Experiments in Food: Soylent and Joylent (by alaric)

I was interested to hear about Soylent - the meal replacement, not Soylent Green - when it came onto the scene. I lead a busy life, which includes cooking for two kids and a wife (one of the children has an intolerance to cow milk, and my wife has an intolerance to gluten as well as milder issues with cow milk and soya). I often find myself in the situation of being quite hungry myself, at the start of needing to cook a complicated meal from fresh ingredients. Also, I don't like eating breakfast until an hour after getting up, so I tend to eat in the office on weekdays; due to a shortage of filling breakfast options that will last long enough for me to finish them off on two days a week, I often end up skipping breakfast at weekends or just grazing on raw root veg from the fridge, then feeling woozy come lunch time (about when I need to start organising lunch for the family). So the idea of a powder I can store for a long period and then turn into a balanced meal replacement with near-zero effort, and cheaply at that, certainly has some appeal.

Sadly, Soylent decided they can't ship to the UK (and muttered something about refunding my contribution to their crowdfunding effort on that basis, but not until November 2015 - and I funded them in July 2013!), so I gave up on the idea of giving it a go.

But thankfully, they have published their recipe online, which has prompted a Dutch company to set up shop making it and shipping it from the EU! They're called Joylent, and as the name suggests, are taking a rather light-hearted approach to producing basically the same stuff. So I gleefully ordered some, and have started experimenting with it.

I don't plan on living on the stuff, although some have - I just want an easy, filling, meal replacement for when circumstances require it.

So far, I've had two "meals" of it, and the results have already been somewhat interesting.

The first one was a weekend breakfast replacement. I started with the vanilla flavour; it was tasty and 600ml of the stuff went down easily, leaving me feeling satiated. I found I felt full, and with plenty of energy, but I was craving crispy and strong-tasting food; I think my mind didn't quite believe that a soupy liquid with a gentle vanilla flavour could have actually fed me. Although I was craving salty fries and pickles, I didn't actually want to eat anything; I just wanted those flavours, and would probably have been happy to just nibble a tiny amount or something.

Come 1:30pm, four and a half hours later, I felt a sudden pang of hunger, but it passed quickly. I still didn't feel light-heated and ill as I often do when I can't easily eat. In this particular case, I was on a long drive, so we didn't get to stop for lunch until 3pm. I was feeling... "peckish" by then; I fancied the idea of eating, but wasn't suffering from hunger, which was unusual for such a late lunch. I ate a paneer tikka wrap and the leftovers of Sarah's nachos, so plenty of exciting textures and strong tastes, which was exactly what I wanted! I didn't have to eat very much to feel full and satiated, and had a light (and nutritionally meagre) dinner of chips and ketchup that evening (due to lack of alternatives, being a vegetarian in a place that focussed on the eating of sausages), and went to bed not feeling malnourished at all.

The next morning, I had a whole grapefruit for breakfast, but was feeling pretty hungry come lunchtime at 1pm. Sadly, the place we ate was focussed on the eating of roasted animals, so all I had for lunch was a small plate of roasted potatoes and steamed vegetables, which was tasty but not very nutritionally diverse (I'd eaten little protein since lunch the day before). So before setting off on the drive home, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I had a second vanilla Joylent. It was pleasing that I'd been able to chuck my nice Joylent mixing bottle and the open pack in my bag for the trip; I bought a bottle of water in a shop to mix it up, but if I'd brought my own bottle of water I'd have been ready to throw together a "meal" wherever and whenever I wanted.

I was once again satiated, although a little less so; I think I put less powder in (judging a third of a pack of powder is tricky, although I think I'll soon be able to work out how big a third of a pack looks in the mixing bottle and get it right in future), as it came out a lot more watery this time, despite not being full quite to the 600ml mark. Once again, I was quickly craving crunchy strong tastes, so at about 8pm, I ate some salt and vinegar crisps at a motorway service station. This quickly led to me feeling I'd eaten too much salt; I felt a bit dehydrated and had a nasty salty taste lingering in my mouth. I suspect the morale of that story is that I've become accustomed to eating too much salt; I need to train my mind to realise that I don't need to have tasted savoury salty flavours to have eaten a meal!

As I lie in bed typing this at 11:15pm, I'm feeling a bit hungry, but not uncomfortably so (I didn't have dinner or anything else to eat).

The Joylent flavours are banana, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla; I think it would probably be a good idea for me to train myself out of craving salty tastes in a meal, but it's quite interesting that I've not found anything else I've eaten lately as filling as the Joylent, nor able to keep me "going" as long. I could see myself living happily on the stuff, but I would really miss food tastes and textures. However, it's made me more aware of how nutritionally limited a lot of foods are. I like the thought of using something like this as "fuel" and then having small quantities of spicy crunchy foods for the taste!

Also, it would be interesting to try and make a curry flavoured Joylent. Either get some without any flavourings added, or start with a mild-tasting one and blend in a nice mix of spices. I may have to perform some experiments in that area!

