Monthly Archives: June 2016

Credit Card payment via Stripe works again (sigh)

Last week when I was on vacation I spent one morning updating the plugins on my site. It was super fun to do over a cellular connection but that’s vacation. Somehow while I was doing the updates I managed to deactivate credit card payments using Stripe. That meant you could still pay via Paypal, Credit Card (again via Paypal but it’s confusing to look at), and Bitcoin. I noticed that sales were down a bit but I couldn’t figure out why.

Ever been half way through the day and discovered your pants were unzipped? I make it a policy to let people know if I see that. I feel like an old curmudgeon telling a girl that her dress is tucked into her nylons but I figure they would rather know. I know I do!

Anyway So it’s turned back on and everything is happy again.

By |2016-06-30T15:44:15-06:00June 30th, 2016|Site or Store Stuff|2 Comments
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Questions about alcohol on keto and using different oils/protein

This entry is part 134 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Got an email today, I took long enough to answer it I thought I might as well put my answer in a blog post.

The first question was about whether they need to give up alcohol

Well, there are a lot of reports on /r/keto about being on keto lowering tolerance for alcohol (just search for “keto cheap date” and you’ll see what I mean). “Liquid bread” drinks like beer have WAY too many carbs but distilled spirits don’t – and the aforementioned lower tolerance makes it less expensive too.

The second question was about if I had considered algal oil in powder form – it’s what Rosa Labs uses for Soylent 1.6

Rosa Lab’s motivation is a bit different than mine: they want to use vegan sources for everything. While that’s possible with keto, it runs counter to much of the philosophy. MCT oil and cream are better (tasting) and have definitive advantages for ketosis. Additionally doing powdered oils with keto is difficult to do because most powdered oils use starch (maltodextrin) and you’d end up with several times more carbs that the max amount. The only exception to that is the Quest powdered MCT/Coconut oil but it’s prohibitively expensive. I did some poking around and found that to get powdered coconut oil in palettes it ends up being almost exactly the same price as the end user simply buying it from Quest off Amazon.

The third question was about switching to soy protein

Rosa Labs was using rice protein in their powdered mix but it gives an icky silty gritty mouthfeel. Doing Soy protein is the best option if you don’t want to use whey protein. Again, I’m not interested in vegan (I eat a lot of bacon) – I want the best tasting and highest nutrition that’s economical, with emphasis on taste and texture. To that end I’m using whey protein. Doesn’t have the grit of rice or the (incorrect but whatever) public relations issues that soy has with the phytoestrogen scare.

So the short answer to the 3rd question is simply: Keto Chow already has superior nutrition, flavor and mouthfeel; it’s better than the new stuff Rosa Labs is using.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:36-06:00June 29th, 2016|Keto Chow, Soylent|Comments Off on Questions about alcohol on keto and using different oils/protein
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Results from soylent eater’s survey – keto and gender analysis

This entry is part [part not set] of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

The results from the 2016 soylent Eaters Survey are in – I hadn’t commented on it yet since I was out on vacation last week and didn’t really dig down into the results until yesterday.

I’m not a stats guy, can’t even hope to work R but I can poke around a bit with Excel and a few other tools. One question I had was “given the gender disparity in the 2015 survey, would the ketogenic versions change the results? Would there be a higher incidence of women drinking ketogenic ones?”

I’m not going to get into the argument about gender/sex and all that, not the time. There were 26 people who gave a response on the survey that wasn’t “male” or “female”. If you like you can read all the responses to all the questions here. I’m just going to analyze the responses. OK, now that that’s out of the way…

The image at the top shows the total numbers and percentages for all the responses, regardless of what they were or were not using/eating. 18% selected Female, 81% selected Male and 0.8% typed in something different. 18% is larger than the 14% from the 2015 survey but it’s still small. I’ll quote Ted:

Such a wide skew is unlikely to be due to the demographics of reddit as our major sample source, as the Reddit audience is 47% female.

The most plausible answer we’ve heard for the gender disparity since first reporting this disparity last year is that the market for female meal replacement shakes is already well served by Slim Fast and the plethora of other diet shakes created in the past 20 years.  In this interpretation, the soylent/future food trend can be categorized as “slim fast for men.”

We think there are two important differences between future food and the diet shakes of the past.  One, future foods could be consumed perpetually as a single source of nutrition, even if they aren’t currently being used that way.  And two, as we’ve seen in this years data, use of these products is consistent over time, not just during periods of dieting.

That’s the general breakdown by gender, let’s see what happens when we add the additional dimension of “Which soylent/future food distributions do you primarily consume?” – I took off any that had less than 15 responses to make it more relevant. I’d also like to add “Which soylent/future food distributions have you tried?” but I haven’t figured the Excel stuff to do that yet.

