I have a serving of Soylent most days, and I’ve gotten the consistency of making it properly down pat. If you’re considering trying it out, or you have tried it and don’t like it, give this method a shot and let me know what you think. The taste may not be for everyone, but it’s been super beneficial for my health and I’ve never thought it tasted *bad*. Enjoy!
Tag: Soylent
Weight loss, and Fake It returns (January 3)
Fake It is back! Learn a little about my weight loss in 2015.Losing Weight Isn’t Hard
Losing weight is easy, and let me tell you why (and how!).
I have something to tell you that could either be unbelievably hard to believe, or possibly instantly understood, depending on your own experiences. I’ve been talking a LOT about my weight and my health in the last 3 months or so, and I’ve started posting my weight on Twitter every day as a way to motivate myself to eat more responsibly.
This is how I feel now, stepping on the scale.The thing that I’ve learned in losing almost 30 pounds in the last 7 months or so (and 25 lbs in the last 2 months) is that starting to eat isn’t the problem. In losing this weight, I really haven’t limited myself in the food that I have been eating. That’s not to say I haven’t changed my habits, but I still eat burgers, and pizza, and nachos, and all kinds of other delicious foods. I can probably even say I basically eat about as much of those things as I always have.
The MOST important thing I have learned when losing weight is this: stop eating. Don’t let your hunger decide how much you should eat for the first little while. Restaurants are the worst for this. You have no control over the portion of food you get, and it can be difficult to control your intake this way, especially if you despise the inconvenience of doggy bags as much as I do. When I go to a restaurant now, I get the main dish I really want (be it a big, juicy burger, or a pizza, or whatever other thing I might want), and then get a side that has very little food in it. Fries are a terrible example of this, because there is a LOT of food in fries. I’m not trying to survive a year and a half on Mars, so I probably don’t need to eat several hundred grams of potatoes along with my meal.
Once I accepted that I could eat less than I had been, I was fine missing “meals” and just eating a little bit when I felt like it. It is darn near impossible to gain weight while eating only fat and protein. Carbohydrates (sugars) are the real problem here. And in our modern grocery stores, everything is full of carbs. The simple reason for this is that carbs are incredibly cheap calories. Dipping those carbs in fat and covering them in salt is an easy and cheap way to make them DELICIOUS.
The other really important part of weight loss is your metabolism (to put it simply, that’s the amount of food energy your body burns when it’s just sitting there doing nothing else). I’ve been biking or walking 1-2 times per day since I really started focusing on my health. Because my bike ride is to work, that means I get 25-30 minutes of pretty intense exercise about 8 hours apart, splitting the day up nicely for my metabolism. It’s a pretty common excuse that around 20-25 years old your metabolism drops off and you stop being able to eat whatever you want and maintain your health, but I really think the “change” isn’t in your metabolism, but in the average adult’s activity level.
With the activity that I’ve been trying to do every single day regardless of other circumstance, my good metabolism that I had written off as having “lost” in my late teens is back, and I can eat a good amount while still losing or at least maintaining my weight. For a little more background on this, Nick and I discuss active transportation and its impact on healthy weight in last week’s episode of East Meets West (the discussion of health and such starts around 44:15, but I encourage you to listen to the whole thing).
Anyhow, to simplify things, or if you’re looking for an easy set of guidelines that have been working for me so far, here are the easiest things I can recommend:
- Have a food around that you can sustainably eat every day, and can prepare in a few minutes (no more, and no less; that is Soylent for me). Any more prep and you will do something easier. Any less prep and you will already be eating before you’re hungry enough.
- Exercise at least a half hour every day, twice throughout the day if you can, to keep your body burning energy.
- Try not to order fries at a restaurant, unless that’s all you’re having (soup, salad, etc. is much easier to control the total amount you eat).
- Stop thinking that fat will make you fat. Carbs will make you fat, but don’t necessarily avoid them completely (you will need quick energy sometimes). Keep in mind that not all sugars are created equal, and simple sugars (like in candy) will spike your blood sugar and make you crash.