Time to get fit (by alaric)

Sarah's been putting a lot of work into losing weight lately, but apart from the fitness stuff I do in Krav Maga classes most weeks, I've not really paid much attention to my own health. However, my work have a fancy new medical insurance benefit thing, which has two features of relevance: One is that they pay for us to be poked and prodded and weighed and so on to establish our basic health parameters, and the other is that they encourage us to do exercise and eat well through a complex system of points-based incentives.

This has a two-pronged effect: It's told me that my body mass index (23.4) is in the healthy range (18.5-25), but a bit close to the top end; and my blood pressure (124/75) should be under (120/80). Thankfully, both of these can be improved by doing more cardiovascular exercise; and with the complex system of points-based incentives, this is GAMIFIED. Combined that with discounts on interesting fitness tracker gadgets, and feeling that nagging awkward feeling of watching Sarah work really hard on her weight loss while I slumped on the sofa with my laptop, and it started to become inevitable that I was going to start doing more exercise.

So, I got a discounted Polar RC3 GPS. This is a watch with a GPS and some smarts in it, which communicates via radio with a heart rate monitor worn on a strap. By logging heart rate data it can measure my exertion in an activity, and if that activity involves moving around (running or cycling, for instance) it can combine that with speed and gradient information from the GPS to work out what effort I was expending. This data is uploaded via a USB cable to a Web service that Polar run (alas, I have to depend on them keeping the thing up and bothering to securely store all my data, although there does seem to be an option to download it in a documented file format; but if the site goes down, I'll be having to reverse-engineer their USB protocol to continue to get data from my watch).

The fun is in the analysis, however. Their software has a model of human metabolism that works out how much strain I'm putting on my system, how many calories I've used, how many calories of fat I've burnt, and an efficiency factor they call "running index". It'll gather data across exercise sessions and work out trends and all sorts of fun stuff, including a "training load" graph that tracks an exponentially decaying cumulative average of the strain I undergo; horizontal bands on the chart indicate cumulative load levels where I should be taking things easy for a few days.

It also has an ability to suggest training schedules, which can be uploaded into the watch, and will then guide me - giving me a target heart rate to aim for for a given time period, then moving up to a higher pace, than down again, for instance.

So I've set myself the target of doing at least one - and ideally three or four - runs a week, where I spend at least half an hour above seventy percent of my estimated maximum heart rate. Here's one I did earlier. You can even see what I did on a little map, including my cool-down period at the end!

The data from this thing feeds into the health insurance provider, too, which then drives their points-based incentive system. This has an unexpected benefit; although I'm quite enamored of earning points on principle, some of the benefits are things that Sarah and the kids enjoy (free cinema tickets once a week, Starbucks or iTunes credit, etc). That makes an incentive for them to send me out on runs; given how busy our life is, that's surprisingly useful!

Other than meeting my weight and blood pressure goals, and generally increasing the number of armed assailants I can disable at Krav before I start to get sweaty, I'd quite like to do a marathon or something one day.

Exercise and a Diet That’s Wise (by sarah)

Those who've been following will know that I am loosing weight - what is kind of weird is that I am still loosing weight even though I am now back up to the 1400 cals that I was eating before with binges of 1600. Of course it is not that weird, having lost a bit of weight, discovering in the process that I can't eat any wheat or barley etc... and having medication for headaches and what not and then the bleeding finally stopping. My pelvis finally settled down and most of the joint pain went so I can do stuff.

I've been running! Yes I know! Six months ago I was having to use the damn walking stick to walk into town and now I have little races with Jeany. I wish I could have done it before but I couldn't, I know because I was trying. Desperately. It took the combination of medication for under laying problems, getting equipment out of my own money that meant I could exercise without putting undue strain on the pelvis and could exercise at home so I could rest when needed, a 1000 cal diet for about 3 months during which time I was dizzy with white spots in vision, neaseatingly hungry and Mr McGrumpy Pants, and last but not least discovering that there was something else other than cow and soya that I was allergic/intollerant/having an immune response to.

To be honest I don't think I would have managed it without Al or the nurse or the money to eat properly and buy special equipment or if I'd had a full time job. In fact one of the things that became apparent to me was that everytime I have tried to go back to college I have become really ill again. It could just be the added strain but I don't think so because it was also taking me 2 weeks to recover from parties and the common factor was bread.

At home we didn't tend to eat it, but at parties there were sarnis and college there was packed lunches or bought sandwitches. I've done a couple of parties now without eating any wheat and it has not taken me two weeks to recover!

So this is all great, but you know I'm not actually that excited by the weight loss itself - what I am excited about is getting fit and doing stuff. So I am currently aiming to go to the climbing wall for a me climb once a month - and yes that is lame but it takes a while for my muscles to stop aching and being all fatigued enough to do a proper climbing session. It has been amazing to be able to climb again - I suck at it and it is frustrating because I remember being better but I think I'm doing well.

I have a Dr Who Walk/Run-athon which I am working my way towards and of course the exercise bike 🙂

Last night I did a 7 min work out with Alaric though I skipped a couple of the exercises though one of those was because I was still planking and this time I had to stop not because of my c-section scar or my stomach muscles but due to my shoulder! I did not even attempt the side planks but Al did.

(Shoulder is an old stunt biking accident - the same one where it turned out I'd broken my pelvis not that I knew it at the time).

Then we have the chin up bar - now I got this bar about 2 years ago and Al installed it and I was really trying with it. First off I couldn't even reach it with my hands, then I reached it and held on but couldn't lift my feet. Alaric on the other hand could bring his knees up to his chest but not do a pull up - we both wanted to do climbing again and it seemed like a good thing to train our upper body strength.

Eventually I managed to lift my feet off the ground - just a fraction. I was so excited though it really was nothing and it wasn't with my arms it was just trying to lift the legs using leg muscles and handing by my arms.

I am now 2 years later at the same point Alaric was in the beginning - I can pull my knees up to my chest and for the last 3 days I have been able to lift myself slightly with my arms. Yesterday I sung on the bar which was ACE, I lost my grip but did not crash to the ground but landed on my feet and my pelvis did not hurt! Stuff like this has been so painful for so long that mainly the last few months has been about testing limits. Amazingly I've only ended up with ouchy hip twice - though I am having a... erm... wee wee problem. I'm kind of just padding up and ignoring it and then showering as soon as I've had a run etc... TMI I am sure but I also know this is a problem a lot of women have and it needs to be talked about!

Alaric can now do 3 pull ups 🙂

I've caught up to him with the planking - now I need to do the same with the pull ups!

Also one day I would still like to do a full marathon - I had resigned myself that this was one life goal I could never reach but now very much I am starting to think it is back on.

Kind of should get some running shoes...

12 years… (by sarah)

So today I went to the Drs to see how the weight loss was going and stuff, I was convinced I had piled it on over Christmas I felt a lot stockier than before Christmas and to be honest I ate a lot reaching 1600 on alot of the days. This is about the 1400 stable and 1200 weight loss that I sorted with the nurse. 1600 is what I was eating before I went to the Drs, the amount I was eating and wondering why my weight was creeping up as everyone knows women have 2000 calories a day - unless you are me. I am short, had a boarderline thyroid for a decade or so and as it turns out have the lighter Asian skeleton like my dad (as well as the afro-carrabean spin from my mum) - add in the low mobility and I was screwed.

But between tablets and the discovery that I can't eat wheat and sticking to the low calorie counts to loose the excess weight, I have been loosing weight but I seriously ate some food over the holiday and then my birthday and so on.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I go and find I have lost weight, not much but I have lost weight still. The key being that due to pelvis being a lot more stable I have been out doing more stuff, doing running games with the cubs and even managing a 20 minute climb. And then they said my bloods were all good, all the tests were normal!!!

That is the first time that has been said to me, no not sures, or a bit high, or oooo that's not goods or it's boarderline or here's a tablet to help control this. So amazing!

And that is the first time in about 12 years possibly more.

One of the conversations I had with the Dr recently was that I don't know what energy level I am supposed to have - I've not had "me" energy since I was 18, I don't think 30+ normally have the same the energy as a teen so I have no idea if I am back to normal or not and to a certain extent I kind of don't care either as I am so much better than I have been for so long. I feel a little bit sad that that bit of life is kind of missing for me but at the same time I have the girls and though maybe I could have taken them to more things if I'd been weller I also know they love snuggly time watching films and colouring and stuff and I still took them to parks it was just some days I couldn't and when I did it was the outing for the day.

Interestingly I came home thinking about what I was doing last time it looked like I might get better with all the back treatments and exclusion diets at Chelsea and Westminster. That was like 12 years ago as was me trying to get a PhD place, the one I really really wanted was with the Open University, but it relied on Beagle2 landing and collecting data. It didn't happen, the beagle disappeared and today I watched the press-conference live of how they've found it sitting there on the surface of Mars. It made me smile, bitter sweet and poetically lovely.

Maybe when I have a cyborg body I can fly to Mars and say hi to it 🙂

Of course with hindsight I think it was for the best for me, I became so very sick and my friend who got the PhD funding did far more with the chance than I think I would have because fundamentally I am a shyer person and just not as good at Chemistry and form filling!

And anyway I am not sure I wouldn't be in a similar place to were I am now anyway.

2015 is kind of gearing up to be an amazing year.

Advent 19 – Bojustu (by sarah)

It is day 19 of Advent and I am so not really ready for Christmas but here is today's painting - it is supposed to be Father Christmas's sled in the northern lights

This week Jean learnt stuff that is apparently not widely known outside of Japan, seeing the rugby players on route I am so glad she is doing jujitsu or bojutsu as it was today. This involved large sticks that I couldn't help but compare to English quarter staves as they and archery were like the only things I was ever any good.

(photos phone)