n=me experiments – 100% Keto Chow, blood tests, dealing without a fridge
I’m in the final stages of doing some changes to the Keto Chow recipe (v2.1) and I wanted to do a “burn-in” test to make sure that everything is working.
Might as well experiment on myself, right? My plan for the next 4 weeks is to ONLY eat Keto Chow, drink only water, take fish pills, and have some salt if necessary. On Friday I went over to my local LabCorp and had 14 vials of blood drawn for 25 tests. Around vial 9, the vein in my left arm gave up and they had to pull the remainder from my right arm. Here’s what I got:
| GGT | Cortisol | Heavy Metals | Lipid Panel | Thyroid Cascade Profile |
| Apolipoprotein A-1 | C-Reactive Protein | Hemoglobin A1c | Lp-PLA2 Activity | Uric Acid |
| Apolipoprotein B | Fasting Insulin | Homocyst(e)ine | NMR LipoProf +Graph | Vitamin A and E |
| CBC | Ferritin, Serum | IGF-1 | Reverse T3, Serum | Vitamin D |
| Comp. Metabolic Panel | Free Fatty Acids | Iron | T3Free | Zinc, RBC |
My plan is to have 6 other tests done every Friday for the next 4 weeks:
| NMR LipoProf +Graph | Lipid Panel | Comp. Metabolic Panel | CBC With Diff. | Fasting Insulin | C-Reactive Protein |
Today I’m running a test on my Postprandial glucose after eating. It’s something I’ve done before but it was time for an update I’ll probably report on that tomorrow.
Now, here’s where it gets fun: I started my experiment yesterday and it’s going well so far. Then I started thinking about what’s going on in the near future and realized I’m going to be heading off to San Francisco for the DreamForce conference in 2 weeks. Crap. “That’s like the worst timing ever for a test!” I thought, then I thought “Might actually be good timing for a test” The likelihood of me breaking keto traveling while I’m doing a nuts-o test on myself like this is actually lower.
Big problem is: the “hotel” I’ll be staying at does not have refrigeration available. I’m going to need to come up with a game plan during the 5 days I’ll be traveling. Here’s what I have so far:
- I’m going to use avocado and MCT oil instead of heavy cream.
- I’m going to portion out the powder for meals into individual bags ahead of time.
- This week I’m going to test to see how adding the oil to the powder beforehand affects storage and taste.
- If that works, I’ll put the oil right into each bag, making a sort of thin oily paste.
- I’ll triple-bag the mix =)
- I’m going to find a place that has ice and ice water available (they have it all over the place at the conference) and mix my keto chow in HydroFlasks, they should stay good for several hours, more than long enough for the “just mixed” taste to go away (which takes like 30 minutes).
- I suspect I’m going to do some kind of intermittent fasting, maybe I’ll leave all of the stuff at my hotel and just eat 3 meals in a small window.
- I’ll bring soap and a bottle brush and wash out my HydroFlasks every night.
- I’ll have my magnesium supplements handy along with some salt. I’m planning on mixing salt with water to drink during the day if I feel like I need it.
Anyhow, that’s the plan. I’m posting this ahead of time to further decrease the likelyhood of me failing (accountability FTW!!!)
Chris Bair is a technology and computer geek. He became involved in the nutritionally complete "future foods" movement in January 2014, originally with a conventional recipe and later switching to a high fat, low carb "ketogenic" variant on October 2014. In January 2015 he created the recipe for Keto Chow and released it without restriction for anyone to use, at the same time he began mixing the recipe up for people that wanted a finished product and has seen steady growth in the business every month since.
