1500 Days to Freedom

Think different and escape the rat race.

The soylent experiment was never about the soylent

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Trees about to go through their annual reset.
Trees about to go through their annual reset.

Last week, I went on a liquid diet of DIY soylent. Soylent intrigued me since I first heard about it sometime last year. I had wanted to try it for a long time and after I started to pack on some unsightly pounds, I figured now was as good a time as any. However, my body experiment was never really about soylent. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first I’ll tell you what happened on the liquid diet:

  • My weight dropped like a rock. I dropped from 168.2 down to 165.2 in 5 days. After going back on solid food, my weight creeped up by about a pound. Success!
  • Mentally I felt no different, but I didn’t crash in the afternoons. After I eat a heavy lunch, I’m ready for a nap. I felt great in the afternoons on the soylent.
  • Physically, I felt a lot better. I had more energy. Going to the 2nd floor of my home, I always skip every other stair. On Thursday I caught myself skipping 2 stairs at a time. It surprised me. I also noticed that I had a lot of pep during my workouts. On Thursday, I did almost 300 push-ups.
  • Sleep was horrible. I could not get to sleep. Despite going to bed around 10pm, I would still be tossing and turning 2 hours later. I think that this is either from having an empty stomach or maybe one of the ingredients had caffeine.
The Earth's daily reset
The Earth’s daily reset

While disgusting, I’m going to continue on with the DIY soylent. I’ll mix it with normal meals on a semi-regular basis. I’ll make a 1 day batch and consume it over the course of 2 days.

While the liquid died intrigued me, the experiment was never really about the soylent. It was about resetting my relationship with food. Prior to the 5 days on soylent, I had been eating a lot of junk. Way too many cookies, way too much pizza and not enough vegetables. After a week on the liquid diet, my willpower to eat the right thing is a lot stronger.

Resets are a necessary and powerful part of life

I’ve been thinking about resets a lot lately. They are healthy and we can find them in all parts of life. It just isn’t natural for any kind of system to maintain a consistent trajectory forever.

Last week, we experienced a slight stock market correction. The markets tumbled a bit and a lot of people freaked out. However, this is nothing but a little stock market reset. Some day, we’ll have a bigger one and it’s best to accept it for the reset that it is.

We need resets from our jobs in the form of vacation time. We take a week or two off and do something else with our time. We don’t have enough of it here in the States, but that is a post for another day.

Sometimes we decide that we need to change jobs completely. We find a new job or maybe even find a new career. A big life reset.

Those of us who are unlucky marry an incompatible person. That reset is called a divorce and can also reset the bank account. Ouch.

Resets are not always fun, but are healthy and natural. They are simply a course correction. When we come back from vacation or move to another state, we do so in the hope of changing our lives for the better. Same idea with my liquid diet. Forcing myself out of my comfort zone will improve my diet. Perhaps someday I’ll have to reset my diet again and I’ll choose a different experiment that time.

The biggest reset of all

The underlying theme of this blog is early retirement. One day in the future, I’ll reset my life when I stop working at my conventional job. That will be a good reset.

 

One last thing: I was interviewed last week. Listen here or here if iTunes is your thing.

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Comments

  1. Huh, I had never thought of early retirement as a “reset” before. Makes sense though. So much of the routines and patterns of my life is currently held in place by the bracing and scaffolding of a career.

    Without that framework all sorts of things are likely to get reset. Sleep schedule, vacation schedule, all schedules! Time and the allocation of it might dramatically change, and that’s exciting!

    The food reset is something I’m quite familiar with too. For us, that generally happens post holiday season. The double whammy of thanksgiving and christmas generally leaves us feeling like we need to eat only lettuce for all of January 🙂

    Even Frugal Hound needs a reset from time to time. Over the weekend, she was the happy recipient of a piece of anchovy on Saturday (I was cooking puttanesca) and a black bean on Sunday (cooking lunches for the week). It was hound heaven! Then yesterday evening she innocently trotted over to the kitchen while I was making dinner. Though she loves garbanzo beans (I was making hummus) she didn’t get one. I don’t want her learning to beg, and it was clear that treats 2 days in a row had given her ideas 🙂
    Mr. Frugalwoods recently posted…Music Mondays: What’s Your Mushaboom?My Profile

  2. Great post! I, too, could use a reset on my food eating habits and have been trying to eat more veggies lately (yuck!). I can’t wait for the day I get to hit the reset button and stop conventional work!

  3. My husband just did a reset as he started a new job yesterday at 62 years of age. He works remotely from home and was hired through a series of phone interviews. He says he doesn’t think they know how old he is. I said, don’t worry about. They’ll get an idea on Friday when he goes out to lunch with a bunch of them. 🙂
    debs @ debtdebs recently posted…55 Reasons it’s Okay To Be 55My Profile

  4. Feeling in a similar position as you did a week or so ago actually, been eating total crap and drinking far too much the last 3-4 weeks!
    I won’t be trying soylent but am going to get back on the normal healthy good stuff in the fridge and start running and playing squash again. I find myself in a much happier mood when I do this kind of routine, but it seems so easy to fall back into old habits, especially when lot’s of social occasions all come along at once 🙂
    theFIREstarter recently posted…Track Your Finances For Free – Introducing Money DashboardMy Profile

  5. Interesting idea that early retirement is a reset of your life. Good point. I, too, look forward to this life reset myself.

    For our household the biggest reset right now would be moving to a new house in a different city. It will take a bit of time to get used to.

