Ketogenic diet – take 2, boots to the ground – first week – Thursday thru Saturday

I’ve decided to take advantage of the fact that the market is actually offering tools to measure ketones in your blood, so I ordered a ketone monitoring system.  It’s basically just like a glucose monitoring system for diabetics, in fact it does that as well just with two different style test strips to be used.  I’m doing it to make sure my blood ketone level is within tolerance, and not going way over or under.  The optimum level is 1-3 mmol/l.  After shopping around for longer than I would have liked with keto being a trend now, I found one that is less expensive than most per test strip while having a good track record of precision.  The brand is keto mojo (www.keto-mojo.com) which does both glucose & ketone level monitoring with two different types of test strips.  It comes with 10 ketone test strips, and are about $1/test strip when purchased separately.

I was on intermediate fast from 11:00pm until 12:00 noon (13 hours) before using the monitor for the first time.  I set it up first per instructions and ran the code chip through.  I then used an alcohol wipe to clean my finger off, dropped a ketone strip into the top loading slot of the keto mojo, lanced my finger at 4/6 setting on the lancet, squeezed a drop of blood out and touched the tip of the test strip to the drop.  That’s about all there is to it, then wait 5 seconds as it counts down while processing.

I’ve only really been on the ketogenic diet since July 11th, and during that time I’ve been almost entirely on Keto Chow meal replacement powder with avocado oil.  (Occasionally at restaurants with friends and had to improvise of course). Currently, Keto Mojo is measuring my blood at 2.3 mmol/l, which is obviously between 1 & 3 which is a good thing to see.  I’m going to monitor my blood once or twice a week, more than likely in the mornings due to fasting time.

I do have to say that the weight loss from keto is effective.  I started 10 lbs heavier than I am right now, and while the first 5 or so pounds are water weight on keto, there’s obviously more than 5 lost.  I know the loss rate will drop since my calorie intake is more geared towards 1-2 pounds per week and not more.