42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 days of Keto Chow – Day 01, it begins.
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42 days of Keto Chow – Day 01, it begins.

42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 days of Keto Chow – Day 01, it begins.

This entry is part 1 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

I’m starting a new experiment today, for the next 6 weeks I’m going to only be eating Keto Chow. I recently did a similar experiment for 4 weeks but this one has different goals. Last test I was proving that I wouldn’t die – I realize that sounds like a joke but a lot of people have romantic notions about food and eating with no factual basis and think you can’t do a high fat, nutritionally complete, liquid diet that has sucralose and not die… or something. Spoiler: I didn’t die and I have a plethora of blood tests to prove it. I made sure to hit the Brazilian Steakhouse for lunch yesterday since I won’t be going out for food anytime soon.

This new test I’m going to be specifically testing how consuming different fatty acids types affects my lipid system (cholesterol, triglycerides, lipoprotein composition). I’m going to do this by using Keto Chow to eliminate variables and have alternating weeks where I’m consuming high amounts of poly-unsaturated fatty acids, saturated fatty acids, and mono-unsaturated fatty acids. While I’m at it, I’m also going to do a week where I replace all of the fat in my ketogenic diet with dextrose.

Standard dietary advice from most health “experts” and organizations is to eat a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrates. I’m going to do exactly that and it’ll do a good job illustrating the ludicrousy of the notion that a calorie is a calorie, is a calorie and that the type of calories means nothing – just the number of calories. Each day for 6 weeks I’m going to be consuming the same number of calories and only changing a single variable. I think I’m going to get some really cool results and have it all just in time for Low Carb Breckenridge.

Anyhow, that’s the plan! At the same time, I have 3 people that are repeating parts of my earlier experiment, they’re only doing 3.5 weeks of Keto Chow only but today two of them are getting their first blood test, it’s going to be cool to see how their bloodwork is affected.

By Chris|2018-01-19T07:12:40-07:00January 5th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: experience, blood test, science, saturated fat, nutrition, User Experiences, 42dayExperiment|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 02

This entry is part 2 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

OK, so day 2 and 3 of the experiment I forgot to do a daily update. Sorry. I’m putting this here so that the numbering of the posts stays consistent. You can go ahead and jump to Day #4.

By Chris|2020-07-05T21:53:57-06:00January 6th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|0 Comments

42 days of Keto Chow – Day 03

This entry is part 3 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

OK, so day 2 and 3 of the experiment I forgot to do a daily update. Sorry. I’m putting this here so that the numbering of the posts stays consistent. You can go ahead and jump to Day #4.

By Chris|2018-01-15T11:10:12-07:00January 7th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|0 Comments

42 days of Keto Chow – Day 04
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42 days of Keto Chow – Day 04

42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 days of Keto Chow – Day 04

This entry is part 4 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Well, I’m hitting my stride with Keto Chow only. I had a pretty good weekend. We had family get together that we needed food for, we ended up grabbing a pair of “6-foot” sandwiches from Walmart (they’re always 2 foot, you just get 3 if you order a 6-foot); knowing that a significant part of the people coming are doing keto, we also got a Meat & Cheese tray so they won’t need to throw away bread. Meanwhile, there were 3 of us there that hung out drinking Keto Chow from a blender bottle.

Yesterday I did time-restricted feeding (intermittent fasting), didn’t eat anything until about 3 pm – which was fantastic, my blood ketones were up to 1.9 mmol/dL just before I ate. Problem was I was also not drinking anything at the time so I got a bit dehydrated (I still have a bit of a headache from that Monday morning), but I’m taking care of that with some rock salt and water.

By Chris|2018-01-12T10:52:25-07:00January 8th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: blood test, science, saturated fat, nutrition, User Experiences, 42dayExperiment, experience|0 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 05

This entry is part 5 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

This is from last night, finished uploading while I was sleeping. We’ll see if I can make videos a regular occurrence for these updates.

By Chris|2018-01-12T10:52:43-07:00January 10th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: Oil, Keto Chow, science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol, experience, 42dayExperiment, video|3 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 06

This entry is part 6 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Day 06. I had a pretty bad dehydration headache this morning. I actually stopped on my way to work and grabbed a small jar of pickles, ate them all and drank the juice. USDA reference database says it had approx 33.6 calories with 3.7g net carbs. I’m still counting it as “Keto Chow only” though. I do feel better, pickle juice always makes me happy =)

My blood ketones are still hanging out in the 0.4-0.6 mmol/dL range. I expect in 2 days that’ll jump up quite a lot when I start my week of GrapeSeed Oil. (more…)

By Chris|2018-01-12T10:52:53-07:00January 10th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: video, Keto Chow, science, saturated fat, cron-o-meter, 42dayExperiment, experience|0 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 07

This entry is part 7 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Day 07 – going well still. Ketones are still steady at 0.6mmol/dL Tomorrow is my first blood test for the experiment and today is my last day of doing heavy cream only in my Keto Chow. I’m mixing it up a bit by adding raspberry flavored Torani sugar-free syrup (which is one of the tips you’ll find on the flavor hacks page AND you can use it on Keto Pancakes) since vanilla can get… boring sometimes.

