Let me preface this with the fact that many of the recipes sound delicious. Also, on page 13 and 14 of the book, it accurately discusses the macros involved in a keto diet, which can be found anywhere using a simple google search for free. The general consensus is some range of 5-10% carbs, 15-20 proteins, and 70-80% fats. I personally use 5, 25, 70 since I need a little more protein in my diet to account for other dietary needs.
However, all the book does from there on out is focuses entirely on carb counts - it never once brings up balancing the amount of proteins and fats again. If you eat too much protein, your body will break down those proteins instead of fats (you want to burn fats) into amino acids, and any excess amino acids gets broken down into glucose. Which basically means you might as well just splurge on eating an entire box of Kraft Mac n Cheese because you ruined your ketogenic state, and defeated the entire purpose of the diet.
What I thought would be handy, which turned out to be the absolute worst part of the book, was the 4-Week Meal Plan included in the back. When someone sees a meal plan, especially when they are brand new to a different eating lifestyle, is they follow those meal plans to the exact letter. They don't get creative with adding sides or taking the time to find out what snacks would best be paired with that day's macros. They just do what they are told. I checked every single day's meal plan for the first week, and not a single day of those meal plans balanced up to keto-safe macros, nor do all of the day's meals have enough calories in them to sustain even a perfectly weighted human being throughout the course of the day.
I will list what I calculated each day's macros to be along with total calories for the day to show the huge discrepancy. Disclaimer: due to the quirks of rounding, the percentages will not always add up to exactly 100%, especially since I rounded them to the nearest .5% for simplicity. But even the 1-2% discrepancy in totals does not make up for the HUGE gap in macros these meals contain.
Day 1: 48.5% Fat, 45.5% Protein, 6% Carb, 1178 Calories
Day 2: 62.5% Fat, 33.5% Protein, 5% Carb, 1543 Calories (this day is as close to keto-safe macros as it gets)
Day 3: 45.5% Fat, 47% Protein, 7% Carb, 975 Calories (!!!)
Day 4: 38.5% Fat, 51.5% Protein, 10% Carb, 777 Calories (!!!!!!!! This is by far the WORST day! Of course my %s don't include the almond milk for the breakfast, but it wouldn't make up for the GLARING deficit here.)
Day 5: 38.5% Fat, 53% Protein, 10% Carb, 881 Calories (!!!)
Day 7: 34.5% Fat, 60% Protein, 5% Carb, 1376 Calories
In order to meet keto-safe macros, you would need to find some way to, at the most, double your fat intake for the entire day, and that doesn't include the big caloric gap in 3 of those days. Maybe if you just slather everything in a pound of butter (oh, sorry, "ghee")??? But I mean, beyond taking the time to figure out which snacks might balance the macros, or how you could adjust the serving sizes of each of the day's meals to meet macros and caloric requirements, I would venture to say the entire 4-Week Meal Plan is not only utterly useless, but blatantly dangerous for newcomers to the diet that do not know any better, or don't want to take the time/don't know how to macro-check each plan.
So yes, while each meal in the book sounds absolutely delicious, many of them are way too protein heavy, and not fat heavy enough, to constitute calling this a keto cookbook. It is simply a low carb Atkins style cookbook with zero regard to the macros required to sustain ketosis without significant amounts of planning. In my opinion The amount of work required to make keto work with this book makes it completely unable as a tool, and SHOULD be titled as a low/carb/diabetic friendly/Atkins inspired cookbook instead of keto to avoid the feeling of being cheated through false advertising.
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