Weight Loss

N=me experiment: 4 weeks of *ONLY* Keto Chow – 1st week tests back

This entry is part 124 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Way TL;DR: eating only Keto Chow & drinking only water for a week and a half has brought down my fasting insulin to 3.7 μIU/mL and raised my ketones to 3.2 mmol/L. I’ve also lost 9.2lbs but that’s not on the graphs below.

On October 22nd, 2017 (3 years and 2 days after I started Keto) I began an experiment: I was going to ONLY eat Keto Chow for 4 weeks and see what it did to some blood tests. Today I received my first blood test after starting the experiment. I took a baseline test before starting to establish a control to compare against. Leading up to “test 0” I was very much eating keto (and consuming Keto Chow 1-2 times a day) but I was not actively tracking my carb intake. Most (including me) would likely call it “lazy keto” – I know from my own experience that if I do strict keto and write down everything I eat BEFORE I eat it, I’ll invariably get on track and lose weight. But with this experiment, I wanted to go for the nuclear option: absolutely no food except Keto Chow. No drinks except water. No treats. No snacks. No confounding variables.

This would also serve another purpose in allowing me to do a validation test on the upcoming Keto Chow 2.1. I like to have absolute confidence in my product and this is a great way to do it. For the most part, the recipe for 2.1 is the same with some notable differences:

  • Switching from whey protein isolate to milk protein isolate [see footnote 1]
  • Switching the form of Selenium, this change removes a weird smell that goes away after a few minutes. Functionally it’s the same but I like the way it smells and tastes better.
  • One flavor (Natural Strawberry) will be available sweetened with Monk Fruit instead of Sucralose [see footnote 2], another flavor (Savory Chicken Soup)… well it’s savory and doesn’t need a sweetener.
  • A bunch of new flavors are coming, though that doesn’t affect the nutrition.
  • If I can pull it off: we’ll be switching all the magnesium from citrate over to malate.
  • We’re officially recommending using avocado oil as an alternative if you don’t want to use heavy cream (I still primarily use heavy cream).

In the same spirit of open data that Dave Feldman uses in his experiments – I’m publishing the complete blood test results from my experiment. You can view the blood results on this online spreadsheet. Currently, there are only two entries – more will come, there’s a 5-6 day lag between the test and me getting it. I’m also going to be posting my complete Cron-O-Meter logs so you can see exactly what the input variables were. Here are the first 11 days so far. I also did a test on my second day where I tested postprandial glucose while drinking Keto Chow.

So, how’s it coming along so far? The most obvious change I’m seeing is my blood ketone level which has gone from 0.4 to 3.2 mmol/L (I measure each night just after I brush my teeth – measuring in the morning is a bad idea). That rise makes sense since I’m getting exactly 10.54g of non-fiber carbohydrates per day. My fasting insulin has also gone down from 6.7 to 3.7 μIU/mL.  I asked Dave Feldman about the results so far, he said: “The insulin change actually looks even more interesting in the context of everything else being practically the same (including lipids!)” – I’m going to try to get Dave to do a written analysis of all this at the end of the experiment, he’ll probably do one anyway because he LOVES DATA! My small LDL-P has gone down by half, which is also interesting. Personally, I’m not concerned at all about my lipid panel because I do not believe that high cholesterol (or more properly: Elevated Lipoprotein) is something bad. Dave uses a really great analogy about lifeboats on cruise ships… hang on, I’ll just let Dave explain:

OK, that’s the blood part of my experiment. How has the experience been so far?

Before I started this, I was doing Keto Chow for at least 2 of my meals on most days, you’d think that going 100% wouldn’t be a big change but it seems to be. Maybe it’s all the ancillary things I also eliminated like sugar-free gum, diet soda, and anything else that wasn’t Keto Chow and water. Warning, poop talk ahead. First thing I noticed was Bristol type 7 stool, don’t worry though I took a probiotic and it went over to a 4. After a few days, as all traces of other food left my system it’s settled on a 5. I think this is due to everything getting digested and metabolized except for the acacia gum – and that gets metabolized by my gut bacteria into short-chain fatty acids (bonus fat!). The volume has gone down significantly. I’m still regular, there just isn’t that much there. OK, done with poop talk.

