experience

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

Weight Loss, Weight Lifting, Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow

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 Chris|2017-03-20T12:19:23-06:00January 23rd, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Weight Lifting, Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: Keto Chow, Withings, nutrition, weight lifting, experience, results, ketogenic|0 Comments

Recommended reading for those starting Keto; Keto Chow at the construction site
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Recommended reading for those starting Keto; Keto Chow at the construction site

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow

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:

January 22nd, 2014: DIY soylent – Week 1
February 18th, 2014: 1 month on DIY nutritionally complete “future foods”
June 18th, 2014: My thoughts on (s)oylent – this one is interesting because it’s the first mention of a ketogenic diet
June 19th, 2014: First order in the shopping cart: Rob P. ordered a week of People Chow.
November 4th, 2014: The Nuclear Option: Ketogenic nutritionally complete “future foods”
November 18th, 2014: 1 month in doing Ketosis – Time for an update
December 23rd, 2014: 3 months of Keto – update
January 1st, 2015: New ketogenic recipe in development, it’s moar betterer – first mention of Keto Chow recipe
January 6th, 2015: A year in review – 365 days doing (mostly) nutritionally complete “future foods”
January 29th, 2015: Changing stuff around here – added credit card payments and announced I was stopping selling People Chow
April 21st, 2015: 6 months of Keto, I’m 81% the man I used to be
October 20th, 2015: 1 Year of Keto, 77% the man I used to be
September 21st, 2016: NMR Cholesterol Blood Test Results: I’m still alive (what a relief!) – 2.5 years of blood tests compared

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.

By Chris|2018-06-26T08:47:11-06:00January 13th, 2017|Categories: Future Foods, Weight Lifting, Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: Keto Chow, User Experiences, preparation, experience, Weight loss, results, ketogenic|0 Comments

On track with my New Year Resolutions
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On track with my New Year Resolutions

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Weight Lifting

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:

Strength training 3x a week (StrongLifts 5×5).
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 Chris|2017-01-09T09:06:59-07:00January 9th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Weight Lifting|Tags: experience, cron-o-meter, Weight loss, Keto Chow, Withings, nutrition, User Experiences, weight lifting|2 Comments

Tracking Net Carbs and more using Cron-O-Meter
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Tracking Net Carbs and more using Cron-O-Meter

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow

Tracking Net Carbs and more using Cron-O-Meter

This entry is part 69 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

One of my main New Year resolutions is not to eat anything until AFTER I have it entered into a tracking app. In the past I’ve used MyFitnessPal (hereafter referred to as MFP) – it works fine, has pretty good social sharing so friends can see what you want them to see; and they have a massive user-contributed database of foods. The website and app are free (though they hit you up pretty hard to buy the premium membership). It’s kinda like the wild west so far as their food database is concerned, though: anybody can add any food with any information. If you look in MFP for “Keto Chow” you’ll find several dozen entries, some that I made =) MFP does have some serious shortcomings though. First and largest is that user-contributed database, it has a lot of good stuff in there but it also has a lot of junk: entries with incorrect or incomplete information, duplicates, and more, including linking barcodes to incorrect products. Sure there’s an entry for food X, but you have to verify the information – it’s about the same as entering it yourself anyway, advantage lost. MFP also doesn’t know how to track net carbs, only total carbohydrates (including fiber). There is a Chrome browser script that you can use to add net carbs to MFP but it doesn’t work with mobile and is a bit of a hack.

By comparison, there’s Cron-O-Meter (hereafter referred to as CM) – free via browser, paid as an app with barcode scanning. The biggest difference with CM is the food database is curated – it only has validated, correct entries. It also has a lot more detailed information. You can add your own foods and recipes that combine foods together – if you buy the “gold” membership you can share foods and recipes with friends. CM also added a Ketogenic Diet mode back in March 2016 (I even posted to /r/keto about it =) – it’ll help you track net carbs and other nutrients. Set your macronutrient targets and go! I recommend CM over MFP for these two features alone. The problem becomes: How do you get custom foods into CM? ~~I have the process for getting Keto Chow officially added to the database going but that could take years! The solution is to add it yourself with some handy information I’ll give you.~~

To start off, you’re going to want to add an entry for just the 50g of Keto Chow powder. You can refer to the entry I created for Keto Chow 1.9 Rich Chocolate. If you add new food, there’s a gear icon on the far right that you can import a JSON file with the nutritional information so you don’t have to type it all.