- Stop using dinner plates (and stop eating “dinner” at all at home, if possible). The modern meal, and the size of dinner plates, means that on average we tend to eat way more than we need. Eat when you are hungry, and give it 15 minutes before deciding you need more.
- Eat eggs. However you like them cooked, they are a great source of life stuff (vitamins, minerals, fats, protein, etc.). There’s a reason you can grow a whole chick from an egg. It has everything you need for life. And stop thinking that eating cholesterol will make you have high cholesterol (it won’t).
- Last, I forgot one of the very important things, drink water! Not lots of water, but definitely some water. It keeps you from feeling hungry when you’re not actually hungry.
It honestly wasn’t that hard for me to lose a lot of weight just keeping these simple principles in mind, but if you have had trouble on “diets”, I’d recommend keeping track of your weight every day. It will give you a good sense of how your habits are affecting your weight (and overall health, in general) and you will be able to stay ahead of bad habits (like eating too much on weekends). You can follow the steps here and download a useful spreadsheet to track your weight (ask me about it if you’re interested in the modifications I’ve made to my version). And you can follow along with my weight loss journey here.
What’s my weight again?
Future Chat is on hiatus this week, while Mike schmoozes with Disney characters in Orlando, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to announce this week!I’ve decided to take my health changes even more seriously, and give you real-time (daily) access to how my health changes are impacting my weight. I’ve never done anything like this before, and it might go terribly, but here we go…
Click through the image (or here) to get straight to the live version! I’ve created a special page so if you’re interested in my weight loss progress, you can follow along. Feel free to leave best wishes, or heckle me if I eat way too much on a given weekend. Go check it out!
It’s a big week for me and my friends, Ottawhat is launching a brand new initiative! We’re calling it Ottawhat News, and it involves us taking a look at the lighter side of news in and around Ottawa. I really hope you like it, and you can learn more here. You can also check out the first story, by our own Keegan On, below:
Deer Shot in Greenbelt, Refuses to Cooperate with Police
Also, don’t miss the new episode of Ottawhat:
This week on the show, we spoke to Jessica Heuther from Ottawa Geek Market. She told us all about the event, going on during October 3rd and 4th at the Nepean Sportsplex. Jessica also works with Carnival Diablo, Canada’s only* carnival sideshow…RSS |
Milestones! Gains! Losses!
That’s a lot of views (I’m just one man)! It’s been far too long since I last wrote something on here, and given that a whole heck of a lot has happened in the last month! First up, around the time of the writing of this post, my blog is going to pass another base 10 milestone, racking up a total of 50000 views! This isn’t a big milestone, but I still consider myself as just getting started, so I’m pretty pleased with it.
As well, in a follow up to my piece about weight loss/overall health, I’m pleased to announce that although my wedding and three-week vacation caused me to gain back a significant amount of the weight I had lost, as of today I will get back to a new all-time** low weight (**least I’ve weighed in over 2 years). I have been working really hard, and I wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am now without my bike, my Soylent, and the willpower to not go nuts eating snack foods. I’ve also effectively eliminated traditional meals from my diet, relying on snacking and smaller portions throughout the day, which has also been nice for me.
During your wedding/honeymoon, you may experience mysterious weight gain paired with a complete loss of data. Finally, I went almost a month without recording a single podcast, but I’ve been back at work on them now (Ottawhat did have an episode every week while I was on my honeymoon though, so you’ll have to go and catch up on those). Last week on Ottawhat, we interviewed my beautiful new wife, Julia, and Mike and I have been getting into some great conversations on Future Chat. On Ottawhat this week, we talked to the owner and manager (2 people) of a local 1-screen cinema, the Mayfair. It was a really great conversation and you should go and check out their podcast too! Links to the episodes can be found below:
This week on the show, we met with Josh and Mel from the Mayfair Theatre. These diehard movie buffs told us all about the origins of the theatre, why they…RSS |
On this week’s show, we agree non-Celiac gluten sensitivity probably isn’t a real thing, electric, self-driving cars will be all over our roads soon, and…RSS |
Reflections On Soylent So Far
I’m going to keep this fairly short, but after 5 days having Soylent for at least one meal, here are my thoughts:
- I don’t like the taste of sucralose, and it is the main taste of the current formulation. If there was a non-sweetenered version, I would find that much tastier. I would also love to chew gum these days if it wasn’t sweetened with terrible sucralose, aspartame or acesulfame potassium. The artificial sweetener just kills it for me.
