experience

Discovered a superpower

This entry is part 39 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Yesterday for kicks I did a little experiment and didn’t eat anything from 21:00 the night before until 18:00, so 21 hours without eating just to see what would happen. I had read that doing a ketogenic diet my body would cope with fasting extremely well, and it did. I still drank water and some zero calorie flavored things, but I didn’t get hungry at all for the entire day. Then I chowed down on some Keto chow, a bunch of cheese and some beef jerky. I’m trying it again today and so far it’s worked extremely well. The next 3 days I’m working at a trade show/conference all day and I’m not going to have ready access to refrigeration for bringing keto chow. In the past I’ve just brought an insulated lunch bag with a cold pack which has worked very well but frankly I don’t want to be bothered with transporting food and all that. Anyhow, my plan is for the next 3 days (bringing the total to 5 days): I’m going to eat when I get home and fast the rest of the day. On Saturday that will probably take me beyond 24 hours since that’s the pack-it-up day. It feels a little weird having not eaten for so long, especially since I’m still not hungry. I didn’t have any problem at all doing the elliptical this morning either. Anyhow, it’ll be an interesting experiment.

For my own reference, I started the day yesterday at 224.7 and this morning I was 222.8.

By chris|2015-02-11T14:41:02-07:00February 11th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent, Weight Loss|4 Comments

Doing that again? dagnabbit

This entry is part 36 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

warning: TMI

Last time I started ketosis (back in October) I bucked the normal trend of getting constipated when starting and went the opposite way. Well, It’s happening again, lucky me. I’m not sure if it has to do with gut fauna dying off (not likely since I only are carbs for 6 days) or my body going “oh wow, that’s a LOT of fiber…. um not sure what to do here, let’s try this!” If past experience is any indicator I’ll be back to normal by Monday morning.

Now as a reminder: the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”. My experience should be in no way construed as the norm for starting keto. But hey, it’s what’s happening to me.

I’m nearly back to my weight before I started my carb binge, that’s good.

By chris|2015-01-24T12:48:50-07:00January 24th, 2015|Soylent, Keto Chow, Ketogenic|Comments Off

Water weight and keto flu redux

This entry is part 35 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

As previously noted, I started a local weight loss contest yesterday that compares percentage of weight lost as opposed to total pounds. I successfully replenished my glycogen reserves by eating carbs for a few days and gained a fair amount of water weight.

So that craziness is over. Now I’m back doing a ketogenic diet which means I get to go through keto adaptation and probably the keto flu again. I did this to myself on purpose. I guess one good thing is I’m actually prepared for the keto flu this time and am already doubling down on the electrolytes, plus the keto soylent I’m drinking has the proper amount of potassium and sodium (3541 and 2745 mg/day compared to 2936 and 1963 mg/day on the recipe I used last time). It should be an interesting experience.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:18-06:00January 22nd, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|Comments Off

Leveling the playing field

This entry is part 34 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

On Wednesday I have my initial weigh in for a local weight loss contest. It’s based on % of body weight lost. In the past the winners have lost anywhere from 15 to 21%. I figure that no one else doing it is going to be starting out without glycogen in their system so I’ve been building back up my reserve. Glycogen comes with a lot of water weight, this is the major 5-10 pounds that most people lose in the first week of Keto (and it stays off so long as you don’t eat carbs).

In other words: I just ate some biscuits and gravy, yesterday was Mexican food and on Wednesday I’ll have pizza and soda.

It’s been interesting having carbohydrates again (if only for a few days). Yeah I do feel sluggish and rather crappy. And thirsty, I keep making myself feel ill from drinking so much water but I’m still thirsty. I’m really not looking forward to carb cravings on Thurdsay (or the keto flu). I had completely overcome that and intentionally putting myself back into that is actually kinda stupid.

I guess one good thing is it’s given me some perspective: Carbs aren’t as delicious and I thought they were. Eating a Kit-Kat or strawberry oreo was anti-climactic. Yeah, it’s good but not good enough to cheat on next week. Frankly melted cheese, bacon and other 0 carb foods are good enough there really isn’t a reason to cheat.

Now excuse me as I go eat the last tortilla chips I’ll eat for at least 6 months.

By chris|2015-01-18T09:44:42-07:00January 18th, 2015|Ketogenic, Soylent, Weight Loss|3 Comments

Soylent anniversary – 365 days (mostly) on DIY soylent

This entry is part 38 of 39 in the series DIY Soylent

On January 13th, 2014 I mixed up my first batch of People Chow 2.3.0 you can read my first blog post about it here. People Chow 2.3 wasn’t very good. It had a lot of almond meal in it that gave me heartburn and specified a particular brand of corn flour that was exceptionally difficult to find and was the only one on the market that wasn’t nixtamalized. The creator of the recipe, MaxK, soon updated it to v3.0 and then 3.0.1 which has been the recipe for almost a year now. It’s been an interesting year.

