The Vegas experience is all about living large, a massively hedonistic stimulation of the senses. Pick up your towering boozy sugary concoctions, wander the strip, eat all the things, see all the bright lights and big buildings, and gamble to the tune of noisy slot machines. Whatever you don’t lose at the tables, you can spend at all stores that fill out every hotel on the strip. The Vegas experience can be summed up in 5 words: Go big or go home.

Resisting Carb Temptation Starts by Having a Plan

Temptation is everywhere in Vegas. For anyone trying to maintain a low-carb diet, the temptations can be hard to resist, especially if you don’t have a plan. Since Chris and I both wanted to maintain our keto lifestyle for the most part while we were in Vegas, I worked out a plan of attack before I even set foot on the plane. I decided that I would find solid restaurant options for low-carb eating, set us up with keto snacks, and decide what things I would allow myself more flexibility on (we were on vacation after all.)

Our Oddessey to SkinnyFats

I found a cool hipster restaurant aptly named SkinnyFats, not far from the “Welcome to Vegas” sign. This is a bit of a way from the strip, but we mistakenly thought it looked closer on a map. It ended up taking well over an hour to walk there, but on the plus side, we did work up an appetite. Not only do they have a number of decent keto food options, like the Hot Chix salad, a buffalo chicken salad with avocado, blue cheese, jalapeño ranch, etc, which I got, they’ll also make almost any swap request without extra charge. Chris ordered the Thai Cobb Salad but asked them to swap the mango for avocado. They’ll also swap buns for lettuce. They have zucchini noodle bowls, Buffalo-style cauliflower, even chia pudding. See their complete menu. And if you’re not going to be in the area and don’t have access to a car, they have a delivery service.

Mrs. Williams Diabetic Delights: Indulging Our Low-Carb Sweet Tooths

My Vegas Yelp search brought my attention to Mrs. Williams Diabetic Delights, a bakery that’s been creating sweets catering to people who are diabetic for nearly 30 years. Sugar-free doesn’t necessarily mean low-carb though, but the staff is quite aware that their business attracts people who are on the ketogenic diet so they have a sheet that shows the carb counts of most of their offerings. The lowest-carb baked goods they have are as follows: cinnamon puffs, cheese pockets (plain or berry), napoleons, and cheesecake.

Most of their chocolates and candies are low-carb too, but be warned: they are all made with either malitol or Splenda, which is fine if you’re only having one or two, and you are able to handle the spike in blood sugar, but if you have too many it can wreak havoc on your digestive system, so be careful not to over-indulge.

Ocean One $4.99 Lunch Items

It can be challenging to find affordable sit-down restaurants to eat it in Vegas, even if you're not sticking to low-carb. Ocean One Bar & Grill at Planet Hollywood gives a lunch-time respite from this offering all their lunch dishes and appies for only $4.99. We got the tuna tartare, a mahi mahii sandwich (bunless at my request) with coleslaw, and a Greek chicken salad, all of which were delicious. Check out their lunch menu.

Special Keto-Friendly Drinks in Vegas

Obviously, you don't want to order any of the ubiquitous sugary concoctions at Fat Tuesdays or pretty much any other restaurant on the Strip, but we did manage to find a couple of special keto-friendly beverages that were unique to Vegas. At the Coca-Cola store, we found an orange-vanilla Coke Zero that made for a nice, cold treat while out on a walk. They also had a blueberry-lavender Vitamin Water the was pretty nice too. It was also pretty easy to find kombucha at the local Walgreens which I chose to sip on while we walked up and down Fremont Street. I know, these drinks are not exactly a wild party, but I did end up having a free vodka and soda at a casino while playing slots. Woo-hoo.

