Monthly Archives: November 2015

“Golden Oldies: Impressions and comments on the keto chow solution for Senior citizens.”

This entry is part 108 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I have another user experience to share (with permission):

  • Gender: Woman
  • Age: 66
  • Length of time on keto chow: 4 weeks.
  • Results: very positive.

A favorite blouse fits so much better than it did a month ago, just before starting Keto Chow.  I tried the Atkins diet several years ago and was moderately successful. Losing weight is much different than maintaining a lower weight. We are hopeful that this approach will do two things, keep weight off and avoid diabetes.

I have often called myself a sugar addict and restricting carbs has clearly put my addiction in the spotlight.  The flavors and formulas of keto chow have made the transition less traumatic and I have not experienced “keto flu”, to date.  Mood swings and any food challenges seem to be resulting from extended family problems more than dietary adjustments.   My former knee jerk reaction to self medicate with sugar has been offset with the immediate benefits.  Swelling has gone down in my face, hands and feet.  I can hear better, too.
My husband has joined me in this lifestyle change and the mutual support is a tremendous benefit.  We encourage each other, rather than trying to sabotage improvements.  We also did a month of preparation.  We cleaned non compliant foods out of the cupboards and freezers, except for snacks to feed grandchildren.  We studied the keto chow blog to grasp preparation, and bought helpful equipment such as shaker bottles.  My first challenge was to decide how much “real” food to eat and how many keto chow to consume.  This is probably very subjective, according to the weight loss goals.  I settled on one to two shakes a day, leaning toward one.   Fasting is less difficult, because I do not feel as hungry when I have not had anything to eat.
Favorite flavors:  Pina colada, cinnamon bun, toffee and strawberry blast.
I will continue to do periodic updates on my progress.  No weight posts, taboo to ask a lady what she weighs.
By |2016-10-13T07:27:59-06:00November 30th, 2015|Weight Loss, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|3 Comments
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A Happy (Keto) Thanksgiving

We are hosting thanksgiving for my family this year and yesterday we hosted my wife’s family for pre-thanksgiving. It was a great opportunity to test out some recipes. All turned out fantastic so I thought I would share. There will be 5 of us doing keto so we wanted some awesome food. On a side note: I found a local grocery store that carries Swerve artificial sweetener. In the past I’ve used truvia but it has some carbs. Swerve hits a 0 glycemic index with 0 net carbs. Awesome! You can find a bunch of other awesome recipes over on /r/ketorecipes – there are currently two pinned posts at the top with holiday recipes.

Appetizer

Cranberry-Jalapeno Cream Cheese Dip Used Swerve instead of sugar and I forgot to make flax crackers so I just pulled out a bag of unflavored pork rinds. Wife says “There is happy in my mouth!”. Also of note from last week: Bacon Ranch CheeseBall.

Side

I didn’t discover this recipe until today so we just did mashed cauliflower with sausage gravy – the gravy was absolutely AMAZING and got eaten by all those carb eating people.

Turkey

I picked up a Masterbuilt gas smoker back in April and I can’t think of anything more keto friendly than smoked turkey! A friend of mine told me that for smoking turkeys you want a fresh (not frozen) one so I grabbed one from Costco and brined it. I was going to spatchcock the turkey but it ended up being too large to fit easily on the racks so I sharpened a cleaver and bisected the bird. Cooked better cut in half anyway. I used a wireless thermometer to track how done it was, I had to leave for several hours and so I pointed a webcam at the thermometer so I could check it remotely. Worked great (the smoker blew out twice necessitating a trip back home).

Ham

This was in case the turkey went wrong. Just a standard spiral ham that didn’t have any sugar in it. We pulled off some of it for us Keto people and then put the glaze on for the normal people.

Desserts

  • CavemanKeto Strawberry cheesecake this was just plain awesome. Seriously better than most “carby” cheesecakes.
  • Pumpkin Cheesecake Made these last year and they were great, worked again!
  • Fat Bomb Cheesecake I had an extra pie crust so I wanted to make another one but I didn’t have anymore pumpkin.  Super simple recipe, worked great.
  • Whipped cream. I put a couple cups of heavy whipping cream into a bowl with some swerve and whipped it for about 10 minutes. Yeah, I ate a bunch of this straight with a spoon. I want some right now.

We also had salad, pickles, olives and other assorted goodies. Between the cream cheese used for all the cheesecakes, the potatoes, the dip and the gravy we used up a little over 6.5lbs of cream cheese this weekend.

By |2015-12-27T17:17:20-07:00November 23rd, 2015|Ketogenic|Comments Off on A Happy (Keto) Thanksgiving
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New flavor of Keto Chow available: SnickerDoodle

This entry is part 107 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

With the (maybe temporary) demise of Mocha, I decided to bring on a new flavor for Keto Chow so there would still be 12. Introducing SnickerDoodle! It tastes very much like one of the cookies with a much better flavor than cinnamon bun. Personally I’ve never liked cinnamon bun but others do. This one is decidedly good. We’re finishing up the Day packages and have about 2 dozen of the Week packages already done. In a few minutes we’ll be starting on samples too.