UPDATE: The developer of Cron-O-Meter contacted me and said I should just submit all the flavors for publication in the general database. I had previously tried that but nothing ever happened. About 15 minutes after I submitted them they were approved and ready to use. So you can now simply search for “Keto Chow” in Cron-o-Meter! END UPDATE.

I was excited to find an entry already in CM for “Darigold, Whipping Cream, Heavy Classic 40%” which is the stuff I get from Costco in 2-quart packages. BUT the entry was missing a key element: the 0.48g of carbs per serving I know are in there. The solution was to find the USDA entry for “Cream, fluid, heavy whipping” and edit a copy with the specific values on the Darigold label (since the Darigold has more calories and fat at 40% fat instead of the standard 36%) see here for the complete entry I created.

OK, so you have an entry for the powder and the heavy cream. You can enter the powder and cream separately every day (tedious) or you can bundle the heavy cream into a “recipe” with the powder. I created a recipe that includes the powder, heavy cream and MCT oil (since I use MCT oil, I’ve been at this 2 years =) – you can check it out here. Now every time I want to add Rich Chocolate Keto Chow the way I like to mix it up, I just add 1 full recipe of “Keto Chow 1.9 Rich Chocolate plus 50ml heavy cream and MCT”. What about Chocolate Peanut Butter? Since it’s my #1 favorite flavor of all time you gotta know I have a recipe for that too! I made a custom food entry for “Peanut Flour Light Roast 28%“. I cloned the Rich Chocolate recipe and added 10g of the peanut flour to give me “Keto Chow 1.9 Peanut Butter plus 50ml heavy cream and MCT“. In case you’re curious, here are the entries for KC2.0 Chocolate+heavy cream and MCT and the corresponding KC2.0 Chocolate Peanut Butter. Finally, make sure you are getting your Ω-3 fatty acids – here’s an entry for the new Keto Chow Fish Oil pills .

One thing to note about CM: If you edit a food entry you created, the change will propagate back to previous days. This is handy for fixing an error you discovered but sucks for revisions. The solution is to edit a copy of the food, then “retire” the outdated one. The existing entries will remain unchanged and the old food will not show up as a suggested entry when you add food to your diary.

Here are my entries for yesterday (January 2, 2017):

The target values were derived from the Keto Macro Calculator coupled with some details I got from my DEXA scan last year.

By Chris|2020-05-21T13:50:10-06:00January 3rd, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: ketogenic, myfitnesspal, Keto Chow, flavors, nutrition, ketochow2.0, cron-o-meter, experience|6 Comments

Keto at a Conference, round 2
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Keto at a Conference, round 2

Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, On Tour

Keto at a Conference, round 2

This entry is part 62 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

A year ago I detailed how I used HydroFlask insulated containers to keep my Keto Chow nice and cold while I was attending classes at the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco. I did it again a few months ago when I used a similar tactic on a trip to DisneyLand. Well, last week was DreamForce again – but this time, I had a new trick in my arsenal: Keto Chow muffins. I used the “brownie” recipe since it makes nice, substantial, muffins that stood up quite well to being in a backpack for a few days. I cooked 12 meals worth a day before I left and froze them so they would last longer out of the fridge. When we reached the AirBNB (that was half way to San Jose, it was nuts) I put my bags of muffins in the fridge along with the Trader Joe’s shelf-stable whipping cream.

For liquid Keto Chow, I brought along 4 days worth of Cookies & Cream in day packs – made for easy transport and since I was mixing up 3 blender bottles at a time, I used a carton of cream and a day pack of Keto Chow in their entirety each time. The blender bottles would go in the fridge for overnight chilling and most of the time I just kept it in the blender bottle and had that for breakfast with 2 meals worth of the muffins in ziploc bags in my backpack (along with keto snacks). Here’s my backpack ready for a day of class:

The muffins were nice and flexible since they should last unrefrigerated for at least 3 days. If I ended up having something keto at a restaurant, the muffins would go back into the fridge when I got home for the next days’ meals. In all, it worked out great: I stayed in ketosis, didn’t gain any weight on the trip, and didn’t have to worry about meals. This last point was really important as our AirBNB sucked for finding a place to eat. One of the guys I was traveling with ended up having several of my muffins on several occasions rather than going out for food after a long day walking around.