Not chewing anything anymore has also been very interesting. I think I need to drink more water – I keep getting a sort of film on my teeth. A quick swish of water in my mouth removes the film but it eventually comes back. I don’t think this would be a problem if I was chewing gum – but I wanted to eliminate ALL variables, including other non-nutritive sweeteners. Maybe I could find some unflavored and unsweetened gum…

Another interesting thing is the “no thanks, I’m just drinking this for now” aspect in social situations. I used to think politely declining carbage was an issue doing Keto. Man – that’s NOTHING compared to trying not to have to explain why I’m not eating bacon right now. For Halloween, we have a yearly neighborhood potluck. I mentioned to my kids a month ago that I could just wheel down the griddle and cook bacon (not thinking that it was SMACK in the middle of my experiment). They ultimately convinced me to do it – I cooked 10lbs of bacon, it was all eaten. Just not by me. Dinner with the family is also kinda weird. I’m cooking food that I’m not going to eat all the time.

Next week will be especially interesting as I’ll be at a tech conference in San Francisco without refrigeration. I have a solid game plan to cope but it’ll be a lot of work.

 

So. There you go. I have test #2 tomorrow, we’ll see what further changes come! (Test #4 will be a comprehensive test just like #0 instead of the subset I’m doing for 1-3)

 

 

[Footnote 1] So what’s the deal with Milk Protein Isolate (hereafter “MPI”) compared to Whey Protein Isolate (hereafter “WPI”)? MPI has a bunch of advantages over WPI and overall is simply a better product to use. I actually tried to get MPI back when I first started doing Keto Chow but nobody would take me seriously – they do now =). Advantages: first and foremost, MPI is the protein from milk, isolated out – this means the protein is in the same ratio as milk: 80% casein 20% whey. Casein is slower digesting, for bodybuilders that just finished a big workout that may not be optimal – but for people on a ketogenic diet, it means you will likely have a much smaller insulin response. WPI is a byproduct of the cheese making process, the supply goes up and down with the demand for cheese. MPI is a primary product, so the supply is consistent and reliable. It’s also coming from Idaho which makes for awesome lead times getting to Utah. MPI also contains a significant amount of calcium and phosphorus in extremely bioavailable forms, this allowed me to kill Calcium Phosphate from the ingredients. Overall, MPI is a slam dunk!

[Footnote 2] Monk Fruit and “natural” sweeteners. For some people, the sucralose we use in most of the flavors of Keto Chow is the end of the world… ok not really =) but many people do want to avoid sucralose completely. Some rat studies (note: humans are not rodents – it’s true, look it up) have indicated sucralose may cause changes to gut bacteria composition. We will be using 80mg of pure sucralose per meal in Keto Chow 2.1 (20% less than 2.0, that’s 0.08g – or 62.5 meals worth is the weight of a US nickel) with the exception of 2 flavors: Savory Chicken Soup and Natural Strawberry – the savory flavor won’t have any sweetener and the Strawberry will be using Monk Fruit extract. I tested Stevia instead of Monk Fruit and the taste wasn’t very good. I also tested Erythritol and blends of Stevia, Monk Fruit, and Erythritol – problem with those was the mass. To get the right sweetness we needed to use 43g of erythritol. That change would nearly double the weight of Keto Chow. No way man! I was toying with making all the flavors of Keto Chow with Monk Fruit but taste tests with people that aren’t me, along with surveys of our customers indicated that wasn’t a good idea (especially since Monk Fruit + Chocolate tasted REALLY weird). I still wanted to have a non-sucralose option available for those that wanted the option. Monk Fruit lends its self well to fruity flavors so we decided to have an additional “Natural Strawberry” flavor.

By |2017-11-02T13:39:17-06:00November 2nd, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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Eating Keto to Save the Planet (I’m serious)

A lot of people have concerns when they start keto that “well sure, it’s healthy for me but what would happen if everybody started eating like this? Wouldn’t it destroy the environment?” There is a simple thing you can do to stop desertification, lower atmospheric CO2, improve soil health, AND your own health: increase your consumption of ruminant agriculture products. Wait, isn’t that the opposite of what everyone says? Don’t cows destroy the planet, lick your dog, and emit greenhouse gases that will destroy the world? (seriously, you gotta watch that clip!)

Not even close, quite the opposite, and it turns out you’ve been taught that way because John Harvey Kellogg and others pushed a vegetarian agenda way back in the 1800s.

Look, they were wrong about fat being bad for you, carbs being good for you, cholesterol causing heart disease and much more. Why would they be right about this? What if it’s ALL been a lie? OK, so this is going to be a bit of a dive down a rabbit hole, I’ll take you through it in the order I ran across the pieces, I recommend you visit each link and come back here for the next one.

