Here’s What the Pioneer Woman Really Thinks About the Keto Diet

The keto diet is one of the absolutely most popular diets in the country right now, and Ree Drummond — the Pioneer Woman — is one of the most popular food personalities in the country, so it only makes sense we’d want to hear what she has to say about it. And it turns out, she likes it. “Last summer, I kind of dove into the keto [diet] world and enjoyed it,” Ree told People. “It was a good exercise.”

But don’t think that the queen of casseroles and comfort food is going to be entirely grain- and sugar-free. She says she started eating along the lines of the diet because her sixth cookbook, New Frontier, offers suggestions on how to lighten up dishes that are otherwise really carb-heavy. “It’s been really fun to come up with versions of really delicious dishes that you can take a few steps to make them lower in carbs,” she says. But then afterwards, she “settled back into a more sustainable, realistic way of eating.”

The book isn’t all low carb, though — it’s just full of suggestions. “My low-carb cookbook will be out October 22!” she wrote on Instagram. “And what’s super cool is that my high-carb cookbook will be out the exact same day! And to make it convenient for you, I put the two cookbooks inside the same cover.”

The cookbook, she says, is basically designed on how she eats in real life — and that means somedays she uses spaghetti squash and has a low-carb dinner, and some days she digs into the lasagna. It sounds like a very balanced way to eat — and a good way to be able to work in the big, carbtastic recipes we’ve come to know from Ree while also getting to try her take on something a little more healthful.