Weight Loss

Why I make Keto Chow

This entry is part 139 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I want to help people change their lives… and help them not go nuts in the process.

Nutritional Ketosis (aka “Keto” or “Ketogenic Diet”) can be highly effective but it’s daunting, especially for beginners. Keto is the only thing I have ever tried that has had any lasting effect on my health and my weight. I consider it like the “Konami Code“: a cheat or hack, because of how effective it has been in turning around my life (and the lives of family, friends, and former strangers =).  I’m committed to helping others get into the Keto lifestyle and Keto Chow makes doing Keto easier; not only for beginners that are just starting out, but also for grizzled veterans who have been doing keto for years.

My first introduction to the ketogenic diet was when our oldest son started having seizures. After trying most of the common anticonvulsants (with no success) the neurologist sent my wife home with some information on a dietary treatment to control the seizures. He told her that if they didn’t have success with a medication soon then we would need to try a ketogenic diet. Glancing through the information he provided, my initial reaction was “holy crap, that sounds impossible!” all of the dietary restrictions and rules were more than we could handle. We would be like this family. The next medication worked and I all but forgot about the ketogenic diet. Years later it came up again when I decided I needed to lose weight.

When you first start doing Keto, there is a lot of information to be learned. There’s new vocabulary, new science, new lists of things you should or shouldn’t eat. It can actually be a bit dangerous if you don’t do sufficient research and don’t know that insufficient electrolytes will make you feel terrible (it’s called “Keto Flu” and it isn’t any fun) – that was one of the mistakes I made when I started Keto. I also started keto using a meal replacement shake that was loaded with coconut flour, chia seeds and other gritty stuff.

My goals in making Keto Chow were:

  1. Make figuring out Keto easy. Easy on your brain and easy to prepare the food.
  2. Keep people from running into electrolyte deficiency (the aforementioned “Keto Flu”).
  3. Make it tasty enough that you’ll not just tolerate it but honestly, actually, for realsies, enjoy consuming it (and want more).
  4. Make sure people are getting the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients they need to be healthy. Likely healthier than ever before.

Here’s the honest truth: I completely and entirely believe in this product and the Ketogenic diet. It’s not the end-all, be-all answer to everything in the world and I don’t eat it all day, every day for every meal (because: bacon and cheese). But I do have it for most meals.

I made Keto Chow for myself, it just happens to be the sort of thing that other people like too. It’s easy to prepare meals and I don’t have to worry about missing out on weird vitamins or minerals. I hit my macronutrient goals. I’m getting my electrolytes and it’s REALLY good tasting – like I’m always sad when my Chocolate Peanut Butter is empty. I mix up a couple days worth at a time and am able to just grab containers out of the fridge on my way out the door. Let me give you an example:

Last weekend our family went to help some friends cut wood. They use it to heat their home during the winter and you can get a permit to take dead pines (either that or they eventually fall over and block the road; the pines, not our friends =). It’s insanely cheap to get the permit ($5 a cord, 4 cords minimum – a cord is a really arbitrary measurement). We had to leave by 6 AM to get down to the place at the time we wanted. While I was packing the cooler with food for the kids I threw in several “blender bottle” containers full of Keto Chow… and that was it! I drank one on the drive and the other in between chopping up the tree. It’s easy, it’s effective and it’s tasty. I even brought along Keto Chow to Disneyland.

[print_gllr id=20066]

So I use it myself, how about other people? PrimitiveOrigins posted that he had lost 100 lbs on Keto Chow, complete with before and after pics. I asked him for a full review, here it is:

About a year and a half ago I was having a bunch of medical issues and it seemed my diet had to change and I needed to lose some weight. So after trying diet after diet nothing worked. A lot of this had to do with the nature of the diets themselves, I’m very “black and white” as a person and the diets I was attempting were very just avoid carbs at night or try to eat vegan for breakfast and lunch. That is fine for some people, but since these diets gave me an inch I became a ruler. I needed something as strict and rigid as myself, I stumbled across keto. It seemed very easy for me to do. Want pizza? Nope, can’t have it: carbs and sugar. Want a pineapple? Full of sugar: nope. So I went forth with this idea and it was fine for a while, but I soon realized I disliked cooking and eating; only keto gave me a realization that I was only eating for fuel so I started looking for something that would fit that idea.

