Ketogenic Soylent

1 month in 3 days doing Ketosis – Time for an update.

This entry is part 11 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I had a crazy huge lunch of pizza on October 22nd, that night I tried the “induction” recipe for the first time and then went full-bore the next day on Thursday, October 23, 2014. I’m expecting to hit at least 16 lbs down at the month mark and I’m gunning for 18. Today I took a drill to my belt and added a couple new holes so my pants won’t fall down.

Since I have the data, here is the last year of my weight. TMI, I know. I’ve labeled notable changes in the trend with what was going on at the time.

Last year of weight data, click to “em-biggen”

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 18th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

I’ll give shipping Ketofood a shot

This entry is part 12 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

So I was asked if I am shipping Ketofood. My stance up until now was that I wouldn’t and mainly because of the logistics of getting the oil to people. MCT oil is a rather specialized product that’s very difficult to find away from the Interwebs. MCT oil is also a critical component of ketosis. It gets you into ketosis quicker, helps you maintain ketosis and is very expensive.

We talked back and forth about some stuff and I asked him if he would prefer a more expensive option that included the oil or cheaper powder without the oil. His response was something I actually hadn’t considered. He said he was looking for a low-carb option but wasn’t “hell bent” on ketosis.

Duh.

Including the oil is more convenient for the end user. It’s all there, no additional stuff is required (except some way to measure the oil). Not including the oil opens up additional options for your own customization (you want MCT+Olive? MCT+Canola? Skip the MCT and go straight canola?). It also reduces complexity and even reduces cost: the Oil is shipped once to you by amazon or whatever instead of coming to me and getting repackaged and shipped.

So this actually sounds viable. What do you think? let me know.

Oh, and I added https to the site for all pages. Secure server, YAY!

By chris|2014-11-18T16:24:14-07:00November 18th, 2014|Soylent|4 Comments

Fixed the Ketofood recipe, added keto sample and preparation instructions

This entry is part 13 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I was looking at Ketofood in MyNetDiary and comparing it to the recipe and discovered that some of the information in the recipe is royally screwed up. The total carbs was listed as less than the fiber total. Yeah, that’s impossible. I did a ton of research and used the label information and USDA database to cobble together a new ingredient on the recipe. I also fixed the salt and linked in my own personal nutrient profile. I renamed it to Ketofood 1.1 (for Ongoing Ketosis) and you can also find it in MyNetDiary as “Quidnyc – Ketofood for Ongoing Ketosis 1.1”.

I also added Ketofood preparation instructions with recommended equipment and also added a Ketofood sample.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 19th, 2014|Soylent|1 Comment

Video – mixing up 3 meals of ketofood

This entry is part 14 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I have this written up in text for on my Ketofood Preparation page, but I wanted to do a video showing the process. There’s a different video of measuring and mixing the dry ingredients.

As a follow-up, here is what it looks like the next morning after everything separates. Note that the oil didn’t separate, you mostly just have coconut floating and chia sinking. A quick shake and it was all mixed back together.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:25-06:00November 20th, 2014|Soylent, Preparation|Comments Off

Adapting MyFitnessPal for Keto diets

This entry is part 15 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This keeps coming up and I keep forgetting where I got it from so I’ll post it here. NEVER AGAIN!

Do the install, as instructed on this page
Next you’ll want to set up your “macros” in MyFitnessPal:Go to: Home -> Goals -> Change Goals
Select “Custom” and click continue
I have mine set up as 70% Fat, 25% Protein and 5% Carbs.
You also need to add Fiber as a column to track so the script can calculate Net Carbs for you:Go to: Food -> Settings
Add Fiber to your list of nutrients to track. Make sure you at least have carbs, fiber, fat and protein selected. These are what you need to track for a low carb or ketogenic diet.

