Starting today, I’m going 30 days without eating any food. Instead, I’ll be living off Soylent, a new age powdered meal replacement.
Why am I doing this? I’ll explain. But first, if you aren’t familiar with Soylent, here’s the gist:
In 2013, 24 year-old Rob Rhinehart created a powdered drink mix that met all of the nutritional requirements for an average adult. Basically, a meal replacement. He called it Soylent.
After a 30 day diet consisting of only Soylent he launched a crowdfunding campaign on Tilt so his friends could get their hands on some as well. Shockingly, Soylent ended up raising $3 million, one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns ever.
Since then, Rhinehart and his team have raised $20 million in funding and have a cult-like following (along with an army of haters).
But to answer your original question, here’s why I’m giving up food for a month and living off Soylent instead.
1. Curiosity
One of the reasons Rob Rhinehart created Soylent was to help maximize his efficiency. Meaning, eliminate the time he spent cooking and consuming food. I’m interested to see if living exclusively on Soylent for a month will make me more efficient.
My wife, Jessica, and I live in the outskirts of Nashville. We have one dog (Bro, who is a world-record holder in the dog mile), no kids, and we’re always hustlin’. I run a lot. I coach cross country and track at a local school and travel for meets regularly. It’s a dream.
Jess and I run a photo/video business and find ourselves traveling quite a bit for it. That’s also a dream. When we’re not traveling we’re at the desk cranking out hours of editing. At times we’ve felt torn on how we can manage this schedule alongside our other interests: friendships, writing, crafting, running, date nights, etc.
Everyone wants more time. Will Soylent help me get back some of my precious time?
2. No other posts have addressed my questions
There are a few posts documenting people living off Soylent for 30 days. Some of them are great, but most do not involve things that matter to me.
For example, I’m a runner. I run around 70 miles a week. I like doing 5K races on the weekends and I recently ran a 4:12 mile. I have yet to read a post explaining the pros and cons of Soylent on athletes. So, because I’m one curious dude, I decided to find out myself. Throughout these 30 days I’ll document my productivity levels, running performance, and the emotional effects.
3. I support crazy
I’ve done a bit of research on Rob Rhinehart, the creator of Soylent. The guy is building a product he thinks will replace food. He’s teetering the line between crazy and genius. I like that. Did y’all see the post he wrote about having magnets in his hand?
Of course, most will say that living off Soylent for a month is extreme. I don’t disagree. This experiment, along with the rest of this website, is about exploring interesting and outlandish people. 30 days with no food? That’s pretty outlandish.
Who knows…maybe I’ll find some enlightenment in the next 30 days.
4. Soylent 2.0 was just released
Soylent just released a ready to drink version. While I’ll mostly be drinking the original powder version, I hope to spend at least a week or two using their new mix. Plus, their recent publicity gave me a good kick in the butt to do this.
Wanna follow along?
Over the next month I’ll be documenting my experience right here on The Hustle.
I’ll write a post each week about my running, productivity levels, body, emotions, and a bunch of other stuff.
At the end of the 30-day experiment I’ll write a big recap, which hopefully will become a resource for anyone interested in doing the same.
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