I found Soylent quite quickly and marveled at the idea; this was exactly what I was looking for, but soon realized it wouldn’t work for me as weight loss was my goal and Soylent doesn’t really provide efficient weight loss. So I started looking for keto version of soylent and discovered […] Keto Chow. I placed my first order of a months’ worth of rich chocolate.

I explained to my wife what I was planning on doing, she was skeptical to say the least (amplified by the fact that the order came in a ziploc bag lol.), but I pressed and she agreed if anything was going to work it would be this. I got my order and mixed everything up and the next day I would have my first meal.

I had my first meal. Taste wise, I did not enjoy rich chocolate at all, but again I was drinking it only for fuel so I pushed through it. I drink 2 a day as it works for my schedule better, one at around 6am and the other at around 6pm, I have done this for about a year and a half now.

The toughest part was training myself out of eating socially, that took about a month to get used to. Once that was over it was smooth sailing, I started mixing my own.

I didn’t see any weight loss, but I got a scale and I was reading it on the scale, so something had to be working. It was insanely motivating and frankly addicting. When people would offer me food or soda my gut reaction was like: “Are you insane? I’m not working out and I’m losing weight at an aggressive rate, you couldn’t pay me to stop this!” My friends all thought I was nuts for the first month or two then after I dropped my first 50lbs or so they were very interested and I had at least 4 friends try it. None of which could stick with it as aggressively as I did/do. It’s a wonderful meal replacement, but real weight loss takes dedication and I was determined.

I’ve “cheated” on Keto Chow by, now and then – maybe once a month, getting plain meatballs from Noodles&Co. or having scrambled eggs and bacon and that was great while it lasted, but I was having some stomach trouble from that so I gave it up.

Overall my plans for the future are: Keto Chow until I cannot anymore. One of the reasons I’m going to be doing keto chow the rest of my life is because I had undiagnosed absence seizures. For the longest time, my wife and I just thought I’d get mixed up when speaking because of my stutter and forget what I was talking about. I’d have really bad headaches and get randomly tired throughout the day. I was going to the doctor to make sure I wasn’t losing weight too fast and that everything was going smoothly. It was, but one day I happened to “cheat” and grab some Noodles&Co. meatballs before my Dr. appointment; and I had an absence seizure right in front of him. He noticed and we started testing for epilepsy. Apparently I have a good deal of food allergies that also trigger seizures, but apparently I was an undiagnosed epileptic for some time and thanks to you I’ve been seizure free for almost 2 years. (Minus the forced ones.)

It’s so cheap, it’s so simple. I see no reason to ever change my diet at this point. My wife and my friends are all used to it; it’s a bit strange explaining it to new people, but the results speak for themselves. Overall I’ve never been happier or more healthy and it’s all thanks to Chris.

Seriously, that’s just awesome. This is why I make Keto Chow.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:32-06:00September 2nd, 2016|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Weight Loss|3 Comments
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Found an awesome Keto blog – especially relevant for “the ladies”

OK, so I was kicking around /r/keto and found this post which linked over to this recipe over on ketokarma.com

Seriously good stuff and inspiring! She has a wealth of great information, recipes, and video updates. If you’re looking into starting Keto, wanting some more info, motivation to keep going, or whatever – check it out!

http://ketokarma.com/about/

By |2016-07-22T14:06:56-06:00July 22nd, 2016|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on Found an awesome Keto blog – especially relevant for “the ladies”
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Relatively good article in Men’s Fitness about Keto

If you’re familiar with Keto you probably won’t get too much out of it but Men’s Fitness has an article up about the Ketogenic Diet: http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-eat/truth-behind-worlds-most-cutting-edge-fat-burning-performance-meal-plan-keto

That is all.

