Unforeseen Complications

I timed my DIYS start poorly. I brought enough DIYS with me yesterday to stand me through my workday but not enough to get my through my math exam last night and I came out of it ravenous.

Unfortunately, I also became aware of another issue- I had the urge to physically chew on something and this urge got stronger throughout the day. At some point, I mentioned the desire to rip at something with my teeth to a friend and she seemed mildly alarmed (and justifiably so). I attempted to stem this urge with gum but the relief was temporary. By 8pm, this urge became so overwhelming that my arrival home involved me busting through my front door and barreling to my fridge and devouring a small amount of chicken casserole right then and there. I didn't even really want the taste- just the pleasure of chewing on something. So, I clearly have a chewing addiction that I need to break; this explains a lot about why I previously found myself eating when I wasn't hungry. When I weighed myself this morning, I had already dropped a bit, so my one brief encounter with my fridge didn't do that much harm.

Solution time! I had planned some loopholes into my DIYS diet in case of emergency and I've expanded those loopholes accordingly:

• Food from my garden is okay. I grow tomatoes, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and, someday, my grapevines will mature. 
• I will be adding raw carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumbers to my garden ASAP and those items will be store-bought until further notice in order to aid with resolving my chewing needs. Fresh/raw vegetables are back on the table for me. 
• A light dinner is acceptable once a week. Twice a week is fine if said dinner is a salad. 
• I will continue my weekly Graze box of healthy snacks. They are $6 and I have been ordering their calorie-counter snack box for a few months now and they're GREAT. If you want to see what they are, go to the Graze site. If you want to try one, you can use my code GWEND45ME to get your first box free. This isn't a plug, per se... I just really like my boxes and many of my friends love getting them as well.

Also, I did not calculate caffeine into my diet and between the sudden lack of coffee and the sharp drop in calories, I got super dizzy around 2pm yesterday. The most popular resolution for Soylent-related dizziness is water and I have therefore been downing some in addition to my jugs of brown. If you are planning to try Soylent, plan on that as well. I also had to take some ibuprofen for my caffeine-withdrawal headache. This was, as you might guess, not ideal before taking an exam.

Since pure caffeine in controlled amounts is good for improving your metabolism, I have considered getting some caffeine tablets, crushing them, and adding them to my Soylent mix. I ran almost purely on coffee and Redbull before Soylent so I feel like this wouldn't be that drastic. Bear in mind, the tablets I'm talking about have about the equivalent of one cup of coffee per tab and I'm certainly not planning on dumping a whole box in. Maybe just two- and those will be spread across my whole day's amount of nutrition.

I will expound on this in a later post: I've ordered some powdered peanut butter and some Xanthan Gum so assist in improving my recipe. Peanut butter is for protein and taste (I really wanted to taste the PB in my whey mix!) and for texture; this reddit link goes over ways to reduce the gritty texture in DIY Soylent and not only is Xanthan Gum on there, but the Schmoylent folk making the Glenda Fuel mix seem to be using it in most of their mixes as well!