User Experiences

Here we are, day 85, 17/20 through my experiment! Everything is going fine on the nutrition front – nothing much to report on that. I did answer a relevant question on the keto subreddit yesterday from a person that wanted to know if they can eat the same thing every day: https://bit.ly/2JHEboZ

This morning I received my most recent blood test results. They’re interesting, to say the least. This week I was recovering from a cold AND I was using 45ml of Avocado Oil + 15ml of MCT oil in each shake. Compared to the previous 2 weeks where I was using only avocado oil, there was a MASSIVE change in my LDL (particularly small LDL) and my Triglycerides. My HDL has continued to go down (and likely won’t come up until I begin the butter portion later this week). You can get the full data from my shared spreadsheet: https://bit.ly/2HMIMUo

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSJhZxs47tBqgJOHEEoM_y2h44AO4IY3iYMcivH71AQFg-Ztdzf8D0g84t643iyyi-Bq-QhHhUMLWac/pubchart?oid=394107758&format=interactive

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSJhZxs47tBqgJOHEEoM_y2h44AO4IY3iYMcivH71AQFg-Ztdzf8D0g84t643iyyi-Bq-QhHhUMLWac/pubchart?oid=1649903602&format=interactive

Back in January when I came up with this scheme of doing 100 days of only Keto Chow for all my meals, I also pre-loaded the blog post entries onto the site, complete with a header photo for each day, those have been there ever since, with the list of “draft” posts slowly getting smaller each day. After I post this one today, there should be 15 left and they all fit onto one page. I re-lost the 1.3lbs I had gained on Sunday – figured it was water.

https://youtu.be/AtWW-muN7eg

I spent much of yesterday mixing up two 21 meal prototype batches of the Creamy Tomato Basil for Beverly and for me. Now that we know you can use butter with the regular flavors (see yesterday’s post) having more savory flavors isn’t as much an issue but it’ll be nice to have as well. I’m really stoked for Friday, mmmm…. butter.

Yesterday I mixed up the 12 meals of Keto Chow that will finish off the Avocado Oil + MCT Oil portion of the experiment, that’ll take me through to Thursday evening, then I start the butter segment! As part of that, yesterday we tried an experiment: We melted 3 meals worth of butter (1/2 stick per meal in this case) and got some warm water, added the butter to the warm water, added 3 scoops of Chocolate Mint Keto Chow, mixed it all up with a blender, put it into some Blender Bottles, and put those into the fridge. I wanted to see if the butter would separate out or not, my experience with the avocado oil and the immersion blender is that the blender and the acacia gum emulsifies the mixture really well so it might stay integrated. This morning Miriam checked the bottles and all of them were still completely mixed, no floating layer of solidified butter! Looks like mixing up ahead of time is a viable option, sweet!

This morning we have a “fitness challenge” starting here at the office. It’ll go for a month, half of which will be during the final phase of my 100 days. Looks like there is a max of 10 points a day for doing things like: No soda, Drink 64oz of water, 8000 steps, No desserts, 7+ hours of sleep, vegetable serving each day (I’m totally counting acacia gum!), track everything in an app like cron-o-meter, with a bonus 10 pts if you lose 3% of your weight. This will be interesting!

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!