Shame on The Universe   Poetry and Thoughts on the Universe

So, I did something kinda dumb.

Back in October, I decided to buy a box of Soylent. Soylent is a meal replacement drink, designed to give all of the nutrients you need to survive. It was designed by some silicon valley CEO that was too busy creating the future to be worried with base needs like eating and happiness. You ever wish that you could fill your self up like a car (hopefully not literally)? Not me, but I am a sucker for weird things like this.

I tried it out for a while. It works, but it tastes like pancake batter. Just straight pancake batter. As in, mix up a water bowl of it next morning and chug a bit and you have the taste of Soylent. Flavoring it makes it better, you can have pineapple pancake mix, or orange creamsicle pancake mix.

Overall, its a cool concept. If you are an eat to live type of person, it takes a lot of the effort of cooking out, and it is more healthy that fast food. If you are not that type of humanoid creature and you enjoy food, then this stuff is a nightmare. It is boring, bland, and uninspired. I could like on it if I needed, but I wouldn’t want to.

All that being said, I ended up accidentally ordering 4 more boxes. I signed up to an automatic subscription and forgot to cancel it for 2 months. Stupid 15% off.

Those 4 boxes have been sitting in my house for a couple of months now. Unopened. Untouched. Unloved. They might have even stayed that way.

But while listening to Penn Jillette’s podcast, he mentioned something interesting. He recently lost a ridiculous amount of weight ridiculously fast. I’m not planning on doing his super vegan, magic power diet (I don’t hate myself that much. Yet.), but he mentioned that for the first two week of the diet he could only eat potatoes. Unappealing, but enough to live.

He stated that his diet guru did this because he wanted to change Penn’s taste palate. By being forced to eat only potatoes, you will eat pretty much anything else by the end. On top of that, it helps you become aware of boredom eating, social eating, etc., which I found very interesting.

Now, I think nothing but potatoes can be a little risky. They aren’t very nutrient diverse. Although I doubt a month would be enough to kill you, you’d probably feel pretty crappy at the end. I will save that venture for my trip to mars.

But I do have something as bland as potatoes, but much healthier. I have that unloved and neglected pile of Soylent. So, in a moment of extreme masochism, I decided that I will spend 4 weeks eating nothing but Soylent.

Yay…

I have set some rules for myself.

– No more than one bag a day, with no flavors or additions. Blandness is the point of choosing Soylent, and the one or less back a day should ensure I have enough for the challenge.

– No calories from any other sources. That includes juices, soda, really dirty air, etc. My life is now Soylent.

Pretty simple, right?

Now, I am going to be posting about my progress each week on Friday. I was going to do daily, but you can only bitch about self imposed challenges in so many ways. A week gives me times to get something of substance.

So… ready, set, go!

– Shaman