By |2016-07-07T12:31:39-06:00July 7th, 2016|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on Relatively good article in Men’s Fitness about Keto
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Look, there’s an easier (cheaper) way

This entry is part 132 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

So the newly FDA approved AspireAssist has been all over the news (even made the Colbert Show back in 2015). It’s a tube that is implanted into your stomach so you can suck out undigested food before it is absorbed. In other words: it’s a FDA approved form of surgically assisted bulimia, that’s the consensus over on /r/keto (note: on the comments “ED” means “Eating Disorder” not… something else).

There’s a much easier, enjoyable, SUSTAINABLE and cheaper way to change your life: eat bacon stop eating sugar; and by “sugar” I mean glucose, fructose, polymerized glucose (starch) and the like. Call it what you will – I will call it “Keto” and it’s really not that hard. Look, if you are like me and your body apparently can’t handle carbohydrates like it’s supposed to: don’t eat them, eat better food. People wouldn’t insist that celiacs eat bread, they don’t tell people with peanut allergies to have some, and Jim Gaffigan frankly needs to stay out of the sun. Switching over to the lifestyle of keto changed my life – and more and more of those around me are doing it too (or at least giving it a try).

Personally I use Keto Chow for most of my meals but most people doing Keto use “regular” food – either way is fine. Got a gut? Keto might be right for you too. Best part is: it’s not a MLM, it’s not being promoted by any special interest group and you can do it yourself! You won’t need surgery, you’ll have more energy and my wife claims doing keto has made me more attractive, so there’s that too. Here’s a handy guide:

keto-paleo-diet-food-pyramid

By |2016-10-13T07:27:37-06:00June 16th, 2016|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|2 Comments
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The Biggest Loser Diet – Explained!

This entry is part 126 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This week results of a study were posted showing that contestants from “The Biggest Loser” from several years ago had mostly regained all their lost weight. From the conclusions offered in the findings it would seem there is no way to lose weight. The subjects metabolisms slowed down so much that it was nearly impossible for them to maintain their weight loss. Doctor Jason Fung does an excellent job of distilling what’s really going on here. I suggest you head over and read his article. I’ll wait.

This is what is sometimes termed ‘starvation mode’. This is what people imagine happens as their body starts to shut down in order to conserve energy. Basal metabolism (Calories Out) falls and you feel like crap. As you eat less, your body burns less calories, so that eventually weight loss plateaus. Then you feel like crap, so decide to eat a bit more (your hunger hormones are also rising like a spire), but not as much as you used to. But, your ‘Calories Out’ is so low that you get weight regain. Sound familiar? Happens to every dieter out there. What’s unfair, is that their friends and family silently blame the victim of having ‘fallen off the wagon’, or not having enough will power. Actually, the dietary advice – Eat Less, Move More is guaranteed to fail. So don’t blame the victim when they actually do fail.

You did read the article right? If you didn’t the TL;DR is:

  1. Caloric Reduction as Primary strategy puts you into starvation mode (lower metabolism).
  2. The key to losing weight in the long term is maintaining basal metabolism, or keeping ‘Calories Out’ high.
  3. Failure rate of Eat Less, Move More is proven to be 99% or so. This remains the diet advice favored by most physicians and dieticians.
  4. Actual starvation (fasting or bariatric surgery) does not put you into starvation mode (metabolism remains high).
  5. Ketogenic diets do not put you into starvation mode either (metabolism remains high).

My own experience confirms this. When I had a DEXA scan done I also did the resting metabolic rate test. Despite being on a Ketogenic diet for over a year and a half, my metabolism isn’t crazy low, quite the opposite:

The RMR report also said I probably want between 1776 and 2218 calories a day for weight loss; and that my metabolism is 10% faster than people of similar sex, age, height and weight. There were some less than useful platitudes about “you must burn more calories than you consume to lose weight” which is the same as saying “you must save more money than you spend to save money” or “if more people leave a room than come in, there will be less people in the room” – um… thanks?

