Blood draw scheduled for Friday.
Making men’s Soylent for transport.
Producing a cooking show and a spotlight on grinding equipment.
One child got unsick, now the other is sick.
Husband decided he has SAD and needs a sun lamp. And drugs.
It turns out my new neighbor is a former coworker who everyone thought was my father.
I suddenly have 40 pages to write at work – so writing at home is going a little slow.
What would you feel like if you got 100% of every vitamin and mineral every day? What would it feel like after a month? What if you could do it without eating food? Could you do it?
Since August I’ve replaced one or two meals a day with Soylent. Now I’m preparing to take the plunge into total Soylent subsistence. I’m ready! I’m psyched! I’ve got a pantry full of ingredients and my mixer at the ready – I’m raring to go!
But are we not men of Science?! If I’m going to do this, I’d better do this right.
Every experiment needs a control. Because I’ve been supplementing with Soylent for a while, I will need to abstain from Soylent until the trial begins. I’ll eat regular food to “reverse-flush” my system because we’ll need good physical, mental and biological data for comparison.
I plan on doing daily monitoring of resting heart rate, blood pressure, weight, and fat/muscle ratios to document how a Soylent diet impacts body composition and performance.
I will order blood tests to get a snapshot of any internal changes that occur. That way we’ll find out if an all-Soylent diet will kill my liver, wreck my iron, or get me all hopped up on B vitamins. (Hint: It will probably get me hopped up on B vitamins.)
Rob claims that his brain on soylent is sharper, more receptive to new ideas and information. I’ll take a few cognitive tests before and after to track if there is any evidence of increased mental acuity.
Throughout I will keep a journal of moods and maladies.
A month is a long time to forgo all food-related social commitments. Proper timing will be the key to my success.
Between a party next Saturday and a major food-based US holiday in November, I’ll have just enough time to get in a solid month of Soylent if I start on Sunday, October 27th!
In the upcoming week I’ll take care of all the requisite doctor business, planning, writing, ingredient hoarding, etc. before the big dance. Mark your calendars!
As I am told daily with increasing vigor: Nobody reads words. I believe in the power of pictures, and showing the process. Seeing all the powders, trials, blenders and everything that goes into the experiment is awesome. We’re aiming for awesome, here.
There are also claims of Soylent evening out complexion, causing scars to fade and users to appear happier, healthier. Hair is shinier. Mouths are smilier. I’ll take a picture every day to see if I can document any such change.
I’ve never done this before. I’m a little scared, to be honest. Three other human beings rely on me to sustain their lives with food. How will it go? Can you cook for a month for others, not eat, and come out with your sanity in tact? Who knows? The Shadow knows.
I ask you, What else would you like to see in a daily report?
This gets deep into the psychology of why we perform these experiments, why we like to read them, and what we expect and want to see. When I began, I gobbled up any early adopter blog and media trial I could find – greedily consuming each innocuous detail. Bowel movements? Fascinating! You smelled a pizza today?? Unbelievable! How many mL of saliva did you produce????
Let me know what else you’d like to see. Leave a comment to below!
I am very excited to begin, but there is much to do!
Knowing that I will not have Soylent is an odd feeling. I’m looking forward to having pizza in my mouth, but not in my stomach. It’s really weird.
9 days until the Month of Soylent…
My name is Holly. I’m 28 years old, and I’m tired of eating food.
Wait, no, I love food. I just eat too much of the wrong food.
Several months ago I was just minding my own business (trolling the interwebs) when I stumbled across the Soylent crowdfunding campaign. Creator Rob Rhinehart’s proposal was tantalizing –
What if you never had to worry about food again?
For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. Suppose we had a default meal that was the nutritional equivalent of water: cheap, healthy, convenient and ubiquitous. Soylent will be personalized for different body types and customizable based on individual goals. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost.
Soylent: A nutritionally complete, no-hassle, cheap, non-perishable food substitute. Soylent. And it wasn’t green. I watched the marketing video, which was clearly full of marketing juju. Marketing.
