Is Shumai Keto Friendly? (3 Tips For Weight Loss) 

Shumai is a staple food of any dim sum restaurant but many of the options you find are not keto friendly and can affect your fitness goals.

It’s definitely amongst the most popular Dim Sum dishes and offers a ton of flavor with awesome textures that make for an amazing dumpling.

Although Shumai is delicious, is it keto friendly?

Shumai is not keto friendly as many of its calories come from a egg and flour mixture. You can expect to find carbs in Shumai so make sure to watch out for these dumplings if you are looking to stick within your low carb range.

Here are three tips and facts that you can keep in mind for your next dim sum journey. 

1. What is Keto and What Does It Take? 

2. How Can Shumai Be Keto Friendly? 

3. What Other Keto Options Are Available When Eating Dim Sum? 

Let’s get into the detail on how we can fit Shumai into our fitness goals. 

How To Stay Fit When Eating Shumai 

Eating Shumai most likely means that you’ll be eating at your favorite dim sum restaurant.

If you’re someone who is dedicated to their fitness goals you probably want to know if Shumai or Dim Sum is something you can fit into your diet.

The answer is that it’s totally fine to eat Dim Sum and things like Shumai, just figure out your calorie intake and make sure to put some muscle on your frame. 

Let’s talk about calories.

When you understand how many calories you need to consume in a day then you understand how to control the amount of fat that you carry.

There are many diets out there such as intermittent fasting, keto, or paleo that aim to help you eat at a deficit, but, if you understand energy balance, these aren’t completely necessary for anyone trying to get lean. 

Eating enough calories allows you to eat with less restrictions and that’s really the beauty of it.

You aren’t limited to eating a certain amount of foods as all foods are available as long as you know the calorie count of it.

However, keto, intermittent fasting, or paleo can aid you in your journey of fat loss as long you know your calories.

They’re great tools to help us stay fit but not the main focus.

So figure out how many calories you need to shed fat and that is the first step of eating foods such as Shumai while staying fit. 

Now, let’s talk about muscle.

Muscle helps us burn more calories at rest and increases metabolism over time.

The fastest way to put more muscle on your body is to get into resistance training or lifting weights.

The worry here is that many people think that lifting weights makes you big and bulky when, in reality, lifting weights is what slims you down and keeps you lean.

The reason why we talked about our calorie intake before building muscle is because they go hand in hand.

If you overeat on the calories then you will see yourself get big and bulky. It isn’t the exercise that makes you bigger, it’s the food! 

Make sure that you’re consistently working out and controlling your calories.

You’ll definitely see that there is much more leniency on the foods you can eat and big results will definitely come.

So, let’s talk about the pros and cons of keto and whether or not you can fit Shumai into your diet! 

What is Keto and What Are Its Pros and Cons? 

Keto is the process of eating a small amount of carbs to allow the body to produce and rely on ketones as energy instead of carbs.

In order to see the effects of Keto you must usually eat a minimal amount of carbs for over two weeks.

Sometimes the time it takes can be lower or higher, it all depends on the individual.

What I want to discuss in this article is the pros and cons of a Keto diet and whether or not it will fit into whoever reads this. 

The pros of Keto is that it promotes quick fat loss results in the beginning of its cycle as carbs are taken out of the diet.

Carbs retain water which is why, when starting Keto, most people feel lighter and see the scale dropping.

The great thing about Keto is that it promotes a high protein diet as you are eliminating one of the macronutrients from the meals you eat.

That means it forces you to eat more healthy meats and veggies while avoiding any sugary foods that are stuffed with carbs. 

The cons of Keto, however, is that it is extremely hard to maintain as it is a very restrictive diet.

Results come when consistency is placed into a diet or workout regimen.

If you are someone aiming to get a flat stomach or six pack abs, expect a year or two of constant workouts and constant dieting.

If you cannot see yourself following a Keto diet for over a year, then this diet is a really bad option for you.

Most people cannot stick with Keto for too long, but if you are someone who is dedicated to staying on it then by all means eat your meat and get some great results! 

Now let’s dissect the all mighty Shumai and see if we can fit it into a Keto diet! 

How Can Shumai Be Keto Friendly? 

In order to answer this question we need to look at the nutrition facts and what goes into a typical Shumai dish.

A typical Pork Shumai usually runs for 60 Calories with 2.7 grams of fat, 5.3 grams of carbs, and 2.8 grams of protein.

These are the macronutrients for one Shumai dumpling and is what you should expect when diving in to your next Dim Sum meal. Here are the nutrition facts. 

After looking at these stats we can conclude that Shumai is not very keto friendly.

However, this does not mean we can’t have a few in our Keto endeavours! In order to get into Ketosis or sustain Ketosis we must eat less than 50 grams of net carbs in our day.

Since, Shumai only has around 5.3 grams of carbs we can probably have a few! 

The problem, however, is that you are eating other things such as vegetables and other dishes so you need to be careful when indulging in this meal.

The tip here is track everything that you eat and look at the nutritional content of foods.

If you know a food has carbs then look it up and make sure that you’re still on track with your Keto diet. 

You can probably have a couple pieces of Shumai but make sure that you are aware of how many carbs (and calories) you are consuming in your day. 

What Other Keto Options Are Available When Eating Dim Sum? 

When I was on my low carb diet, this was the question I was always asking.

Since I love Dim Sum, I did my research and found the foods that I could eat safely and a lot of.

The top items I found were the braised tendons, the steamed meatballs, and chicken feet. So let’s take a look at each one of these! 

Braised Beef Tendon 

If you’re a fan of eating the Braised Beef Tendon when eating Dim Sum, then this is a great dish for staying Keto and getting a ton of protein.

The macronutrients on a typical tendon dish is usually around 1 gram of fat, 0 grams of carbs, and 37 grams of protein.

Now, I couldn’t find one specifically for Dim Sum but I imagine that the carbs and fats are still relatively low in this dish.

Try this one out and you won’t be disappointed. 

Steamed Meatballs

The great thing about these meatballs is that they are huge and satiating.

Although similar macronutrients to the shumai, these are a great option since they are much bigger for every plate served.

The macronutrients are 7 grams of fat, 5 grams of carbs, and 4 grams of protein. Not bad at all!

Just a little warning here though, one is plenty if you want to stay in your carb range for the day. 

Chicken Feet 

Chicken feet is one of the dishes that represent Dim Sum and, the best part about these, are that they are low in carbs and high in protein!

A typical foot goes for 73 calories,  5 grams of fat, 0 gram of carbs, and 7 grams of protein.

This is perfect for our Keto diet and is a great way to get our protein in while eating Dim Sum.

Dim Sum is filled with carbs so eating something with high protein at these restaurants is very difficult to do.

Stick with the chicken feet if you want to stay fit! 

That’s it! 

If you want to fit Shumai into your Keto diet, you totally can. Just make sure to review the nutrition facts and understand that there are carbs in there.

If it’s too hard for you to resist eating more then feel free to just go on a loser diet when you track your calorie intake and macronutrient ratios.

If you want to know more about healthy Asian foods then make sure you check out our other blogs! 

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