  1. On the first stop of our journey, we have this audio recording of a presentation by Dr. Peter Ballerstedt, given at the 2016 Low Carb USA conference.
  2. I listened to that recording on my drive to work one morning, it was thought-provoking enough that when I got to work I tried to search for stuff I had heard and ended up on this page.
  3. Dr. Peter Ballerstedt also did a variation of his talk at the Low Carb Breckenridge 2017 conference – it’s a video so you can see his slides.
  4. Then the 2 Keto Dudes interviewed Dr. Ballerstedt on their podcast.
  5. He was also interviewed by KetoGeek, it was long enough it had to be broken into 2 parts: Part 1 & Part 2.
  6. Now comes a really fun one: 2 Keto Dudes also interviewed Dr. Gary Fettke who had just given this presentation regarding the ACTUAL history of the US dietary guidelines. The podcast was interesting enough to keep me wide awake driving to Idaho at 3 am to see the solar eclipse.

If you go through all of that you’ll discover some interesting info about some of the “narratives” (as Dr. Ballerstedt likes to call them), the history behind them and the truth. Is grass-fed beef better for you? Sure but not by much, likely not enough to justify the expense. Indeed, grass-fed beef does have MOAR omega 3, but the difference is so little that 1 ounce of salmon gives you more than 3lbs of grass fed beef. If your concern is over omega 3:6 ratios then you should never eat poultry or pork and if you get some soybean oil in your mayo then you’ve likely negated a LOT of grass-fed beef eating.

Then you get into the amazing effects of ruminant agriculture on soil health and how effectively it can sequester carbon, stop desertification and completely change the climate (for the better). I now have a burning desire to save the planet by eating more beef and using more milk products. Happily, the macronutrient sources in Keto Chow come from ruminant agriculture (whey/milk proteins and heavy cream FTW!).

Specifically, I think Dr. Ballerstedt does an amazing job at articulating his points and his “discussion” topics. He’s very deliberate in what he says and how he says it. That first link was so good that I made my kids listen to it one day while we were driving for a few hours. You should check out his Facebook page.

By |2017-09-22T06:04:50-06:00September 15th, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , |2 Comments
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Fun Videos – Coconut Oil will (not) kill you & Low Fat food will make you fat

First we have JP telling us how the American Heart Association has to be right about Coconut Oil killing you

And then we have Adam ruining low fat food

Weird thing is: Adam uses a lot of references from Taubes and Teicholz about sugar being bad but fails to follow through on what you should eat. If you watch the entire episode the clip above comes from the nutrition advice they do give is more of the same “eat less, move more” – guess they decided telling people fat is good was a bit too much.

By |2017-07-28T09:34:09-06:00July 28th, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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One is the cause and one is the effect, conventional wisdom has them switched

So I was listening to the 2 Keto Dudes podcast and something Richard Morris said struck me as extremely important. There’s a lot of heated debate in fitness and nutrition about “Calories In = Calories Out” – also known by the shorthand CICO. The basic premise is that: You lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you need, including calories from exercise. This thinking also assumes that people who are fat got that way because they eat too many calories (it’s a character flaw they should be deeply ashamed of) and they stay that way because they are too lazy to just exercise (again, it’s a character flaw they should be ashamed of). People who are fat got that way and stay that way because they indulge in “sinful” behavior and as a society we condemn them, mock them and denigrate them openly. It’s pretty much the only socially acceptable prejudice nowadays.

I think that line of thinking is stupid and reprehensible, among other things.

 

Here’s what I got from Richard’s comments. Conventional wisdom says that:

(Calories Consumed) – (Calories Burned) = (Calories Stored as fat)

Everything I’ve seen (with decent science behind it, and the fundamentals of how insulin works) say that instead:

(Calories Consumed) – (Calories Stored as fat) = (Calories Burned)

It’s a slight change in the order – which one is the cause and which one is an effect, but let’s look at what this means: If we take the standard CICO model and I eat 2000 calories a day, my BMR burns off 2500 calories (it was actually 2218 last time I had it measured but let’s keep the math simple) and I do absolutely no other exercise during the day I would have a negative energy balance of 500 calories. The standard model says each pound of fat is 3500 calories, so my 500 calorie deficit would have me losing 1 lb a week. Isn’t that a nice simple story? Guess what, our bodies aren’t that simple, especially considering the active metabolic management we have going on. If you cut intake by 500 calories a day, your body isn’t going to simply continue on at 2500 BMR, it will adapt down to fit the energy it’s given… unless you are able to mobilize the stored energy you have it your fat cells.

There’s a problem with that: if you have high levels of insulin in your blood, your body WILL NOT allow you to access energy stored as fat. From an energy balance standpoint, if your insulin is too high, you have the same energy stores as a theoretical person who has 0% body fat. Neither of you will have access to stored energy in fat and both will run out of energy when your blood glucose drops. “Carb Coma” anyone?