So. If you want to lose weight because your body doesn’t handle carbohydrates well (like me!) and keep it off, it seems these are the steps:

  1. Switch to a ketogenic LIFESTYLE – no cheating, no end. If you go back to eating the sugary junk that got you fat in the first place, what do you think will happen?
  2. Do intermittent fasting (just don’t eat for two meals but keep drinking water) or outright fasting (24 hours without calories)
  3. If you’re feeling ambitious, try lifting weights. I’m currently a few weeks into StrongLifts5x5 (along with my wife, she’s awesome by the way; our anniversary is tomorrow) and so far it’s been simple and easy to stick to. Takes around 30 minutes, three times a week.
By |2016-10-13T07:27:40-06:00May 5th, 2016|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on The Biggest Loser Diet – Explained!
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Testing with acacia gum progressing well, thinking about starting lifting

This entry is part 125 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

So my test of Keto Chow with Acacia gum instead of Psyllium Husk powder seems to be going pretty well. Acacia gum doesn’t thicken like psyllium does so I’m having to use a thickening agent too, MOAR fiber I guess. It’s smoother that the psyllium, like really smooth with almost no texture at all except the peanut butter flour I added to this batch.

I’m still rocking 100% Keto Chow since Tuesday (well except the pickles I ate yesterday…. and then I drank all the pickle juice in the jar which was fun since they were hot chili pickles. My wife has planned for us to go out to dinner with friends tonight so I’l going to break my streak. I’m still down 4lbs from Tuesday.

I’ve been thinking about starting lifting at a gym, particularly since this post. It kinda snowballed yesterday when somebody posted a home gym on a yardsale site. I ended up talking to my brother (the one that is supposed to eventually post his experience with Keto and lifting) about it. His advice: “rent” the equipment with a gym membership, if you’re truly serious about it you can buy some later. OK, good plan. The price of the bowflex would be 3.5 years of membership at the gym nearest my house. Now the problem becomes: when will I have time to work out!? I think the solution will be to stash gym clothes in my car and stop on my way home. My awesome wife said she was going to suggest I start going to the gym but didn’t want to offend me =) So good timing I guess.

By |2016-04-16T08:26:29-06:00April 16th, 2016|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on Testing with acacia gum progressing well, thinking about starting lifting
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Day 100 – 100 days of Keto (Chow) retrospective plus a rant about skinny weight loss coaches

This entry is part 81 of 81 in the series 100 days of keto

Weight change for the 100 days: 209.9 lbs to 205.4 lbs. That’s not really stellar progress but compared to gaining I suppose I’ll take it. I also didn’t “cheat” once; meaning I didn’t ever deliberately eat foods containing sugar, starch or other carbohydrates – but that wasn’t a surprise, aside from “robins eggs” that are still kicking around my house I’m not tempted at all by carby foods. For the most part I did have 3 meals of Keto Chow a day for the 100 days but it’s the “extra” stuff that was detrimental.

This 100 day experiment was a good experience though. I can see a direct correlation between my progress and the amount of malitol I consumed, for one thing. Malitol is a relatively common “sugar free” sweetener. And by “sugar free” I’m using the loose standard the food industry uses since it is a sugar alcohol and is arguably better than sucrose, though not by much. Because malitol is cheaper than most of the sugar alcohols like Erythritol it gets used pretty frequently in sugar free stuff. Like Russell Stover chocolates, sugar free lemon heads and others. My advice to myself and to others: if it has malitol then you can’t subtract the sugar alcohols from the total carbohydrates. In other words: just avoid it entirely. Go get some Swerve sweetener and make your own stuff instead. Seriously, it’s my downfall and I’m finally coming to terms with it. As much as people rail against aspartame and sucralose at least I know they don’t affect my metabolism.

So, I didn’t lose much weight during the experiment, what about blood ketones? First off: measuring your ketones is generally a really bad idea. It’s motivational to get some of the urine test strips when you are very first starting out doing keto since you can see a tangible and almost immediate result. As your body adapts to ketosis the urine test strips become useless though, you stop producing extra that gets excreted and the strips stop working. So you can test with blood tests or breath acetone tests. The blood tests are like $2 each and the breath tester is $150. You also fall into a non-constructive pattern if you are constantly testing and “chasing ketones”. You’re better off just limiting your carbohydrates, tracking food in general and keeping at it. Keep Calm and Keto On (KCKO) as they say. So I did measure my blood ketone levels every day. Near the end of the experiment I discovered that I was doing it wrong! Thanks to the “dawn phenomenon” my glucose was high and ketones were low every morning when I tested. That can partially account for why I only averaged 0.5 mmol/L during the experiment (you want to be in the 1.5-3.0 range). the rest of it is the aforementioned malitol.