By |2015-11-20T16:06:11-07:00November 20th, 2015|Keto Chow, Site or Store Stuff|Comments Off on New flavor of Keto Chow available: SnickerDoodle
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Dymatize Protein and availability woes

The photo is about half of the Peanut Butter packages we mixed last night, waiting to be sealed. I decided it looked kinda cool so I took a picture, they last longer.

Something that I’ve been concerned about lately is the availability of the various flavors of Dymatize (which is a central component of Keto Chow – it’s what sets the flavor). My preferred supplier is out of stock on all the 10lb boxes and most of the 5lb bottles. My secondary, tertiary and other suppliers are also pretty much completely out of stock. My guess is it has to do with Dymatize closing its Texas production plant and contracting with “co-packer” facilities and they’re not coming on-line as quickly as they would like.

I’ve had 2 flavors go out of stock now: Strawberry (update: it’s back in stock) and Mocha (completely out of stock except day packages). I’m still looking to find some place that has either of these but it’s not looking very good with most places reporting they should have some stock in about 10 days. Rich Chocolate has been particularly fun to maintain stock since it’s what I use for Chocolate Peanut Butter as well as the regular Rich Chocolate, the 3rd and 1st most popular flavors (#2 is vanilla). I’ve taken to buying out the inventory of any place I can find 10lb or 5lb containers. Last night I had a friend helping me get some Keto Chow mixed up. If I remember correctly, we mixed 220lbs of Rich Chocolate (half was for peanut butter), 80lbs of Vanilla, 30lbs of Cookies and Cream. With any luck that will be enough to hold us over past Thanksgiving but I’m suspecting it won’t.

 

By |2015-11-20T18:41:57-07:00November 13th, 2015|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow|Comments Off on Dymatize Protein and availability woes
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User experience on Keto Chow (age 47, down 50lbs in 5 months)

This entry is part 106 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This is from a dude in California:

I just wanted to thank you for your Keto Chow diet. On June 18th, I bought a Fitbit and received your first shipment and started the Ketochow diet. I initially did 2 shakes and 1 meal for about a month. I later changed to 1 shake and 2 meals.

Anyway, it’s been about 5 months now and I’ve lost 50lbs on your diet. I started at 228 and today I’m 177.5!!!

I’m 47 years old, 6″ and previously, whenever I start gaining wait, I would cut back on my calories and start to exercise more. However, for some reason, it was much harder for me to drop the weight on a lower caloric diet. I spent a month at 1500 calories with moderate exercise and only lost 2 lbs???

On your diet, I lost 12lbs in the first month and continued to lose about 10lbs for the next 4+ months.

Now, I need to go on Maintenance Mode, I still have a little flab on my belly which I want to completely get rid of. However, I’m worried about losing too much weight. I’m worried that my face will look gaunt. So for now, I’m gently increasing my carbs from 20-40. And gently increasing my calories so that I will be stick around 175lbs. I’ll continue to make adjustments up or down to my carbs/calories.

Anyway, that’s my story and I wanted to say thank you again. Today, I just made another order for $275.00 and I love it.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:59-06:00November 11th, 2015|Weight Loss, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|Comments Off on User experience on Keto Chow (age 47, down 50lbs in 5 months)
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13 things people on keto are tired of hearing

This entry is part 105 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This is shamelessly stolen from this reddit post, with inline images.

  1. No carbs? Hah. I don’t think I could ever do that.reactions01
  2. But your body NEEDS carbs!reactions02
  3. Bacon every day? You’re going to kill yourself on that diet.reactions03
  4. You need to eat more fruit.reactions04
  5. So only whole grain bread, right?reactions05
  6. Good luck, you won’t be able to stay on that kind of diet very long.reactions06
  7. So what day is your cheat day?reactions07
  8. You can have ONE piece of cake, can’t you?reactions08
  9. I guess you’re just lucky / have good genes.reactions09
  10. But eating all that fat makes you fat!reactions10
  11. Fad diets don’t workreactions11
  12. What can you eat? Can you eat here?reactions12
  13. You’re losing too much weight / losing it too fast! reactions13
By |2016-10-13T07:27:59-06:00November 5th, 2015|Weight Loss, Ketogenic|Comments Off on 13 things people on keto are tired of hearing
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Quick note on zip code verification failure and AUTH charges

I get this question frequently enough I’m going to post this so I can have a convenient place to copy and paste from.

The credit card verification I use is pretty strict (as of November 2015 I haven’t EVER had a charge back or fraudulent transaction). Your billing address has to EXACTLY match what your credit card company has on file (if in doubt, pull up your card statement and see where they think you live). If it fails to verify you might still see an “Authorize” transaction on your card, this is from Stripe (the guys I use) saying

“hey dude, does this person have enough money to cover the charge? cool, by the way here is their address, does it match what you have? No? OK, never mind”.

If it does match then it does what’s termed a “Capture” transaction – this is where your card gets for realsies actually charged.

So the good news is: you don’t get charged for the AUTH transactions but they DO usually temporarily count towards your credit limit. After a few days, depending on the bank, the pending charges will drop off your account and all will be right with the world. Now if you need to you can usually call the bank and get them to release an AUTH early.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:59-06:00November 2nd, 2015|Site or Store Stuff|Comments Off on Quick note on zip code verification failure and AUTH charges
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