Today was my first day on the soylent diet. Here were my experiences for the day.
Mixing the Soylent
The whole gang’s here.
Mixing the soylent can be kind of a pain. Here you can see everything needed to make a day of my ketogenic soylent. There’s the soylent powder I mixed up last week, the coconut oil (a stopgap while I wait for my shipment of MCT oil), olive oil, two eggs, and the multivitamins. Don’t skip the multivitamins on this diet!
Ready to be mixed!
This is before I added extra water. It’s about the consistency of a smoothie here.
The recommended serving directions call for everything to be mixed with 3 liters of water for the day. That’s a lot, even for my big blender, so I decided to work in stages. First, I mixed everything with about 0.5 liters of water and blended it until smooth (about 1 minute). Then, I reserved half of the soylent smoothy and filled the blender up to 1.5 liters. After blending that, I poured the first batch in the bistro pitcher. Then I repeated with the second half of the reserved smoothy.
That’s a lot of soylent!
Drinking the Soylent
Here goes nothing!
Different mixes have different flavors, depending on what goes in them. The official soylent has a lot of oat flour, and apparently ends up tasting a lot like oat milk (and also a little sweet). This one has virtually no carbs, so it has a completely different flavor profile.
This soylent tastes kind of like bland peanut butter with an alkaline aftertaste. I’m not sure if it’s the chia seeds, but it’s got a lot of loose fibers as well. The worst part, though, is how much water there is. At 1 liter per meal, drinking this much alkaline-nut-water is an ordeal. And I think the only way I got through it was by using my protein shaker, so I wouldn’t have to smell the stuff while I drank it. For a while after drinking my first meal, I felt unpleasantly full.
By the end of the day, I was used to the taste. Letting the drink chill really helped it to become more quaffable.
I believe their aiming for the consistency of milk, but I don’t think that’s a good choice for this particular mix. If it’s going to taste as oily and nutty as this, I want the mix to be smooth and thick. Actually, the consistency of my initial stage is probably just about right! Moreover, the the mixture was fairly warm (it had to be to keep the coconut oil from solidifying), but I plan to remedy this by adding ice to the blender after the initial smoothy is complete.
On a side note, I think the addition of chocolate and coconut flour for next week will balance well with the nuttiness. The ongoing ketosis mix will probably be a lot more pleasant.
How I felt
It’s hard to say how I felt today. While at work I had a headache for about 5 minutes, though that’s not unusual for me. After my workout I felt really hungry for a nice piece of grilled chicken, and still felt hungry after throwing back 22 oz of the shake. I did have a short bout near the end of my work day where I felt extra alert and focused, and I rode that feeling to get a few last-minute things done that I’ve been putting off for a bit too long.
The main thing I felt was a weird sense that my stomach was full, but I was hungry. My soylent has me running at about a 700 calorie deficit, and the huge amount of water in the soylent can’t quite trick my stomach into thinking I’m getting a full day’s meals. Couple that with a constant need to pee, and I’m seeing some real benefits to reducing the water in my soylent mix tomorrow.
Daily Status: Day 1
Sleep: 1:30 AM – 9:45 AM (8.25 hours)
Food today: Induction phase ketosis soylent (mixed with 3l water) x3 meals
Distance walked: ~5 miles (to school and back + a nice walk while on the phone)
Workout: Inclined shoulder press (9 x 35 lbs/arm), Close-grip supinated pull-downs (10 x 100 lbs), Machine crunches (10 x 50 lbs), Bicycle kicks (40). All weight sets at a 5 up/5 down cadence, weights chosen for failure at 10 reps.
Weight: 190.6 lb
Waist: 34″
Hips: 42.75″
Feeling: Slightly hungry, alert.
I’ve noticed when doing shakes and supplements and stuff that I don’t always like mixing everything together. I’d be ok pouring hemp oil over my salad greens or broccoli, but often just preferred to down the spoonful and get it over with. I would agree with keeping only half of the water in the shake and drinking the other half as a chaser, maybe with a different kind of flavoring. I would also fry up those eggs and add some hot sauce (instead of incorporating them) as a treat.
To some extent that goes against the goal of the soylent being a super convenient super food, and I’m not sure if I could stomach chugging 6 oz of pure oil. But frying up the eggs in a little of the oil for breakfast when I *really need* some solid food in my mouth is a fantastic idea. Thanks!