Keto Chow

1/10 of the way done, see that was easy, right?

Yesterday we did the taste tests. It was actually a lot of fun and REALLY interesting to watch. We were on one side of a two-way mirror in a darkened room, watching people taste different keto meal replacements for nearly 6 hours. Some people would react visibly, others showed no signs of what they were thinking at all. One of the biggest confounders was that one of the products uses a lot of ground nuts and such for the fat and those settle so quickly that the participants had to stir up and swirl each cup before testing – and some didn’t so they just tasted the watery part. From what we saw, Keto Chow is definitely going to come out as the winner but we won’t have the statistical analysis for a few weeks.

Today I’m drinking one of the new test flavors: Spicy Taco Soup. I think it’s a nice change and I also think we have all of the 3 that we’re going to do finalized. We tested the Beef Stew flavor and the Clam Chowder flavor again today, they were good but I think people will want to add beef, veggies and such to the beef and will want to add clams, cauliflower, bacon, and such to the clam chowder. Then we thought “hey, what if we don’t have any added flavor – then people can use it as a base for whatever they want” BOOM. We tried that, just the full mix including the beef protein and beef bone broth and it tasted actually pretty good, without an overpowering flavor you’d need to overcome with the stuff you add. So now I get to start working on the 3 we decided on:

• Beef Soup Base (the unflavored one)
• Spicy Taco Soup
• Creamy Tomato Basil

Let’s see how quickly I can get it all done =P

I’m still going well on the “just eating Keto Chow” – Oh Hello Bakery brought by some of their stuff yesterday, they feel bad “tempting” me with it – meh; I’m a big boy, I can handle it! This morning I mixed up a couple test batches of the Spicy Taco flavored stuff I’m experimenting with, we’ll see which flavor concentration tastes the best. Yesterday’s test of the Creamy Tomato Basil went really well, the consensus was the one with more flavoring was better – the only problem is it uses 33% more flavoring which will increase the price accordingly. I did get detailed nutritional information on the ingredients I’m playing around with and each meal of the Tomato Basil should have 0.96g of net carbs – that’s actually far better than I had anticipated, adding heavy cream adds another 2-4g, using butter or bacon fat should add virtually no additional carbs.

Today we’re going to be doing our blind taste test, REALLY looking forward to it! It took quite a long time last night to mix up all of the stuff. 4 different products in 2-liter pitchers, one in the bottles they come in.

Went to the city offices for my first weigh in today. Got on the scale, it said I was down 9.0 lbs from last week, NICE! (that correlates to the 7.6 lb loss I’m showing on my own scale) The guy doing the weigh-in said: “wait, that’s not right…” Apparently, the lady who wrote down my weight last week messed up and wrote down the wrong weight. The guy was wondering how on earth I had GAINED 30 lbs in a week. I attribute it to the severed limb I had reattached (not actually) on Friday. Anyway, he fixed it.

We did our weekly Facebook LIVE yesterday, we weren’t even late! You should watch it. I’ll wait.

Just before I left work yesterday I was able to mix up a batch of the test Beef-based Savory Keto Chow so I could do some more flavor testing. This morning I have two different variants of the Tomato Basil Soup mixed up. I’m testing the flavoring concentration to see if we need more or less of the flavoring and/or the powdered tomato concentrate. Mixing it up this morning went really well. I cannot recommend ENOUGH how well it works to mix up hot Keto Chow in a HydroFlask, especially compared to how difficult it is in a Blender Bottle. I should probably do a video about that…

Week 1 down. 13.2 to go! My daughter made some amazing keto food in the Instant Pot last night – didn’t eat it =( Had some heated up chocolate Keto Chow instead. Today I’m going to try to get another test batch of the in-development savory flavors going. Want to be able to have those far along by the time I’m hitting around day 80 so I can use them in my tests. Speaking of product development and availability: we talked to the company packaging the samples yesterday. It’s looking like we won’t be getting onto the machine until late January or early February. Miriam got a little… “agitated” and told them “we’re dying here!” It was good to have her on the call =) They are trying to do everything they can to squeeze us in wherever they can and a second packaging machine is going to be coming online in February as well so this shouldn’t happen again. We’ll see.