So here’s where I get into my rant: I feel your pain because it’s my pain too.

Losing weight can be very, very difficult for people (at times it can also be really easy for others). The irony is that almost all of the people you see that advocate exercise, active lifestyles and other “traditional” forms of weight loss have never experienced Metabolic Syndrome, Insulin Resistance or Diabetes. You see the rail thin “never been overweight” paragons of fitness selling exercise plans to get people skinny, or body wraps, or ab crunchers. Even the models they use for weight reduction surgery look like they’ve NEVER been obese. They just don’t understand, and it drives me nuts. Unfortunately society as a whole also subscribes to the notion that all you have to do to be skinny is exercise, fat people are lazy, it’s a moral weakness.

Being fat is a lack of character so far as being allergic to peanuts is a lack of character. Some people can’t handle gluten, others get sunburn almost by looking at a photograph of the sun. Are those problems with their moral fiber, with their will power? Should society look down on them? Maybe they should just try not being diabetic, or celiac , or ginger. Your body’s ability or inability to process glucose/carbohydrates isn’t your fault. If people happen to have won the genetic lottery and their cells haven’t become resistant to insulin yet then that’s also not something they should be applauded for. That’s just how your body may be.

When I was a skinny little kid with asthma I couldn’t gain weight for anything. Then I overcame that and, by the outward indicators, slowly worked up resistance to insulin. I stopped processing glucose like I was supposed to. I don’t know if that was genetics, environment, or (more likely) a result of what I was eating combined with the two.  Regardless, I got fat and stayed fat. To date, the only thing that has had a consistent effect on my weight was coming to terms with how I personally metabolize glucose (or rather don’t). Switching to a ketogenic diet has impacted my health and weight tremendously and I don’t see any reason I would ever stop. Why eat bread when you can eat bacon?

So I consider these 100 days a success for the additional experience I gained. Sure it would have been awesome to be down to 180, but when people report that they’re having issues losing weight I more than understand. I’ve had the same frustrations and maybe even done the same things that are hindering your/their progress.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:40-06:00April 13th, 2016|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Weight Loss, 100 days of keto|6 Comments
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Day 088 – 100 days of Keto (Chow)

This entry is part 72 of 81 in the series 100 days of keto
  • Weight: 202.9
  • Blood ketones: 0.6 mmol/L

Alright, so I made it to 46.4 hours without eating – let’s analyze how it went!

Mood and how I felt. First off, my lack of sleep yesterday was the biggest detrimental factor in the experience. If that had not happened (thanks a lot brain!) I probably would have gone longer, maybe 48 hours, maybe 72 – dunno. I don’t think I’m going to make not eating for several days something I do often since it was rather extreme (obviously); I’ll likely continue doing intermittent fasting here and there. I think I might have also been low on electrolytes since I was feeling sluggish, then again that could have been the sleep (or lack thereof).

Let’s look at the blood results. Tuesday morning (~8 hours) I was at 0.2 mmol/L of ketones in my blood. That evening (~18 hours) when I tested myself again I was up to 1.1. The next morning (~32 hours), even though the only thing I had “eaten” was two fish oil pills the night before, I had gone down to 0.9. When I came home from work that evening and tested again (46.4 hours) my ketones were all the way up to 3.5 mmol/L. After which I had two Keto Chows (Chocolate Peanut Butter), 4 pickles and a couple spoon fulls of ham soup my awesome wife had made. When I tested my blood again this morning, my levels were all the way down to 0.6. Honestly it makes no sense why it’s down again, it just further re-enforces the notion of “don’t chase ketones, just keep calm and keto on” – or don’t do what I’m doing and test your blood every day, just keep doing keto (no cheating!) and it’ll work out. You also shouldn’t get too anxious about the scale, which brings me to…

