Weight loss

The apps and tools I’m using to track my progress

This entry is part 29 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

A coworker asked me a while ago about all the stuff I’m using, I figure I might as well document it. Here are the Apps, monitors and other things I’m using to track stuff about my health.

Activity Monitor

I grabbed a used Fitbit Flex off eBay about a month ago to see if I would like it better than the Jawbone Up I had. Ultimately the Fitbit won and the Jawbone is in my backpack in case anybody on craigslist decides they want to buy it for $40. The Jawbone app was actually far better than the Fitbit one and gave me better information but I like the bluetooth sync function of the Fitbit and couldn’t find an Up24 for cheap. Neither do automatic sleep tracking, you had to tell the device it was nap time and again tell it when you woke up. The more expensive trackers do more stuff automatically. Both Up and Fitbit talk quite nicely to all the other apps mentioned here, sending activity data over automatically.

Fitbit Web UI

Fitbit Android UI

Weight Tracking

The Withings app/website does a great job of tracking weight, blood pressure and a number of other metrics. It’s also free to use and will send the weight data to a large number of applications. By having it send that data I don’t have to go into 5 different apps to update my weight all the time, it just does it automagically for me. You can use the Withings app and site with the Withings Wi-Fi scale or one of their fitness trackers, but you don’t need to. I did eventually end up buying a Withings scale but I used the app for about a month and a half before that. You can also import and export all the measurements very easily. I imported my weight logs from all the way back to October 2006.

Withings Web UI

Withings Android UI

Nutrition Tracking

I’ve been using MyFitnessPal for 2 or 3 years to (occasionally, up until 4 months ago) track my nutrition. Currently I’m on a 87 day streak of putting in my food, weight and activity. I use MFP as a sort of “central hub” for everything else. All my activity monitoring, weight and workouts head here. On a Ketogenic Diet I also need to track how many carbs I’m eating and it does a good job of that. There’s some settings and a userscript that enhance MFP for keto diets. It’s particularly nice to be able to scan a barcode to add food and with how I’m eating mostly the same stuff every day it’s a cinch. I used to use My Net Diary but MFP is way more useful.

MyFitnessPal Web UI

MyFitnessPal Android UI

Workout tracking

I’m using Digifit on my phone to track exercise (via a heart rate monitor, see below). On an ideal day I’m doing 30 minutes of elliptical in the morning and 30 minutes of running/walking in the evening. They have Android and iOS apps that have limited functionality unless you pay the $1.99 or whatever to upgrade it – it was worth it and I used an account that is shared on all my family’s phones and devices to pay so my wife gets the upgrade too. It can be used indoors on exercise equipment (which is what I mostly do) but it really likes going outside to fire up your GPS and correlate actual distance and speed with heart rate. It gets weight data automatically from Withings to use in calorie calculations.

Digifit Web UI

Digifit Android UI

Heart Rate Monitoring

I bought a Jarv Bluetooth 4.0 Chest Heart Rate Monitor for myself and then another one for my wife about 3 days later since it works so well (then we can work out together!). It works exceptionally well and communicates to Digifit just fine, although occasionally it takes a bit of prodding or wetting the chest contacts to wake it up. Coupled with Digifit, it does a much better job at calculating the actual calories you are burning. This morning with the heart rate monitor, Digifit calculated that I burned 439 calories in 30 minutes on the elliptical. That’s a far cry from the machine’s solely weight based calculation of 870.

Ketone Level Monitoring

After a few weeks in Ketosis you get accustomed to what it feels like and can mostly just Keep Calm & Keto On. I do still occasionally check my ketone levels. When I first started I bought a 200 pack of 2 Parameter Glucose & Ketone Test (URS) Urinalysis Reagent Strip (C 200 Strips). I also picked up a very, very cheap blood alcohol breathalyzer about 2 months ago for fun because the super cheap ones can’t distinguish the difference between alcohol on your breath and acetone. Actual breathalyzers that cost more than $5-10 can tell the difference just fine. I’m very proud to report that this morning I blew 0.05% even though I have no alcohol in my system at all.

Cheap Breathalyzer

Ketone Test Strip looks great!

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:21-06:00January 14th, 2015|Soylent|Comments Off

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|Soylent, Weight Loss, Keto Chow, Ketogenic|Comments Off

First batches of Keto Chow using Dynamize protein

This entry is part 26 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Last night I mixed up the first batches of Keto Chow using the Dynamize whey protein I’m going to start using. An adventurous soul ordered week of mint chocolate and I did two smaller 1-day batches of strawberry and mint chocolate for testing.

Keto Chow Strawberry Sample

Upon mixing, the Strawberry is a little pink but not much, and the chocolate mint is a bit… tan. You can tell the difference between the chocolate and strawberry but I think the cream is overruling a lot of the coloring it would have had if it was just protein and water. I took better measurements of the finished result (2 lb 8 oz and 9x7x2.5 inches) which will make shipping estimates better. I’m also going to see if I can squeeze it into a 1096L USPS shipping box instead of a Regional Rate A box that I could fit two weeks in.

Keto Chow Chocolate Mint packaged (bottle not included =)

I tasted the results about an hour after mixing and it was pretty good. It tasted like it could still use some time for stuff to dissolve but in a time crunch it would be just fine. I would have tried it for realsies this morning but I’m going to get a “Comprehensive Metabolic Panel” blood test and I’m supposed to be fasting. As soon as that’s done (and I’m done with my dentist appointment that’s right after, might as well double up) I’ll give it a better taste test.