I ate Keto Chow in class, in line, walking down the street, I even ate two of the muffins on Alcatraz island (in the area where food is permitted, naturally).

By Chris|2016-10-14T07:17:50-06:00October 12th, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow, On Tour|Tags: easy meals, portability, preparation, experience, Keto Chow, User Experiences, on location|0 Comments

NMR Cholesterol Blood Test Results: I’m still alive (what a relief!)
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NMR Cholesterol Blood Test Results: I’m still alive (what a relief!)

Ketogenic Diet

NMR Cholesterol Blood Test Results: I’m still alive (what a relief!)

This entry is part 59 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Several months ago I got a letter from my health insurance company telling me that they thought I should start taking statins.

Number A) That’s crazy!

Number B) No freaking way am I taking statins, given what I know about their side effects.

Number C) Are we looking at the same results? Because the ones I’m looking at are awesome.

It was time for me to go to my doctor and I had decided it was time to get either a VAP or an NMR Lipid Profile done. Why? LipoProtein particle count is important. Far more important than the density of the lipids within the protein so far as being an indicator of likely cardiovascular disease (CVD).

So I went to my doctor a few weeks ago, told him about the letter and told him I wanted to do an NMR or VAP. His initial response was “how on earth do you know what those are?” Next he pulled up my previous results and was rather confused since according to him my numbers were fine “are you sure they got the right person?” Anyway, he asked which one I wanted (NMR or VAP) – I wasn’t picky so I just said “Whichever one is more expensive.” I figure if they’re saying crazy stuff about me taking statins, they need to pay for it. So I got an NMR, the results took about 2 weeks to come back. Turns out that 2 years of a ketogenic diet is treating me just fine. So, let’s compare my “regular” lipid panel numbers!

March 2014 was 3 months after I started People Chow (high carb). January 2015 I was 3 months into keto. May 2015 I was 7 months into keto. September 2016 and I’m very close to 2 years of keto. I’m at less than half my previous triglyceride number, HDL continues to climb. Total Cholesterol and LDL are up as well but that’s why I wanted the NMR.

	3/20/2014	1/6/2015	5/4/2015	9/8/2016	target
Cholesterol	142	135	161	174	0-200 mg/dL
Triglycerides	160	96	75	70	0-200 mg/dL
HDL Cholesterol	43	45	49	53	40-60 mg/dL
LDL (calculated)	67	71	97	107	0-160 mg/dL

OK, now for the NMR numbers:

Test	value	target
LDL Particle Number by NMR	943	<1000
LDL Cholesterol	107	< 100
HDL Cholesterol	53	>39
HDL Particle Number	32.3	>=30.5
Small LDL Particle Number	212	<=527
LDL Particle Size	20.7	>20.5
Large VLDL Particle Number	1	<=2.7
Small LDL (Particle Number)	212	<=527
Large HDL Particle Number	3.3	>=4.8
VLDL Size	43.1	<=46.6
LDL Size	20.7	>=20.8
HDL Size	8.6	>=9.2
LP Insulin Resistance Score	46	<=45

Conclusion from my doctor? “Great on LDL number. Size is good. HDL is good, particle number is a little low but not alarming alone. Overall, I would NOT take a statin at this time. Insulin resistance is slightly elevated.” He’s talking about that last number. It’s a score LabCorp assigns based on a couple factors as explained in their test detail document:

Metabolic Syndrome Markers. Three parameters (average LDL size and pattern, large HDL particle number, and large VLDL particle number ) are reported that are closely associated with insulin resistance and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Well yeah, Back 2 years ago I decidedly had metabolic syndrome and was well along the path of developing “type 2 diabetes mellitus” as they say. Not any more =)

On a final note, I used the numbers I got from this test to complete a “Healthy Living Assesment” for my health insurance (hey, $70 is $70!) the computer recommends I eat less fat to be more healthy. –SIGH–

By Chris|2017-01-10T09:20:29-07:00September 21st, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet|Tags: blood test, results, ketogenic, science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol, experience|0 Comments

How do you explain Keto Chow?

