This morning the scale hit under 200 for the first time since… well, probably 1998. For kicks I tried to take a picture but the scale was acting up and gave me numbers higher than 200. I’m going to live in denial and accept the first pronouncement. And hows about a photo? On the left you have two pictures (from the same day) taken in mid October 2014 during the “DreamForce” conference I weighed about 255 at the time. On the right you have yesterday.
So I tried using Coconut Cream in my Keto Chow instead of Heavy Cream. It works but it wasn’t very pleasant. Since many people do Keto Chow at a higher calorie amount (2000 calories a day instead of 1300) I decided I would try using enough coconut cream to hit 2358 calories/day to see if it’s something that a rational person would try. I’ve done keto chow at the same calories before, it was more creamy but otherwise wasn’t very different from the 1300 cal version.
So I ended up using 250ml of coconut cream in one blender bottle, it filled more than half of the bottle by its self. It mixed up OK but after letting it chill out for a few hours I tried it. It was thick, like crazy thick, like nacho cheese sauce thick. After I drank about 1/4 of the bottle I added more water to dilute it a bit. The coconut flavor came through pretty strong (I used vanilla Keto Chow) and wasn’t very pleasant. I finished the bottle but it’s not something I want to ever do again. So while it’s possible to replace heavy cream with coconut cream, unless you really like the taste of coconut and only want 1100-1300 calories a day I would recommend against it. It also costs quite a bit; the 250ml I used works out to be $5.65 (for just the coconut cream alone!).
Every few days I check my web stats and see where people are coming from. Got a fun surprise today: http://www.insignificant.info/blog-native/2015/6/24/ketochow-diet
Includes quite entertaining commentary (make sure you click the numbered notations, I missed them the first time, they’re really funny), along with a super official “Appendix” where he ranks the different flavors. Personally I think he’s wrong about Rich Chocolate (it’s one of my favorite flavors and my biggest seller) but that’s a matter of personal taste =)
For kicks last night I mixed up some Keto Chow in one of the smaller blender bottles that I got a loooong time ago. Turns out they work just fine for Keto Chow with the only “issue” that you end up with a noticeably thicker mixture, which isn’t really a bad thing. I’m going to start using the two small ones I have on a regular basis, especially for when I’m going somewhere and need to bring keto chow in a cooler.
Yesterday marked 8 months doing ketogenic “soylent”, and the day before that was my 20 year High School reunion. At the reunion I kept getting “wow, you look exactly the same!” probably because the organizers made us name tags that had our Senior portraits on them. If I remember correctly I was about 200 when I started my senior year and about 210 when I graduated. so technically I weighed a bit less then 20 years prior. I was really working on hitting One-derland before the reunion but didn’t quite make it =( It was nice to be the skinny(er) guy for a change. It was also nice that the dinner had keto friendly foods: Prime rib, as well as some meats and cheeses. Should have gotten a second plate of prime rib.
About a week ago I finally broke through my stall. I had been moving up and down between 206 and 211 for nearly a month. I’m thinking the likely culprit was Malitol which is a “sugar alcohol” that isn’t absorbed and used as quickly as glucose but it still eventually gets through. Other sugar alcohols are much better (Erythrotol and Xylotol) and aren’t a problem. Unfortunately most “sugar free” candy uses malitol so I stopped eating any of that and my weight started moving again.
 Weight progress up until today. 55.4 lbs down in 8 months. |
 Taken 4 days after I started Keto, weighed 257.8 lbs when I started |
 Weighed 202.4 lbs this morning, if all goes well I’m going to hit <200 this week! |
 High School senior portrait. Taken back in 1994. I think I was somewhere between 200 and 210 at the time. |
A comment on another post asked about the feasibility of using coconut cream for Keto Chow.
It just might work.
I looked into “Trader Joe’s Coconut Cream”:
I calculated for 250ml of this Coconut Cream for a target kCal/day of 1300 (same as 50ml of heavy cream. It ups the NET carbs from 12g to 20g/day which isn’t optimal but should work fine. It is significantly more expensive though, the 250ml costs around $3.50 a day, compared to $0.75 for the same amount of calories from heavy cream. I also don’t have figures for the Omega 3 and 6 content so those end up red on the recipe editor.
Still, I’m going to grab some and give it a try, see how it goes. For those that can’t handle heavy cream, this might be a viable option. Update: here are the results.
I changed the Keto Chow labels to include a 3 columns: no cream/oil, 50ml of heavy cream, and for 119ml of heavy cream, representing approximately 454, 1300 and 2000 calories/day (3 meals) respectively.
Here are the new labels, you can expect to see them appearing on packages probably around the time I get back from vacation:
Here are the macronutrients for just 50g of keto chow powder with no oil and no cream:
On on /r/keto /u/rhoymand has done a series on testing his blood sugar response to various foods (here is one on a Quest Bar). I’ve been curious what effect Keto Chow has on blood so I got a glucose meter (cheap as free!) and some test strips (holy cow, these are expensive!). Today I did a test of blood glucose levels, sampling every 15 minutes from 08:45 to 14:00 (aka 22 holes in my fingers). During this time I drank a breakfast and then a lunch bottle of Keto Chow. I had intended to start this fasting but forgot and ate some beef jerky around 8. Doesn’t seem to have had an effect on the results but I’ll probably run this again in a month or so. Here’s the result:
Red lines are when I drank a blender bottle full of Keto Chow.
The last few times I’ve had my blood checked by a lab I’ve been 79-87 mg/dL glucose while fasting. Anyhow that’s a pretty negligible change. At least in my n=1 test it looks like Keto Chow doesn’t have an appreciable effect on blood glucose levels. In case you want it, here is the raw data:
| Time | Glucose level | note |
| 08:45 | 96 | |
| 09:00 | 89 | |
| 09:15 | 86 | |
| 09:30 | 86 | Drank Vanilla Keto Chow at 09:40 |
| 09:45 | 95 | |
| 10:00 | 94 | |
| 10:15 | 105 | |
| 10:30 | 88 | |
| 10:45 | 91 | |
| 11:00 | 92 | |
| 11:15 | 105 | |
| 11:30 | 101 | |
| 11:45 | 96 | Drank Rich Chocolate Keto Chow at 11:52 |
| 12:00 | 88 | |
| 12:15 | 97 | |
| 12:30 | 92 | |
| 12:45 | 90 | |
| 13:00 | 98 | |
| 13:15 | 91 | |
| 13:30 | 104 | |
| 13:45 | 87 | |
| 14:00 | 97 |
Did an interview with Maggie Zhang a short time ago, she published the article today: How Soylent’s Meal-Replacement Competitors Got A Not-So-Bland Taste Of Success. It’s a good read.
In other related news, the guy in the cube next to me who is mixing his own Keto Chow is now down 33lbs since he started 5 weeks ago. That’s awesome!
… due to me trying to drill a hole in my leg. I was drilling a hole in a trailer hitch and the drill bit broke. The drill with half a bit flew out of my hands and punctured my leg. Got two stitches and a tetanus shot.
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