How to Make Your Own Keto Ice Cream

Everyone loves ice cream, and many would say it’s one of the most delicious foods in the world. We use ice cream to reward ourselves after a bad day or console ourselves after a bad break-up. It’s one of the best things to use to bribe children into doing what we want, and many parents can tell of times when bad behavior was nipped in the bud after a promise of an ice cream treat.

But we also feel guilty about eating ice cream because it is considered to be an unhealthy food. Regular ice cream has high amounts of fat and sugar, so most people can’t afford to eat large amounts of ice cream without paying for it down the road. Even a lot of healthier ice creams are often not as healthy, or if they are, they don’t taste as good. What is the point of giving yourself a reward if you experience health problems from eating it, or if the healthier ice creams aren’t much of a treat?

With keto ice cream, you can get all the benefits from both a health perspective and enjoyment. You can reward yourself with something that has its own benefits, and if you learn how to make your own, you can even experiment with your favorite flavors and have ice cream suited to your own tastes.

What is Keto?

The ketogenic diet is a special low carbohydrate diet, similar in some ways to the popular Atkins diet. If you are on a ketogenic diet, most of your calories will come from proteins and fats. You will have to cut out pop, bread, pasta, and other foods that are high in carbohydrates. Ketogenic diets are short-term and focused on weight loss instead of permanent lifestyle changes.

When you only take in small amounts of carbohydrates during the day, your body quickly runs out of that kind of fuel. To get the energy you need for the rest of the day, your body will next start burning protein and fat.

Benefits of the Keto Diet

Not only can a Keto diet help you lose weight, it can help with many other kinds of health problems.

A low-carb diet can help diabetics by helping to regulate blood sugars. Not only that, burning fat will keep you from having as many ketones in your blood, which can be dangerous if you are diabetic.

Because your body produces and needs less insulin, there may even be some protection from certain kinds of cancer. Research is ongoing to confirm this link.

Keto diets can help regulate the hormones that can cause you to make too much cholesterol, meaning you could directly affect the build up of dangerous kinds of cholesterol which can lead to hardening of the arteries and other cardiovascular problems. Because keto diets help you lose weight, they can indirectly affect your cardiovascular health by regulating your weight. Obesity is related to a wide variety of health problems, including diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.

The drop in insulin caused by a keto can help you avoid acne breakouts. Just cutting down on the number of carbohydrates you ingest can help with skin issues. Surprisingly, the Keto diet has been helping those with epilepsy to avoid seizures since the 1920s. As always, don’t try to change your diet on your own if you have a health issue.

A keto diet can help with disorders that affect the spine and nervous system too. These include not just seizure disorders but Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and sleep disorders. High levels of insulin can lead to Polycistic Ovary Syndrome, which causes ovaries to get larger and sacs to form around the eggs. Keto diets can help keep that from happening.

Off-Limits Foods

Some people are excited about the idea of eating lots of their favorite high protein and high fat foods until they realize what they have to give up. In the beginning, those who start a low carbohydrate diet do miss their favorite high carbohydrate foods. However, if they are strict with themselves in the beginning, people find that they stop missing their former favorite foods and start feeling better pretty quickly.

When you are on a keto diet, you have to forego or significantly cut down on foods such as:

• Pop, especially those with large amounts of sugar. Even the ones with fake sugars should be avoided. You should also avoid other sweetened drinks, including sweet teas, sports drinks, cocoa, and fancy coffees from your favorite coffee place.
• Breads and grains, including white bread, pumpernickel, quinoa, rice, rye, sandwich wraps, oats, and oatmeal.
• Fruits, which may seem surprising when you consider they are normally considered part of a balanced diet. Fruits are by nature high in sugar and you can get the necessary vitamins in fiber in other areas of your diet, such as with vegetables.
• Some vegetables. The general Keto rule is to avoid vegetables that grow underground, like potatoes and yams. You should also avoid peas, corn, and artichokes.
• Legumes are also on the naughty list. While they have high amounts of the protein you’re looking for, they also tend to be high in carbs. So you should avoid baked beans, lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas and others.
• Dairy is high in protein and important to your diet, but you should keep your dairy intake low because of the carbs.

The Secret of Keto Ice Cream

One of the most surprising and amazing things about the Keto diet is that you can eat ice cream every day if you eat ice cream that is prepared correctly and fits in with your diet. You can easily learn to make it yourself, and there are even selections you can buy at the store which will be approved on a strict Keto diet.