Gender-and-Soylent-2

I find it really interesting that the two “soylent” type foods with the highest percentage of female users are both ketogenic: Keto Chow and KetoSoy. I did skew the numbers a little in my favor by sending out a quick invitation to people who had used Keto Chow in the last year. Still, I like that my product has an above average representation of female users, mostly because the people I like best are women =) Here’s another view of the gender/distribution data:

Gender-and-Soylent-1

Here’s some additional analysis of the survey, and here too.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:36-06:00June 28th, 2016|Soylent, Ketogenic, Keto Chow|Comments Off on Results from soylent eater’s survey – keto and gender analysis
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A Keto Vacation

Got back yesterday from vacation at Bear lake (because we’re the BAIR’s! get it?! …sorry, “dad” joke) My parents came along which made meals interesting – 4 adults eating (mostly) keto and 6 kids eating regular food. We only cooked 5lbs of the bacon we brought but we did power through an awful lot of rotisserie chicken, mayo and boiled eggs for chicken salad. It was a fun time. My wife said:

You should make a post with the big bacon pictures in Minnetonka Cave. Then you can geekily talk about the minerals and stuff

Well, I’m not going to geek out about minerals and stuff – our guide did that enough for everyone. =) The “Cave Bacon” was pretty cool though, here’s another picture of the surrounding area

Cave Bacon Large

I did set up a time lapse both times we went down to the “beach” (which consisted of tiny shells that got into your shoes and was the equivalent of walking barefoot across a floor of legos) – the kids still had fun.

 

By |2016-10-13T07:27:37-06:00June 24th, 2016|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, On Tour|Comments Off on A Keto Vacation
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About the Business Cards that come in orders

This entry is part 133 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Back in March we started including business cards in the packages we ship out. It was my Wife’s idea (I think, might have been Heather’s idea originally). There’s a discount code on the back but it only works once for each person, we continue sending them with each order so you’ll have a nice and easy way to explain to people that ask what is up with Keto Chow. Here’s a comment I got on an order this morning:

Please include a bunch of cards so I can hand em’ out to my friends and coworkers whom are interested in the “shake” that has allowed me to loose 45lbs.

THAT is why we put the cards in there =)

By |2016-10-13T07:27:37-06:00June 21st, 2016|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow|Comments Off on About the Business Cards that come in orders
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Look, there’s an easier (cheaper) way

This entry is part 132 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

So the newly FDA approved AspireAssist has been all over the news (even made the Colbert Show back in 2015). It’s a tube that is implanted into your stomach so you can suck out undigested food before it is absorbed. In other words: it’s a FDA approved form of surgically assisted bulimia, that’s the consensus over on /r/keto (note: on the comments “ED” means “Eating Disorder” not… something else).

There’s a much easier, enjoyable, SUSTAINABLE and cheaper way to change your life: eat bacon stop eating sugar; and by “sugar” I mean glucose, fructose, polymerized glucose (starch) and the like. Call it what you will – I will call it “Keto” and it’s really not that hard. Look, if you are like me and your body apparently can’t handle carbohydrates like it’s supposed to: don’t eat them, eat better food. People wouldn’t insist that celiacs eat bread, they don’t tell people with peanut allergies to have some, and Jim Gaffigan frankly needs to stay out of the sun. Switching over to the lifestyle of keto changed my life – and more and more of those around me are doing it too (or at least giving it a try).

Personally I use Keto Chow for most of my meals but most people doing Keto use “regular” food – either way is fine. Got a gut? Keto might be right for you too. Best part is: it’s not a MLM, it’s not being promoted by any special interest group and you can do it yourself! You won’t need surgery, you’ll have more energy and my wife claims doing keto has made me more attractive, so there’s that too. Here’s a handy guide:

keto-paleo-diet-food-pyramid

By |2016-10-13T07:27:37-06:00June 16th, 2016|Ketogenic, Weight Loss|2 Comments
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Keto Chow 1.5 update – almost there; Finally missed reps on StrongLifts

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

So first the good news: The roll out of Keto Chow 1.5 is nearly complete. Rather than list what is updated to 1.5, I’ll just list what isn’t:

Weeks

  • Chocolate Fudge

Samples

  • Banana and Butter Cream Toffee (as they’re discontinued but I still have some)
  • Chocolate Mint
  • Snickerdoodle
  • Vanilla
  • Cookies & Cream

Days

  • None. They’re all switched over.

