7 days of Soylent
I decided to try living on Soylent for 7 days. I was interested in the idea after reading about it online. I was extremely skeptical and a little bit nervous. I really like eating real food, especially meat. Could I live on vegan food powder for a week?
Day 1
Woke up in the morning, still feeling stuffed from the egg sandwich, fried chicken, and burger with fries that I had the night before. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be eating real food for a week, I decided to binge over the weekend.
I poured myself about 11 ounces of Soylent and drank it in about 1 minute. Tasted pretty good. Reminded me of the protein drinks I used to have back in high school when I was fanatic about bodybuilding.
The rest of the day was pretty easy. Had Soylent at lunch and for a 3:30pm snack. Didn’t really have a desire for real food until dinner. At dinner time, my wife brought home pizza for her and our little boy. He didn’t want his pizza, but I couldn’t eat it, I had my glass of soylent to drink. She gave him some left over homemade Chinese cashew chicken, but he didn’t want that. At this point, I was starting to get a little irritated. Not sure if it was from the lack of calories or seeing real food go to waste. Eventually the irritability subsided.
Day 2
Woke up at 3:30am and had trouble falling back asleep. Eventually gave up and decided to down some soylent mixed with peanut butter. It was pretty good, but I felt a little jittery afterwards. I think I need to drink it slower in the morning.
The rest of the day was pretty easy, soylent wise. The peanut butter is a good flavor. Dinner time was less difficult, but I still missed having real food. Seeing food makes it a little harder.
Tonight, I’ll mix up a batch of almond butter soylent for tomorrow.
Day 3
Keep waking up at 3:30am. Had the soylent with almond butter today. Not bad. Went to a coffee shop in the afternoon. Someone brought in soup or some sort of fragrant food. Wow did it smell good. You really notice these smells when you aren’t eating.
Noticed that my knees don’t hurt as much as they did the week before. Even after running on the treadmill at the gym. Maybe my diet was causing joint inflammation or was missing something to prevent it. Or my knees feel better because of some other factor like a change in weather.
Had a slight headache in the evening. Nothing too bad, but I think I have had these all week. Tomorrow will be soylent with blackberries mixed in.
Day 4
Woke up at 3:30am to my son making some noise. Maybe he is the cause of the 3:30am wake ups and not the soylent diet. Like Day 3, I only drank about 8 ounces of soylent before getting coffee. This seems to work pretty well. Taking down 16 ounces all at once first thing in the morning is just too much for me.
Rest of the day was fairly boring. No cravings for “real” food. Even at dinner, when my wife brought home fried chicken, waffles, and lumpia, I didn’t really care.
Oh, and soylent with blackberries more or less tastes like soylent. I guess I didn’t use enough blackberries.
Day 5
Woke up at 2:30am to my son making noise. Today was soylent with the remaining blackberries and some watermelon. Went up to San Francisco in the early afternoon so I missed my mid afternoon soylent snack. As a result, at dinner time, I could really smell the real food that my wife and son were eating. It was tempting, but I just drank my soylent.
Day 6
A Saturday with soylent. Nothing excited happened. Just drank plain Soylent throughout the day.
Day 7
Today was the final day of soylent. I mixed it up with peanut butter and jelly. That might have been a bad idea. Lots of digestive system cramps during the day. Really glad to be done. Looking forward to eating real food tomorrow.
Thoughts
- You actually can get used to not eating and just drinking your nourishment. I would still like to eat, but I don’t feel like I have to eat.
- This is probably not a healthy thing to do long term. I can’t back that up with anything scientific, I just intuitively believe that you need to eat real food and not just drink a powdered beverage.
- Doing 7 days of Soylent might be a good idea for someone trying to stop harmful eating habits. Forcing yourself to consume Soylent instead of food is an exercise in will power. It is easy to cheat on a diet where you eat real food, harder when drinking Soylent. The possible cheats are the flavorings that you add. You could probably go overboard and really up your calories.