This Is What A Preventive Cardiologist Eats On A Keto Diet

While playing with your food is nearly always frowned upon, playing around with your diet is a totally acceptable thing to do, according to Ethan Weiss, M.D. The preventive cardiologist often experiments with different diets, but most recently, he's gone keto. 

During a mindbodygreen podcast, Weiss shared what he eats on a typical day while sticking to the keto diet. Spoiler: It always starts with a cup of black coffee and ends with a glass of dry red wine.

"There were two nonnegotiables in my nutrition journey," he said. "Anything that I would develop and promote...had to have two things. One of them is coffee, and the other one is wine." 

While choosing your wine might require a bit of research on the keto diet, certain varieties are definitely still doable. "The amount of carbohydrate in a glass of dry white wine is the same as it is in a glass of dry red wine," Weiss said.

Every day for the past two years, Weiss has packed a salad for lunch. Before that, he would buy lunch every day, which becomes both a financial and a health burden. "One of the benefits of doing keto," he said, "is that it's not really easy to find food...when you go out to lunch." 

His salads include some form of lettuce, chopped vegetables, like celery, cucumbers, and peppers. To increase his fiber intake, Weiss adds lupini beans, which are high in protein and have zero net carbs. 

"People on conventional ketogenic diets don't typically get a lot of fiber. So it's great if you can find sources of fiber that don't also have a lot of carbohydrates," he said. "So lupini beans and then a whole avocado every day." 

For more protein and a little crunch, he'll add macadamia nuts or walnuts, and leftover salmon or tofu from the night before. 

Dinner for Weiss's family is complicated, to say the least. "My wife and I are both doing keto," he said. "My younger daughter is a vegetarian, really a pescatarian. And my older daughter basically loves meat." 

To accommodate the different dietary preferences, they usually make a few separate meals. For Weiss, that typically includes a nonstarchy roasted vegetable, like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, or asparagus. With that, he'll eat some protein, like fish or tofu, and less frequently, chicken.