Oh noooooo!

 

Have a cheeky week.

Day 43, steady as she goes

Someone asked me for an update, so here ya go!

It's going great! Not much to report, really. 2/3 meals are soylent, sometimes all 3. We spend less time and money eating now and happily allocate the energy/funds elsewhere. Been mixing it with fruit or chocolate syrup when we want some variety. On that note, my little hand blender ($20 at Walmart) works great for mixing in fresh fruit. But it does make it a bit frothy, which I don't like very much. Still, it tastes pretty good.

Day 23, still a busy bee

So much for regularity! The summer calls and so do all of the awesome activities that go with it, throwing wrenches in plans and tossing the calendar out the window. But that's precisely why I wanted Soylent, and it has not disappointed.

My biggest concern had been the supposed two-day timer you're given once you add water to the mixture. They say it starts to ferment soon after, but I haven't noticed anything of the sort. I've been careful to keep it refrigerated in my thermos as often as possible, and I've gone for at least 5 days without any signs of expiration. But I really do need to crack down and decline full meals when I'm out with friends. That's just too expensive, especially if Soylent ever does decide to expire.

In other news, our raspberries have begun to ripen! We bought a little hand blender for $20.00 to finally experiment by making fruit smoothies from our Soylent. I'll report on that more later.

Day 12, home from vacation

We had a lovely time in Texas but, as can be expected of any vacation, meals deviated from routine. When it came to eateries like Fuzzy's, Whataburger and In and Out, food was a local attraction in and of itself worth exploring, but we still managed to have Soylent once per day or so. Now that we're home, the experiment will resume with more regularity.

I would like to note that my body does, in fact, seem to react severely to flip flopping back and forth from Soylent to highly processed, greasy foods. On the way home, we went through Taco Bell and wow. My body rejected that immediately. I spent several hours trying to keep it down, but eventually had to pull over and yack in some bushes. Then yesterday we got a coupon from Papa Johns, so I stuffed my face with half a pizza, and now I'm feeling it like a food hangover; headaches and yuckiness. But I love pizza, so I'll figure it out.

Greg continues to experience no such adverse effects, so it may just be me. Headaches are a 2-3 times per week occurrence for me anyway, which was one of the reasons I wanted to try Soylent, in hopes that it would solve that problem. Time will tell!

Edit: Thought I'd add some pictures.

Here is how my morning looked.

Pro tip: The best way to keep an ice pack on your piercing headache is to just not get a headache.

And here is some Soylent w/added chocolate syrup, Stephen Colbert style. Absolutely delicious.

Day Seven, on vacation

We drove down to Texas a day or so ago, using Soylent to replace fast food stops during travel and most (sometimes all) of our meals while here so far. As you can imagine, this saves a fair amount of money! Whiiiiiiich I promptly spent on a new swimsuit from Victoria's Secret. Ha! Saving and reallocating money is another fantastic benefit of this weird drink of the future! So, I get a completely balanced, 100% good for me meal instead of a burger and fries and I get to go shopping! How is this not brilliant??

Irksome (if you can even call it that) things we've encountered so far when traveling with Soylent are ...

• Keeping it cool, which you must do to avoid build-up of pressure (and explosion) in it's air-tight container. Also, it just tastes best cold. We are using a mini cooler and thermoses. Easy.
• Drinking in the car. I like my soylent thick, like a milkshake, but just as a clump of it makes it's way to my mouth, we usually hit a bump and it slams into my face. Getting this stuff on your clothes is no big deal, but you have to rinse it under a faucet to get it all out, rather than just dabbing it up with a napkin. Easily solvable, though. Just get a straw!

Yeah. That's about it.

In other news, we went to lunch with a friend yesterday and both ordered burgers and fries. Several hours later, I began to feel nauseous and developed a headache. It would seem that switching back and forth between crap and perfect nutrition could result in some outraged responses from your body. Not surprising, right? Then again, it may have had something to do with the front flips I did on a trampoline 2-3 hours after eating! Greg didn't experience any trouble after his burger, so obviously I'll have to conduct more experiments before coming to a conclusion. My digestive system is more sensitive than his, but who knows!

Day Four

Breakfast: Cereal, Honey Bunches of Oats w/strawberries
Lunch: Jambalaya (Hubby had Soylent, as he doesn't care for Jamalaya)
Dinner: Soylent

I purchased these re-usable ice cubes from Wal-Mart the other day, to place in my Soylent bottle and help break up the powder when mixing. Works pretty well, even though it is one more thing to clean.

Bowel movements are definitely less common, but normal besides that.
We slept like logs last night, which was awesome.

Day Three

It's the end of another very long week. I think I've spent more time in my car than I have in my house, and that's never fun. In the past, a lot of poor eating choices had to be made in times like these, but no longer! Having a thermos of chilled Soylent with me has saved a ton of money, time and my body from having to process yet another nutritional compromise by way of Taco Bell.

And this is the point of Soylent, at least in our lives. We have a real alternative, now. We aren't slaves to the grocery store, to the ingredients list on food labels, to each other's picky eating habits, to the limited variety of restaurants in our small town or to whatever fast food place we'll have to settle for at the next exit on our road trip. When we want to eat solid food, we will! And we'll do for the fun of it this time and not because we have no other choice.

I discovered this morning that a thicker texture (achieved by simply adding less water) makes my Soylent taste more like a milkshake. I'll even go so far as to say it's "delicious" to me now, and I didn't have to add anything extra to it like sugar or cinnamon. I'll just have to remember to drink more water separately to make sure I'm getting enough.

Update: Greg says the sleep he's gotten these past few days have felt more 'restful' than normal, conceding that it could just be placebo. I, on the other hand, have been too busy courting conflicting schedules to get more than 3-4 hours a night. I should be dead on my feet right now, but somehow I'm not. Seems too soon for either of us to credit Soylent yet.

Update #2: I forgot to mention that we both had Planet Sub sandwiches for lunch today, eating Soylent the rest of the time. We got a coupon in our Inboxes and couldn't pass it up.