Weight Lifting

21 days progress with strict Keto: Awesome Sauce! (also 2 years since my last “cheat” meal)

This entry is part 74 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

As mentioned earlier, starting January 1, 2017, I committed to writing down everything I eat in Cron-o-meter before I eat it. Turns out this works quite well, which I already knew but somehow was ignoring and doing “lazy keto” for the last few months by only eating Keto Friendly food but not really tracking food closely. Yes, Jalapeño poppers are, generally, keto friendly – but if you eat 20 of them you’re going to go over your net carbs for the day. Anyhow, I’m doing great and still writing everything down. I’m also still lifting – today I’ll be squatting 90lbs, it’s starting to get harder =) A couple days ago I failed to notice it was the 2 year anniversary of the last time I had a “cheat” meal on January 21, 2015. Since then, I’ve only deliberately eaten non-keto food once: a bite of breaded fish in September 2015, spat it out. I expect that I’ll be living HFLC for the rest of my life, sounds fun.

“Cheating” on Keto is self-sabotage. Imagine you’re trying to climb a giant sand dune. It’s really hard to get up to the top (and you get sand in your shoes, guaranteed) but once you’re there, staying on the top is easy. It’s especially easy compared to the amount of effort required to get back on top if you decide to roll down to the bottom. Being fat adapted is very similar to this: you’ve worked so hard to get your body burning fat instead of glucose, why would you ruin months of work? My advice: embrace living keto, focus on the awesome foods you can enjoy, not the foods you choose not to eat (not “can’t eat”).

Here’s an updated weight log of my progress:

Calories consumed per day (I had a tummy ache on Jan 15, ended up fasting a bit over 2h hours):

Net carbs per day:

3 years of powdered food – from People Chow to Keto Chow

This entry is part 34 of 35 in the series DIY Future Foods

On January 13, 2014 I did the first post on my blog about trying nutritionally complete “future foods”. It corresponds to my first submission on Reddit (my reddit “cake day” is January 9, 2014 BTW).  The Image up top is of my very first batch of powdered food, People Chow 2.3.0 at the time (I still have all 3 of those blender bottles, used the yellow one yesterday). It’s been an interesting journey. You can read some of my earlier “in review” posts if you want the full story:

3 years ago I weighed 260lbs (I’m 5′ 13″), my low point was at 200 in October 2015. I slacked off and did “lazy keto” without tracking my intake, just sticking to low-carb foods, and you can see that on my graph:

 

Recently I re-committed to getting back on track for realsies. It’s a bit pathetic: I know exactly what I need to do to lose weight – it’s rather simple so I should just do it, which I am. Since January 1, 2017, I haven’t eaten anything until after I logged it in Cron-O-Meter. Unsurprisingly, it’s working quite well. Guess I should have read my own stuff =) I was at a post-new year’s high of 223.7 and now I’m at 215 after a week and a half.

You can expect to see my weight graph more frequently now as it goes down further (and I’m less ashamed of the trend =). So there you have it: 3 years of blogging about “Engineered Staple Food” aka “soylent” – this post is number 371.

On track with my New Year Resolutions

This entry is part 71 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

I have two health-related resolutions this year:

  1. Strength training 3x a week (StrongLifts 5×5).
  2. I’m not eating anything until it’s ALREADY logged into Cron-O-Meter.

So far, so good, on StrongLifts 5×5. I did it 3x last week (which is the recommendation for the program): Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday because Friday was a crazy evening. I did StrongLifts regularly last year but we remodeled some bedrooms in the basement and the workout area was turned into a bedroom with the power rack cage becoming a closet. That’s all done, as well as the Christmas mayhem so it’s time to get back into lifting! These first few weeks are relatively easy since the SL5x5 app had me “deload” all the way back down to starting weight. I see that as a good thing since even squatting an empty bar that first time made me sore for 4 days. There’s an excellent article over on Art of Manliness about various fitness programs – he didn’t like StrongLifts as much as he likes Starting Strength due to the number of reps. I might check that one out at a later date if I hit a wall. SS has an app but it’s $9 and I doubt it has the amazing Android Wear integration SL5x5 has. It’s seriously awesome to track my workout entirely on my watch.