It ends up with a cool pie graph and net carbs on the tables (this is for a full day on Ketofood, plus a pepperjack cheese stick as a snack… and 30 minutes of intense elliptical exercise):

2014-11-24 11_53_13-Chris_bair's Food Diary _ MyFitnessPal.com

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:25-06:00November 24th, 2014|Weight Loss, Soylent|3 Comments

Leveraging “fat bombs” with Ketofood

This entry is part 16 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Loosely following the recipe for “Fat Bombs” from this site, I put all the coconut flour plus the caloric equivalent in Coconut oil to all of my MCT and other oil into these little guys

Ended up with 100g of coconut flour that I toasted in the oven for about 10 minutes and 104g of coconut oil that happily melted when I put the still hot from toasting flour on it. I also put in a little stevia powder and completely forgot the part form the recipe about a little salt. Bah. Then I stuck them in the fridge for 15 minutes and got these.

They taste very good. It does have the same desiccating effect on my mouth that eating 10 saltines would have though. I put one in my mouth whole and spent the next 10 minutes sipping water, trying not to choke.

The trade off of doing this is: my regular meals don’t have any oil and no coconut flour. The effect on the flavor of the now mostly chia+raw cocoa+soy lecithin+salt and potassium citrate drink isn’t pleasant. It ends up being pretty bitter, I’m thinking it’s the raw cocoa and the potassium citrate. I added some additional stevia to make it moar better-er and I can drink it without shuddering too bad, but at this point it’s nearly the same experience I had with the induction phase recipe.

I’m going to call this experiment an overall failure. Though the “fat bombs” really are pretty tasty, they don’t make up for the taste of the drink portion. I might try it again with just the coconut oil and maybe some peanut butter, while leaving the coconut flour for the drink part, dunno.

In other news: I just bought a $7 breathalyzer off ebay, which will be fun since I don’t drink alcohol.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 4th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Fixed nutrient info on Ketofood recipe, fun with fatty acids

This entry is part 17 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Following a question on reddit I went through the nutrient info for just about all of the ingredients and made sure the info was as complete and accurate as I could get.

The recipe has 92.3g of total carbs with 62.2g of insoluble fiber, 10.8g of soluble fiber. Including the soluble fiber in the equation, that gives 30.1g net carbs. If all you’re eating for the entire day is this recipe (which is possible) then you’ll get 30g net. It looks like the number 1 source of net carbs is the raw cocoa powder which turns out to have more net carbs than originally thought. It’d be interesting to tweak that ingredient.

Notably the raw cocoa was using nutrition info for something else entirely, the carbs and calories were really messed up compared to the info on the label. Anyhow, you can find the current version at http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/ketofood-12-for-ongoing-ketosis I also updated the prices.

There are also now 4 oil entries on the page: MCT, Olive, Canola and liquid Coconut. I have the olive and canola zeroed out for my own usage because I’m trying MCT + coconut right now. I was surprised to find some at Walmart.

It’s interesting to see the difference between MCT, liquid coconut and regular coconut oils:

	Caprylic Acid (C8:0)	Capric Acid (C10:0)	Lauric Acid (C12:0)
NOW MCT	55.71%	44.29%	0.00%
Carrington Liquid coconut	32.86%	26.43%	5.00%
Regular Coconut Oil	9.00%	10.00%	52.00%

While the liquid coconut oil has quite a bit more of the smaller MCTs, it doesn’t have as much of the Lauric Acid that makes it solid at room temp. Looking at this breakdown of different oils, there aren’t many oils that contain MCTs. As a refresher, the reason you want MCTs when you’re doing ketosis is they get converted almost directly into ketones so it will help you achieve and maintain ketosis better. I bought a bottle of liquid coconut oil and substituted it for the canola I had been using for half of my fat calories. It’ll be an interesting experiment. It adds right around $1 a day to the cost.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 7th, 2014|Weight Loss, Soylent|Comments Off

Got some Ketosoy, let’s do a review!

This entry is part 18 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

In what would appear to be a resounding conflict of interest, I’m going to do a review on ketosoy. Hey, he was nice enough to send it to me (thanks!) I figure and honest, objective review is in order. So let’s get going!

