Redux: What if blaming the obese is blaming the victims?
I’ve posted this before but with the whole “Dear Fat People” video (if you don’t know, consider yourself lucky) I think it should be seen again:
Fun with Nginx
WARNING: the following is geeky devops/sysadmin stuff that has nothing to do with keto.
I moved servers quite recently and in the process went from Apache to Nginx. Nginx is indeed much faster but it has come with a pretty steep learning curve to get everything working right. And today I ran into a problem with non-logged in (guest) users getting scrambled or lost shopping carts. Seems to be the “microcaching” that was messing things up. I’ve removed that and it seems to be working much better. Memcached is still going but just for wordpress “transients” and not sessions. I’ll see if I can reenable those later. Sort of reminds me of this GIF from devopsreactions.
Let me know if you experience any weirdness.
New “how to prepare Keto Chow” video (6 meals)
Had some time yesterday to make a new video on how to prepare Keto Chow. I also wanted to talk about using an insulated thermos like this 40 ounce Hydro Flask or this 16 ounce one because you can use them for when you won’t have refrigeration available. You can also use them to maintain “slushy” for hours Keto Chow made mostly with ice in a blender (think Wendy’s Frosty). Takes me about 14 minutes to make 6 meals worth in the video, it’s faster if you’re not ‘splaining stuff.
Great NYTimes article by Gary Taubes
Linky: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/opinion/diet-advice-that-ignores-hunger.html?_r=0
As described on Reddit:
An excellent article highlighting the differences between fat and carb restricted diets, and the aftermath when people end them, and the effect that carbs have on increased hunger.
Gary Taubes is the guy that wrote “Why we get fat and what to do about it” and “Good Calories, Bad Calories”
I also found this great (older article): http://www.businessinsider.com/9-lies-about-fat-that-destroyed-the-worlds-health-2013-11
Minor Recipe changes now LIVE: Keto Chow 1.0.4
I did a small number of changes to the recipe for Keto Chow:
- The LIQUID part of the coconut oil was causing confusion. I’m removing it in favor of just MCT.
- MK-4 pills have been replaced with MK-7, you still open up one for each day (7 for a week) and add it when mixing together the powder as I do with the pre-mixed Keto Chow.
- I’m now grinding the vitamin pills with a blender. The 1.53g is how much 1 pill weighs. You can grind yours up and add it to the mixture like I do or you can just take one pill per day.
I’ve also updated the preparation instructions accordingly. Nothing ground breaking or really super notable but hey, it’s changes so now the recipe is 1.0.4
Mixing for two
Since my wife switched from “Whole30” to keto I’ve been burning through blender bottles much quicker. We finished the last round this morning so I mixed up some chocolate fudge using all of the blender bottles that weren’t in the dishwasher. Took about 20 minutes, ended up with 10 of them. That won’t even last 2 days! First world problems I guess.
Finished testing changes to Keto Chow recipe
Today marks beginning of an end: all of the Keto Chow I mix from here on out (and actually going back a few days) has the vitamins included in the mixture. No more emailing me because I forgot to put them in the bag. No more questions about if people can use vitamin Y instead of the Kirkland ones =). And less hassle for everyone. For a few people that have special dietary needs (such as an allergy to Niacin or need to limit iron), this will unfortunately cause problems since the vitamins can’t be removed. Sorry about that =( My recommendation if you fall into that category is to follow the recipe and mix your own version of Keto Chow. Speaking of the recipe, for now it’s not going to change since the only modification was grinding up the vitamins with a blender (yes it does blend, but you need to put in a few weeks worth at a time and no more than half a bottle).
For everyone else: the first few orders with integrated vitamins shipped out this morning and within a week or so almost all of the week packs and many of the day packs will be moved over to the new formulation. You’ll be able to tell by the different label, no longer does it say to take one pill per day; rather it says the pudding is in the mix the vitamins are in the mix. And to make it easier for everyone during the transition, I’m sticking a little yellow sticker on them with the same info. It’s kinda hard to miss =)
In other news, I had to abandon my tests on adding additional Magnesium to the mix. The magnesium I tried was adding an unpleasant metallic taste to the mix. Many of the testers couldn’t taste it but I certainly could and didn’t like it at all. Pro tip: when experimenting, don’t change more than one variable at a time (adding vitamin powder plus magnesium) because you won’t be able to tell which one is causing an unwanted result. The end result of all of this is I’m going to keep the magnesium level where it’s at. It’s sufficient for most people and for the weirdos out there (like me) that get occasional muscle cramps because they need more magnesium I’d recommend using a magnesium supplement. Personally I’m using this one. Currently it’s $17.46 for 360 tablets, I’m taking 2 of them which adds 850mg of magnesium. In a few weeks I’ll probably try cutting back to 1 and see if that’s sufficient for me.
There is one more possible change: I just bought 1000g of Vitamin K7 powder. It works out to be 1g = 10 pills of the NOW stuff that I’m currently using (1,000 μg/g). I’m pretty stoked with the prospect of NOT having to open up 100 bottles of 100 pills and getting the powder out. If this does work out there’s going to be a departure in the DIY recipe vs the recipe I mix up since it’s pretty hard to get a hold of this powder unless you’re willing to spend really a lot of money (let’s put it this way, I’m not saving very much by doing it this way, it’s mostly convenience). So the DIY recipe will remain with the NOW capsules and I’ll be using the stuff from aidp.com
Keto Chow for the Lactose Intolerant
Over on Reddit there’s a great post from a guy that’s lactose intolerant and wanted to try Keto Chow. I often get questions about this in relation to the heavy cream and it’s interesting what he found. The TL;DR version is:
- Don’t replace the heavy cream with MCT oil, 63ml of MCT is WAY too much for your GI tract.
- Try a shake with 50ml of heavy cream in it, you might just be fine (this is what he determined and is what he is currently doing). Heavy cream actually has very little lactose (sugar) in it.
- If you have problems with the cream, try putting lactose enzyme drops into keto chow when you mix it and let it sit overnight. The enzyme should break down the lactose.
Anyhow, it’s a good read. “If you or someone you know is lactose intolerant” you should check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3hr032/keto_for_the_lactose_intolerant/
Awesome article over at Art Of Manliness: Everything You Know About Cholesterol Is Wrong
This was published yesterday, it’s a really good read and does a great job distilling down how messed up the “Generally Accepted Dietary Wisdom” is on Cholesterol: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/25/everything-you-know-about-cholesterol-is-wrong/ Some of the things he wrote lead me to believe he’s at minimum aware of ketogenic diets and maybe even doing keto/paleo.
There’s also an excellent section “Beyond Good and Bad Cholesterol: HDL and LDL Cholesterol” that describes the sub groupings within HDL and LDL. Not all LDL is bad, not all HDL is good and nobody talks about Lp(a).
So if you (or someone you know) has questions about cholesterol and how a ketogenic diet with all the bacon, cheese, eggs, and assorted yumminess (of Keto Chow =) can possibly be good for you, check it out! (also check out the rest of the site, it’s got some awesomely excellent information all over the place)
Video of mixing up a big batch of Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow
I decided to take a video of mixing up a batch of Chocolate Peanut Butter Keto Chow. The mixing device was sparkling clean before I dumped the powder into it, that powder is messy stuff man. For this video I let off the cover that normally keeps the dust down a bit. I will sometimes get requests for custom blends of Keto Chow (less salt, less fiber, etc…) that I used to be able to accommodate when I was mixing each batch individually, measuring out each individual ingredient as I show in my mixing video. That approach works fine for 1-8 weeks at a time but it doesn’t scale very well (yesterday I did 34 weeks of just Vanilla, 5 of those being destined for day pouches in addition to that many more of other flavors). So now I measure out the minerals into small bags that match a 10lb bag of Dymatize; a bag of minerals for each batch. I do a quick pre-mix of the minerals before adding them to the mixer because otherwise the calcium/magnesium citrates tend to clump. For the Peanut Butter flavor I also add the peanut flour and then start the mixer. You can see why I’m not able to reduce a single ingredient for 1 week pack.
Because of the peanut flour, every time I do the Chocolate Peanut butter flavor I have to spend 15 minutes or so cleaning everything (bins, scale, scoops) because even though my bags say “may contain peanuts” in the allergy section, I don’t want anybody to get sick.
In completely unrelated news I decided I should set up some social media accounts so there’s now one for “the” Facebook and the tweeter Twitter.