nutrition

Results and conclusions from 6 week fat experiment (42 days of Keto Chow)

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

I have my analysis done on the data from my 6-week experiment doing Keto Chow for all my meals and swapping out different types of fats to see how they impact my lipid panels. It’s all chronicled over on the page about the experiment, along with an extensive array of graphs and other fun stuff.

I also proved that at least in me: eating 2000 calories a day of mostly fat with some protein I’ll lose weight. Switch that to 2000 calories of mostly carbohydrates with a little fat and the same amount of protein (and again, the same 2000 calories), I will gain weight.

Fun stuff!

Fatty Acid Composition Effects on Biomarkers and CICO on Trial

By Chris|2018-02-23T14:18:58-07:00February 23rd, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: results, Macadamia Nut Oil, Coconut Oil, Keto Chow, science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol, experience, User Experiences, Weight loss, Oil, blood test, 42dayExperiment|0 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 43 (done)

This entry is part 43 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Took my final blood test and had my final DEXA scan. I did some updates to the experiment page too. Should have the blood test results by Wednesday of next week.

By Chris|2018-02-16T15:51:37-07:00February 16th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: blood test, results, nutrition, 42dayExperiment, video|0 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 41, blood tests back

This entry is part 41 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

I was watching a video by Dave Feldman (where he had to keep pausing to eat skittles, it was great) and he talked about fructose malabsorption causing him digestive issues. I don’t think I have that problem which is why I haven’t had really bad problems during this phase. Again it seems that I dodged another bullet for which I’m grateful. I’m still anxious to get back into keto. Yesterday I bought the brisket and ribs for the meetup, they’re currently in the Sous-Vide cooking for a few days and I’ll finish them in the smoker on Saturday.

Got my Coconut Oil week blood tests back – REALLY interesting stuff. I’ve entered the data into the spreadsheet (check it out!) but here are some of the highlights:

I hit an all-time low LDL-P (particle count): 567. It’s down 43% from 996 the week before. ? (you’re looking for under 1000)
All time low LDL-C: 56, down from 78. ?
I brought back down my triglycerides from 148 to 103 ? (you want this below 100)
My HDL-C went WAY up (52% to be exact): from 40 to 61 ??? (you want this as high as possible)
A1c is still steady at 4.8 ?
Fasting insulin went WAY up, from 5.2 to 8.4 – the highest I’ve recorded so far. ?

This test was the first time I saw a departure from the previous inversion pattern of LDL-C and Triglycerides which would go up and down opposite of each other. I don’t know if it was the high amount of MCTs in the coconut oil or what. Regardless, I can handily say that consuming almost entirely saturated fat for a week made my blood tests look AMAZING.

Here are some of the graphs from the spreadsheet:

By Chris|2018-02-14T11:36:53-07:00February 14th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol, User Experiences, experience, video, Oil, 42dayExperiment, blood test, Coconut Oil|6 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 40!

This entry is part 40 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

So close… only 9 meals left! It’s getting harder and harder to only eat the food in my experiment. I thought I had some kind of superhuman ability to stay on track, turns out it was likely just the result of solid keto eating. Making dinner for everyone else and not eating any of it hasn’t been a problem and now it’s REALLY hard to not take a bite.

For kicks, I made a crono-o-meter “recipe” of what I’m eating this week – mostly so it would generate a nutrition label so I’d have something to show people that question what I’m eating this week. Here’s a comparison of that and when I’m doing heavy cream:

Carb Week	Heavy Cream Week

Those that say “nay” will likely take issue with the amount of sugar and sodium in the carb week, but if you click on the image and pull up the full nutrition info and check out the vitamins and everything else you’ll see it’s nutritionally complete still.

By Chris|2018-02-13T09:50:31-07:00February 13th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: science, nutrition, 42dayExperiment, video|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 38, my mouth hurts

This entry is part 38 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

One thing I forgot to mention in the video: The previous 5 weeks were a little hard to not eat the amazing keto food around me. These last 2 days I’ve started getting a nearly overwhelming compulsion to snack and eat all the things! This is new and quite unwelcome. Previously I was quite satisfied drinking my chow and done. Now I’m starting to get legitimately hungry and it’s happening all the time. It could be a function of “I’m eating sugar I could eat that handful of goldfish crackers” but I think it’s more of the sugar and my insulin sabotaging me.