For serious, check this out:
After watching the proposal, I saw my eating habits in an entirely new light. Here I am: overweight, overtired, busy, lazy, and broke. It’s no wonder I’m stuck in a miserable food rut: none of these qualities are compatible with a healthy diet. But all are remedied by the idea of Soylent.
Too fat? Here’s a calorie-controlled solution that’s healthy and complete. It’s like Slimfast, except you won’t have to get a reverse mortgage to live on it.
Too tired? Imagine a complete meal with no shopping, cooking, or clean-up required. And with the latest advances in straw technology, you can have lunch and a nap at the same time.
Too busy? Here’s a portable, non-perishable meal that takes less than two minutes to prepare and consume. You could have breakfast while you shower. If this isn’t Jetsons, I don’t know what is.
Too lazy? Soylent is more convenient than Ramen noodles. And that’s saying something. Because I’ll just eat Ramen noodles bricks raw. (Just dip ’em in the salt packet and munch it up, pork pie. You’ll thank me get diabetes.)
Too broke? You can’t eat cheaper off the dollar menu. Soylent replaces food because it is cheaper than food. Shalom hunger, shalom car payment.
But this was a funding exercise, not Amazon. Presently, there is no Soylent to be had – and it would be many months before shipment would be possible. I despaired.
Every day I recognized more clearly that I wasn’t eating what I wanted to, when I wanted to. Breakfast? No time. I’ll just drink coffee and scrounge around for tidbits until I crash. At lunchtime, I’ll run to get something at Bojangles. Seven dollars later the hunger would be gone, but a greasy, tired, fat feeling would linger in its place. For dinner, I’d struggle to just make something, anything for my family. Really, anything. Eggs and rice? With a side of frozen pizza? Sounds like dinner to me! Later would be the nightly TV snackfest borne from pure boredom and apathy.
Soylent shipments were pushed further and further back. I began to detest my own bondage to food, and could see no end to my eternal subservience to sustenance. When the scale ticked into the 170s, I knew something had to change.
If I couldn’t buy Soylent, I would have to make my own.
I did, and I lived to tell the tale. This blog exists to document, explain, explore and share my journey, to be a resource and companion to others who share an interest in the Soylent phenomenon.
I’ve got some big plans, but small amounts of time, so please be patient. This is going to be good.
When you decide to bring your Soylent consumption “out of the pantry,” you’ll discover that even complete strangers will be enthralled by your eating habits.
What is that? It looks awful.
We’re going out for crappy burgers – you want us to get you one, anyway?
You’re going to have to explain yourself to everyone you know (and some strangers, too). It’s the same conversation over and over, and it’ll go something like this:
While it is a fair concern, the asker of this question is probably just rubbing it in. Of course we all like eating food. But whether someone eats Soylent for convenience, for thrift, or for dietary concerns, please spare them your food porn. We know cheeseburgers are tasty without you texting us photos all night.
Yeah, yeah, keep walkin’, pal. Your leftover tamale pie doesn’t look that good, either.
Until at least the end of the year, anyone drinking Soylent has to make their own… so it varies from person to person ;)
No matter what the asker’s motives are, he will be disappointed to learn that it tastes like oat flour, protein powder and water.
Even though it’s a liquid diet, everybody poops. My coworkers watched the Soylent marketing video and somehow got the impression that your body will stop producing waste. That is ludicrous. Even though it’s a liquid diet, a smart Soylenter mixes in dietary fiber to minimize gastric distress.
It’s madness. I like Mexican food. A lot. Like, a LOT a lot. But if I show up one day with a turkey sandwich, people aren’t like:
“WOAH! Woah! I thought you were eating Mexican! Are you giving up on Mexican food!?”
There are many reasons why someone would eat Soylent, the least of which is that they truly desire to eat nothing but Soylent for the rest of their lives.
So loosen up, everybody! It’s just a nutritionally complete, economical and non-perishable food substitute.
What are YOU looking at, Karen!?
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