- I need a better way to mix it completely without resorting to a blender. At the moment, I end up with an imperfect mix (gets stuck to the sides and bottom of the container) just by shaking it up.
- Food when you’re out or with people is a social thing. You can’t just have Soylent when you’re out with friends having a meal, or at a party. That is definitely a limiting factor for me.
Soylent is not actually this social a drink. If I wanted to just replace all my meals with this (non-sweetened), I think I could do it, if I lived in a bubble. But there are so many circumstances where either I want to eat something, or I’m going somewhere that it’s expected I consume food, that incorporating Soylent into my diet 100% would be really difficult.Soylent works best when you’re hungry, have it on you, and you’re going to eat alone. I haven’t tried prepping it in advance to just drink when I get hungry, but I’ll have to try that at some point. I still have almost 60% of the powder left, I think it will last me another week or two. The sucralose taste I think it’s what’s putting me off, because it doesn’t taste bad at all to me, so I think if I could try it without sucralose I could see myself doing it long-term much more easily.
Soylent Friday: Day 3
Wow, the last three days have been crazy. Here are my live-blogs from Day 1 and Day 2. Follow the Day 3 story below:
5:40 PM Fri.: Going to see a movie tonight! I will probably get something like pizza or a hotdog, but I usually get both. I am pretty hungry, but I’m “saving” calories for dinner by holding out for a while. This will likely be my last update today, but check back tomorrow to see how weekend days go!
3:15 PM Fri.: Hmmmmm, I have a little bit of a headache and I’m not sure why. Friday afternoons are always hard for me because I really appreciate my weekends. I’m going to hold out on eating more until I get home, and I might not eat great tonight as I’m going to see Inside Out tonight, but I’m interested to see how the weekend on Soylent goes. I will probably keep up the 50% of calories idea, and I’ll definitely have a batch ready to go for +Future Chat at 12:30 on Sunday.
2:00 PM Fri.:Becca: I wonder if this would be a more nutritious and cost effective option? Im also wondering about fibre and roughage? The same issue arises when people juice everything…. Aren’t you missing out on the fibre??
My answer: That’s a great question Becca, I’ll give you the same link I gave yesterday… https://faq.soylent.com/…/sections/200307055-About-Soylent
In particular, to answer the fibre question, yes…there is plenty of fibre. I can confirm this is not an issue. See this link: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/200789985-Do-you-poop-on-Soylent-Yes
12:30 PM Fri.: Doing just fine, getting ready to have the usual 1.5 scoops for lunch. Here’s another question:
Brian: Are there any cost savings if one switches over from regular groceries/produce to Soylent?
My answer: It really depends what you buy. If you go all out, it’s about $2-$2.50 a meal for Soylent. It would definitely be cheaper for me, but I know people who (allegedly) spend almost nothing on food…
Brian also asked some great questions I answered in the comments below this post.
10:45 AM Fri.: Some really great questions and discussion already on Facebook!
Lisa: Food and cooking is a part of our culture, I don’t think I could get on board with giving that up but I am curious to know why you are doing this! Just for weight loss or like a get-healthy-and-all-the-nutrients-your-body-needs blitz? I can see how it would be really good for people hiking and camping and going on long expeditions where they might not have access to fresh food.
My answer: I’m trying it for a week because I’ve been so curious since it first came out. I don’t know that I could replace everything ever, but it’s been a really eye-opening experience really knowing exactly how much I’m eating in a day, how many calories I need to feel full. I’m also not replacing EVERYTHING, just about half the calories.
It’s not weight loss specifically, but I could certainly lose a little weight with this in combination with being more active. I generally eat WAY too many calories in a day because I just bored-eat, whereas if I know I’m only getting calories from this, I know how much I’m supposed to have for a given time, and I can KNOW objectively that I don’t need more. It also helps to not bring any food to work, so to not eat only this I’d have to cave and find a restaurant, and it hasn’t come close to that.
I love food, but I think this would be OK sometimes.
Anna: It can be the cure for world hunger! But also, I think some more third party info would be interesting to read. I don’t want all my questions about Soylent being answered by Soylent. I’m curious to see whether humans can actually get all of their nutrition from Soylent as it is!
My answer: I think there’s less third-party stuff simply because it’s so new. They’re working with a lot of data from historical nutrition research, it’s not like they’re guessing and hoping. I agree it’ll take a while until it pans out, and I really don’t like the taste of sucralose, so that’s kind of annoying. But overall, there are a lot of people who can really benefit from something like this! I’m also very curious about all of this stuff!
9:38 AM Friday: It’s the start of Day 3 on Soylent as a partial food replacement. We learned a lot yesterday, and that tradition continues today. I just finished preparing my first 1.5 scoops for the day, and I’ve made it to the 2nd pouch. This morning, I tried the preparation method I discussed yesterday, mixing a little hot water with the powder before mixing fully and topping up with cold water. It worked PERFECTLY and now it’s not chunky at all. AWESOME!
I feel good this morning, I think I had a more average breakfast this morning, so I wasn’t hungry until about 9:30 AM. I really notice that even after only 2 days, my appetite is changing. It’s interesting being aware of your nutrition down to the minute level, I’m a lot more aware now, and I find I eat less when I know I don’t have food I like to look forward to. Not that this is bad tasting, but it’s not a “treat” in the traditional sense like a burger would be.
I decided that today I’m going to take some questions, so if you have anything you’re wondering about Soylent, let me know! I’ll be taking questions all day, and I might even make a video about my experiences this weekend! That will depend on your questions.
Day 2 Of My Soylent Adventure
For some context, yesterday was the first day I tried the futuristic food product called Soylent. It is a food product, not a supplement, so you can survive off this stuff. You can check out my experiences on Day 1 right here, and below, you’ll find my thoughts and feelings, and calorie math about Day 2.
9:30 PM Thurs.: I probably ate a little more today than I would have, but I have also been really active this week. I definitely feel like Soylent has helped my appetite quite a bit, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings. In 2 days, I got a little under half my calories from Soylent, and I have used a little under 1 pouch.
See you tomorrow!
2:45 PM Thurs.: Getting a little bit hungry again. I might be done for the day with Soylent, I’ll probably have some solid food when I get home. Nothing against the liquid diet in particular, but it is going to take some getting used to. We also have groceries at home that need eating, so I have to consider that.
1:15 PM Thurs.: Lunch was good, although I think I need more water again. I’m definitely not hungry despite the relatively small calorie intake. One issue that seems to keep coming up in these 1.5 scoop batches is that I end up not being able to mix the powder in completely. I’m going to try to address this by mixing a little bit of hot water with the powder first, hopefully dissolving more before topping the mixture up with cold water, which they recommend to improve the taste. I haven’t had any of this stuff at home yet, but I think a blender would make this whole process a lot easier.Anyhow, now that I’m done with lunch I probably won’t be eating again for a while. I’ll leave you with some Soylent-related reading to do if you have any weird questions or concerns about the nutritional value. I’m not saying take their word for it, I’m just saying they’ve looked into many things and work with nutritional experts to formulate this food. Check it all out here: https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/sections/200307055-About-Soylent
12:15 PM Thurs.: I’m going to be having another ~1.5 scoops, bringing me to ~750 calories plus cereal for the day so far. It’s noon and I’ve had very little food today but I feel fine (other than being a little hungry). I would attribute this more to being very aware of what I’m eating and that I’m not eating very often than to Soylent in particular, but it’s still interesting. When you know “exactly” how many calories you’re ingesting, it’s a lot easier to look at food and think “that’s way too much”.