2016-03-31 07_44_06-Health Mate

Weight results. Well, I came into this from a rather large (keto friendly) Easter dinner which loaded me up on salt and lots of water weight – all the way up to 208.3 lbs on Monday morning. By Tuesday morning (8 hours fasting while sleeping) I was only down to 207.8. lbs. By Wednesday morning I had dropped to 203.6, a slight up-tick Wednesday evening when I weighed myself again and as of this morning I was down again to 202.9 lbs. Monday – Thursday difference is 5.4lbs. Now it will be interesting to see if I can stick with it and continue going down. On a happy note, yesterday was also the weigh-in day for my city’s weight loss challenge. According to the scale there, I was down 6 lbs from the previous week. Nice.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:41-06:00March 31st, 2016|100 days of keto, Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Comments Off on Day 088 – 100 days of Keto (Chow)
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DEXA Scan Results (body composition analysis)

This entry is part 123 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I’ve been doing Nutritional Ketosis (aka: “keto”) for about a year and a half now. I started out at 258 back in late October 2014, got down as far as 198 but came up some with Thanksgiving, Christmas and the like. For the last while I’ve been (mostly) doing 3 meals of Keto Chow a day and am on a downward trend again:

18 months of Keto

Yesterday I had a “DEXA” scan done, which I wasn’t even aware of until I saw this post on /r/ketochow and later this post on /r/keto. The quick explanation of a DEXA scan is it’s a full body X-Ray, aside from a post-mortem autopsy it’s the only way to accurately measure your body composition. Biggest surprise from mine? My entire skeleton only weighs 8.52 lbs, that’s nuts. Another interesting thing to note is apparently how inaccurate my scale is for measuring fat percentage by passing voltage through my body (24.5% compared to the 31.9% the DEXA measured). In its defense: my legs show as having 24.6% on the DEXA scan which is only 0.1% off – since the voltage is going in one foot and out the other, I’m guessing it only measures my legs.The DEXA scanner

Aside from providing some really fun pictures of my skeleton and soft tissue, the scan also gives some very interesting statistics on distribution (my right side is slightly stronger than my left) and with additional scans (at the same place) they give you a graph of changes to each region over time (I removed these from the report I uploaded here since they currently only have a single data point). There is also the datum that I have 63 lbs of fat on my body so losing 30 or so isn’t craziness. 180 would be sweet.

Feel free to check out my report.

Right after the scan I also did a test to determine my Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) which involved putting a clip on my nose and breathing through a tube for 15 minutes. The tube fed to a machine that measured the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels going in and out to determine how many calories I was using. The lady told me to make sure I had my phone or something else to do because it would be boring. And it was. She also warned me that the nose plugs would probably feel like burning. And they did; after about 3 minutes.

RMR Scan

Angry Birds shirt FTW!

The test shows that my resting energy expenditure is 2219 calories a day. It also assumes I’ll burn another 633 calories from walking around and doing stuff that isn’t sitting in a chair, reading reddit; and it postulates I could burn another 277 from exercise. The DEXA scan put my RMR at 2004 calories/day – so it was kinda close. The RMR report also said I probably want between 1776 and 2218 calories a day for weight loss; and that my metabolism is 10% faster than people of similar sex, age, height and weight. There were some less than useful platitudes about “you must burn more calories than you consume to lose weight” which is the same as saying “you must save more money than you spend to save money” or “if more people leave a room than come in, there will be less people in the room” – um… thanks? Anyway, here’s the front page of the RMR report:

Resting Metabolic Rate

Overall I think the scan was great and plan to do some follow-up one, starting with 6 months from now. The place I went to charges $99 for the first scan and $75 for subsequent ones – I got a discount by scheduling the RMR and DEXA together ($10 is $10).

By |2016-10-13T07:27:44-06:00March 15th, 2016|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Weight Loss|Comments Off on DEXA Scan Results (body composition analysis)
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