 

Now for the bad news: Up until last night I hadn’t missed a single rep doing StrongLifts. It was inevitable that I would and it finally happened. Last week I was able to finish the full set of Overhead Press doing 95lbs but doing 100lbs was too much for me, even resting 5 minutes between sets:

2016-06-15 16.04.57

Well, life moves on. The kids asked for Strawberry and Peanut Butter keto chow today.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:37-06:00June 15th, 2016|Weight Lifting, Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow|2 Comments
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Keeping the kids alive until Mom gets home

This entry is part 131 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This week my wife and 3 of our kids are at a girl’s camp, so I’m working from home so there’s somebody here in case something explodes… or somebody looks at the 6 year old wrong and the world ends. Last night I was buying food for my wife to take (camping while doing keto can be challenging if you’re the only one doing it). I was going to grab some easy frozen food so I could have the 3 that are staying with me stay alive and healthy – then I remembered that I have this tasty drink that I make and the kids are always stealing.

Disclaimer: Keto Chow is not designed for children, that said it’s better than the frozen pizza and corn dogs I was going to buy (yes very low bar).

For lunch they were dead set on making turkey lettuce wraps (thereby stealing my low carb tortillas) but I put a stop to that, told them I had a surprise for lunch. When I brought out the blender bottles, my youngest said “Keto Chow, ooh yeah!’

Between the 3 of my kids and the neighbor kid that was over playing, they drank 2 containers. I told them they get to vote and pick out the flavors for tomorrow since today it’s all Snickerdoodle.

Speaking of flavors, since I put the Banana and Butter Toffee samples on sale they’ve been moving steadily, just today somebody decided to buy half of what I had left of the banana. In related news we found a week of banana hiding in the snickerdoodle so I put it back in stock with a quantity of 1.

By |2016-06-14T14:25:35-06:00June 14th, 2016|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|Comments Off on Keeping the kids alive until Mom gets home
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Keto Chow 2.0 and 1.5 update

This entry is part 2 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

We got our second round of flavors for Keto Chow 2.0 yesterday. I talked to a different co-packer who had super awesome pricing but their minimum order quantities were astronomical. Going off the last 3 months of sales we would be ordering a year’s worth of Rich Chocolate at the low end and 2 years worth of Strawberry at the high. Given expiration dates I think that’s a bit over-optimistic. So I’m working on nailing down order amounts and costs with my original co-packer still.

As for 1.5: we’re closer and closer to having all the flavors and sizes switched over to 1.5. If you’re getting flavors/sizes that aren’t on this list and want 1.5 you’ll need to drop a note in the order comments and we’ll try to fulfill your request. Here’s what’s switched over so far:

Weeks

  • Vanilla
  • Rich Chocolate
  • Chocolate Mint
  • Strawberry
  • Cookies & Cream

Days

  • Everything but Chocolate Peanut Butter

Samples

  • Rich Chocolate
  • Strawberry
  • Chocolate Fudge
  • Chocolate Peanut Butter

I’ve reduced the price of the other flavor samples, also samples are the only size with Banana and Butter Cream Toffee still in stock.

By |2016-06-09T10:18:33-06:00June 9th, 2016|Site or Store Stuff, Keto Chow|Comments Off on Keto Chow 2.0 and 1.5 update
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Weight Lifting Update – time to play critique my form

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Weight Lifting

Yesterday I was lifting alone (normally my wife also lifts but she had something to do and wouldn’t be home until late) so I decided to record some of my lifts. We’re prepping a room in the basement for some remodeling, hence the random dressers and boxes all over. I filmed the first and last set of 5 of each exercise – except Dead Lift which aside from the warm-up sets you only do one. Squats were 140lbs, Over-head Press were 95lbs and Deadlift was 185lbs. To date I still haven’t missed a rep so the weight keeps climbing but I anticipate that maybe next time I do OHP at 100lbs (+5 each time) I might not make it. It’ll be interesting to see, that’s by far my weakest lift.2016-06-09 14.10.41

  • Green – Deadlift
  • Orange – Barbell Row
  • Blue – Squat
  • Gray – Bench Press
  • Purple – Overhead Press

Looking at the video I’m going to say that I need to do a better job keeping my back neutral during dead lift. When i’m doing it it feels like I’m actually arching my back but in the video it looks a bit hunched forward. I’m definitely breaking parallel on squat and my knees aren’t hurting when I do it (I consider that a great sign). OHP is tricky: The ceiling in the basement is low enough that I have to stand with my legs spread quite a lot in order to not bash the weights into the ceiling, so my stance is weird and it feels like I’m leaning over backwards with a TON of arch.

By |2016-10-13T07:27:40-06:00June 9th, 2016|Weight Lifting|1 Comment
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