11 Ways to Help a Friend Go Keto

by Team Senza July 15, 2024

Every so often, we ask our growing keto community, “Who does keto with you?” The most common response to the poll is “Just me.”

This is a troubling pattern. Keto is a disruptive change, for your body as well as your lifestyle. Having the support of a friend, family member, online group, or professional coach can make the difference between a short-term experiment and long-term success.

So if you’re in the groove with keto - feeling better, looking different, and seeing results from a commitment to your health, maybe it’s time to pay it forward. Here are eleven ways you can offer support to someone else who’s curious about keto:

1. Host a keto-friendly dinner.

Your friends may be wondering, “What will I eat if I try keto?” Wow them with your newly acquired keto cooking skills and help them discover just how tasty and filling low-carb dishes can be. Plan a keto-friendly dinner party with a menu that showcases rich flavors and popular substitutes for conventional high-carb foods. You can always browse the Senza Recipe Box in the app or follow @senzatime on Instagram for inspiration. You can even go “undercover” with this idea and tell your friend afterward that the meal was keto-friendly.

2. Create a personalized meal plan.

Planning ahead is the key to success with keto. When meals are decided in advance, you already know how the macros add up and can enjoy your food without thinking about nutrition in the moment. Why not remove stress from the first week of the journey by offering to plan a set of meals for a special friend?

Check out our series of free weekly meal plans on The Planet Keto Blog and modify the meals to fit your friend’s macro settings, personal tastes, and cooking preferences. Be sure to include some favorite keto snacks and treats. You’re welcome to ask a Senza Coach to help create a meal plan for a friend!

3. Send a keto cookbook.

Does your friend love to cook and bake? Send a keto cookbook to celebrate the journey. Here are a few of our all-time favorites:

21 Day Ketogenic Diet Weight Loss Challenge by Rachel Gregory with Amanda C. Hughes
Keto Reset Diet by Mark Sisson
Keto Meal Prep by Liz Williams
Keto Celebrations by Mary Alexander

4. Connect as friends in the Senza app.

Invite your friend to join you in the Senza community, and you’ll be able to share foods and recipes to that person’s feed each day for extra motivation and accountability. Share a favorite idea for breakfast or a great find for making low-carb muffins. You can also lead by example and allow your friend to log from your own food journal (last 3 days).

5. Share your keto story.

Setbacks are a normal part of any path to optimal health, and you’ve likely experienced a few bumps along the way. Be real about the challenges and share tips that helped you to trust in the process through all the ups and downs. This can look like:

Sending an encouraging direct message
Posting to your friends through social channels
Sharing a relevant post from social media or the Senza app feed
Talking about a time when you experienced a setback and how you overcame it
Going on a walk together and asking how it’s going
Sharing your non-scale victories (improvements aside from what we see on the scale)
Being an active listener to understand your friend’s questions and concerns

6. Help your friend navigate social situations.

Family members can be incredibly unsupportive of one’s decision to get healthy through keto. Give some practical advice for handling situations when a loved one questions whether keto is safe or declares that it’s unsustainable. The resources below provide accurate information about the keto way of eating:

From Virta Health: Is a ketogenic diet safe?
From Perfect Keto: The Keto Answers Book
From Rachel Gregory and RG Fit: The MetFlex Life blog explains how keto is a means to achieve metabolic flexibility
From Patricia Daly: Get the facts about the science of keto and therapeutic ketosis as a metabolic therapy.

7. Make a keto starter kit.

What did you find most helpful when you first started keto? Put together a care package with some or all of these items:

Ketone blood meter with testing strips
Digital food scale
Body tape for measuring inches lost
Your favorite keto cookbook
Keto electrolyte packets
Dark chocolate bar
MCT oil and/or collagen packets
Samples of healthy fats - ghee, lard, schmalz, tallow, etc.
Samples of keto-friendly snacks

8. Join the 25 Days of Keto challenge.

In December, invite your keto-curious friend to participate in our free holiday challenge. All users who log their food and fasts each day of the challenge and have at least a 25-day streak by Dec. 25 will be eligible for prizes and a keto milestone badge. Details are sent to the Senza feed with each holiday season!

9. Do a keto pantry makeover.

Offer to stock your friend’s pantry with a collection of keto-friendly items like almond flour, coconut flour, nuts, pork rinds, keto ketchup, avocado oil mayo, ghee, avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil, sugar-free chocolate chips, and an alternative sweetener like Lakanto or Swerve. Contact the Planet Keto team to order a custom pantry collection for a friend!

10. Send a Planet Keto gift card.

Our digital gift cards can be applied toward private health coaching, two-week meal plans, shopping services, and more. Check out all the options on our Keto Essentials page.

11. Try a fast together.

Did you know, Senza has a fasting timer built into the journal? Keto and fasting are a great combination of health tools. For most people, fasting is easier to incorporate after a few weeks in ketosis, when cravings have subsided and hunger signaling has stabilized.

Adopting a pattern of intermittent fasting, or time-based feeding, can be a fun way to continue the journey together. The idea is to have a later breakfast (or first meal) and an earlier dinner (or last meal), so that your eating window gets shorter and your digestive system gets a longer period to rest overnight. Learn more in our post about The Basics of Fasting.

Keto is more fun with friends!

Although most of us dive into keto on our own, this journey is far more fulfilling when you can share it with a buddy, mentor, or close friend. At last check, we counted more than thirty thousand friend connections established across the Senza community. And the leader in making new Senza friends is @MrLowCarb, who has experienced the most remarkable success with keto and logged more than 1,000 days in a row in his Senza Food Journal. Let’s all follow his lead and invite a friend to Senza today!