We’re going to be doing our weekly Facebook Live tonight – it’s scheduled for 7:30 pm, mountain time but may start a little late, we have a concert for our kids and I’m not sure what time it will end.

I can report that what I’m eating (3 meals of Keto Chow) is most definitively supportive of a ketogenic diet – I tested my blood ketones at 2.4 mmol/dL this morning with 14.2 ppm on my breath acetone. So, what do those numbers mean? In my own personal opinion: anything over 0.3 mmol/dL of blood ketones means you’re doing really well. You’re producing ketones (ketogenic) and you’re burning ketones (ketosis) as well as fat. Are higher numbers better? They can be if you have a neurological condition that benefits from higher ketones (dementia, Alzheimers, epilepsy, depression, autism, etc…) – higher ketone levels correlate with higher ketone metabolism in the brain so you’d want “therapeutic levels” of ketones. This is also the group that can see potential benefits from using exogenous ketones.

For those that do not have a neurological condition, higher ketones just mean that you have higher ketones. It is academically interesting but it isn’t a predictor of faster weight loss. What I’m eating, combined with how my liver is working, I’m getting relatively high numbers. I like seeing those higher numbers because it assures me personally that the diet I’m eating is A-OK for keto (in the “Chris Bair metabolic model”) beyond a shadow of a doubt, which makes me feel good about recommending it to people as a meal that’s a good idea when doing keto. I’d still be happy if I was at 0.5 or 1.2, or even higher. All of this is why it’s said to “chase results, not ketones” – I’ve gotten my ketones up to 5.8 mmol/dL before (3 meals of Keto Chow a day, only avocado oil, no heavy cream, a little MCT oil) and likely will again during the science portion of this 100 day experiment. It did (and likely will) put my brain into overdrive – which was great as I was doing classes at the time – again: neurological benefit, not necessarily weight loss benefit.

Dr. Berry happened to post a video today that’s also about who should use exogenous ketones:

Checked my blood ketones just now, I’m at 2.4 mmol/dL. Strangely enough, I’m only at 8.9 ppm on my breath acetone, I would have expected it to be higher. Miriam and I were discussing this morning how there’s an offset between when we started doing the p90 workouts in the morning (December 31) and when I started the 100 days of Keto Chow challenge (January 2), we’re on week 2 of working out but only week 1 of the challenge. I guess I just need to look at what date it is and subtract 1: 7-1=6.

Had a good weekend with no issues at all sticking to only Keto Chow for all my meals. I only got around to drinking 2 meals of Keto Chow yesterday. I baked salmon for the kids, turned out fantastic and looked super yummy. I had hot Chocolate Keto Chow instead of the salmon because that’s what I’m doing right now. Last night I also mixed up 20 blender bottles of Keto Chow. 18 for me (6 days worth at 3 a day) and two for the Keto Chow storefront so that people who come into the store can try some of the flavors. This morning I mixed up a third one so if you happen to come by our store in South Jordan, Utah this week, you can try: Snickerdoodle, Root Beer Float, or Chocolate Peanut Butter. On a completely unrelated note, we have a fridge for Oh Hello Bakery up front now too that they’ll be stocking up with baked keto treats. Right now we only have some of their keto double chocolate chip cookies. To answer the obvious question: no, they can’t be shipped – it’s local only for now but they’re working on getting shipping nailed down.

Salmon before baking

Salmon after baking

hot Chocolate Keto Chow for me!

6 days worth of meal prep

For any that are morbidly curious: I’m down to a 5 on the Bristol scale now, looks like I didn’t need to use any probiotics this time when going all Keto Chow for all my meals. I also installed front and rear dashcams in my car on Saturday, looks like they work well. Here’s my drive from home(ish) to work. Yes, I’m WAY behind on my podcast listening =(