11:15 AM Thurs.: Doing fine, I’m sure I can make it to lunch today. I decided I should answer of the questions everybody asks, “What is Soylent?”. I’m surprised you haven’t all already heard of it, but to answer the question, I’m just going to tell you what’s IN Soylent…this is from their website, and it tells you what you’ll get in every serving (2 scoops) of Soylent. Basically, it’s everything your body needs to sustain itself. See for yourself below, or on their website!
Click to enlarge. Complete nutrition facts available here. 10:00 AM Thurs.: About to go into a meeting, headache has subsided, so I guess the calories have helped 🙂 . Goooooooo Soylent!
9:00 AM Thurs.: Downed an ice cold 1.5 scoops of delicious Soylent this morning. I think adding just a little more water will help me mix things up a little better, but I have also taken to just swishing some water around at the end of the “meal” to clean the bottle and get any bits that might be stuck to the bottom of the bottle.I’m a little concerned about hunger today because I still have a bit of a headache, and I don’t have any food with me. But I’m going to do my best to keep hydrated, we’ll see if I can last another 3 hours until lunch on only about 500 calories, but it will be tough.
7:46 AM Thursday: It’s a lovely morning. I had some more cereal (another smaller portion today). I brought another pouch with me on the bike again, although I might not get to it because I still have quite a bit of pouch #1 from yesterday. I’m feeling pretty hungry already, but I think I’ll get to preparing my first portion around 8:30 again. This time, I’m going to put extra effort into getting it mixed up really well. I’m going to try to give you guys some interesting facts about Soylent throughout the day, so stay tuned for that!
Soylent Adventure: Day 1 (Wednesday)
Here’s Day 2!
I’ll be doing this in live-blog format, keeping things updated throughout the day. The day starts at the bottom and new stuff will show up right below this sentence. Times are in EDT.
9:30 PM Wed.: OK, I’m home after a day of Soylent. I had approximately 2/3 of the first pouch over the course of the day, totalling about 1000-1300 calories if I had to estimate (I don’t actually know how much is left, it could be closer to 1/2). I had dinner and a beer out, along with my morning cereal as well, so I think I’m at about 2000 calories for the day, and I feel very full. If calorie calculators are even remotely accurate, I normally get about 3000 calories on a given day, so this would be a big drop. I’ll have to see if I can keep up this pace and hunger levels, but I’m hopeful.
I’m not hungry right now, and though weight loss isn’t the primary goal of this experiment, I wouldn’t be opposed to getting out of the “overweight” designation on the BMI scale. That being said, preparation was SUPER simple, and with Nick’s amazing funnel suggestion this is an extremely sustainable amount of lunch prep.
Anyhow, I will continue this story in a new post tomorrow, although I will probably provide fewer updates because I don’t feel the need to duplicate things I said today.
Goodnight all, thanks for following my story!
5:20 PM Wed.: I may update one more time before bed, but for now, I think I’m done with Soylent for the day. I feel fine, despite having eaten far fewer calories than I would have otherwise today. I’m going out for dinner to get the rest of my calories, but I don’t feel so hungry that I feel like I’ll need a huge dinner…soooooo tentative success…but we’ll see how I feel later tonight and tomorrow!
4:00 PM Wed.: I feel much better having chugged half a bottle of water, and working through 1.5 more scoops. Headache has mostly subsided, and although I didn’t go all out in mixing this one (it would be very loud at work), it’s still quite good to taste. Still feels very different compared to my normal day, but it doesn’t stand out as bad.
