100 Days of Keto Chow

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 23

This entry is part 29 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

The 100 days of Keto Chow are still going really well. I ended up drinking breakfast and lunch between 1 and 3 with dinner at 7 last night. The probiotic is still doing an amazing job. I think I have the “Garden of Life” one that I got from Costco. It says to refrigerate after opening and despite being like 2 years past the “best by” date, it’s still working great.

For any that are curious, I finally got the floor of our closet completely cleared and I vacuumed last night.

There was a discussion on Reddit recently about high-oleic sunflower oil. Normal sunflower oil is very high in poly-unstable fats that rapidly oxidize and cause problems, similar to soybean oil that the AHA loves so much because of how much they get paid by the soybean industry. High oleic sunflower oil comes from modified sunflowers that make more mono-unstable fats, similar to what you get from fruit oils like avocado and olive, that’s a good thing. The bad thing about high oleic sunflower oil is that it is much lower in saturated/stable fats compared to avocado or olive. Based on my own experiments, I try to get as much saturated/stable fat as I possibly can; with the rest mostly as mono-unstable, and as little poly-unstable as I can possibly get – with most of that as Omega 3s. The cool thing about all of this is there are actual math and science that you can use to determine how healthy a fat is for you. Dr. Michael Eades had a fantastic presentation at Low Carb Breckenridge last year that explains it all.

By |2019-01-24T11:39:42-07:00January 24th, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |2 Comments

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 22

This entry is part 28 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

Most of today so far was spent picking up 1400 more of the “Super Secret In-Development Test Product” – we also visited the production facility where our electrolyte supplements are packaged. That took up most of the morning and now it’s a sprint to see if I can get everything done I needed to get done today in the few hours I have left!

By |2019-01-23T14:00:54-07:00January 23rd, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Beverly’s Week 3

This entry is part 4 of 16 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow - Beverly's Experience

Am I really going to do this for 100 days?  Oh my.  Right now, that feels like such a loonnngggg time.  April 12.  Ugh.  Yeah, so there is a part of me that is re-thinking my commitment to this project.  But the in-control part of me feels rather settled into this new liquid diet routine.  As much as I miss my favorite keto meals (chorizo & eggs, pizza toppings, taco salad, buffalo wings, omelet, grilled chicken Caesar salad…), I really love using Keto Chow for all of my meals.  The decision-making process regarding what will be for lunch or dinner is a simple choice between Chocolate Keto Chow and whatever other flavor(s) are currently pre-made and waiting in my refrigerator.  Yum!

No matter what Keto Chow flavor I choose, my last meal of the day is ALWAYS warmed up.  Oh, how deliciously comforting it is to wrap my hands around a large soup mug and sip warm Keto Chow.  If you haven’t tried it, you really should.  In my microwave, it takes three minutes to get to just the right temperature.  I stop it once or twice in the middle to stir it (if I don’t, the liquid expands a little too much for my mug and overflows).

Back when I first became a Keto Chow customer in November 2017, I went “flavor crazy”.  Oh my goodness!  At some time or another, I have tried every single shake flavor that is offered (the only one I really didn’t like was Banana).  In addition to trying all of the flavors and combining many of them (i.e., Strawberry-Banana-Chocolate, Chocolate-Caramel, Vanilla-Mocha), I bought 26 bottles of sugar-free flavored syrups (Torani and DaVinci brands).  I was out of control, trying different flavor combinations at every meal.  I even experimented with adding differing amounts of xanthan gum to my mixes.  It was so fun!  Things have calmed WAY DOWN since those days though.  Now I just have my few favorite Keto Chow flavors and my few favorite sugar-free flavored syrups always in stock and am completely satisfied.

Last Sunday, my husband chose his favorite local buffet for lunch.  He is so supportive of me in this project, the least I can do is accompany him out to a restaurant once in a while.  It’s not super-tempting to sit in a restaurant or at a meal with other people who are eating.  But it’s not super-easy either.  I’m not sure how to describe it.  It’s certainly not fun, that’s for sure.

Something my wonderful husband does regularly is pick up a diet soda for me whenever he is out for an errand.  Even though he does it often, it’s always a surprise and something I love about him.

One of my sisters who lives out-of-state was in town for a couple of days this week and I had the opportunity to meet with her Monday after work.  She does keto too (and keeps Keto Chow on hand even though she’s not an every-day consumer like I am) so I knew I could count on her to place my order at Starbucks since she goes there literally every day and I almost never do.  I had a sugar-free cinnamon hot macchiato with unsweetened almond milk (or so they claimed unsweetened – I have to admit, I don’t fully trust restaurants) for what I think was – fingers crossed – 100 calories and 7 net carbs.  It was GREAT to spend time with my sister and enjoy a “treat” in sort-of a restaurant setting.  Even if the barista didn’t use the right ingredients, my ketones didn’t seem to be affected so it’s all good.  ;)

Speaking of ketones, I started checking them right before lunch instead of right before dinner a couple of days ago.  I’m just trying to be more consistent to check at/near the same time each day.  I also added trend lines to my charts this week just for something different.  Whoopty doo.  :)

With a Day 1 weight of 135.6 and a weight today of 131.8, I have lost almost 4 pounds in 3 weeks.  I think that is awesome!  I am back near my lowest weight and feeling much less like a stuffed sausage in my jeans.  I did NOT like that feeling, and I was determined to not buy a bigger size!