So let’s look at that second equation, it may not be a perfect model for the human metabolism but it’s far closer to explaining the observable data. So I eat 2000 calories in a day. If I eat mostly bread, fruits, and other carbohydrates; my body will dump insulin into my blood in an effort to deal with the potentially toxic levels of glucose running around. My cells (particularly my fat cells) will key off the insulin and dutifully pull the glucose out of the blood. I’ll be able to burn some of that 2000 calories in my muscles but much of it is going to go straight to fat storage. Let’s say that 500 calories (a number I’m making up out of thin air, again: easy math) gets stored – that means I only get to use 1500 calories for “keeping the lights on”… except I need 2500 today. My body will figure out a way to keep things going, either by breaking down non-essential muscle cells or other means, but you can be certain I won’t feel like running up the stairs, going for a walk… or anything. I’ll just want to lay down and find some food so my cells can get some energy (except the same insulin issue will arise). Eventually, my cells will get used to reduced calorie availability and my base metabolic rate will go down to fit what is available. Nature abhors a vacuum.

On the other hand, let’s assume I eat 2000 calories in a day, but most of that is in the form of calories that do not create an insulin response: a moderate amount of protein (so I don’t have to cannibalize muscles to rebuild cells), the smallest amount of carbohydrates possible, and the remainder of those calories as fat. This page about “Intermittent Fasting” does an astounding job of explaining how the different macronutrients affect insulin (and debunks the “you should eat many small meals” myth), but the short version is: fats have little discernable insulin response, protein has a slight-to-moderate response and carbohydrates cause a massive insulin response. Don’t believe me? ask a type 1 diabetic about dosing insulin for 500 calories of rice vs. 500 calories of cheese. So back to the thought problem: I have 2000 calories but my blood sugar didn’t spike and my insulin didn’t spike either. For argument’s sake let’s say 100 calories get stored away somewhere (probably as glycogen in my liver or muscles) so I still have 1900 calories to work with. I need 2500, so I need 600 more from somewhere… well my insulin is low… so I can mobilize energy stored in fat cells! Holy cow, I have all the energy I need! (usually 100,000 calories or MORE).

The funny thing is: this all still works if you decide you’d like to fast for several days. Your insulin is low and you have all the energy stored you could possibly want. Many people report massive energy after 36+ hours of fasting (you still drink water and get electrolytes). Anyhow, that’s the rant for today. If CICO is true then if you are overweight it’s because you suck as a human being, stop eating so much and should just get up and move more – is that really so hard? If the alternative is true (and I believe it is), then you are overweight because the foods you’ve been told are “healthy” (“low fat” cookies? “whole wheat” bread?) have messed up your insulin response to the degree that you are storing much of the energy you consume. So get rid of the rice, the pasta, the bread, THE SUGAR and go for the foods that will make you healthy. A ketogenic diet is essentially taking this a bit to the extreme, it’s a major intervention for people whose metabolism and insulin response are broken because of years of too much junk. Many people appear to be just fine living mainly off carbohydrates, that’s fine for them – I’m not one of those people.

I tell people I don’t eat sugar because I’m allergic to it, “how do you know you’re allergic to sugar?” they say. Simple: it makes me fat.

By |2017-06-21T10:24:19-06:00June 21st, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , , |3 Comments
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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:

By |2017-03-20T12:19:23-06:00January 23rd, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Weight Lifting|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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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!

By |2017-01-09T09:06:59-07:00January 9th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Weight Lifting|Tags: , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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Excellent, short, BBC documentary on low carb diets

This entry is part 65 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Over the weekend, a link to an excellent documentary showed up on /r/keto. It’s really a good overview of a high fat, low carb diet with a decent amount of time spent showing how to do it effectively. They do an excellent job exploring the controversies too. I would absolutely recommend it for anyone wanting to know some of the quick details of keto (and it’ll be a good intro to the junk you’re going to hear from doctors and family when you start!). For those in the US: a “stone” is 14 lbs; for those elsewhere, it’s 6.35kg – they really like their archaic weight measurements!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F8qXxjdh-4

I read through some of the comments, one thing that jumped out was his GP (primary care physician) told him she can’t say how this affected his liver and kidneys. Yeah, they have blood tests for that. I’ve gotten them. She’s hard to take serious saying things like that. She also recommended he do it for only 3 weeks. Today is my 3rd Halloween where I will not be eating any candy since I started keto 3 years ago just before Halloween. Doing it indefinitely is awesome!

