100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 96
I forgot to record a video update for day 96. We went camping out in the middle of Utah’s West Desert, far from cell signal and anything else. Everyone else had meat, I drank Keto Chow =)
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 95
I totally spaced recording a video for day 95. We were camping:
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 94
Hello and welcome to Day 94! I have my penultimate blood test today and I received the blood test results from myself and Beverly yesterday – those are both up on the spreadsheet (look for the “100 Days of Keto Charts” tab for the easy to read graphs): https://bit.ly/2HMIMUo
I’m quite happy to be back from the convention. Every time I do one of these it seems like my email inbox explodes. I prefer to keep it completely empty with every message taken care of. When I’m at a convention, there are a lot of things I simply can’t address on my phone and need my actual desktop, so it sits there and festers, gnawing at my brain.
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 93
Can’t believe it’s day 93 already (and not butter… actually it is butter, yum!). It’s been interesting talking to people about Keto Chow, they’ll frequently ask if you can eat it for all of your meals if you’re just too lazy to cook. I’ll chuckle and say “actually yes, I’m on day X where it’s the only thing that I’ve eaten for all of my meals – since January 2” They usually blink a few times and have a TON of follow-up questions. Using your own product like this REALLY has some serious benefits for showing people that you mean what you say and truly believe in the product and what you claim it to be.
I got up and going early so I could come into the office and get a little bit of work (and this post/video) done before heading to the show again today. I’m not sure what we’re getting out of the convention. It’s more for large food manufacturers that are showing their stuff to supermarkets. The most frequent questions we get asked are “are you in the [associated foods] catalog?” and “are you in the [associated foods] warehouse?” Nope, we are not. We are in OUR warehouse and we have a forklift to load trucks. The prospect of going for retail is interesting but comes with a lot of overhead (figurative and literal) and I’m not sure it’s where we should devote some of our time and energy. Interestingly enough, one big takeaway for us is that the Ketogenic Diet (or “keto”) is now hitting the mainstream in a big way. Many of the people that we talked to were ones that are currently doing keto and were interested in Keto Chow for their own personal use (including people running bakeries and caramel businesses). We’re not allowed to sell at the show but several of the other smaller “local” vendors placed orders on our site last night, a few we’re shipping direct and one we’re bringing her order with us to the show today =)
Beverly’s Week 13 (Week 7 of Science)
What a week it has been! The beginning of the “butter phase” began Thursday evening when I prepared enough shakes to get me through the weekend because my fantastic husband was taking me away for a couple of days. Because Chris had generously shared a new flavor with me, I had more variety than I was expecting to have available this week.
I made three shakes of each of the following flavors (pictured left to right): Chocolate, Creamy Tomato Basil, and Savory Chicken Soup. All the shakes turned out beautifully! I was SO looking forward to tasting each of them – I honestly was ready for the two oil phases to end.
Mixing my shakes with butter as the fat source was a breeze. It was no different than mixing shakes with heavy cream or with oil(s) for me because I already mixed all of my batches of shakes in a blender. For people who typically use a Blender Bottle for mixing, there may a bit of an adjustment phase with mixing if they decide to try butter.
My first shake on Friday was the new flavor! You can almost see how appealing it looks in the photos I took. I could not decide which picture to add, so I am adding both! I have to say it is very exciting to have another savory option on the menu. (I can’t wait to try the Spicy Taco flavor that is also being developed.) My second shake of the day was Chocolate, and I was swooning over it! Creamy deliciousness has been returned to me! Did I warm it up the way I thought I would need to do for a shake made with butter? No way! That Chocolate shake looked all the same as a made-with-heavy-cream shake to me so I went for it with my straw. Ah-maze-ing!
While I can’t find the original post now (I was going to give them credit), I know someone commented on the Facebook support group on Friday that mixing the Salted Caramel flavor shake with butter as the fat source was a good combination. Well, duh!  Butter is a primary ingredient of caramel. I did not have any Salted Caramel in stock, so I quickly placed an order for Salted Caramel along with Snickerdoodle because – again, duh! – butter is a primary ingredient of Snickerdoodle cookies – and Cookies and Cream because – well, because it is my favorite flavor.
Chris has reported that his Chocolate shakes made with butter separate a bit after blending. For the record, this has not been my experience. This Chocolate shake (shown on the left, taken during my lunch break today) is from a batch I made Sunday evening – and today is Wednesday. Zero separation.