I have to say that Chris’ adding cheese to his Keto Chow soup had me a little bristly.  It seems like a slight stretch to say cheese is well within reason – but maybe I’m just jealous since I don’t have any Keto Chow soup on hand at the moment.  If I did, I guess I could make Keto Chow using cheese as my fat source.  Hmm, I hadn’t ever thought of it that way until just now.  I had thought of cheese as an extra in addition to the fat source (and therefore too many calories).  I think I’m liking (and approving of) this idea after all!  Now I have to add Savory Chicken Soup to my next order.  Thanks for the idea, Chris!

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 21

This entry is part 27 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

Still going well on my 100 days of Keto Chow. Most days it’s not even an issue, even cooking food for the family that I’m not going to eat – yesterday I arrived home from work and launched immediately into clearing the driveway approach which had quite a lot of heavy and wet snow/slush that would be frozen solid in a few hours. When I finished up, I came inside to discover dinner was ready: low carb meatballs covered in Rao’s marinara sauce and cheese. Smelled absolutely amazing. I drank a Root Beer Float Keto Chow =)

Let’s talk about protein and your body’s glucose/insulin response to the protein. Years ago, I was misinformed about protein consumption and thought that if you overconsumed protein on a keto diet, your body would convert the excess into glucose. I also thought that any time you ate protein it would cause an insulin response. Last year we went to the Low Carb Breckenridge conference and sat in the presentation by Dr. Benjamin Bikman. You should give it a watch:

I’m not going to summarize it because he does that himself. Cool, cool stuff! As for eating meat, especially red meat. Here’s an excellent article that refutes some of the misconceptions.

By |2019-01-22T11:11:08-07:00January 22nd, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |2 Comments

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 20

This entry is part 26 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

The 100 days of Keto Chow only is still going well. I had some Keto Chow soup last night at dinner and totally put some cheese in it. The kids thought I was cheating but hey: it’s still only Keto Chow! Since I’m adding heavy cream, adding some cheese is well within reason.

It’s a really snowy day here today. As soon as I finish up this post I’m going to run home with the 4-WD truck and pull the kids around on sleds before the snow plows ruin the fun. Hopefully, that’ll give the people that are finishing up the Electrolyte Drops and Fasting Drops some time to get it finished and delivered down to us.

By |2019-01-21T09:19:21-07:00January 21st, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 18

This entry is part 24 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

The challenge is still going fine. Last night I warmed up some of the Costco smoked pulled pork, dang that smelled good. It’s one of the few times thus far that I’ve been truly tempted in the last 18 days to eat something besides Keto Chow. Instead, I warmed up some Chocolate Keto Chow and enjoyed that.

I mixed up 12 new meals of Keto Chow today, that should last 4 days. With me doing this and 3 other people in the house regularly eating Keto Chow, we tend to go through it rather quickly. We didn’t get the Electrolyte Drops and Fasting Drops yesterday but they’re scheduled to come on Monday.

We have our monthly Keto Meat-Up tonight – I’m going to bring some of the prototype Creamy Tomato Basil and the Spicy Taco soups for people to try. Should be a lot of fun. I’m thinking we’ll be watching Dr. Berry’s analysis of Gillian Michal’s comments about Keto – we try to find a short-ish video that’ll get people talking and spend most of the time just talking to each other about keto in groups. You should check to see if there’s a Meat-up in your local area and if there isn’t, organize one!

By |2019-01-19T15:05:05-07:00January 19th, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 17

This entry is part 23 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

I’m tired this morning – doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m eating, has everything to do with not enough sleep in the last 3 days. I’m REALLY happy it’s Friday and I get to sleep in tomorrow. Or at least that’s the plan, typically my brain wakes up at 4:30 on weekends and won’t be quiet, too much stuff to do. Anyhow, here’s to hoping! Driving to and from Heber, Utah was interesting yesterday – a few hours after we came back an avalanche closed the road, that’s how hard it was snowing. We went to the Real Salt offices where they package the Redmond salt for human consumption as Real Salt. At other facilities they make industrial and equine products (salt licks, horses LOVE them). It was interesting because the horses like the stuff that’s higher in minerals – almost dark red, humans like the salt with less of that so they use the purest white (which is still quite pink) areas of the mine for us. We’re going to take our kids on a tour of the mine in a while, should be fantastic.

