N=me experiment: 4 weeks of *ONLY* Keto Chow – 1st week tests back

Originally posted on  https://www.ketochow.xyz/2017/11/nme-experiment-4-weeks-keto-chow-1st-week-tests-back/.

Way TL;DR: eating only Keto Chow & drinking only water for a week and a half has brought down my fasting insulin to 3.7 IU/mL and raised my ketones’to 3.2 mmol/L. I’ve also lost 9.2lbs but that’s not on the graphs below.

On October 22nd, 2017 (3 years and 2 days after I started Keto) I began an experiment: I was going to ONLY eat Keto Chow for 4 weeks and see what it did to some blood tests. Today I received my first blood test after starting the experiment. I took a baseline test before starting to establish a control to compare against. Leading up to ‘test 0? I was very much eating keto (and consuming Keto Chow 1-2 times a day) but I was not actively tracking my carb intake. Most (including me) would likely call it lazy keto? I know from my own experience that if I do strict keto and write down everything I eat BEFORE I eat it, I’ll invariably get on track and lose weight. But with this experiment, I wanted to go for the nuclear option: absolutely no food except Keto Chow. No drinks except water. No treats. No snacks. No confounding variables.

This would also serve another purpose in allowing me to do a validation test on the upcoming Keto Chow 2.1. I like to have absolute confidence in my product and this is a great way to do it. For the most part, the recipe for 2.1 is the same with some notable differences:

• Switching from whey protein isolate to milk protein isolate [see footnote 1]
• Switching the form of Selenium, this change removes a weird’smell that goes away after a few minutes. Functionally it’s the same but I like the way it smells and tastes better.
• One flavor (Natural Strawberry) will be available sweetened with Monk Fruit instead of Sucralose [see footnote 2], another flavor (Savory Chicken Soup) well it’s savory and doesn’t need a sweetener.
• A bunch of new flavors are coming, though that doesn’t affect the nutrition.
• If I can pull it off: we’ll be switching all the magnesium from citrate over to malate.
• We’re officially recommending using avocado oil as an alternative if you don’t want to use heavy cream (I still primarily use heavy cream).

In the same spirit of open data that Dave Feldman uses in his experiments I’m publishing the complete blood test results from my experiment. You can view the blood results on this online spreadsheet. Currently, there are only two entries more will come, there’s a 5-6 day lag between the test and me getting it. I’m also going to be posting my complete Cron-O-Meter logs so you can see exactly what the input variables were. Here are the first 11 days so far. I also did a test on my second day where I tested postprandial glucose while drinking Keto Chow.

So, how’s it coming along so far? The most obvious change I’m seeing is my blood ketone level which has gone from 0.4 to 3.2 mmol/L (I measure each night just after I brush my teeth measuring in the morning is a bad idea). That rise makes sense since I’m getting exactly 10.54g of non-fiber carbohydrates per day. My fasting insulin has also gone down from 6.7 to 3.7 IU/mL. I asked Dave Feldman about the results so far, he said: The insulin change actually looks even more interesting in the context of everything else being practically the same (including lipids!) I’m going to try to get Dave to do a written analysis of all this at the end of the experiment, he’ll probably do one anyway because he LOVES DATA! My small LDL-P has gone down by half, which is also interesting. Personally, I’m not concerned at all about my lipid panel because I do not believe that high cholesterol (or more properly: Elevated Lipoprotein) is something bad. Dave uses a really great analogy about lifeboats on cruise ships hang on, I’ll just let Dave explain

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