It’ll be interesting to see what my blood work shows when I get it sometime later this week or next week. I had it done back in March 2014 (9 months ago?) after doing People Chow for 2 months and those results weren’t bad at all. I’m looking forward to seeing what cutting out carbohydrates and living on mostly fat and some protein has done =).

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00January 6th, 2015|Keto Chow, Ketogenic, Soylent|Comments Off

3 months of Keto – update

This entry is part 22 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I hit my 3 month mark on ketosis yesterday (while eating a lettuce wrapped hamburger at Carl’s Jr.) and It’s time for an update.

Weight Oct – Dec 2014

In total I’m down almost 24 lbs. I’m going to be getting a “comprehensive metabolic panel” sometime next week. It will be interesting to compare it to my results from May (when I was eating mostly People Chow). Now to get through Christmas and it’s chocolate oranges with my ketosis intact…

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 23rd, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Leveraging “fat bombs” with Ketofood

This entry is part 16 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Loosely following the recipe for “Fat Bombs” from this site, I put all the coconut flour plus the caloric equivalent in Coconut oil to all of my MCT and other oil into these little guys

Ended up with 100g of coconut flour that I toasted in the oven for about 10 minutes and 104g of coconut oil that happily melted when I put the still hot from toasting flour on it. I also put in a little stevia powder and completely forgot the part form the recipe about a little salt. Bah. Then I stuck them in the fridge for 15 minutes and got these.

They taste very good. It does have the same desiccating effect on my mouth that eating 10 saltines would have though. I put one in my mouth whole and spent the next 10 minutes sipping water, trying not to choke.

The trade off of doing this is: my regular meals don’t have any oil and no coconut flour. The effect on the flavor of the now mostly chia+raw cocoa+soy lecithin+salt and potassium citrate drink isn’t pleasant. It ends up being pretty bitter, I’m thinking it’s the raw cocoa and the potassium citrate. I added some additional stevia to make it moar better-er and I can drink it without shuddering too bad, but at this point it’s nearly the same experience I had with the induction phase recipe.

I’m going to call this experiment an overall failure. Though the “fat bombs” really are pretty tasty, they don’t make up for the taste of the drink portion. I might try it again with just the coconut oil and maybe some peanut butter, while leaving the coconut flour for the drink part, dunno.

In other news: I just bought a $7 breathalyzer off ebay, which will be fun since I don’t drink alcohol.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:24-06:00December 4th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Adapting MyFitnessPal for Keto diets

This entry is part 15 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

This keeps coming up and I keep forgetting where I got it from so I’ll post it here. NEVER AGAIN!

Do the install, as instructed on this page
Next you’ll want to set up your “macros” in MyFitnessPal:Go to: Home -> Goals -> Change Goals
Select “Custom” and click continue
I have mine set up as 70% Fat, 25% Protein and 5% Carbs.
You also need to add Fiber as a column to track so the script can calculate Net Carbs for you:Go to: Food -> Settings
Add Fiber to your list of nutrients to track. Make sure you at least have carbs, fiber, fat and protein selected. These are what you need to track for a low carb or ketogenic diet.

It ends up with a cool pie graph and net carbs on the tables (this is for a full day on Ketofood, plus a pepperjack cheese stick as a snack… and 30 minutes of intense elliptical exercise):

2014-11-24 11_53_13-Chris_bair's Food Diary _ MyFitnessPal.com

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:25-06:00November 24th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|3 Comments

1 month in 3 days doing Ketosis – Time for an update.

This entry is part 11 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

I had a crazy huge lunch of pizza on October 22nd, that night I tried the “induction” recipe for the first time and then went full-bore the next day on Thursday, October 23, 2014. I’m expecting to hit at least 16 lbs down at the month mark and I’m gunning for 18. Today I took a drill to my belt and added a couple new holes so my pants won’t fall down.

Since I have the data, here is the last year of my weight. TMI, I know. I’ve labeled notable changes in the trend with what was going on at the time.

Last year of weight data, click to “em-biggen”

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 18th, 2014|Soylent, Weight Loss|Comments Off

Video – Mixing up Ketofood, some more details about getting started with keto

This entry is part 10 of 139 in the series Ketogenic Soylent

Somebody asked me about the recipe that I’m using for ketosis. It’s the same as QuidNYCs for ongoing ketosis but with Canola oil instead of Olive, mostly because I have issues with the smell/flavor of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, you can see it here. The first tab is more of a general overview, you can get down to the nitty-gritty in the “Recipe Editor” tab including omega ratios and other specifics.

Along with that, yesterday I recorded a video of me mixing up a week of Ketofood. Normally it doesn’t take this long but I was ‘splainin’ stuff and taking my sweet time to do it (plus grinding those chia seeds is a pain).

So, there you go. Ideally it only takes me 15 minutes or so to mix up a batch. It’s not rocket science and really it’s easier than baking a cake from scratch: you just weigh stuff and stick it into a big container, then you measure oil.

Final thought: I was asked how quickly I got into ketosis. I started by using the QuidNYC induction phase recipe but I didn’t like it at all and jumped to the “ongoing” after 1 week. I didn’t get the Ketone test strips ($14 for 200 FTW!) I’m using until I was well into my second week so I can’t tell you exactly when I entered ketosis but I was feeling the dreaded ketosis flu by the 3rd day. By the time I got the test strips on Halloween (ordered on the 27th) and tested myself it was showing a level between 4 and 8.

By chris|2016-10-13T07:28:27-06:00November 16th, 2014|Preparation, 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

Weight loss

Activity Monitor

Weight Tracking

Nutrition Tracking

Workout tracking

Heart Rate Monitoring

Ketone Level Monitoring

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