I try to automate as much of the boring aspects of life as possible.

Eating healthy takes too much time, too often. And it’s expensive.

I usually skip eating anything more complicated than a granola bar for breakfast and end up feeling mentally sluggish and generally horrible right up until lunch. I need to manage my blood sugar better.

Enter the meal replacement Soylent, currently popular with programmers and various other nerd-types. I read about it on MakeUseOf and was convinced to give it a fair shot.

Week 1 with Soylent

Day 1

The first time I prepared it I followed the instructions exactly, and used only water and powder mix, and drank it with slightly cold tap water. This experience was rather unpleasant; I had to choke down about half a serving.

I thought my Soylent experiment was going to be a failure at this point. I considered canceling my subscription, but decided to at least give it another try with some modifications.

The Rest of the Week

After some quick research, I tried preparing it the night beforehand in a blender and storing it in the fridge. The second day I mixed it with a banana and Nestle chocolate powder mix, and the day after that a banana plus strawberry mix.

I’ve been drinking it once a day minimum, sometimes twice a day, but never for all four meals.

Cold soylent with some flavour is decent

It’s decent enough to continue on a daily basis and I’ve even started to look forward to it. More importantly though, I’ve been feeling much better every day this week in the mornings. I’m not hungry before lunch and I have better mental clarity all day.

Hey, look at me, I’m even updating this long-silent blog

That says something, too.

I guess there really is something to all that “eat a balanced diet” stuff.

I’ll update this post a few more times over the next year.

Update: 2016-05-17

I discovered that all you really need to improve the taste significantly is one banana per serving. Most other things don’t do much for the flavour at all, including the strawberries and chocolate sauce mentioned earlier. The banana is the key.

I am still having soylent for breakfast (almost) every day. On the days I don’t have it my mood and energy levels are consistently lower.

Soylent works and I’m happy with it.