This entry is part 58 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

There was a great thread over on reddit “How do you explain Keto Chow?” – good stuff, but there were 2 responses that are awesome. I’m going to edit them so my kids can read them without their eyes melting and fix some spelling and grammar issues.

It usually goes like this:

ppl: Hey, WOW, you’re looking great! Are you on a diet?

Me: Yes!, Have you heard of Soylent?

ppl: Hardy har har ‘soylent green’, you eat people

Me: This is a food replacement drink that gives me exactly the calories/vitamins/nutrients/minerals that my human body needs.

ppl: … , so you’re not eating?

Me: I have engineered my food to give me exactly what I need with none of the bad stuff.

ppl: … , but like you’re not eating, I like food, is this what you eat for Thanksgiving?

Me: No, Of course not, eating Keto Chow is what allows me to have a few cheat days while still keeping me slim and healthy

ppl: What the crap is Keto Chow?

Me: explains ketogenic diet

ppl: …

ppl: I like food, you’re weird, eating that much fat is bad for you, why can’t you just eat salad?

Me: Keto Chow means theres no more cooking, cleaning, running to the grocery store, paying a small fortune every 5 days for fresh fruit and veg, no more logging and guessing what to enter into MyFitnessPal

ppl: …, You’re so lazy, and weird, who doesn’t like food?! changes subject

and one of the replies:

I like to get Metaphysical on them.

ppl: Why don’t you just eat food?

Me: What is food?

ppl: You know, stuff you eat! Stuff you CHEW on you know!

Me: So if I put a lego in my mouth, crush it with my teeth and swallow it, does that make it food?

ppl: Noooo….

Me: So what makes it food?

… Continue as necessary until it is established that food doesn’t have to be chewed, it is something consumed to provide energy and nutrition for life. Ergo KetoChow is food.

This can actually be really entertaining and MIGHT make them reconsider what they think about food. It also might not (probably not) but it can make them look pretty foolish for a little while.

By Chris|2016-10-14T07:17:51-06:00September 21st, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: easy meals, experience, Keto Chow, User Experiences|0 Comments

Why I make Keto Chow
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Why I make Keto Chow

Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet

Why I make Keto Chow

This entry is part 57 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

I want to help people change their lives… and help them not go nuts in the process.

Nutritional Ketosis (aka “Keto” or “Ketogenic Diet”) can be highly effective but it’s daunting, especially for beginners. Keto is the only thing I have ever tried that has had any lasting effect on my health and my weight. I consider it like the “Konami Code“: a cheat or hack, because of how effective it has been in turning around my life (and the lives of family, friends, and former strangers =). I’m committed to helping others get into the Keto lifestyle and Keto Chow makes doing Keto easier; not only for beginners that are just starting out, but also for grizzled veterans who have been doing keto for years.

My first introduction to the ketogenic diet was when our oldest son started having seizures. After trying most of the common anticonvulsants (with no success) the neurologist sent my wife home with some information on a dietary treatment to control the seizures. He told her that if they didn’t have success with a medication soon then we would need to try a ketogenic diet. Glancing through the information he provided, my initial reaction was “holy crap, that sounds impossible!” all of the dietary restrictions and rules were more than we could handle. We would be like this family. The next medication worked and I all but forgot about the ketogenic diet. Years later it came up again when I decided I needed to lose weight.

When you first start doing Keto, there is a lot of information to be learned. There’s new vocabulary, new science, new lists of things you should or shouldn’t eat. It can actually be a bit dangerous if you don’t do sufficient research and don’t know that insufficient electrolytes will make you feel terrible (it’s called “Keto Flu” and it isn’t any fun) – that was one of the mistakes I made when I started Keto. I also started keto using a meal replacement shake that was loaded with coconut flour, chia seeds and other gritty stuff.

