Weight Loss

It’s a bit of a lazy Saturday today, we got up late (which isn’t to say I actually slept in – my brain started running at the normal time). The 100 days is still going great, yesterday I went to dinner with my wife and our friends, I had Coke Zero while they had some wings and Prime Rib. I also did an “all day of eating” video just for fun, I eat a lot of Keto Chow every day =)

Welcome everyone to day 80 of my 100 day experiment/challenge! I’m now 4/5 of the way through and going strong! I’m going to be heading in for a blood test this morning. I’m doing them at a new location that’s in a hospital. I was WAY early last week but took 15 minutes to find the office, so I ended up on-time after all. I did get last week’s blood tests back yesterday and I’ve updated the spreadsheet: https://bit.ly/2HMIMUo

Yesterday evening I actually felt hungry for the first time in probably a month or longer. I think I was likely just thirsty. Often the signal for “you need to drink” comes through as “you should eat.” Still, it was interesting in that I hadn’t noticed the absence until it showed up suddenly. I’m wearing my Ketofest 2017 “coNfounder” t-shirt today, just wanted to remind everyone that the Kickstarter for Ketofest 2019 is going on right now – if you’re going to be around New England in July of 2019, you should really consider signing up. Last year was fantastic!

https://youtu.be/PhEPD_NSAT4

I’ve been informed that I need to highlight the positive aspects of doing the 100 days, which is funny because I thought I did that frequently. So here goes. So I’m on day 79 of 100 where I’m only eating Keto Chow for all of my meals. Every day people ask how many meals of Keto Chow I’m eating during the experiment, I blink at them a few times and say “3?” – Don’t know if they don’t believe me when I say “for all my meals” or what =) Sometimes they ask what I do between meals, “I don’t eat?” Not snacking between meals is one of the best parts, for me, about this whole thing. It’s a bit liberating to not be snacking on anything but diet soda (for the “keto police” that get all hot-and-bothered that I’m drinking diet soda: my average blood ketones for the last 30 days is 3.0, what’s yours? =). The sheer convenience of mixing up a bunch of Keto Chow once or twice a week and having all of my meals covered for the next several days is absolutely fantastic and one of the best parts of all of this. Last night, we were running a little late for a performance and I was able to just grab an Orange Cream Keto Chow I made previously and drank it while driving to the school. It’s also been very handy to have a liquid diet since getting a molar crowned – I gave up even trying to chew gum a few days ago because that just makes it sore. I did notice last night a return of an interesting phenomenon. In 2017 I did an experiment where I ONLY had Keto Chow for 4 weeks. No diet soda, no sugar-free gum, none of that. Near the end of it, the lack of chewing anything was starting to get old and there was the “film” that I kept feeling in my mouth – dunno if it was real or imagined but if I hadn’t had anything to drink for a while, my mouth felt like I just woke up and had a sort of film on my tongue and teeth. I’d brush or take a drink of water and it went away, a few hours later and it would be back. When I did my 42 days of Keto Chow in 2018 and was chewing sugar-free gum, I had no such experience. Not having had gum for several days, it kinda feels like that again. Interesting stuff, I figure my tooth will be fine in a few days and I’ll be back chewing gum when I feel like it.

https://youtu.be/xO4P7xgCkZk

Oh, and the weight loss these 79 days has been great too. That 1.1lbs I gained yesterday? Totally came back off this morning. I guess it’s probably time for me to don the zozo suit again and take some measurements, maybe I’ll do that Saturday morning.

We had an absolutely fantastic time on our Facebook live last night with our special guest Caitlyn of Cayt’s Meats and Meals, I’ll have the UHD4K recording uploaded to YouTube later today. A bunch of her followers joined the broadcast so I had to explain why I was crazy and not eating smoked meat for the first 100 days of 2019 =) We did announce at the end of the live that we’re going to double-down on this week’s “Flavor of the week” and we changed the Pumpkin Spice Caramel to 20% off. If you, or someone you know, are a “basic white girl” and loves that pumpkin spice – now is the time to stock up. Get 4 of any flavor of the 21 meal bags and there’s an additional 5% discount. I believe the expiration date on the back of the bags is August 2020.

The 100-day experiment/challenge/lunacy of eating only Keto Chow for all my meals is still going exceptionally well. My newly crowned tooth from last week is still hurting if I chew gum or drink something cold so I’m going to just lay-off the sugar-free gum for a while, again: this was good timing. Oddly enough, even though I’m eating the same amount of calories and the same food every day; the scale showed me going UP about a pound today. I’m sure it’ll come back off tomorrow (water is as water does!) but it’s interesting never the less.

On a side note: January is typically our biggest month… until March comes around which is our biggest month… until July comes around (and so forth). Anyhow, January: it’s important that we have inventory on-hand in January for the surge that comes with the new year resolutions because otherwise, it sucks. BUT, there’s a reason that companies do “inventory reduction” sales in December. As a “pass-through” tax entity (LLC filing as an S-Corp), any on-hand inventory that Keto Chow has on December 31 is passed through TO ME as straight income, just like it was cash sitting in my bank account. It’s like an awesome “bonus”… of taxes. It all works out in the end eventually since that’s money I will not be taxed on for 2019, but it’s still no fun to cover right now. Added bonus: I get to pay estimated tax on that “income” every quarter of 2019 too!

