chris

Week 1 down. 13.2 to go! My daughter made some amazing keto food in the Instant Pot last night – didn’t eat it =( Had some heated up chocolate Keto Chow instead. Today I’m going to try to get another test batch of the in-development savory flavors going. Want to be able to have those far along by the time I’m hitting around day 80 so I can use them in my tests. Speaking of product development and availability: we talked to the company packaging the samples yesterday. It’s looking like we won’t be getting onto the machine until late January or early February. Miriam got a little… “agitated” and told them “we’re dying here!” It was good to have her on the call =) They are trying to do everything they can to squeeze us in wherever they can and a second packaging machine is going to be coming online in February as well so this shouldn’t happen again. We’ll see.

We’re going to be doing our weekly Facebook Live tonight – it’s scheduled for 7:30 pm, mountain time but may start a little late, we have a concert for our kids and I’m not sure what time it will end.

I can report that what I’m eating (3 meals of Keto Chow) is most definitively supportive of a ketogenic diet – I tested my blood ketones at 2.4 mmol/dL this morning with 14.2 ppm on my breath acetone. So, what do those numbers mean? In my own personal opinion: anything over 0.3 mmol/dL of blood ketones means you’re doing really well. You’re producing ketones (ketogenic) and you’re burning ketones (ketosis) as well as fat. Are higher numbers better? They can be if you have a neurological condition that benefits from higher ketones (dementia, Alzheimers, epilepsy, depression, autism, etc…) – higher ketone levels correlate with higher ketone metabolism in the brain so you’d want “therapeutic levels” of ketones. This is also the group that can see potential benefits from using exogenous ketones.

For those that do not have a neurological condition, higher ketones just mean that you have higher ketones. It is academically interesting but it isn’t a predictor of faster weight loss. What I’m eating, combined with how my liver is working, I’m getting relatively high numbers. I like seeing those higher numbers because it assures me personally that the diet I’m eating is A-OK for keto (in the “Chris Bair metabolic model”) beyond a shadow of a doubt, which makes me feel good about recommending it to people as a meal that’s a good idea when doing keto. I’d still be happy if I was at 0.5 or 1.2, or even higher. All of this is why it’s said to “chase results, not ketones” – I’ve gotten my ketones up to 5.8 mmol/dL before (3 meals of Keto Chow a day, only avocado oil, no heavy cream, a little MCT oil) and likely will again during the science portion of this 100 day experiment. It did (and likely will) put my brain into overdrive – which was great as I was doing classes at the time – again: neurological benefit, not necessarily weight loss benefit.

Dr. Berry happened to post a video today that’s also about who should use exogenous ketones:

Checked my blood ketones just now, I’m at 2.4 mmol/dL. Strangely enough, I’m only at 8.9 ppm on my breath acetone, I would have expected it to be higher. Miriam and I were discussing this morning how there’s an offset between when we started doing the p90 workouts in the morning (December 31) and when I started the 100 days of Keto Chow challenge (January 2), we’re on week 2 of working out but only week 1 of the challenge. I guess I just need to look at what date it is and subtract 1: 7-1=6.

Had a good weekend with no issues at all sticking to only Keto Chow for all my meals. I only got around to drinking 2 meals of Keto Chow yesterday. I baked salmon for the kids, turned out fantastic and looked super yummy. I had hot Chocolate Keto Chow instead of the salmon because that’s what I’m doing right now. Last night I also mixed up 20 blender bottles of Keto Chow. 18 for me (6 days worth at 3 a day) and two for the Keto Chow storefront so that people who come into the store can try some of the flavors. This morning I mixed up a third one so if you happen to come by our store in South Jordan, Utah this week, you can try: Snickerdoodle, Root Beer Float, or Chocolate Peanut Butter. On a completely unrelated note, we have a fridge for Oh Hello Bakery up front now too that they’ll be stocking up with baked keto treats. Right now we only have some of their keto double chocolate chip cookies. To answer the obvious question: no, they can’t be shipped – it’s local only for now but they’re working on getting shipping nailed down.

Salmon before baking

Salmon after baking

hot Chocolate Keto Chow for me!

6 days worth of meal prep

For any that are morbidly curious: I’m down to a 5 on the Bristol scale now, looks like I didn’t need to use any probiotics this time when going all Keto Chow for all my meals. I also installed front and rear dashcams in my car on Saturday, looks like they work well. Here’s my drive from home(ish) to work. Yes, I’m WAY behind on my podcast listening =(

And so it begins! Today is Day 1 of my 100 days of just eating Keto Chow for all my meals. I’ll be heading over to the Riverton City offices this afternoon to do the weigh-in for their 6 week weight loss challenge and yesterday I did the weigh-in for the DietBet challenge I’m doing as well – there’s still time for you to join in the fun on that one if you need some motivation for 2019.

Today I need to contact a bunch of people that have been away during Christmas vacation – it’ll be nice to get things rolling again on the various projects we have!