    We’ll probably reset our eating habit too in the next few weeks. We’ve been snacking too much and eating too much sugar. Not good.
    Tawcan recently posted…Weekend Reading – packing editionMy Profile

    • Moving can be tough. Our move prior to this one was one of the most traumatic episodes of my life. Our neighbors were horrible, incredibly materialistic people. With that said, I think most people are decent at heart. We just ended up in an extreme place.

      Good luck with your move and eating reset!

  6. I didn’t realize that was what this experiment was about ,but it make sense.

    I have been at my company for more then 6 yrs doing about the same thing. This blogging community really got me out of my funk.

    I am currently working on a reset myself. Interviewed for a new position. I’m excited. But just going through the process has been great so either way its a win
    The Roamer recently posted…A Wedding or A Marriage? Part 1My Profile

  8. I like how you tied it all together. Life isn’t so much about the individual actions we make, but more about overarching concepts. I like it.

    Obviously, our big reset (and the event that eventually cascaded to every other part of our life) was our divorce and reconciliation. It’s crazy how life has been completely night and day different in the last 6 1/2 years.
    Big Guy Money recently posted…Luxury’s Curious Effect On Decision MakingMy Profile

  9. A good awakening. The only reset that I used to notice is my inability to be able to stay awake (sleeping disorder). You made good sense of it all by just pointing it out. Turns out I reset things all the time. Thought it was a short attention span (could be) but realise there is much more to my bouncing around to multiple hobbies, books, honey-dos, etc. Bravo

    • Oooh, a sleeping disorder sounds like hell. I take my good health for granted a bit too much.

      I tend to bounce around too. iPhone attention span I call it.

    • Yeah, and I admit I was a bit terrified. I don’t know what my problem is. My heart beats like crazy and I have to calm myself down. After it was done, I thought about telling the interviewer to trash the whole thing.

      In any case, thank you for the vote of confidence because I obviously have none.

      • Yeah, I’d never know you were nervous. It sounded great. I’m curious if that trip out to SF/Yosemite will happen before we head your direction? You think it will happen before April next year? That’s our goal for being out there.
        😉

        • Thanks Jeff, I’m getting better and I appreciate your kind comments.

          Our California trip isn’t until May/June, but our paths will cross no matter what.

  11. This was by far one of my favorite posts you’ve done to date. While not the humorous type I usually enjoy from the 15oo’s, it was a thought-provoking read.

    Maybe it’s because I’m with my mother so much these days as she’s heading for the biggest “reset” of all…end of life. But she and I both believe it’s just the end of life as we know it. I hope for her that the next part of her journey is full of joy, no pain and lots and lots of beautiful trees. I’ll never look at another tree again that I won’t think of her and how she sees them.

    To resets ~
    Ree
    Ree Klein recently posted…Reflecting on Failure as a Byproduct of GrowthMy Profile

    • Oh Ree, good luck with preparation for sending your mother on her next big journey. I’ll be thinking of your family when I visit the redwoods in 2015.

  12. This whole year has been one big reset for me with a career change. It shakes things up for awhile, but these resets are necessarily and helpful over the long haul.

  13. Hello family 1500! At first, I want thank you all four for the great blog, that I am following for quite some while now.

    Your experiment has inspired me to make the soylent reset myself. Since the birth of our small princess I ate a lot of “not so healthy stuff” due to the associated stress. With soylent it seems I have the chance to do the necessary reset, which I did not seem to find the energy for up to now.
    I will use an off-the-shelf version. (Should need even less energy than DIY.)

    (Please excuse my English, I am no native speaker.)

    • Hi Thomas-

      Your english is great and I wish you the best of luck with your own Soylent experiment. It has worked out great for me so far and I actually miss it a bit now that I’m back to normal food. I’ll be going back on in shortly though, probably next week.

    • I agree that it is different, but I think it’s still a reset. Not a job reset, but a life reset or somewhere in between.

      I should have studied philosophy so I could come up with clearer thoughts.

  15. I’ve been on my own similar DIY soylent (I abhor calling by beloved smoothies solent) fix for awhile now. It really gets me consuming something highly nutritious and healthy both in the morning and lunch time.

    That 2 times a day thing has helped condition me to be good about dinner too, so dinner is rarely pizza now and often more healthy nutritious whole foods.

    I’ll keep ya on your healthy kick by checking in on your DIY soylent diet 😉
    Steve recently posted…Zero to One Book GiveawayMy Profile

    • Nice! Yes, “soylent” is a foul sounding word that should be reserved for the nastiest of the nastiest.

      Please do keep me honest. It has been going well, but sooner or later, I’ll fall off the wagon. My immediate goal is to weigh in below 160 before America’s Thanksgiving (end of November).

      • I’ll hold you to it – I’ll wag my finger at your if you are not at your goal by the end of November!!

        In 2008 I was a beefy 180 pounds – the most I have ever been. I did do a lot of weight lifting but I also consumed A LOT of food. My ideal weight nowadays is in the low 150s.
        Steve recently posted…Zero to One Book GiveawayMy Profile

  17. For the past couple of years I’ve done a cleanse of some sort at the beginning of the New Year. I love how it’s a literal and metaphysical way to start fresh. I am in the process of approaching a big reset and it’s a huge deal for me. I think that we atrophy and shut down without fresh energy and perspective. And literally getting rid of the crap from before. HEHE!!
    Michelle recently posted…Food Waste, the Documentary DIVE, and How YOU Consume, Let’s Save Some MoneyMy Profile

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