chris

Well, I’m back to the original Almond meal and there’s not a noticeable difference, guess that was a wasted $12. Seriously this is so much better when I put in the right amount of water! Speaking of water, I’m apparently extremely dehydrated – that or something in the formulation is tinting my pee yellow, and there’s the 4 pound weight loss since I started. Regardless I’m happy with how it’s going so far. Entering my daily meal into myfitnesspal.com is stupid easy: “let’s see… what did I eat today? Oh that’s right +peoplechow2.3” and DONE. It was also nice to be able to sit and talk to my kids during dinner while they ate, normally I’m chowing down on a salad or something.

I’m going to be in this for the long haul. I’m not picky about repetitive foods, quite the opposite. For the last 7 years I’ve eaten instant oatmeal for lunch at work probably 90+% of the time. Probably helped my cholesterol and stuff a lot, especially since my previous lunch regimen was heating up a can of chili or putting a frozen pizza in the toaster oven (my blood pressure used to be CRAZY high!).

As for my state of being on soylent: this is actually rather nice thus far. I’m not hungry all the time, quite the opposite. it’s sort of like how I don’t get hungry when I have a stomach bug. I also learned from Lee Hutchinson’s experience when he tried Soylent for a week for Ars Technica: if you’re not hungry, you don’t have to gag it down =).

So my biggest problem so far has been the acid reflux/heartburn from the bits of almond sticking to the back of my throat. I thought it might be the brand of almond meal so I got the stuff that was officially recommended and tried that out. Somebody also noted that I was using WAY too little water. At their direction I put 8 (volume) ounces of powder into the bottle, then after shaking it a bit got it up to 24 fluid ounces (up to the top). It was much better. I tried chugging it instead of sipping it and I don’t have the acid reflux nearly as bad, it’s barely noticeable. While not a ringing endorsement =) it’s a significant improvement. It’s also possible that the change to the Bob’s red mill almond meal has helped too. I’ll have to try the old stuff tomorrow (since I still have 2 days mixed up in baggies). Scientific method-ish you know?

I also did break ranks a bit and had 1 slice of pizza during lunch. I decided I would finish my second bottle of soylent before having any, mostly so I would be full and not want much. I stopped at 1 because I was full already but also I noticed that my stomach didn’t seem to like the pizza very much. It has to be psychosomatic or something because, while I did take 5 minutes to eat a single slice, I don’t thing it could have reacted to it that fast. Plus I’ve only been on this for like 30 hours and my gall bladder still has plenty of bile. Regardless; the pizza, while tasting yummy and salty, didn’t sit well.

My wife decided to try a swig during dinner. Her response: “Well… it’s not *horrible*…” I laughed pretty hard.

I discovered that the recipie/formulation has been revised: People Chow 3.0 is here! The official changelog:

CHANGELOG 3.0.0 – “Tortilla Perfection!”

• Replaced Harina P.A.N. with masa harina
• Added 30g carbohydrate base (masa harina)
• Removed the almond meal
• Added 7g whey protein isolate
• Added 14g soybean oil

Too bad I still have 2 days mixed up of the old formulation. I’m going to go ahead with the prepared stuff for days 3 and 4 and switch to the new formulation on Saturday. I’m conflicted though since I really like the almond *taste* but won’t miss the stuff in the back of my throat.

So On Monday I got all my ingredients (finally – I ordered it all on Jan 1st). I mixed up three batches Monday night and concluded that I need a better scale. The one I have has .1 g increments, I need one that has .01 increments.

All the stuff I’ll be eating. I have enough of everything for 45 days, some stuff I have 110 days worth.

I didn’t see specific guidance for how much powder to mix with how much water so I split up the powder between the three BlenderBottles I got from Sams-Club. The mix ended up about as thick as a milk shake (yeah, this was WAY too thick, more on that later).

BlenderBottles ready to go – that’s 2000 calories for 1 day.

It didn’t taste like I anticipated at all. Because it has 45 g of ground almond it has a distinctive nutty flavor that I actually like quite a bit. But because I mixed it up too thick  I was taking a mouthful and kinda chewing at it (“mmmm almonds!”) but I had some almond stopping at the back of my throat giving me heartburn/acid reflux. This proved to be the biggest hurdle for me and didn’t really go away until I ate half a slice of bread followed by some Tums. Aside from the almond issue it was really nice to not feel hungry at all. I commented on my experience with the almond and hypothesized that it might be due to my choice of “Simply Right” instead of “Bob’s Red Mill” brand. So I bought some of the Bobs and mixed up a new batch for Wednesday.

I’m giving DIY “Soylent” a try. Mostly as a simple way to manage calories and eat better nutrients. I’ll assume you have no idea what “Soylent” is (hereafter I’m going to omit the quotes) so in a terribly brief summary: It’s all the essential Macro and Micro nutrients a human needs to be healthy, mixed together in powdered form and consumed as a drink. The idea is to replace all/most food with this stuff. The creator invented it originally to save time and effort and has been eating it 3 meals a day for around 11 months now. Since then he did a Kickstarter campaign and they have been moving steadily towards shipping out a product. There is an excellent write-up that gives you (way) more info than you could want: ArsTechnica does Soylent for a week (using the pre-release of the official one). Honestly this series is worth a read just for the hilarity that ensues, especially when he starts tinting it green and red. There’s another good write-up on http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soylent-no-food-for-30-days

I have seriously considered buying a month’s worth but $255 is a little steep, especially when the ship date is indeterminate and keeps slipping. Along with more time and better health one of the other consistent results seems to be weight loss since people are eating the right number of calories; and I’m anxious to do something about that.

So, since the official version isn’t available yet and the official site downright encourages people to try building their own soylent that fits their own specific needs and tastes… I decided to try DIY soylent. After a few days of research I quickly homed in on “People Chow” (because “SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!”) as the most popular DIY recipe, it’s also around $129 a month if you buy it all from Amazon, less if you can find the stuff locally for less. The creator is very active on Reddit and the comments section of that recipe. As of right now he’s updated it to version 2.3.0 with an update to 2.4 coming in the next day or so.

So with all that in mind I went shopping on Jan 1st to see if I could get all the ingredients. I would have gotten away with it if not for those kids if not for most stores being closed for the holiday. So I got what I could and then ordered the rest from Amazon. Then the “polar vortex” shut down the midwest and my order sat on the loading dock waiting for UPS for nearly a week. I finally got it all on Jan 13th.