I’d have to say that eating (mostly) just soylent for the last year has been a great success. As I’ve noted in other posts I initially lost quite a bit of weight drinking only people chow, maintained it for quite some time, slacked off and ate other stuff too, gained a bunch on vacations and then started dropping it like crazy on ketogenic soylent. I’ve learned really a lot about diet and nutrition over the past year and even more about metabolism, ketogenic bodies, insulin and such since October.

So here’s to another year!

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:21-06:00January 13th, 2015|Soylent|Comments Off

Blood test for a year on DIY soylent, 1/4 of that doing keto

I just got back my blood tests and they look good (at least as far as I can tell =). The last time I had it all tested like that was March 2014 after 3 months of People Chow. So here’s how they stack up to each other:

Name	1/6/2015	3/20/2014	target
Sodium	141	142	135-145 mmol/L
Potassium	4.7	4.4	3.5-5.1 mmol/L
Chloride	103	106	99-111 mmol/L
ECO2	28.2	29.6	21.0-32.0 mmol/L
Glucose	87	79	74-106 mg/dL
BUN	21	19	7-18 mg/dL
Creatinine	1.11	1.1	0.6-1.3 mg/dL
BUN/Creatinine Ratio	18.9	17.3	8.0-27.0 Ratio
Calcium	9.5	9.2	6.5-11.8 mg/dL
Alkaline Phosphatase	79.2	83	50-136 U/L
Cholesterol	135	142	0-200 mg/dL
Triglycerides	96	160	0-200 mg/dL
HDL, Cholesterol	45	43	40-60 mg/dL
LDL (calculated)	71	67	0-160 mg/dL

My wife points out that I really should have done a blood test before I started People Chow last January but hey, I forgot to do it at the time.

Clearly I’m dying due to the massive amounts of saturated fat I eat every day on my ketogenic diet… or not =) I do think it’s funny that my glucose level is slightly higher even though I hardly consume any glucose anymore.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:21-06:00January 8th, 2015|Soylent, Ketogenic|2 Comments

A year in review

This entry is part 27 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Hey, how about a “year in review” post? I started mixing soylent almost a year ago, starting January 13, 2014. You can read my full exploits Here (in chronological order!). It’s been an interesting year with a lot of downs and a few ups (most notably there in October when I gained back everything I lost in February. I’m approaching the lowest weight I’ve been since I started tracking in October 2006. When I hit 220 I’ll probably do a post with that graph for the morbidly curious =).

Doing a ketogenic diet has made a huge difference in my life. When I first started I said I’d probably get my weight down and then go back to People Chow but with the way Keto Chow is shaping up I think I’ll stick with Ketogenic soylent as my primary food. I probably won’t be as strict with snacks but with how good Keto Chow is I don’t see a need to switch back. Honestly it’s far better tasting that People Chow, less gritty and low carb to boot.

As they say on /r/keto: “Keep Calm and Keto On” (KCKO).

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:22-06:00January 6th, 2015|Weight Loss, Soylent, Keto Chow, Ketogenic|Comments Off

Fun with Graphs

This entry is part 20 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

While it’s not as fun as “Fun with Flags” here are some fun graphs. Here’s my weight since I started doing keto. High spot is 257.8, this morning I was 238.0 (Thursday I was 235 but I ate a LOT of shrimp and prime rib on Friday):

Weight graph

I got myself and my wife each a Jarv Premium Bluetooth® 4.0 Smart Heart Rate Monitor and have been using https://my.digifit.com to track workouts (mostly treadmill and elliptical). They do a really good job and were half or less the cost of comparable ones. They work great with our phones and appear to be very accurate. Digifit tracks time, heart rates and the like and has some cool dashboards. The graph above is calories burned while wearing the heart rate monitor. Did pretty well last week, we’ll see how well this week goes.

There was a reddit thread last night that caused a lot of interest in official and DIY soylent – and a pretty massive surge in visits to my site. It was pretty funny to see the stats going a little crazy. Below is site traffic according to WordPress:

Here is site traffic according to Google Analytics:

You can see in increased database queries on the backend:

mysql_commands-week

But it’s not nearly enough to significantly impact the load on the processors:

load-month

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 15th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Exercise whilst in ketosis, don’t drink it too fast

This entry is part 9 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I read a really interesting paper that gave some background on Inuit hunters and keto diets. One very interesting thing that stuck out near the end was the length of time required to adapt to ketosis and its effect exercise. The paper pegs the time needed to adapt to 2-3 or even 3-4 weeks. I have noticed a significant difference in how difficult it is to do my standard Elliptical routine in the morning now that I’m doing ketosis. The program has two spikes of resistance that just about wipe me out every time now. A month ago (normal diet) I didn’t notice it being so hard. Conversely, it’s about the same to do my running program. Anyhow, here’s to hoping it gets easier to do aerobic activity. The paper I linked at the beginning has a really good rundown on the history of ketogenic diets. If you’re at all interested, I’d recommend reading it. Along with the stuff about exercise I also learned that I need more sodium and potassium in my diet for happy ketosis, I’ll fix that in my next batch; until then I’ll just eat some pepperoni.

One other “experience” thing I wanted to relate: Ketofood is pretty intese stuff with a lot of nutrients in a tight space. It’s not a good idea to chug it down in a few minutes and be done. With People Chow I had no problem at all with doing exactly that and I have to remind myself that if I don’t slow down and take at least a half hour or so eating my food I’m going to be sorry.

Eating ketofood too fast makes my intestines hurt. I’m saying intestines instead of stomach because it’s far lower (belly-button area). Slowing down to drink my ketofood goes in line with other admonitions to drink it slowly so I’ll feel more full.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 14th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Ketosis – the “cheat”; Raspberry Ketones are useless

This entry is part 8 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

So first off I’d like to change my description of a Ketogenic diet. I have been referring to it as “The Nuclear Option” since it’s sort of a last-ditch final effort to lose weight. Over on a reddit thread there was a great write up about how when you force your body into ketosis, you are deliberately creating a (non-fatal) deficiency in a (mostly) essential nutrient: carbohydrates (glucose). Yep, that’s exactly it. Our bodies have the ability to run on carbohydrates, amino acids and fatty acids; essentially we’ll take anything we can get so as to not starve.

Ultimately any time you lose weight it simply comes down to your body using/burning more energy than you recently consumed so it’s forced to use reserves. You have some glucose reserves in your liver and muscles, protein that can be broken down into glucose in your liver; and you have fat. Some cells burn fat just fine, most would rather use glucose. Traditional weight loss (just less calories) works because as you have a calorie deficit, your body will eventually convert stored fat into energy. Some will be made into glucose via Gluconeogenesis, some will be made into ketone “bodies”. Specifically forcing your body into a state where it is mostly doing the ketones is the cheat.

Ketogenic Diet: the Konami Code for your belly

Here’s how I normally play a video game: I’ll start it out normal, playing along, collecting ammo and dying every once in a while. After a few days of 1-2 hours playing in the time I can get, I’ll start to notice that I need to concentrate on other stuff (kids, wife, yard, etc…) so I’ll find the cheat codes, give myself all the weapons, ammo, health, the ability to fly and walk through walls; all the good stuff. Then I plow through the rest of the game and I’m done. I think Unreal Tournament 2004 was one of the few that I did (and still do! Onslaught FTW!!) play normally.

Ketosis/ketogenic diets as a biological cheat? Absolutely. Is it something I’m planning on doing forever? Probably not as strict, but more on that in just a bit. Is it difficult to not eat pizza when lunch at work is from The Pie? It was brutal. Will being on a ketogenic diet teach me to eat better after I go off it? …

UPDATE Feb 18, 2015: Initially I didn’t think it would be a lasting change, reexamining this after a few months on Keto I think I have changed my eating habits permanently. If I ever get down to the point that I’m happy with my weight and am super skinny I guess I can lay off being such a stickler on ketosis and eat a few carbs on select occasions. The new recipe that I’m using (Keto Chow) is better tasting than People Chow ever was, I’m not going back. I see no reason NOT to continue on Keto Chow unless something even better comes along. END UPDATE.

One other fun aspect of ketone bodies is they are water soluble. If your body produces too much for you to use, they do not get re-converted back into fat; instead they are excreted from the body. along with coming out in urine, they can also come out in sweat and even respiration. In really high concentrations (undiagnosed diabetes, for example) the amount coming out through respiration cam give the person “acetone breath” which is usually described as “fruity”.

Well, that was fun, now let’s talk about “Raspberry Ketones”. Raspberry ketones are all the rage right now for weight loss. A while ago I ordered potassium citrate from bulksupplements.com and they offered to send a 100g packet of anything they sold if I would review it on Amazon. I had already gotten the stevia, MSM (for kicks, you should be getting all the sulfur you need if you have the right amino acids balance), and they didn’t have pure caffeine that I could give to my brother-in-law as a Christmas present; so I had them send me some raspberry ketone powder. I figured “ketogenic diet, raspberry ketones? why not!” After mixing some into a week of ketofood I actually did some research and found out more about raspberry ketones.

There is nothing to actually, for realsies, indicate they help with weight loss in humans
They don’t come from actual raspberries (unless it’s crazy expensive and even then there’s no way to know)
For all intents and purposes, “raspberry ketones” is just “artificial raspberry flavoring” but new and fancy somehow
It will give a marked raspberry flavor to stuff, I don’t like it in my ketofood

I can’t find the original source, but there’s a great write-up about why NOW doesn’t do anything with raspberry ketones. So my official recommendation: don’t bother with it. I really (really) don’t like the additional flavor even though I like raspberries; and it’s not even going to actually do anything for you.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 13th, 2014|Keto Chow, Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

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