Taking the probiotic yesterday worked like a charm (it always does for me, which is fortunate) though I did find out that at least one of my kids has a stomach bug that’s unrelated to doing Keto Chow for all his meals (which he isn’t doing ANY of his meals as Keto Chow), there’s a possibility it’s unrelated but who knows?

By Chris|2018-01-12T07:17:42-07:00January 11th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment, Uncategorized|Tags: video, Keto Chow, saturated fat, User Experiences, 42daysofketochow, experience|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 08 – Beginning Grape Seed Oil and a dissertation on PUFAs
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42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 08 – Beginning Grape Seed Oil and a dissertation on PUFAs

42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 08 – Beginning Grape Seed Oil and a dissertation on PUFAs

This entry is part 8 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Today I’m starting the first day of the “real” experiment (last week was a “washout” period to normalize everything). I’m starting with Grape Seed oil. Why Grape Seed Oil? well, it has the highest Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs) of any oil I could find, including Soybean oil (ok, technically I think Walnut oil has a slightly higher amount but walnuts give me canker sores and I didn’t want to go there). Why am I going to be doing a week of PUFAs? let’s recap in case you missed it:

In my earlier 4 week test, I did a week of avocado oil and I got some really weird results with my triglycerides. I asked Dave Feldman about it and he suspected that part of the cause may have been that I went from using heavy cream as a fat source to avocado oil – which is going from primarily saturated fat to mostly mono-unsaturated fats with a little poly-unsaturated. My body likely wasn’t used to that much PUFA so it may have been the cause. The only way to be certain would be to isolate out an oil that was exceptionally high and compare it to saturated, and mono-unsaturated (MUFAs) fats.

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So what’s the big deal about PUFA vs. MUFA vs. Saturated? Some of it is simply the way the molecules are set up, a major part is that seed oils (which are typically very high in PUFAs) aren’t something humans have consumed for very long, less than 100 years and often shorter. Our metabolism really doesn’t know what to do with them and the high Omega 6 causes inflammation and oxidative stress. By definition a poly-unsaturated fatty acid is a chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms that have multiple double bonds, Mono have a single double bond, and saturated have only single bonds:

Saturated Fats are exceptionally stable and resistant to oxidation (“Reactive Oxygen Species” is a term you’ll hear a lot) – this is why your grandma kept a bucket of lard on the counter and it never went bad. MUFAs do oxidize, though they’re quite good – Olive Oil is primarily MUFAs. PUFAs oxidize like crazy – in heat and even in light! But because the Diet-Hear Hypothesis that fat = bad, cholesterol = bad depends on the ideal that lowering cholesterol is the end-all-be-all, the fact that PUFAs lower cholesterol (while causing inflammation but that’s ignored) means they are “Heart Healthy” and recommended for consumption if you absolutely MUST have fat in your diet. Problem is: our bodies LIKE saturated fats because they know what to do with them so we have companies modifying PUFAs to look, feel, behave, and taste more like saturated. Thus Trans-Fatty Acids were born. We artificially add hydrogen atoms to make PUFAs into Saturated. “Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil” is code for Trans-Fat and fortunately everyone agrees that trans-fats are awful. In part thanks to the work of Nina Teicholz. If you’d like to go down the rabbit-hole on the history of fat, I highly recommend reading “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” which Nina wrote. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, I got my first blood test of the experiment today. I feel sorry for the poor employees at the Draper, Utah LabCorp location. They used to be a walk-in only location but ever since I’ve been going there, you can make an appointment online (which is what I’ve always done). Well there were 3 of us doing blood tests together so we all just carpooled. Well, some people had been there waiting since just after 8 and they took all 3 of us with appointments right at 9 – ahead of the people that had been waiting. Conveniently there’s a card with info to call to express your displeasure and the phlebotomists encouraged the people to do so. I thought there was goign to be a riot =(

By Chris|2018-01-12T15:44:03-07:00January 12th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: Oil, blood test, science, cholesterol, 42dayExperiment, PUFA, experience, Grapeseed Oil, video|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 09

This entry is part 9 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

I wasn’t very hungry at all yesterday doing Grape Seed Oil, so I drank my 3rd one after we went bowling. This morning I woke up to my guts making gurgling noises – which was kinda weird. Anyhow, today I spent almost all day getting speakers installed into the walls of our family room in the basement. Working like that I usually don’t get hungry either but I remembered to eat to keep the data from the experiment valid.

Tonight I mixed up 7 meals of Keto Chow with grape seed oil using a test batch of Keto Chow 2.1. Didn’t take long to mix (which is good since I’m rather tired).

Doing oil instead of heavy cream has my net carbs for the day exceptionally low and my blood ketones show it. Last night I hit 1.8 mmol/dL and tonight I was up to 2.2!