3:15 PM Wed.: Still really hungry. I’m going to be having more soon, probably 1-1.5 more scoops so I can last until 6:30 dinner. Trying to drink as much water as possible too.
2:30 PM Wed.: I’m feeling hungry much earlier than I would have on a regular day, which makes complete sense because I’m having way less food than I normally do by 2 PM. I did some calculations to figure out calorie requirements for a person like me. If I can stick to ~2000 calories a day, I could lose 5-10 pounds in the next month. The important distinction is going to be working through my feelings of hunger that come up throughout the day even though I’m not hungry. I’m also going to focus on drinking lots of water this afternoon, because they recommend adding 1-2 extra litres of water per day to make up for water in your food.
1:45 PM Wed.: I ended up having about 1.5 scoops of Soylent for lunch (about 375 calories), bringing my total for the day to 625 (plus a small bowl of healthy cereal). I am going to aim for another scoop at around 3:30 PM, which will leave me at about 1000 calories from Soylent today. This also gives me about 700-800 calories for dinner tonight to get to the recommended 2000 per day in total (although I think I probably go a little or a lot over that most days). Very happy with my level of hunger so far though.
12:15 PM Wed.: Nick was so right. The make-shift funnel made this a completely mess-free process. Thanks Nick! Looking forward to a nutritious liquid lunch!
Thank you Nick for the great suggestion, the funnel worked great and there’s NO mess. 12:00 PM Wed.: Getting some grumblies as we approach noon. This will be the critical moment for the success of Day 1 I think, if Soylent can replace my regular lunch. I normally eat quite a bit over the course of a work-day, so it remains to be seen if those calories can be effectively replaced by a liquid. Still not perfectly clear on how I should get the powder into my bottle quickly and efficiently, but I’ll be trying +Nick Maddox‘s idea of a make-shift paper funnel this time. Wish me luck, I’ll report back after lunch!
11:15 AM Wed.: Still not super hungry. I’m pretty happy with the way this is going so far. I’ll probably make somewhere between 1-2 servings around lunch time, but I’m pretty happy with how this has gone so far!
10:30 AM Wed.: Check out the video below of the fun time I had mixing up some Soylent. I’m still going strong, not any hungrier than I was an hour ago.9:15 AM Wed.: I finished the half-serving I made (250 calories; 1 scoop). It was just fine. Headache has abated, though that may just be a coincidence. So far the worst thing about this process has been the small mess I made already and trying to figure out how to not have that happen again next time. I still feel a little hungry, but I think that’s pretty normal and just not something I’m used to with solid food.
The finished product, a little messy but mostly alright. 8:45 AM Wed.: This is messy. It took about 5 minutes from sitting with the stuff to a finished container. The scoop is larger than the mouth of the bottle I’m using, so it took a little spillage to get everything in. The taste is surprisingly reasonable. It’s hard to mix by hand though, at least without drawing a lot of attention to yourself. I took some video making it, I’ll try to put that up today.
8:15 AM Wed.: Starting to get a little headache. I’ve started to notice that since I ate a smaller breakfast I’m hungrier than I would be otherwise.
7:45 AM Wed.: I should mention now that I’m going out for dinner tonight, so I’m not relying on Soylent for ALL my calories on day 1, but it will still be a big part of my food intake today. I’m hoping I can have enough throughout the day so that I don’t have to have a huge meal at dinner.
7:15 AM Wed.: I’m a little hungry, but I’m going to wait a little before I crack the first bag. I hope it tastes good enough that I can drink it through most of the day.
6:30 AM Wednesday: I’m taking a bag (~ 1 day supply) of Soylent with me to work on my bike.
6:00 AM Wednesday: I’m having a bowl of cereal (a small one) to start the day.
Last Night: We’re off to a tough start. I’ve been so excited about this for so long that I’m already getting suggestions from Julia that I should marry Soylent instead. For the record, I don’t want to marry Soylent, but I am excited about the adventure!