My goals in making Keto Chow were:

Make figuring out Keto easy. Easy on your brain and easy to prepare the food.
Keep people from running into electrolyte deficiency (the aforementioned “Keto Flu”).
Make it tasty enough that you’ll not just tolerate it but honestly, actually, for realsies, enjoy consuming it (and want more).
Make sure people are getting the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients they need to be healthy. Likely healthier than ever before.

Here’s the honest truth: I completely and entirely believe in this product and the Ketogenic diet. It’s not the end-all, be-all answer to everything in the world and I don’t eat it all day, every day for every meal (because: bacon and cheese). But I do have it for most meals.

I made Keto Chow for myself, it just happens to be the sort of thing that other people like too. It’s easy to prepare meals and I don’t have to worry about missing out on weird vitamins or minerals. I hit my macronutrient goals. I’m getting my electrolytes and it’s REALLY good tasting – like I’m always sad when my Chocolate Peanut Butter is empty. I mix up a couple days worth at a time and am able to just grab containers out of the fridge on my way out the door. Let me give you an example:

Last weekend our family went to help some friends cut wood. They use it to heat their home during the winter and you can get a permit to take dead pines (either that or they eventually fall over and block the road; the pines, not our friends =). It’s insanely cheap to get the permit ($5 a cord, 4 cords minimum – a cord is a really arbitrary measurement). We had to leave by 6 AM to get down to the place at the time we wanted. While I was packing the cooler with food for the kids I threw in several “blender bottle” containers full of Keto Chow… and that was it! I drank one on the drive and the other in between chopping up the tree. It’s easy, it’s effective and it’s tasty. I even brought along Keto Chow to Disneyland.

So I use it myself, how about other people? PrimitiveOrigins posted that he had lost 100 lbs on Keto Chow, complete with before and after pics. I asked him for a full review, here it is:

About a year and a half ago I was having a bunch of medical issues and it seemed my diet had to change and I needed to lose some weight. So after trying diet after diet nothing worked. A lot of this had to do with the nature of the diets themselves, I’m very “black and white” as a person and the diets I was attempting were very just avoid carbs at night or try to eat vegan for breakfast and lunch. That is fine for some people, but since these diets gave me an inch I became a ruler. I needed something as strict and rigid as myself, I stumbled across keto. It seemed very easy for me to do. Want pizza? Nope, can’t have it: carbs and sugar. Want a pineapple? Full of sugar: nope. So I went forth with this idea and it was fine for a while, but I soon realized I disliked cooking and eating; only keto gave me a realization that I was only eating for fuel so I started looking for something that would fit that idea.

I found Soylent quite quickly and marveled at the idea; this was exactly what I was looking for, but soon realized it wouldn’t work for me as weight loss was my goal and Soylent doesn’t really provide efficient weight loss. So I started looking for keto version of soylent and discovered […] Keto Chow. I placed my first order of a months’ worth of rich chocolate.

I explained to my wife what I was planning on doing, she was skeptical to say the least (amplified by the fact that the order came in a ziploc bag lol.), but I pressed and she agreed if anything was going to work it would be this. I got my order and mixed everything up and the next day I would have my first meal.

I had my first meal. Taste wise, I did not enjoy rich chocolate at all, but again I was drinking it only for fuel so I pushed through it. I drink 2 a day as it works for my schedule better, one at around 6am and the other at around 6pm, I have done this for about a year and a half now.

The toughest part was training myself out of eating socially, that took about a month to get used to. Once that was over it was smooth sailing, I started mixing my own.

I didn’t see any weight loss, but I got a scale and I was reading it on the scale, so something had to be working. It was insanely motivating and frankly addicting. When people would offer me food or soda my gut reaction was like: “Are you insane? I’m not working out and I’m losing weight at an aggressive rate, you couldn’t pay me to stop this!” My friends all thought I was nuts for the first month or two then after I dropped my first 50lbs or so they were very interested and I had at least 4 friends try it. None of which could stick with it as aggressively as I did/do. It’s a wonderful meal replacement, but real weight loss takes dedication and I was determined.

I’ve “cheated” on Keto Chow by, now and then – maybe once a month, getting plain meatballs from Noodles&Co. or having scrambled eggs and bacon and that was great while it lasted, but I was having some stomach trouble from that so I gave it up.

