100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 26
Customary short Sunday update. We’re having family over for tacos tonight, I’ll be drinking Keto Chow ?
Customary short Sunday update. We’re having family over for tacos tonight, I’ll be drinking Keto Chow ?
Not to name drop or anything =) but I just got a call from Dave Feldman who had questions about mixing up the Savory Chicken Soup Keto Chow – For any that have the same question, you go here:Ā https://old.ketochow.xyz/keto-chow-preparation/ and then click on the orange button for the Chicken Soup instructions. Dave can call me any time he wants, though I may not answer if it’s 1 am and I’m sleeping.
Today is day 25. I’m 1/4 of the way done with my 100 days of Keto Chow only challenge and 59% of the way done with the 42 day weight loss focused segment. According to my bathroom scale, I’m currently 16.7 lbs down from January 2 following a bit of a stall last weekend. Weight loss is not linear and speeds up and slows down a lot. If I were to extrapolate out my 16.7lb loss to the remainder of the 100 days, that would be almost 70lbs and there’s no freaking way I’m going to lose that much so I’m not going to get worked up about it and set myself up for disappointmentĀ when my unrealistic goals aren’t met =)
Anyhow, I’m drinking Strawberry Keto Chow (regular) this morning and I think I have Banana and maybe some Chocolate Mint for the remainder of the day. As soon as I get done with today’s post I’m going to get a package of pork ribs going for dinner tonight. I’d do them in the smoker but:
I keep forgetting to report on my weight loss. As of today (day 24) I’m down 15.8 lbs from my starting weight. There are only 4 days left in the DietBet challenge!
I blew a 233 ppm breath acetone on the LEVLĀ this morning, my blood Ketones were 2.1 mmol/dL – so I’m still doing well on all that. Dinner was leftovers so that wasn’t an issue =) I do think that I might have used some heavy cream that was borderline and the bottles of Keto Chow I mixed up with it are getting a bit iffy. They are still OK to drink for today but I might have to toss out 5 or 6, which sucks =( So goes life. Sometimes people will contact us because their Keto Chow tasted wrong, most of the time it’s due to heavy cream that went bad on them. Easiest fix is to simply taste the heavy cream by its self and see if anything is wrong. I guess it’s good for people to know that I’m not immune to having it happen to me too. I think that carton of heavy cream went bad quickly because it was the one that was used at the most recent Keto Meat-Up for making diet root beer+heavy cream Italian sodas. The time without refrigeration shortened its time.
Here at the Keto Chow office, we’re getting all official and stuff. Yesterday we put up a KanBan board so that we could manage what we’re working on and the backlog of stuff to do. This morning we’ll hold our first “Stand-up.” Late last night I enrolled in the “Keto Chow LLC 401(k)” plan. In about a week, the group health insurance plan begins, I’ll finally be off COBRA – took almost exactly a year.
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 BreckenridgeĀ last year that explains it all.
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!
Am I really going to do this for 100 days?Ā Oh my.Ā Right now, that feels like such a loonnngggg time.Ā April 12.Ā Ugh.Ā Ā Yeah, so there is a part of me that is re-thinking my commitment to this project.Ā But the in-control part of me feels rather settled into this new liquid diet routine.Ā As much as I miss my favorite keto meals (chorizo & eggs, pizza toppings, taco salad, buffalo wings, omelet, grilled chicken Caesar saladā¦), I really love using Keto Chow for all of my meals.Ā 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.Ā Yum!
No matter what Keto Chow flavor I choose, my last meal of the day is ALWAYS warmed up.Ā Ā Oh, how deliciously comforting it is to wrap my hands around a large soup mug and sip warm Keto Chow.Ā If you havenāt tried it, you really should.Ā In my microwave, it takes three minutes to get to just the right temperature.Ā I stop it once or twice in the middle to stir it (if I donāt, 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”.Ā Ā Oh my goodness!Ā At some time or another, I have tried every single shake flavor that is offered (the only one I really didnāt like was Banana).Ā 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).Ā I was out of control, trying different flavor combinations at every meal.Ā I even experimented with adding differing amounts of xanthan gum to my mixes.Ā It was so fun!Ā Things have calmed WAY DOWN since those days though.Ā 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.Ā 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. Ā Itās not super-tempting to sit in a restaurant or at a meal with other people who are eating.Ā But itās not super-easy either.Ā Iām not sure how to describe it.Ā Itās certainly not fun, thatās for sure.
Something my wonderful husband does regularly is pick up a diet soda for me whenever he is out for an errand.Ā Even though he does it often, itās 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.Ā She does keto too (and keeps Keto Chow on hand even though sheās 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.Ā I had a sugar-free cinnamon hot macchiato with unsweetened almond milk (or so they claimed unsweetened ā I have to admit, I donāt fully trust restaurants) for what I think was ā fingers crossed ā 100 calories and 7 net carbs.Ā It was GREAT to spend time with my sister and enjoy a ātreatā in sort-of a restaurant setting.Ā Even if the barista didnāt use the right ingredients, my ketones didnāt seem to be affected so itās all good.Ā ;)
Speaking of ketones, I started checking them right before lunch instead of right before dinner a couple of days ago.Ā Iām just trying to be more consistent to check at/near the same time each day.Ā I also added trend lines to my charts this week just for something different.Ā Whoopty doo.Ā :)
With a Day 1 weight of 135.6 and a weight today of 131.8, I have lost almost 4 pounds in 3 weeks.Ā I think that is awesome!Ā I am back near my lowest weight and feeling much less like a stuffed sausage in my jeans.Ā I did NOT like that feeling, and I was determined to not buy a bigger size!
I have to say that Chrisā adding cheese to his Keto Chow soup had me a little bristly.Ā It seems like a slight stretch to say cheese is well within reason ā but maybe Iām just jealous since I donāt have any Keto Chow soup on hand at the moment.Ā If I did, I guess I could make Keto Chow using cheese as my fat source.Ā Hmm, I hadnāt ever thought of it that way until just now.Ā I had thought of cheese as an extra in addition to the fat source (and therefore too many calories).Ā I think Iām liking (and approving of) this idea after all!Ā Now I have to add Savory Chicken Soup to my next order.Ā Thanks for the idea, Chris!
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.
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.
Just another day, cooking food for the family that I’m not going to be eating =)
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 otherĀ 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!