Tag: Writing

  • A Diminishing Willingness to Do or Try New Things

    The technological inertia of adulthood, signified by a diminishing willingness to do or try new things.

    I have been trying, without a great deal of success, to get my friends interested in using Slack to communicate with one another. Slack is a great service with mobile apps, desktop apps, and a really slick web interface that makes communicating with bigger groups of people really simple and easy.

    However, I’ve been trying to get people jazzed about better communication services for the better part of 10 years now, and I’m mostly thwarted at every turn. I honestly feel, deep in my heart, that this failing isn’t because the services I’m advocating for (Google Wave, Facebook Messenger, Google+, Twitter, Google Hangouts, Slack) are objectively bad.

    That being said, I also don’t think my friends, the people I want to keep in touch with the most, are idiots for not being as excited in the next big thing as I am. I am always on the lookout for new technology, but I know I’m rare in being that way. But I also know that there is value in what I’m trying to do.

    When I first got a cell phone, SMS was the only method of communication I used (aside from the very occasional phone call). When I first got an email address, I would occasionally use it to email friends, but its much more vital use was to get me logged in to MSN Messenger.

    I’ve always subscribed to a vast number of different communications services (as I broke down in my last post about this stuff), and I use many of them to keep in touch with just a handful of people. The people I talk to on a regular basis interact with me in a startling number of ways:

    • Some people I know I can reach most easily with SMS
    • Some I know will only check Facebook sporadically
    • Some who keep data turned off unless it’s an emergency
    • Some people I will only message through Google Hangouts
    • Some people answer messages during the day through one chat platform, but use another platform the rest of the time (even though both are available to them at all times).
    In trying to make Slack a thing with my closest friends, what I’m really trying to do is make it really easy for those people to know exactly where and how they can reach me and each other, all the time. Maybe, for some people, that’s actually a failed premise. It’s just something that’s never going to happen.
    It might be that no matter how hard I try, some people are just going to send me a text message when they want to reach me. And perhaps, that won’t change.
    Liberal youth grow older and more conservative, even if their values never actually change in the process. I’m going to do my best to be adaptable, while advocating for new and better at every turn. We don’t have to define ourselves by who we are now, we can choose to present ourselves as the best we can be in the future.
    Communication is a social contract we all enter into, and having it formalized might be scary or uncomfortable to some people. I don’t think it’s too lofty a goal to aim for better than a 14 person group thread in Facebook Messenger as a way for people from all walks of life to interact and figure their lives out. We can do better, and while I’m suggesting one specific option, I’m just trying to do the best I can today.
  • My 2016 (As of January 29)

    My 2016 (As of January 29)

    When I set out to make more in 2016, I did so with the goal of finding work and fulfilling my creative pursuits. It’s only been 29 days so far this year, but I have already learned a ton from this experiment.

    I’ve been taking more pictures, making all kinds of podcasts, and writing every single day. I said I would do this project every day for a year, or for as long as I need to. I put that loophole in there specifically because I knew how much work that would be, and if I started working anywhere near full time again, it’s unlikely I would have the energy to keep up a daily pace (of posting stuff, not of making stuff).

    So far this year, I have done a few really great things:

    1. I hit my weight goal from the middle of last year (that’s 210 lbs, down 40) at the end of this week.
    2. I started writing every day, taking more pictures of cool things I see, and with friends.
    3. I’ve found some work that should be starting quite soon.

    Given all of that, and the fact that my creative endeavours aren’t going to stop right now, I am going to stop posting something here every day.

    I’m planning on continuing to take more pictures (probably posted on Instagram), writing as much as I can (including on this blog), and dedicating my efforts to working more on being creative. It’s been a great year so far, and it’s only going to get better!

  • 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.

  • How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    How to Turn the Page (on Life)

    I’m not sure there is a wrong way.

    This week, I learned that I will be entering a new chapter in my life. For those of you who are following me on social media, you will probably already be aware that I found out that my contract at NSERC, where I’ve been working for the last 11 months or so, will be ending come October 9th. That means that as of right now, I have a little over one week left to find work to replace that job.

    Obviously, there are a number of negative ways I could choose to look at this. It would probably be very easy to sit back and let the bad news occupy my mind and bring down my mood. But I’m not going to do that. I’ve been here before. Since I left school in 2011, I’ve been unemployed 3 times, the longest time for 6 months (most of that by choice). The work I’ve done since I left school only vaguely relates to the work I am doing since I finished my degree.

    Mostly, the reason I’m not worrying about new ventures is that things are going REALLY well in my life overall. Despite this looming potential unemployment, my life is mostly looking way up, which is something I’m really happy about. I just got married to the girl of my friggen dreams, I’ve lost almost 20 pounds since the beginning of July, I’ve got a large number of very satisfying hobby projects, and I have an amazing network of friends who have been incredibly supportive of everything I do.