My mouth is really starting to hurt. Dunno if it’s the sugar, the citric acid in the skittles, or the chewing – but inside my cheeks are pretty raw. I might need to start swallowing the skittles whole. I’m happy that I haven’t had any crazy headaches or digestive issues yet – sure it would make for a more interesting result but since I’m talking about my own comfort, I’m good with boring and just not feeling as peppy as normal with some minor bloating and flatulence thus far (oh, and my mouth hurts =).

My weight did go up a little this morning. I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t gone up far more already. I know from personal experience that my body will pretty quickly replenish glycogen (the opposite of the “whoosh” people get when starting Keto) which adds water weight rather quickly. The awesome thing about keeping this experiment isocaloric and regimented is that I’m eating the exact same amount of calories as in the previous phase of the experiment so even if I wanted to “spike” my results by eating more I couldn’t, so the results will be undeniable.

By Chris|2018-02-11T08:56:21-07:00February 11th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: video, nutrition, 42dayExperiment|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 36: Carb Week Begins (with a live stream)
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42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 36: Carb Week Begins (with a live stream)

42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 36: Carb Week Begins (with a live stream)

This entry is part 36 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

https://youtu.be/w_MnfN8KWp4

OK, here we go!

You can view my glucose tests as I take them on the “Sugar” tab of the spreadsheet here.

By Chris|2018-02-09T13:19:02-07:00February 9th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: User Experiences, experience, video, 42dayExperiment, Oil, blood test, Coconut Oil, science, saturated fat, nutrition|0 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 34: on the ByteSized Podcast
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42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 34: on the ByteSized Podcast

42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 34: on the ByteSized Podcast

This entry is part 34 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Woke up with a dehydration headache today, some water and ibuprofen took care of that. My gut is feeling much better, just in time for me to royally mess things up! =) Today is my second-to-last day of doing the liquid coconut oil. That means I have fewer than 48 hours before I eat carbs for science (and will likely feel like crap). In case you missed yesterday’s post, I’m going to be using skittles, sprite, and some M&Ms in addition to the dextrose to hit my 2000 calories for that week. And in case you’re wondering why the crap I’m doing all this, the original plan is laid out on this page.

Yesterday I was a guest on an episode of the ByteSized podcast and today it went up. I tried to keep it really short and didn’t ramble as much as I could =) Anyhow, please check it out!

By Chris|2018-02-07T10:59:28-07:00February 7th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: 42dayExperiment, video, Oil, Coconut Oil, nutrition|2 Comments

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 20, off to S.F., Grape Seed Oil results

This entry is part 20 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

I’m heading off to San Francisco in a few hours. Rather than worry about how to transport my shakes, I’m just going to do time-restricted feeding (“intermittent fasting”) by drinking all my meals this morning and afternoon, then I’ll eat again after I get home tomorrow. I had to bring everything I need with me to work, including an umbrella. Fun fact: I’ve been to San Francisco almost 10 times now, I’ve never been rained on (misted on, yes, but no rain) looking at the forecast, this might break that streak.

This morning I got back my blood tests from the week of doing Grape Seed Oil. Feel free to head over to the spreadsheet of results and check them out. Grapeseed oil is on Column O.

Let’s see… my LDL-P came way down (1242 to 849) – into the “normal” range thanks to the PUFAs, my LDL-C also came down (116 to 72) – again into the “normal” range. My triglycerides did indeed go up, though nowhere even close to the result I got with avocado oil in November: that one went from 113 to 199, this new test with grape seed oil went from 104 to 117. I guess we’ll see what happens with the subsequent tests with Saturated and MUFA: will the triglycerides go down or not?! While you’re on the spreadsheet, you can pop over to the other tabs and see the ongoing results coming in from the n=3 experiment that’s also going on. Both females have had really stable triglyceride levels, regardless of heavy cream or avocado oil. Makes me wonder if the 199 was a freak aberration (yes I was fasting at least 12 hours before the test).

So what else does the blood test show? On PUFAs my cortisol increased dramatically (9.8 to 12.7) and my fasting insulin predictably went down to 2.4. That’s actually the lowest I’ve ever gotten, 2.7 was the level when I did Avocado Oil. Oddly, my CRP (which along with cortisol is a marker for inflammation) was slightly up but still far lower compared to what I was getting in November.

By Chris|2018-01-24T10:11:49-07:00January 24th, 2018|Categories: 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment|Tags: User Experiences, experience, video, Oil, 42dayExperiment, blood test, results, science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol|9 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: 42dayExperiment, video, Oil, Keto Chow, science, saturated fat, nutrition, cholesterol, experience|3 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: experience, blood test, science, saturated fat, nutrition, User Experiences, 42dayExperiment|0 Comments