As for tracking my food in Cron-O-Meter, I did this 100% all last week, I have a perfect record for 2017 =). Writing down what I eat before I eat it has an interesting effect on reducing what I’m eating. Either I decide not to eat something because I’m too lazy to write it down; or I write it down, check to see how the addition affects my macros and decide “yeah, not going to eat that after all.”

Due to the aforementioned laziness, all but one of my meals last week were Keto Chow. It’s pretty easy to enter 3x “Rich Chocolate with 50ml heavy cream and MCT” from the list of frequent foods. Saturday evening we needed to drop off some kids for a thing and then hang around for 2 hours until they finished, so we took the remaining children to dinner at Red Robin. I knew this was coming so I messed around with their nutrition calculator page (requires flash) and decided on the Guacamole Bacon Burger. I added the standard one in Cron-o-Meter, then edited a copy to change the values for carbs, fat, protein etc… I haven’t tried to do that on mobile, doing it in a web browser with multiple windows open was quite simple. Red Robin is pretty proud of the fact that they can make any burger “wedgie style” (lettuce wrap), and you can do bottomless steamed broccoli or side salads instead of the fries. I opted for the salads, ended up getting 3 of them by the time I was done =) You can see the spike in calories consumed:

Anyhow, looking at the averages for the last week, I’m quite happy with the 18.9g net carb average. I could probably go higher than 20g/day but I’m going to keep it low.

In the end, one of the big ones is: how is this affecting my weight? I’m happy to report that: Hey! I’m losing weight again! That big spike (banana for scale) in the graph below was the morning of Sunday, January 1 2017.

We had a New Year game party with our friends (who are also doing keto) and our kids (not doing keto). We made individual “fathead” (keto) pizzas for us and regular dough pizzas for the kids. I ended up eating a lot of salt and it clearly shows that following morning in water weight. I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t keto friendly that night but you eat too much keto food and you’ll be over your macros easily. I also noticed that my weight doesn’t fluctuate as much when I’m mostly eating Keto Chow and the mild heartburn I had in the morning since mid-December is gone.

So, here’s to a successful new year for everyone! May the odds ever be in your favor!

Awesome user success post from Reddit today

This entry is part 54 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Just saw this posted over on /r/keto, thought you’d all enjoy seeing it (make sure you check out the photo gallery). 350 to 225lbs.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/4vz0ew/svpic_update_down_125lbs_today/

Keto Chow 1.5 update – almost there; Finally missed reps on StrongLifts

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

So first the good news: The roll out of Keto Chow 1.5 is nearly complete. (more…)

By |2021-09-20T13:37:58-06:00June 15th, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow, Weight Lifting, Keto Chow News|Tags: , , , |2 Comments

Site fun, Sous Vide, Stronglifts Update

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

Been having fun with the site lately. And by “fun” I mean it’s been wonky since Sunday when the two web/database servers were getting hammered hard, load average was up around 50+. (more…)

By |2021-09-20T13:22:53-06:00May 18th, 2016|Categories: Weight Lifting, Keto Chow News|Tags: , |4 Comments

Stronglifts 5×5 update, random stuff

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

My Dad made the news last night. Funny thing is I was in a bunch of the photos shown…. though you can’t see me because I’m hiding behind rocks holding lights =) Glorified light stand and pack mule I am. So I guess I made the news too =) (more…)

By |2021-09-20T13:11:59-06:00April 26th, 2016|Categories: Keto foods, Ketogenic Diet, Weight Lifting|Tags: , , , , , |6 Comments

Power Rack arrived this morning

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

FedEx brought the power rack this morning. We got it assembled, and ready for today’s workout. Now I just need to visit Cal-Ranch or Tractor Supply and get some horse stall mats for the floor.

By |2021-09-20T13:09:29-06:00April 22nd, 2016|Categories: Weight Lifting|Tags: , |1 Comment

Started StrongLifts 5×5 at the Gym, couldn’t stand it – time for home gym

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

I’ve been wanting to start lifting and StrongLifts 5×5 looked like a simple and effective way to get back into it (not to mention there is a seriously awesome app to keep track of it, it even has android wear integration!). (more…)

By |2021-09-20T13:08:18-06:00April 20th, 2016|Categories: Weight Lifting|Tags: , , , , |3 Comments