Last week after I had a mini-meltdown about the scales no longer moving with a downward trend, a new friend kindly brought my focus back to my original goals. Why did I even do the challenge? Was it to lose weight? No. I said that I did not have a goal weight and that I did not know if I would even lose any weight on this journey. When I unexpectedly started seeing real weight loss by Week 7, I got caught up in that. Can I weigh less than 130? Can I wear a smaller size of jeans? Can I get below 120?? Can I weigh less than a certain sister/friend? I think that a focus-shift like this is a natural thing to have happen to anyone, especially in our culture. This new online friend was so thoughtful and gentle in her approach to me, that I was receptive to it in a way that I might not have been with someone else. So I appreciate her.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention something else important that I experimented with on this butter phase – salted butter vs unsalted butter! After that first weekend of using salted butter with all three shake flavors, I decided to give unsalted butter a try with my sweet flavors. My vote for mixing with the sweet flavors is for unsalted butter but both are good! You might try out different options yourself. But definitely go with salted butter for the savory flavors!
In previous weeks, I pointed out that my ketone numbers went up when I was consuming MCT oil. Well, guess what? Those numbers came right back down when I stopped consuming MCT oil. Check this out:
AVERAGE DAILY KETONE LEVEL
First six weeks of challenge with heavy cream:Â 2.0
Week 1 of science with heavy cream:Â 2.53
Week 2 of science with heavy cream:Â 2.66
Week 1 of science with avocado oil:Â 2.5
Week 2 of science with avocado oil:Â 2.83
Week 1 of science with avocado oil & MCT oil:Â Â 3.23
Week 2 of science with avocado oil & MCT oil:Â Â 3.11
Week 1 of science with butter:Â 2.53
Week 2 of science with butter:Â ?
So my husband had given me a weekend away, and I rewarded him with… wait for it… crankiness. This is sadly true. I was mentally and emotionally out of my mind for several days (most of last week and over the weekend). While I am feeling better this week, I am still evaluating my feelings, behaviors, and the reasons (hoping I can think of some justification). One fact is that this journey has been challenging in ways I did not anticipate. The first time I took this “only Keto Chow” road, I did not have a scheduled end date – I was doing it indefinitely. So I never before had an “APRIL 12! APRIL 12! APRIL 12!” chant playing in my head like I do this time. I do not like the sound of that chant, so last time around was easier in that regard.
My sweet husband said to me excitedly last night, “One week plus one day!” Yay, he is so right! In a sense, it is hard to believe the time is nearly here. But it is. And it is exciting! I think the least I can do is let my husband choose the restaurant and/or the meal… that first weekend… and every day… for the rest of our lives. I just might owe him that!
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 92
We’re at the Associated Foods show, it’s mostly store buyers wanting to get wholesale information ?
Getting my meals ready involved stopping for 5 seconds at the fridge and grabbing 2 blender bottles of Keto Chow to throw in the cooler. Easy stuff!
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 91
Quick update today, we’re going to go set up a booth at a local conference this morning so I gotta be done really quickly.
Not much to report, the experiment is still going well. I got a crown on one of my molars yesterday, for whatever reason (likely because it’s on the top), my teeth don’t hurt at all today. That’s cool.
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 90
Wowsers, here we are at 90% of the way through my 100 days of only eating Keto Chow for all of my meals! I have to say: using butter in Keto Chow is absolutely fantastic. Chocolate is a little weird because if it’s heated, the cocoa powder settles over time (I covered that in depth on Day 88) but it just needs a good shake. I’m going to need to mix up some more Keto Chow with butter tomorrow and I’ll have the camera at home in order to do the weekly Facebook Live so I’m planning on recording a short video showing the process that I’m using to mix it up. The short version is: use warm water, melted butter, and a blender/immersion blender; pour it into containers for storage (we use blender bottles), and either drink it cold the next few days or you can reheat it.
It should be noted that today we launched a new flavor of Keto Chow and the Chocolate Keto Chow is the Flavor of the week and correspondingly 10% off for the large 21 meal bags.
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 89
Hoo boy, day 89! I did Chocolate and Chocolate Mint Keto Chow with butter for breakfast and lunch, didn’t even bother heating them up – the butter was fantastic. I think when I’m done with the 100 days, I’m going to stick with using butter a fair majority of the time. I think butter would also be a great option for travel, TSA doesn’t care about butter ?
See you all on day 90, I have some cool stuff for tomorrow so watch out for it!
100 Days of Keto (Chow) Day 88
Hey there, welcome to day 88! I did start losing weight again after about a week-long stall. As of now, I’m down 39.7lbs since starting this challenge on January 2.
I’m here at the office for just a bit and then on my way to help my dad. Today for lunch I’m drinking Chocolate Keto Chow with BUTTER as the fat source. Didn’t even bother heating it up, I’m just drinking it cold and enjoying it. Because you have to heat the water to get the butter to emulsify, the heat causes the cocoa powder to separate once it cools. A good shake fixes that right up but it’s interesting. The Chocolate Peanut Butter and Mocha should have the same issues but none of the other ones likely will. Here’s my Breakfast, Dinner, and Lunch: Creamy Tomato Basil, Chocolate Mint, and Chocolate.
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| Before Shaking | After Shaking |
