#ketochow

Alright, guys, it’s time.  

It’s time for me to no longer get by on lazy keto with minimal effort.  I’ve given it 40 days of eating keto (without counting calories/macros), walking and lifting and have only managed to lose 3lbs.  Unfortunately, I’ve learned that I’m only able to consistently lose weight when I go hard and strict so let’s give that a shot and see how it goes.  Today it starts.  

I’ll be eating small keto meals throughout the day with no take-out for an entire week to see what one week of solid effort will do.  I’ll do my best to track calories/macros but am not holding myself to that since I typically suck at keeping up with it.  

I expect a typical day will go like this:

Breakfast:  3 eggs with coffee and 1/2 tbsp heavy cream

Lunch:  Keto Chow shake

Snack:  Keto Chow pudding (thanks to the ever creative @zerocarb who knows how to manipulate KC better than anyone ever)

Dinner:  Something sensible and small, protein based.  

I’ll be keeping up with my walking/lifting but will primarily be focused on my intake this week.  I’ll also be making sure my water intake is above 64oz a day. 

Here we go :)

Don’t let the Keto Chow image fool you, I’m not a fan of the Raspberry Cheesecake flavor but Kevin is.  This is simply the only bag I didn’t put away before snapping this picture and wanted a visual representation of what’s in the bottles/bowls. 

We’ve finally gotten through the leftovers of the $0.59/lb clearance turkey I cooked after Thanksgiving-- made some soup with the drippings and bone broth and white meat and that was A+. There was no need to eat Chow when there was real food around that needed to get eaten... now it’s gone and I’m happily mixing up my meals again.

I’m just about out of protes though so I need to make an order from True Nutrition for more of their nice, complete vegan protes mix. Last time I ordered 5lb of plain and 2 1lb packages of flavored-- Cafe Mocha (meh) and Salted Caramel (kind of better, but smelled like maple?) Both of the flavors were way too strong and sweet by themselves, but I liked the mix if I did each bottle with 40g of plain and 10g of flavored (plus a tablespoon of cocoa or a teaspoon of cinnamon). This time I might try Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup and maybe Pumpkin Spice or Cinnamon Bun. I also need to eat it faster; I think the protein started to oxidize a bit, it smells a little rancid now (still edible though).

Weigh-In-Wednesday

Starting Weight (7.10.17):  260

Last Week’s Weigh-In (9.13.17):  247.5

Today’s Weight (9.20.17): 243.7

Pounds Lost in 1 Week: 3.8 pounds!?!

Total Pounds Lost in in 2 Months: 16.3 pounds!

YaaaaahhoooOO!  Now that’s what I’m talking about!  Way to go body bringing in this low weight on a weigh-in day!  I’m now officially 76% of the way to my dietbet goal with only 2.4 more pounds to lose before I’ve hit my goal with a fast approaching deadline of a week and a half to go.  I think I can do it!!  Just have to stay strong, continue to avoid temptation and keep hitting my macros.  Can we do another dietbet after this???  I’m so in.  

Sadly, we ran out of Keto Chow yesterday so I had to actually make my lunch today.  For breakfast I’m drinking my used-to-be standard protein shake (which is so so sad and thin now that I’m used to Keto Chow’s creamy deliciousness).  For lunch I whipped up some egg salad and threw in a bunch of spinach for bulk since the three-egg salad looked so puny on its own.  

Don’t worry, we have four bags of KC arriving tomorrow!  Hooray for flavor variety!  We’ll be enjoying chocolate, strawberry, cookies & cream (it was on sale), and my personal favorite - banana.  Which is so weird because I used to detest all banana flavored things besides actual bananas.  

Starting Weight (7.10.17):  260

Last Week’s Weigh-In (8.23.17):  252.2

Today’s Weight (8.30.17): 249.9!

Pounds Lost in 1 Week: 2.3 pounds!!

Total Pounds Lost in in 2 Months: 10.1 pounds

YahOOO!  I finally am seeing the 240′s!!  I guess this whole actually tracking your foods and staying under calories/macros thing is working.  I was soooo hoping lazy keto would be enough but apparently not!  

I’m excited that I’m going into the dietbet knowing how to start shaving off pounds successfully with just a little bit more will power and effort on my behalf. Staying within my macros has been giving me feelings of pride, control, and happiness.  Score!

I took @westcoaststartinganew‘s advice yesterday and decided to only eat if I was hungry and surprisingly enough I got distracted and forgot about eating (whaaat?).  I spent my evening finishing the final two episodes of season one of Atypical.  Really really liked that show. Hope I don’t have to wait a year for season two :/  

I packed another lunch of chicken and avocado but this time threw in a tiny bit of diced red onions and I have some sunflower seeds to toss in too.  Excited!!  

Monday Monday.  Can’t trust that day.  

But no, the day was fine!  I just now have The Mamas & The Papa’s stuck in my head which is never a bad thing.   

Dinner was chicken tenders rolled in an almond flour, parmesan, and spices mixture.  Tasty, quick and easy.  

I was desperately trying to get a picture of my cat sitting next to my new Keto Chow bag to replicate @lizzielosing​‘s Duck picture to see if I could compare our cat sizes but Saki would not sit down adorably next to the bag.  I have about 10 other pictures in my photo shoot attempt and this was the best one I could snag. 

SO happy to have more Keto Chow in the house!  Having a 600 calorie lunch today, while delicious, was totally annoying.  I am craving a sweet after dinner treat but since I already ate up to my limit on everything I’ll just abstain.  My weight this morning was 245.8, which shocked me to still be in the 245′s but I want to see that .8 go down tomorrow.  

I’ve got four KC’s brewing in the fridge for Kevin’s and my breakfast and lunch tomorrow.  I experimented with mine this time.  One has 1/8th heavy cream and water and the other has 20oz almond milk (no cream).  We’ll see how satiated I am and how tasty they are!  Never fear, I’ll be sure to report in tomorrow with the results!

Also I’m running and in the gym lifting heavy every damn day. My husband has a little stationary bike thing under his desk that he pedals on. He’s so tired from that. Nevermind that I’m sore for days from squats and bench press.

So yeah it pisses me off. He can drink Coke and eat cookies and lose weight. I eat 1300 cal/day and don’t lose anything. Argh.

I only use 40mL of cream in my Chows to save calories for dinner, and I've found I don't notice the missing mLs at all. I say try it!

I make mine with 20ml HWC and 20ml light olive oil each (grand total 1340 cal/day, I eat Chow for 3 meals). Unfortunately they’re a little less tasty without the HWC! But I can live with that.

So I log all my food-- except for the HWC I put in my coffee in the morning. I’ve always felt like “this way madness lies” if I’m trying to figure out the calories in my coffee creamer. Well, when I used a splash of milk or half and half it was probably negligible, but I just did the math for adding HWC-- the sad, sad math-- and found out that I’m having ~300 more calories/day in my coffee.

Options: I can learn to like my coffee black. (Ugh.) I can adjust my KetoChow so that I don’t add HWC anymore, only oil, so that will have less fat, to even out the calories through the day. I can suck it up and accept that I’m doing fine with the extra calories. I can give up coffee (NEVER).