Even if the ice cream says it’s all right for the Keto diet, you should still be careful and read the ingredients before you buy. There are a few ingredients which are used for different reasons which you should avoid. These include artificial sweeteners which may have their own bad health effects, added hormones to the milk or cream, and certain preservatives and additives like food dyes, which can cause everything from swelling to a spike in your blood sugar, which would be really bad for your Keto diet.

There are some store brands you know you should avoid, like the Breyers Carb Smart ice cream. It has several questionable ingredients, including four artificial sweeteners.

New Ingredients

The first thing you will notice is that the ingredients are more pronounceable and easy to recognize as food. Keto ice cream has ingredients like pea protein, vanilla bean seeds, monk fruit extract, ground flaxseed and organic Stevia extract. You will find that the normal ingredients in Keto ice cream are naturally healthy, easy to pronounce and have added benefits, besides being delicious.

What Makes Keto Ice Cream Different

As you can see later with the store ice creams, Keto ice cream is different in its makeup than traditional ice creams. While traditional ice creams have high amounts of unhealthy fats and sugars, Keto ice cream has fiber, very low carbs, and healthy fats.

Making Keto Ice Cream at Home

Once you get used to making your own ice cream, you will only want store ice cream in a snack emergency. It doesn’t even take very long to prepare. There are several differnet types of ice cream makers and strategies that don’t require a machine that you can use.

Advantages of Making Your Own Ice Cream

You can save money by buying ingredients in bulk, such as heavy cream. Since you can freeze it, you can make as much as you want and eat it at your leisure.

The biggest advantage, though, is that when you make your own ice cream you have complete control over the ingredients. Especially when you have a special diet which depends on you maintaining a low carb status, you want to know for sure that every ingredient fits in your diet.

Picking a Recipe

There are a lot of recipes online which claim to be low carb, but especially when you are making your own ice cream, you need to be careful and make sure it will really fit your diet.

Putting the “Ice” in Ice Cream

There are actually several ways to make ice cream at home, but here are a few easy ones.

Ice Cream Makers

• Electric Ice Cream Makers: A machine will be easy, inexpensive, and come with simple instructions. There is also little to clean. There are several different types, such as countertop ice cream makers, hand-crank ice cream makers, and freezer bowl ice cream makers.
• Crank Ice Cream Makers: With a crank Ice cream maker, you are doing the physical work yourself, but it’s still easy and quick.

Plastic Bag Method

You can make your own ice cream in a bag in 20 minutes, saving mess and time. You start by putting your first ingredients into a pint size plastic bag, including your dairy or dairy substitute. Then you put ice, rock salt, and the other bag into a gallon size bag together. Rock it back and forth for about 10 minutes until it thickens into ice cream.

Besides these methods, you can also prepare your ingredients and use your own bowls and freezer.

Keto Ice Cream Without the Work

Happily, there are some brands of ice cream you can buy at the store that will suit your diet.

• Wink Frozen Desserts has a line of plant-based pints which are low in sugar and carbs, none of which should have more than 100 calories. The Vanilla Bean, for example, is vegan, soy-free, and gluten-free. It has only one net carb and 25 calories.
• Rebel Creamery has a line of delicious and rich ice creams that taste more like custard. They are packed with healthy ingredients, with tastes like Peanut Butter Fudge, which has 200 calories, 19 grams of fat and 2 net carbs.
• Halo Top is the original low carb ice cream, and there is a lot to love about it. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough has 90 calories per serving.
• Enlightened is a brand with delicious flavors you can trust, including Movie Night flavor, which has a popcorn base and chocolate and caramel swirl.
• Arctic Zero doesn’t use sugar alcohols, which sets it apart, and the milk and why protein are free from hormones.

Conclusion

If you feel like you could benefit from a Keto diet, you can see how easy the diet is and the numerous benefits. Make sure to talk to your doctor first, especially if you already have health problems. Even if the Keto diet is known to help people with your condition, it is important to make sure your doctor knows so you can make sure it won’t interfere with your current treatment or have any other ill effects.

Keto ice cream is proof that you can adopt a Keto diet without suffering. Healthy and delicious, you can get Keto ice cream in all your favorite flavors or easily make it yourself.