So I got a day’s worth, it came in a standard USPS letter size package. Padding is competely unnecessary for this and there wasn’t any damage to the envelope. I managed to smear the “contents” label there on the front when I put the package face down on a still-damp-from-cleaning counter. both labels on the front appear to have been made with an inkjet printer and smearing when wet is something that’s to be expected. I’m guessing these early production runs are like that until more permanent packaging is finalized.

OK, back label time! there’s some stuff to note: the nutrition facts are for 1/3 of the pouch or 1 “meal” so stuff should be giving you around 33% of your totals. I’m going to throw out a wild guess and say that if you were to take a multivitamin like the Kirkland Signature Daily Multi Vitamin specified in the ketofood recipe you’ll probably get 100% of your RDA. That said, the vitamin D is awfully low (but then we don’t have to get into a heated discussion about the merits of D3 vs. D2). I was a bit surprised to see it has milk protein concentrate, as opposed to the typical whey protein isolate. That would mean that it has more of the “stuff” from the milk instead of just the protein. Some lactose intolerant people can have WPI but can’t have concentrate. I’m guessing the “edible grasses” is for fiber and vitamin K. Horray for not bleeding to death! The primary oil is Olive which was apparent when I mixed it up (looked like olive).

So here’s what’s inside. Splenda is sucralose. The instructions say to “sweeten to taste” – yeah I just barely noticed that now. I put all 5 packets into my 3 bottles and I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty intense. Dangit. The paper-covered foil packet opened easily and looks nice, the dark green oil container will keep the oils from oxidizing from UV light; this will keep the vitamin K in the oils from being destroyed. Again: horray for not bleeding to death.

It’s like winning the lottery: I got an extra 4.6g of ketosoy! =) I mixed up three bottles after glancing at the rather sparse mixing instructions. It’s really not complicated though, and well, I’ve done pretty much the same thing before. After mixing I stuck all three bottles in the fridge and I’ll try it out tomorrow.

Up close, Ketosoy looks an awful lot like Ketofood – well except for the splenda there on top. I think the chia seeds are ground (good) but I didn’t remember to check close. Dangit again. Anyhow, time for bed – I’ll do a followup when I actually taste it tomorrow. Here is the follow-up.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 5th, 2014|Soylent|Comments Off

Using a different coconut flour makes all the difference

This entry is part 19 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I started doing ketofood using Anthony’s USDA Organic Coconut Flour (5 lb), because the cost was better. I actually went through two of them before starting on my new Nutiva Organic Flour, Coconut, 25 Pound that I didn’t get from Amazon, I got it from these guys.

Wow, what a difference! The Anthony’s is is more of a finely shredded not-powder while the Nutiva is a darker color (slightly toasted?) and a much finer grind. It’s more like actual flour. I tried adding in some xanthan gum to the mix as well and the consistency was much improved, overall it was awfully close to Ketosoy except sweetened with stevia instead of sucralose. I’m going to have to keep experimenting with this.

By chris|2014-12-08T13:24:51-07:00December 8th, 2014|Weight Loss, Soylent|Comments Off

Fun with Graphs

This entry is part 20 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

While it’s not as fun as “Fun with Flags” here are some fun graphs. Here’s my weight since I started doing keto. High spot is 257.8, this morning I was 238.0 (Thursday I was 235 but I ate a LOT of shrimp and prime rib on Friday):

Weight graph

I got myself and my wife each a Jarv Premium Bluetooth® 4.0 Smart Heart Rate Monitor and have been using https://my.digifit.com to track workouts (mostly treadmill and elliptical). They do a really good job and were half or less the cost of comparable ones. They work great with our phones and appear to be very accurate. Digifit tracks time, heart rates and the like and has some cool dashboards. The graph above is calories burned while wearing the heart rate monitor. Did pretty well last week, we’ll see how well this week goes.

There was a reddit thread last night that caused a lot of interest in official and DIY soylent – and a pretty massive surge in visits to my site. It was pretty funny to see the stats going a little crazy. Below is site traffic according to WordPress: