So I completed 1 week of drinking soylent all week. I did have some other food (a piece of pizza, a little soup, some biscuits and gravy) which combined are about 750 calories for the week. While not insubstantial, it was less than 5% of what I ate. I wanted to log my results so that others could benefit from my experiences. Rather like the “Stuff I’ve learned through sad and painful experience (you’re welcome)” section I put in a tech conference class I taught about Amazon Web Services.
So how do I feel about the soylent? I think the stuff is simply awesome. I’ve gotten to where I can mix up 3 days worth in about 6 minutes, preparing a meal involves dumping 2 half cups of powder into a blender bottle and adding water. I’m not having any of the heartburn issues that I had the first few days now that I’m adding the right amount of water and the almond meal was removed from the formulation. The recipe that I’m using right now (People Chow 3.0.1) is really good; superb, in fact. I suspect the only reason I would change anything is if Max (the creator) comes up with another tweak that makes it even better. The main complaint people have about the recipe (and just about all of the recipes) is the grittiness of the flour. Yes, it is a bit gritty; though far less so than the previous iteration. I find it very drinkable and usually just shake up my bottle, chug about a third of it, and then repeat again when I feel like it. Twice last week I only consumed 3/4 of my daily soylent, mostly because I wasn’t hungry, partly because of eating some “muggle” food. Still – I agree with most of the experiences I’ve read from others: no you aren’t hungry all the time. For that matter I’m rarely hungry and when I do feel hungry I drink some soylent and some water and I’m OK. On the topic of muggle/normal food: Earlier on I had some rather severe reactions to eating stuff besides soylent. I don’t know if that was because of the 2.3.0 version or what but the last two days what little I have eaten hasn’t caused me any discomfort or problems of any kind.
How is my body reacting to a week on soylent? Very well, thank you. My gastrointestinal tract seems to like it just fine. The microbes that release foul smelling gas after feasting upon the insoluble sugars in bean skins appear to be rather sad though – since they appear to not be doing much of anything right now (meaning I’m not having a problem with gas, rather a vacation from it!). I’ve not had any issue with not enough or too much fiber (constipation or the runs). I feel like I have more energy, I wake up easier, don’t feel slow and bogged down after eating dinner. I’ve also gone from eating (far) too many calories to eating as much or even less than the 2000 calorie recommendation, especially when I add 30 minutes of elliptical. I was a little freaked out by the vitamins tinting my urine a bright neon yellow – though I was dehydrated; but others had the same issue and it’s apparently a well known reaction with certain vitamin supplements. I’ve found it easier to not eat junky snacks when (a) I’m already full from the soylent I drank a few hours ago (b) I can just mix up some more and (c) seriously? do I really want to eat that? If I do it might sit heavy in my stomach and I don’t even really want to – I just think I do.
I started this whole endeavor as a way to lose weight. Thus far it’s working quite well. I know that’s not the aim of creating soylent but I have no problem using it for my own nefarious purposes. Until now I’ve posted a few graphs without a Y-axis label since I wanted to have more results before telling teh Intrawebs how much I weigh. Well, here is the graph for January 2014 using the tools from The Hackers Diet to account for variations in water and other factors. I’ve been using this since 2006 and have the process down fairly well: weigh at same time every day just before showering (plus removing other variables I won’t go in to).
Weight log – January 2014
Yeah, that’s a VERY good trend =) It will be fun to see how it continues to go down over the next few months. I suppose if I really wanted to amp it up I could play around with the formulation or even go Shangri-la Diet on it and down the oil with my nose plugged but I’m content with how it’s going so far. In about a month or so I plan on getting some blood work done, mostly because my health insurance will pay me $50 to do a health assessment each year (cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, etc…) but it will be good to see how I’m doing.
Anyhow – I expect I’ll be doing a few weekly updates from here on out, now that the “exciting” or unknown is behind me.
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