the pandemic hit hard. After about two months I think he had gained about 20 lbs. I guess the food here was slightly better than the home in which he had been living. At that time only my hubby and I were eating keto. So somewhere in October my Dad said, "Put me on the keto thing as well. I've got to lose this weight!"

Therefore, three of the five people at my table eat low carb and the other two don't.

So, how do I reconcile this without making two totally separate dinners?

Here are some tips:

1) If making pasta, make one sauce and boil two separate batches of pasta, one keto friendly and one regular.

2) For steak night, I make the usual veggies and steak and only prepare a potato for Helen (Chester never wants one).

3) French Toast, I'll use our zero carb keto bread for us and a few regular slices for the others.

4) Chinese food. Oh how we all love Chinese food. We still get Chinese from time to time. We just avoid the heavily breaded dishes, like General Tso's, :( and the keto followers just don't take any rice. Yes, some of their sauces definitely have sugar in them but we view it as a mild cheat.

Since my kids were little I always said. "I refuse to be a short order cook. Dinner is what dinner is. If you don't like it, too bad. That's all there is." But as you can see, I am willing to adapt a bit when I don't want my kid or my MIL on a low carb diet. And their "diets" don't need to derail you from your weight loss journey.