Others noted that it’s ironic that all of the doctors they interviewed who advocate the government dietary guidelines are overweight and some are obese. Especially the guy in charge of the obesity clinic, if he can’t lose weight on the accepted low fat diet, how can they expect people to take their stance seriously?

I also loved this comment:

“What we are concerned about is the lack of substantial long-term evidence for it’s ease of use…”

The “ease of use” argument always gets me. The only reason you could consider a LCHF diet harder to follow is because of how everyone else eats. If we never had to go to work events, family events, or parties where there’s nothing but carbs and everyone questions our diet, it wouldn’t be hard at all! But some of these doctors/dietitians in here are saying that’s a reason to question the inherent effectiveness of the diet. Makes no sense.

If the youtube link stops working, you can also get it from here.

By |2016-10-31T11:25:36-06:00October 31st, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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“We’re All Guinea Pigs in a Failed Decades-Long Diet Experiment”

This entry is part 100 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

So what occasioned this rant? A new article published over on Vice.com: “We’re All Guinea Pigs in a Failed Decades-Long Diet Experiment“. The thought of a class action lawsuit against some company is tantalizing but are we also going to posthumously sue “Doctor”Ansel Keys and Senator George McGovern for their roles in all this? I’m going to move on and help as many people as I can. That’s why I make Keto Chow.

As a kid, one of the things I loved to eat more than anything was a bowl of melted cheese. Cut off a slab, microwave it and eat it with a fork. I didn’t do it very often.

Part of that was cheese was (and still is) rather expensive. The main reason was that I knew that it was full of fat and fat is bad for you. I would even microwave it a bit longer and drain off the oil that over-cooking the cheese would render out. Why did I know that fat was bad for you? The 1980 US Dietary Guidelines said so, my parents, my teachers, EVERYBODY said that it was bad. So it was. End of discussion, or so we though.

For almost 2 years now I have been living with new knowledge: that refined carbohydrates are the true cause of the obesity I’ve battled almost all of my life. Some people seem to handle sugar OK; I don’t. For these past two years, I’ve lived with a High Fat, Moderate Protein, Low Carbohydrate lifestyle. I’ve only “cheated” twice (January 2015 when I ate carbs before a weight loss competition, and I ate some breaded fish at a party in September 2015 and immediately regretted it). Knowing what I know about diet and nutrition now, and looking back at my life; I sometimes get angry. It passes when I think that at least my kids won’t have to deal with what I did, but I still get upset.

Along with the aforementioned cheese I also really, REALLY like bacon and sausage. Emphasis on the sausage. Before October 2014, eating sausage was an extremely guilty pleasure. Like when I hear Backstreet Boys and it reminds me of living in Chile back in 1997. When I cook sausage now it’s typically because we’re camping and I cook 2 pounds of it, plus another 3lbs or so of bacon and a couple dozen eggs. Granted: there are 8 of us, but the kids usually don’t have to ask “how many pieces can I have?” – they just get what they want. I didn’t put butter on anything before November 2014 because it was “bad”. When I think about sausage, sour cream, cream cheese, butter, guacamole and the other downright awesome fatty foods I didn’t use to eat: I get angry too.

When I think about Type 2 diabetes, which I thankfully did not develop before I started Keto, I’m filled with grief and a bit of rage.

I suspect everyone has someone they know, love, or respect DIE because of the effects of refined carbohydrates ravaging their bodies. Some people I’ve successfully helped transition to getting rid of sugar, flour, rice and other carbs and turning their lives around. Other people, I’ve tried to help but they didn’t want to make the change. They like bread too much, or candy, or pasta, or potatoes. I’ve never had bread that’s worth dying for (which is saying a lot, we grew up on homemade sourdough bread). Again, while I acknowledge that there are some people who can healthily have some refined carbohydrates, the level of sugar consumption we have attained in our diet is astounding. If Peter Attia can develop T2 diabetes doing Iron Man races, then do the rest of us have any hope?

Probably not unless we ignore the official dietary recommendations and do something else.

When I get an hour block I’m going to watch “Fixing Dad” about two UK film-makers who intervened in their father’s life when he was facing likely amputations due to his diabetes. There seems to be an over-emphasis on extreme exercise but the message about changing his diet looks promising.

By |2016-10-14T07:17:51-06:00September 16th, 2016|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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The content of this website is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of recommendations is at the choice and risk of the reader. If you are on any medication, please consult with your family doctor before starting any new eating plan. Keto Chow is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease. Pregnant or breast feeding women should consult their health care professional before consuming.



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