Well, I am feeling MUCH better today. I still am not feeling well enough to do the workout, which is a shame since we got pretty close to never missing a day of our P90 workout routine, even when we went to Denver we still did it.

https://youtu.be/XefCTSQgdsw

I keep forgetting that I’m having new people find these posts and videos so let me sum up what I’m doing: I’m eating only Keto Chow for all of my meals every day. That means 3 meals a day. I’m not taking any other vitamin supplements. I am taking the Omega 3 pills that are recommended if you are eating only Keto Chow (since that’s not included). I’m also taking some magnesium and melatonin at night. I do chew sugar-free gum and occasionally eat a few pickles, mostly for the salt. All of my calories are coming in the form of Keto Chow.

Yesterday was the 3/4 mark for my 100 days of eating only Keto Chow for all my food every day. As of this morning, I’m down 38.2lbs, I cut 2 inches off my belt, I’ve lost 4 inches from my lower waist, 1.25 inches from my neck (and 1.25 from my “Upper Arm Right” among other places =). The experiment is still going really well, though I did come down with a cold over the weekend (apparently I’m one of the cool kids since a bunch of other people got sick following Low Carb Denver). Being sick the last few days hasn’t been fun at all, doesn’t have anything to do with the experiment though. Remember, if you need to sneeze: you should sneeze into the back of your knee =)

On Saturday we had our monthly Utah Keto Meat-Up. If you’re not close enough to come to ours, see if there’s one in your local area. If there isn’t one, make one! That’s what I did a year and a half ago, mostly because all of the ones that were nearby had only met twice and were sponsored by MLM exogenous ketone sellers. I took a few photos and counted how many people came, I think there were 38-41 people in attendance. We might need to move to a larger space if this keeps up! Next meet-up I won’t be only having Keto Chow, guess it’ll be time for me to smoke another brisket =)

Wow, I didn’t realize I was officially at the 3/4 mark until I was talking about it at dinner tonight. Only 25 days left. As customary on a Sunday, this is a really short post, I’ll probably wax philosophical about it all more tomorrow. Enjoy your night!

Looking at the scale I’m now down 37.1 lbs from when I started on January 2. More importantly, I also took off the buckle on my rachet belt and cut off 2 inches, then reattached the buckle. Turns out that many good quality belts can be trimmed this way.

We have our Utah Keto Meat-up today, I’m making Keto Chow biscuits and also making sausage and heavy cream gravy so everyone can have biscuits and gravy. Should be stellar. The meat-ups are always fun and we’ve had a steadily increasing number of people coming each time. Do yourself a favor and head over to meetup.com and see if there’s one in your local area, and if there isn’t: make one! That’s what I did about a year and a half ago.

So I’m really quite glad that I am doing an all-liquid diet right now. I got a crown on one of my molars yesterday (failing filling FTW!) and haven’t needed to chew anything. This morning I grabbed some sugar-free gum and it’s still quite sore, not a problem at all! I believe I’m also coming down with a cold or something, probably picked it up last week in Denver. The interesting thing is that illness is very likely to massively change my blood test results so the blood test I did this morning before I came into work is likely to reflect the illness.

Today I have a bunch of stuff to finish up, I also picked up the ingredients to make Keto Chow Drop Biscuits for the biscuits and gravy I’m making for tomorrow’s Keto Meat-Up. I’m editing down an interiew we did with Megan Ramos about our electrolyte supplements, it’s really fantastic stuff. Finally, at Low Carb Denver we met a really nice lady from Australia that seemed to quite like Keto Chow. On the final day I made sure to let her know that we were going to need to either pour out the samples we had for people to drink or it would be wasted so she got quite a lot. Turns out she’s Jessica Turton, I’ve even listened to her on several podcasts and simply didn’t recognize who she was. I’m claiming the dental braces made her look really young so I have an excuse. She posted on her personal blog today and gave us a shout-out, which was very nice:

Between talks there was plenty of time to chat and network with the presenters, vendors and attendees. And if you are a lover of food samples (like me) then you would have been loving the vendors at this event. There is nothing better than a vendor that has almost an unlimited supply of food samples… Never trust anyone selling food that is stingy with their samples! I have to give a massive shout out to the team at Keto Chow for keeping me so damn satiated across the three days. These guys do keto meal replacement shakes that actually taste good! If you have had a consult with me you’ll know that I don’t like recommending protein shakes or meal replacement products, but since working long hours in clinical practice myself (and having braces…) I have come to realise the important role that high-quality meal replacement shakes can play in many of our busy lives. The team at Keto Chow continued to fill my little sample cup up with delicious flavours like choc mint, eggnog and pumpkin pie (oh my gosh yum!).