##True ”Vegas Experience” Dining: All-You-Can-Eat Since it was Vegas, I knew that all-you-can-eat buffets would likely have enough low-carb options for us to get our fill. An added bonus is that Chris and I are pretty comfortable doing OMAD (one mean a day) and eating all our day’s food in a 2-hour eating window when we feel like it. It allows us to get the best value from one AYCE sitting provided that they have enough high fat, low carb options to fill us. Fortunately, there are plenty of video walk-throughs of Vegas AYCE restaurants on YouTube, so I was able to find two great options,
The Garden Court Buffet and AYCE. [The Garden Court Buffet at the Main Street Casino](https://www.mainstreetcasino.com/dine/garden-court-buffet) in Downtown Las Vegas offers a breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets for $9.99, $10.99 and $13.99 respectively (with Ruby player’s card discount, which is free and easy to get). [AYCE at The Palms](https://www.palms.com/eat-and-drink/ayce-buffet), only a 40-minute walk from the Strip, offers 2-for-1 dinner buffet ($21.99) at 4pm with a players card, or you can just get a $2 discount for one person for any buffet menu, making their breakfast and lunch buffets $10.99 and $13.99 respectively. If you’re doing a late breakfast though, you can just stay and eat their lunch buffet if you want after they make the transition at 11am. Both buffets have many high-fat, low-carb roast meats brisket, ham and/or turkey, ribs, chicken wings/drumsticks. Both have salad bars that allow you to build a variety of keto-friendly salads. Both places also had a variety of sugar-free desserts. There are some differences beyond these similarities too. The Garden Court Buffet is arranged by different areas’ dishes, American, Asian, Mexican, Hawaiian, etc. Their sugar-free desserts are all baked goods (i.e. pies, cakes, dessert loaves, etc). The only seafood they had at lunch was mahi-mahi and mussels, but both were pretty good. I found low-carb food that I liked at every area, and while the food didn’t always seem as fresh as it was at AYCE, their prices overall were cheaper. The AYCE at the Palms is arranged by cooking type rather than ethnicity, so they have stations like The Hearth, Smoke & Fire, Revival (vegetarian “healthy” choices), Roastery, Greenery, World Pan, The Hearth, and Light & Sweet. I found lots of great keto choices at every station. Zucchini noodles and baba ghanoush at Revivial, kimchi and taco at World Pan, French onion soup, green bean casserole, collard greens with bacon, brussel sprouts, clam boil and crawdads at The Hearth. I was quite happy at the variety and the freshness of everything.

They even have an omelette station at breakfast which becomes a pasta bar for lunch and dinner. And don’t think that because it’s a pasta bar it couldn’t be keto-friendly. Because they offer lots of veggie options, and the food is made in order, you can easily put together something nice. I had them make a chicken Alfredo with broccoli, tomato, mushroom, bacon and Parmesan cheese. No pasta necessary!

But my favourite thing was probably the sugar-free dessert section. They have a gelato ice cream bar with two sugar-free flavours, vanilla and caramel. Throw on some roast peanuts from their toppings section and it’s a great low-carb dessert. Of the other sugar-free plate desserts, I would say the best options would probably be the peanut bar, with a similar flavour to a butter tart though less sweet, the lemon curd with strawberry coulis, and the brownie, which all appeared to have less flour than the other options.

##Take-Home Snack Attack Sometimes you just want to have a snack night in your hotel. On one such night, we had stopped by a Walmart off the strip (we had a rental car to go camping and went on our way back), and picked up some pork cracklings and avocado salsa to bring back to our room. We also went to [In-N-Out Burger](http://in-n-out.com) near Linq Hotel and picked up two “protein style, animal style” double cheese burgers to go with our snacks (bunless with pickle, extra spread and grilled onions). A great combination for an inexpensive meal to eat in your room with a couple of Mrs. Williams low-carb pastries for dessert.

##Deciding on Higher Carb "Exceptions" I have to be honest. While I stuck to keto foods 90% of the time, I still gave myself the option to make a couple of exceptions. At the AYCE, I indulged and had an ice cream sandwich. While I was able to ask them to make it with sugar-free ice cream, the cookies were definitely not keto. We also decided to try [Doughp](https://www.eatdoughp.com), a dessert bar at Planet Hollywood that specializes in cookie dough. We ordered a small bowl with ice cream. Neither of these were sugar-free, and the cookie dough was made with wheat flour, but it did inspire to play more with my own keto cookie dough recipe a bit more. There was also a super cheesy baked macaroni and cheese at the Garden Court Buffet I tried that was divinely decadent.

All of these things were novelty items that we wouldn’t normally have the option to have, so we decided to go for it. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. I have no regrets. I felt it was better to stay keto for most of the trip and simply make a few allowances so I don’t feel like you missed out on something special. I don’t use exceptions as an excuse to completely fall off the wagon. Vacations, for me, are short periods during which I can indulge a little more. That being said, a week is a long trip, and I also want to have the energy to enjoy the activities we have planned, so staying with keto choices most of the time is what I prefer, but to each their own. If you need to stay on track the entire time, do that. If you prefer to let it all hang loose and eat all the things, but go back to your usual keto ways when you get home, then do that. Whatever you decide, I think it’s best to decide ahead of time what you want to do so you can more easily stick to whatever works best for you.

Have you ever tried to do Vegas on a keto diet? How did it work out for you? Any tips for everyone that helped you? Please share your thoughts in the comments. :)