    I was very briefly hesitant to talk about my soon-to-be unemployment as publicly as I have, but in the many years since I basically became an open book to the world socially, my life has only gotten way better. And the reaction and help I’ve gotten from friends, colleagues, family and many other people is really quite touching. Once you tweet your weight to the world, directing them to a website where anybody can see what you’ve weighed for the last 30 days, there’s really no reason to keep anything too secret.

    Oddly (though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised), the main question I get when people want to help me look for a job is “What kind of work are you looking for?”. I think this is a weird question mainly because I don’t really think too much about it. I want to work, I want to make a living and I want to do something I love. I really like media (video, audio and writing), the internet, technology, and science. I’m getting to the point where work I do in those fields can be put on my resume as real experience, something I definitely didn’t see happening just a couple of years ago.

    I’ve talked before about how wonderful if would be if Canada instituted a basic income for its citizens, because more than anything what I want to be able to do is to be creative. I want to share my experiences and knowledge with people who want to learn and try new things. I want to open minds. I’ve been thinking for a very long time about doing a big project where I get to do things like this on a regular basis, but for that today I really do need a day job where I make enough to support what I’d like to do for the other big part of my life.

    However, even considering all of this, the biggest priority for me, and the reason why I’m so keen to get a new job as soon as possible, is that I want to start a family. I’m not in a rush to do that, but I do want to start sooner rather than later. And, seeing as how my wife and I are responsible and financially prudent, we’d rather wait until there are two sources of secure income in our lives before moving forward with that. And that is the most frustrating part of all of this. I just want to express my ideas and thoughts in a positive, constructive way and make the world a better place, and pass those traits along to the next generation of humans. But first, I need someone to take a chance on me.

    It’s worth it.

    If you know of any job openings or places that might be hiring, especially those looking for young people who are ready to learn and looking to make a difference in the world, please let me know. You can send me email at [email protected].

  • What’s my weight again?

    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…
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  • The “Honeymoon” Phase of #JuliaRoberts2015

    The “Honeymoon” Phase of #JuliaRoberts2015

    Getting married has honestly been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. The idea of committing ones-self to only one other person for the rest of your life seems like the kind of thing that would be terrifying, but so far I have been completely fine with it.

    “The One Where They Got Married” #juliaroberts2015
    Posted by Jacquie Watkins on Saturday, July 25, 2015

    Even though the day-to-day events of Julia’s and my life since we got married are basically unchanged (finalizing wedding stuff obviously notwithstanding), everything feels very different. Getting home and seeing Julia’s beautiful, smiling face is that much nicer, going and running errands as she recovers from her excellent party on Saturday feels like no effort at all. I know we’re still fully in the “honeymoon” phase of the marriage, but I think we are both acutely aware of the fact that this is going to take work. More importantly, Julia and I should easily be able to put aside our minor squabbles and disagreements, and focus on what really matters, our life together and our mutual happiness.

    We are still fully entrenched in post-wedding business, like writing thank yous to everybody who was SO generous this past week, with their time and with their love, and our friends and family have proven to us just how much they care about our future together. I can’t wait to get started!

    At what point do we change #JuliaRoberts2015 to #JuliaRobertsForever?

  • Weight Loss (How I Am Breaking The Pattern)

    Weight Loss (How I Am Breaking The Pattern)

    One of my favourite things to do is open up and talk about things that are going on in my life. If you want to hear about me in more detail, I convinced my co-hosts on Ottawhat? to let me talk about myself for an hour this week (listen here).

    But that’s not what today is about. Today, I want to tell you what’s been going on with my weight in the last month or so. You can see all the past stuff I’ve written about Soylent here, but this isn’t really about Soylent either. This is all about my weight, and health.

    Trust me, I was too small.

    For the majority of my adult life, I have weighed between 230 and 250 pounds. Most health experts will tell you that for my height, that makes me about 50-70 pounds overweight. This puts me just a smidge past overweight, and into “obese” territory. For almost a year, when I tore my ACL in 2010-11 and couldn’t do any real physical activity, my weight actually dropped down as far as 190 pounds, and I honestly looked like a skeleton. That is my “healthy” weight, so I know that I can’t depend on a measure like BMI (which doesn’t take density or body structure into account) to measure my health. Buoyancy is dependent on density, and I would drown if I tried to float, so I know I’m pretty dense.

    All of that being said, in the last few weeks, I have been cycling to and from work about 70% of the time, and I have also not been taking a lunch. Instead, I have been having one serving of Soylent around 12:15 PM every day, in addition to breakfast and whatever I eat in the evening. The result of this is a pretty drastic drop in my weight since the second week of July, as you can see here.

    The last month of weight measurements.