I brought along a bottle of Keto Chow because it was a lunch (though technically, I was eating breakfast) and I wouldn’t be eating any of the food they had. Surprisingly, they actually had some legitimately keto food there. Real Salt has been getting bigger into keto and the people making the food for the luncheon knew what was going on. One of the highlights was meeting Caitlyn McCleery of caytsmeatsandmeals on Instagram she does keto off and on but mostly makes amazing meat. We’re planning on attending some of her cooking classes and seeing if we can bring her on a Facebook LIVE in the next while.

I think today is finally the day that for realsies we will be getting the large bottles of the reformulated Fasting Drops and the Electrolyte Drops (which used to be called Fasting Drops), looking forward to that. We’ll get the smaller pocket bottles later

By |2019-01-18T12:26:14-07:00January 18th, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 16

This entry is part 22 of 107 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow

My 100 days of nothing but Keto Chow are still going well. I’m down 14.4 lbs from my starting weight 16 days ago. Yesterday we went to the Ice Castles, to get there in time the kids ate dinner before I got home and I drank my Root Beer Float Keto Chow while driving, worked out great. I always tell people that if they’re having digestive problems on keto; or with Keto Chow, specifically: take a probiotic. I finally took my own advice. The probiotics fixed up any issues I was having within hours.

Today, Miriam and I are driving back up to Heber, Utah (right by the ice castles) to visit the Real Salt people. They’re coming to the Keto Salt Lake conference and invited us up for a tour of their facility, and lunch. I’ll be drinking Keto Chow =) We’ll need to leave early to get up there and I’m trying to have everything ready in place for if/when the electrolyte drops and fasting drops get here so they can go live right away. I’ll likely need to do some clean-up and photoshopping and such when we get back from Heber.

 

By |2019-01-17T10:26:33-07:00January 17th, 2019|Categories: Weight Loss, 100 Days of Keto Chow|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Beverly’s Week 2

This entry is part 3 of 16 in the series 100 Days of Keto Chow - Beverly's Experience

My husband and I laugh at each other whenever we noisily slurp up the last few drops of a Keto Chow shake.  We always want more even though our stomachs are satisfied.  When I watched Chris’ Day 10 video, I totally could relate when he said he wants each flavor of Keto Chow to leave the consumer wanting more.  I always, always want more.  Yum!

Wanting more is something that makes this 100-day challenge (or any “diet”) difficult.  Even though I have eaten enough, I sometimes really want to eat more.  Food sounds good!  I encountered an awkward situation earlier this week when a group of co-workers went out to lunch for one individual’s last day of employment.  This co-worker is a friend so I wanted to go.  Just as I saw when dining out last week, other people are more uncomfortable with the fact that I am not eating than I am – but I did not like having attention drawn to me.

Today, I added a bit of chia seed gel to my lunch (Pumpkin Spice Caramel).  I used to do this frequently but had kind of forgotten about it.  While dusting last week, I came across the package of chia seeds and set some in the refrigerator to soak.  I really like the added texture and flavor!


I made a mistake Monday night when I grabbed the wrong bottle of night-time cough syrup off a dark shelf in the middle of the night.  I didn’t realize it until the following night when I looked again and saw I had grabbed the regular cough syrup rather than the sugar-free version that is located right next to it in the cabinet.  The result of this can be seen on my net carbs chart above.  :(  Be very careful to read labels when purchasing any type of medication, including cough drops.  Calories and nutrition information are rarely included on the packaging so you have to look for any form of sugar listed in the ingredients.


Fortunately, this mistake did not knock me out of ketosis (stayed above 0.5!).  I typically check my ketone level in the evenings before I drink my 2nd shake.  The resulting numbers (see above) directly reflect how many hours it has been since I had my 1st shake.  If it has only been about two hours, the number is lower; if it has been four or more hours, the number is higher.  I’m going to make an attempt to be more consistent about my timing so that the results have more relevance.  And as you can see, I have forgotten to test my ketone level twice.  So now I have sticky note reminders in the refrigerator, on a cabinet door, and on the microwave.  :)  Hopefully I will not forget again.


For Chris’ DietBet challenge, I think I am going to qualify as one of the “winners” since the goal was to lose 4% in 4 weeks and I have lost about 5%.  Now I just have to keep that weight off!

Since my taste buds were given lots of powdered artificial sweeteners on a daily basis for nearly 40 years (since junior high school), I got used to them and I liked them!  I have not faltered in my decision to instead use liquid sucralose but I honestly am not enjoying my coffee or iced tea as much as before (huge bummer).  Hopefully I get used to the flavor of it!  In the meantime, it is good to see my net carbs and calories staying low (excluding, of course, the cough syrup incident).

By |2019-02-20T08:12:10-07:00January 16th, 2019|Categories: 100 Days of Keto Chow|Tags: , , , |0 Comments