It's no secret, we all love Chipotle Mexican Grill. Did you know that there are tons of keto friendly Chipotle options? In this guide, we'll cover exactly what you should avoid and what you should order at Chipotle while living a keto lifestyle!
Chipotle Mexican Grill is a great place for keto dieters to find meals that fit their macros. The restaurant offers a variety of protein-rich options, including steak, chicken, and carnitas, that can be prepared without any carb-heavy sides.
For example, a steak burrito bowl with lettuce, sour cream, and cheese contains only 5 grams of carbs. Plus, Chipotle's guacamole is a great source of healthy fats, and the restaurant offers a variety of sugar-free drink options, making it easy to stick to your keto diet while dining out.
Chipotle is our go-to fast-casual restaurant for easy low-carb meals on the go! It's a good option for a variety of diets but especially the ketogenic diet!
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Keto-Friendly Options at Chipotle
First, you may be wondering "is Chipotle keto friendly?" Then answer is YES! Chipotle is a great option while eating low-carb.
There are a few ways to customize your low-carb meal at Chipotle. To make your own keto meal, opt for one of these options:
Burrito bowls are the obvious go-to. While you'll want to skip the rice as the base, you can opt for your base to be meat and choose other low carb ingredients as your toppings. Unfortunately, Chipotle discontinued the cilantro lime cauliflower rice that they debuted in early 2021.
Salads - similar to the burrito bowl but this keto salad bowl is served on a bed of romaine lettuce, this is a good way to get in some extra veggies as well. You'll want to skip the traditional salad dressing and opt for using salsa instead. We love the green salsa in place of salad dressing.
Lifestyle bowls - Chipotle has a line of Lifestyle Bowls that work well for a ketogenic diet. Their Whole30 Salad Bowl, Paleo salad bowl, or the Chipotle Keto Bowl are both great. The Keto bowl has just 6g of net carbs for the entire bowl making it a great option for any low carb diet.
Our go-to bowl is half chicken, half steak topped with salsa fresca, red-chili salsa, tomatillo green-chili salsa, sour cream, shredded cheese, and shredded lettuce with a small scoop of guac. This is the perfect bowl for our high-fat diet, we just love the low carb toppings that Chipotle offers, the nice thing is that they definitely don't feel like diet food.
Carbs in Chipotle Ingredients - Nutrition Facts
Below you'll find the total carb counts for each ingredient. Note, these are TOTAL grams of carbs, not net. If you'd like to see the grams of net carbs for your chosen meal, click on the link for the Chipotle nutritional calculator at the bottom of this post.
Protein Option
- chicken - 0g
- steak -1g
- barbacoa - 2g
- sofritas - 9g (a good option for a vegetarian bowl but a touch high for some keto dieters. If you opt for sofritas, you'll want to keep the remaining toppings really low carb)
- garlic guajillo steak - 2g
- carnitas - 0g
Salsa
- fresh tomato salsa - 4g
- tomatillo green chili salsa - 4g
- tomatillo red chili salsa - 4g
Toppings
- shredded cheese - 1g
- sour cream - 2g
- queso blanco - 4g
- guacamole - 8g - make your bowl high fat with guac or dairy!
- shredded lettuce - 0g
- fajita veggies - 5g - we love this blend of low-carb veggies!
What to avoid
- rice - you'll want to skip both the brown rice and the white rice / cilantro lime rice
- beans - all beans including black beans and pinto beans are too high carb for a keto diet
- tortilla chips - obviously, these are too high-carb for a low-carb diet
- tacos - again, anything with corn is a no-go
- burritos - the tortilla is too high carb
- corn salsa
Nutrition information
You can view the complete nutritional information for Chipotle's fresh real ingredients here. You can also use the Chipotle nutrition calculator to calculate your meal here.
Unlike other fast food restaurants like Taco Bell, Chipotle is very customizable and as long as you keep a few notes in mind, there are a lot of keto options that keto dieters love. It's easy to add healthy fats to your meal with creamy guacamole and lots of veggies since they use only fresh ingredients! Whether you are an extra cheese type person or one who wants all the veggies including their tasty fajita vegetables, Chipotle has you covered!
All in all, Chipotle is one of the best fast food restaurants for finding a keto friendly meal on the go. Like a lot of people, we're always looking for ways to make sticking to the keto journey easier and having low-carb options like the Chipotle Keto menu make that super easy.
Next time you're at Chipotle, tag us @castiron_keto on IG so we can see your Chipotle creation using our guidelines!
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