    Luckily for me, since I first bought a WiFi-connected scale in February 2014, my weight has been a known quantity as long as I stand on it every day. What I saw from the last 18 months is that what I had been “doing” to lose weight, wasn’t doing much. Even Soylent and cycling, as you can see from the graph above (starting at the end of June), weren’t really having any effect on my weight.

    The thing that finally started me down the path you see on the right side of the graph is a pretty simple change, that is, using this graph. I am currently using the measurements from my scale, and feeding them into the graph described here. It keeps a moving average of the last 10 days (so 9 days ago is weighted at 0.1 in the average, 4 days ago is weighted 0.6, etc., and today is weighted as 1). What this means, as described if you read the article above, is that if you have an off day or eat a whole pizza, it doesn’t completely ruin your weight trend, because you will still have a string of good days before it that are factored in to your weight.
    What I’ve been trying to do with this information is keep the blue line up there below the red line. That makes weight loss incredibly simple, and it means that I can in theory eat whatever I want on a given day, just that I have to be healthy overall. As you can see, I went to a birthday party last weekend where I ate a little bit too much. Where that would normally be a huge discouragement, with this data available, I can see that as long as I put work in to make up for it, everything will be fine.
    This was a really good, too big meal, from 2012.
    What all of this really comes down to is that to lose weight, I have had to limit what I eat. I don’t necessarily need to eat healthy foods, but that definitely helps. Even more than losing weight though, this has come from a desire to be healthier. I know that I just plain eat too much food. At home, I have a lot more control over what I eat, and that really helps, but restaurants are becoming a bigger and bigger pain to eat at. The problem that I end up having is: the portions restaurants give you is WAY too big. Any restaurant worth its salt (heh) will know that the economics of food mean that they will make more money if they give you bigger portions. As meals (and servings) get bigger, you can charge more for them, and the only downside is that it’s WAY too much food for any one person in one sitting.
    What I have to get into the mindset of doing is mentally setting aside some of the food on my plate when I’m at a restaurant, and knowing ahead of time that I actively shouldn’t be eating all of the food I’m given. At the moment, I treat the food on my plate at restaurants as a goal, even though I stop being hungry very early in the meal. I think, if I can keep up these measurements and motivations, and actually change my restaurant habits, I can keep this up and get to a weight where I feel a little better about myself and feel healthy all the time, as opposed to feeling like I should eat a salad more often (because salads are the worst).
    That being said, as a work food replacement, Soylent has been unbelievable. It’s all I’m eating at work these days, and it’s been filling enough that I don’t need to eat any snacks before lunch, and I don’t feel starved biking home if I only have one small portion in the morning. Although I still don’t love the sucralose taste.
  • Taylorette1989 is Over, and What is a Podcast?

    Taylorette1989 is Over, and What is a Podcast?

    #Taylorette1989 is done. No, we weren’t able to get Julia into Taylor’s inner circle (although this did happen), but I think both Julia and myself learned a lot about life, love, and what’s important to us in the last 6 months or so of trying. I’ll be writing a bit in the near future about my experiences trying to capture the attention of probably the most widely recognizable entity in the world at the moment.

    Pictured: 6 months of hard work and dedication, and we get some pixels hosted on taylorswift.com!

    There are a couple of really interesting secret things I had been doing for Taylorette that I’m excited to share in the coming weeks, but for now, I’m looking to the future. I have some big plans once the summer is done and all the wedding and honeymoon craziness is behind us. I miss making videos every week, and it’s obvious to me that I haven’t done enough to let my friends in on what I’m working on these days, so I’ll be trying to do more of that too.

    Another fun project that I think it might help me to talk about is sharing some of the things on the internet that entertain me on a regular basis. Most people I talk to bounce around viral videos and things that pop into their Facebook feeds, whereas I tend to follow the work of individuals and groups of creative people on the Internet, keeping track of what they’re up to on a regular basis. I’m excited to talk about those people and what I’m able to learn from them, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

    I’m still going through my week’s supply of Soylent. As expected, it isn’t something I think I can realistically have to replace ALL of my meals. That being said, I do like it (minus the artificial sweetener) and I have been able to not bring lunch to work for the last 2 weeks and get along just fine.

    In the meantime, Ottawhat? and Future Chat continue to soldier on with their usual episodes, you can subscribe to them and listen to the latest episodes down below. It has come to my attention that even people who are close to me are not aware that Future Chat is a podcast. First of all, it seems like those people probably just don’t actually know what a podcast is (really any episodic video or audio conversation or documentary could be considered a podcast). Second of all, if it’s been a while, I would encourage you to check out one of these two shows, we have a lot of fun making them and really try hard to put together something anybody can enjoy.

    This week, we sat down with training librarian and new mom Jessica Dubois. She told us all about her experiences with part-time online learning, her…
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    This week on the show, we discuss all the latest goings on around Pluto, the ramifications of the leap second, and how you might not get Windows 10 for a…
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  • Reflections On Soylent So Far

    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

    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.