Overall my plans for the future are: Keto Chow until I cannot anymore. One of the reasons I’m going to be doing keto chow the rest of my life is because I had undiagnosed absence seizures. For the longest time, my wife and I just thought I’d get mixed up when speaking because of my stutter and forget what I was talking about. I’d have really bad headaches and get randomly tired throughout the day. I was going to the doctor to make sure I wasn’t losing weight too fast and that everything was going smoothly. It was, but one day I happened to “cheat” and grab some Noodles&Co. meatballs before my Dr. appointment; and I had an absence seizure right in front of him. He noticed and we started testing for epilepsy. Apparently I have a good deal of food allergies that also trigger seizures, but apparently I was an undiagnosed epileptic for some time and thanks to you I’ve been seizure free for almost 2 years. (Minus the forced ones.)

It’s so cheap, it’s so simple. I see no reason to ever change my diet at this point. My wife and my friends are all used to it; it’s a bit strange explaining it to new people, but the results speak for themselves. Overall I’ve never been happier or more healthy and it’s all thanks to Chris.

Seriously, that’s just awesome. This is why I make Keto Chow.

By Chris|2017-03-20T12:20:45-06:00September 2nd, 2016|Categories: Keto Chow, Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: easy meals, Keto Chow, portability, nutrition, preparation, User Experiences, experience, video, results, background, ketogenic, on location|3 Comments

Random Photos and Fun (plus an update on KC2.0)
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Random Photos and Fun (plus an update on KC2.0)

On Tour, Keto Chow

Random Photos and Fun (plus an update on KC2.0)

This entry is part 55 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

We went camping over the weekend. As usual, we ate a lot of bacon, sausage, and eggs (with hash browns for the kids, who aren’t doing keto). We were at Willard Bay, a freshwater reservoir that was built adjacent to the Great Salt Lake by erecting a dike – essentially a dam around the entire area. The water is relatively warm and it’s not very busy. The main thing is: it’s close to us and since we were taking a camp trailer PLUS wave runners (super awesome 1996 Polaris ones I got for cheap on Craig’s list – hey, they work) I didn’t want to go very far. I had Keto Chow for lunch at the water (which was far more tasty than the sandwiches the kids were eating), as did my wife (see photo above).

Last night my wife pointed out a box one of my kids has drawn on. Apparently, he thinks we need to introduce a new flavor. I especially like the logo and the QR code.

This morning my “daily movie quote” calendar was full of awesome. Soylent Green is people; Keto Chow is ground-up low-carb hippies.

Finally an update on Keto Chow 2.0: Yesterday I went to visit the co-packing place to pick up a new batch of flavor tests. Overall they’re excellent. Vanilla, Strawberry, and Chocolate are awesome (strawberry needs some more pink color which is unrelated to taste but whatever). The Cookie and Cream flavor was buttery tasting with not enough “oreo” aspect, maybe needs some chocolate? It’s still good though, more like a butter cookie. The Chocolate Peanut Butter is interesting.

The Chocolate Peanut Butter is interesting. The facility has an employee that’s allergic to peanuts. This means that using actual peanut flour at that location isn’t an option. The first solution is to have a different facility do the packaging of the Chocolate Peanut Butter, we’re looking at that. The second solution is to use a peanut butter flavor that doesn’t contain any of the problematic proteins. We tried some of that and there was a slight hint of peanut taste but nothing like what we currently get with the chocolate peanut butter flavor using real peanut flour. With this being my #1 favorite flavor you can be assured that I will not compromise on anything less than “this is yummy enough to drink for a month straight, I want MOAR!”. He also gave me a mocha (I think coffee anything smells like burnt toast so I got a guy testing it for me). The Snickerdoodle flavor wasn’t ready yet, I’m thinking about adding a Salted Carmel and maybe a Banana flavor – dunno. In all, it’s a definitive step in the right direction!

By Chris|2016-10-14T07:17:51-06:00August 16th, 2016|Categories: On Tour, Keto Chow|Tags: on location, preparation, experience, Keto Chow, ketochow2.0|1 Comment