Claire McDonnell had to take the initiative when it came to utilizing the Keto diet for her daughter while traveling and being on the road, McDonnell shares her story about the effects and changes Keto has offered.
Over from England to present on the health benefits of a Ketogenic Diet at the Epilepsy Family Day, Orlando. We also took our Paleo style Keto diet to Disney World, Florida with great success. Keto foods travel well and shouldn’t hold you back from enjoying experiences as a family.
Our daughter, Leafy, has been on her Ketogenic diet for 3.5 years now. The diet has had stunning results in massively reducing her seizures and improving her health in all areas. Our whole family has benefited from this change, as we are now happily a low carb family feeling great for cutting out the sugars and processed foods.
It was quite easy to check out the Disney restaurants and their menus; we used the Disney apps to locate them. The choices for buying Keto foods in the Disney parks are very limited. We did find some things, well mainly chicken Caesar salads, which is passable when we removed the croutons and added avocado and olive oil.
We packed up a full picnic for each long park day and kept it cool in our handy roll along picnic bag, Leafy even hitched a ride on it when she was too tired to walk! We ate flax seed crackers, nitrate free beef jerky, nuts, salads, chicken drumsticks, which were easy to bake in our apartment, mayonnaise, boiled eggs, olives and of course Florida Avocados. There are plenty of drinking water points all over the parks so we didn’t need to carry that too.
The tempting smell of sugary carbohydrate high treats is everywhere, so it was important that we also packed some delicious paleo treats too. We brought homemade almond flour scones and chocolate, orange muffins, macadamia nut bars and buttered popcorn for our tasty treats.
November is a lovely time to visit the theme parks in Florida. It’s low season just before the big Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons and the weather is perfect, gorgeous sunshine but not too hot.
We feel very lucky to have had such a wonderful experience that would not have been possible for us if it hadn’t been for Leafy’s amazing keto diet.
NOTE: The Ketogenic diet changes the way the body is fuelled, from using glucose to using fats as its primary fuel source to produce Ketones. Changing the body’s fuel source to ketones has been shown to manage seizures in adults and children, reduce cancers in particular brain tumours and to improve a wide range of mental health-related conditions; including depression, bipolar, ADHD, anxiety.
Claire McDonnell-Liu, Leicestershire UK
McDonnell is a Nutrition Advisor with Leafie.org sharing her low carb, Paleo and Keto family journey, recipes and tips with other families taking control of their health.
This article was written by Claire McDonnell, UK Matthew’s Friend’s Regional Coordinator, Nutrition Advisor at Leafie.com & Ketogenic Diet Keynote Speaker.