Sunday, October 5, 2014

Soylent and DIY imitations

I started using a Soylent imitation (copy, clone, DIY recipe, knockoff) 3 weeks ago, just for breakfast.
Soylent is a food replacement product. Unlike half assed diet products such as Slim Fast, 3 servings of Soylent (here's a wiki link)will give you 2000 calories or better. Any other product you see will usually be around 100 to 300 calories per serving. And no, you cannot just drink enough of them to add up to 2000 calories, or even 1500, because the vitamin/mineral/chemical content will kill your kidneys at that quantity.
Soylent is designed to completely replace food. You drink 3 servings of this powdered mix with water and you are set. Don't laugh, do some searches, there are people out there who have been doing it for many months as of this writing.

I ordered a one week supply, 21 servings, to only drink for breakfast for a month at first to test it out.
Turns out Soylent caught on so well that I'm back ordered 2 months.
Not willing to wait that long, I found another product that is an imitation of Soylent called 100% Food. That order arrived in a week.
As I mentioned, I've been using it for breakfast on weekdays, skipping weekends and holidays to help make it last a full month.

A little info about me, and what else I'm eating.
I am 56 years old, sedentary and overweight, but with no real health problems other than allergies (trees mostly).
I had been eating mostly frozen veggies and meats, very little processed food. However, a few months before I started this, I got so sick and tired of meal preparation that I started eating almost nothing but frozen burritos, fish sticks, and chicken nuggets and patties. I also started eating deli takeout a lot more, which I can ill afford. So this test came right on time!

I had intended to weigh myself weekly, though I did not expect to see any changes. But the batteries were dead in my scale and I haven't yet replaced them. Obviously, weight reduction is not that important to me.

What is important is girth reduction. I'm not fond of being a tub of guts, but I did not expect just breakfast would have any effect. So far, it has not.

I'm taping my gut using my belly button as a marker, and looking in a mirror to see if the tape is fairly straight. Not scientific, a lot of room for error, but it'll show a trend over time.
So far, I came up with, measured in inches, 53, 54, 53. So I was right that there would be no changes from just drinking it for breakfast.

I expect to feel no other changes in energy, alertness, etc. and indeed there have been no changes good or bad. Some folks complain of gas, but I have not had any issues with that.


So, as far as successfully drinking 100% Food for breakfast, how does it work?

IT WORKS GREAT!

I am very happy with this product! I drink it around 8:30am and I am all set until noon, when I start feeling that I could use a snack, but no big deal. Typically, I don't eat until somewhere between 12:30pm to 1:30pm and I have no problem with that. I do not have any snacks between breakfast and lunch. When I was eating "normal" food, I always needed a snack by about 11:00am.

I do not need a full month to know that I want to go to 2 meals a day ASAP.

I have ordered another product, Custom Body Fuel, to try it out. I plan to switch to that for breakfast to compare with 100% Food, and use the 100% Food for lunch. Again, I ordered a 21 day supply which is intended for a week.
Whenever the hell the Soyent finally gets here, I'll use that for breakfast so as to keep a consistent comparison. 21 day supply here too.
Let's see how I do on 2 meals a day.

There are more details, like pricing and such. But I'll go over that in the next post. I intend to continue follow ups every week to 2 weeks, depending on if anything interesting happens.

Meantime, I highly recommend using 100% Food for at least one meal a day replacement.



No comments: