Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on. NOT to "End Food". It is to be a better occasional meal replacement. It's a nice improvement on many boring products that preceded it (Ensure, etc). But, that doesn't make for good linkbait headlines nor revenue-generating eyeballs on sidewall ads. This is yet another in a long series of manufactured-controversy articles propping up Soylent as either the Savior or the Devil. YOU DECIDE!

Not that I mind. I'm a backer of Soylent. When my month's supply arrives, I'm looking forward to living on it 100% for 30 days for a few reasons:

1) I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening. But, I think that if I commit to a defined, strict diet, I stand a chance. Soylent should be particularly good for that because supposedly it won't leave me with carb/protein/fat cravings like every other diet I've tried.

2) I like the idea of going on a cleanse. What better cleanse than supposedly exactly what your body needs and nothing else?

3) I'm interested in the chemical science vs. mystical vitalism theory of nutrition debate. I.e. do we need certain chemicals or do we need "something to do with Real Food" to thrive? Supposedly, people feel really fine living on Soylent. I want to see for myself first-hand. I plan to get my "blood work" numbers measured before and after.

> I need to lose a bit of weight. I know that for me, the best way to do that is to significantly change my "generally good but occasionally indulgent" diet. I know from experience that I can't willpower that into happening.

I had the same problem. The way I increased my willpower was by:

   1) Weighing myself every day (always at the same time if I could)
   2) Writing it down.
   3) Graphing it in Excel

I found that seeing how my behaviour over the previous days had affected my weight gave me the willpower to eat smaller portions and forgo snacks. And having a short feedback loop allowed me to correct if I started slipping. I still ate plenty, and had snacks/biscuits etc. between meals, (I didn't feel like I was starving myself) but I found that a small change in daily intake was enough to gradually make the weight come off.

Calculate how much calories you eat. You can find online the max amount of calories to lose weight.

Too much work, and I've already lost as much weight as I need to [1]. Weighing yourself every day and recording the result is very easy. All you need is a pad and pen by your scales. And if you want to graph it, once you have a spreadsheet, then updating it (even if only once a week) is very quick, and seeing the graph head downwards, is very motivating.

I found it was the smallest habit I had to form to produce a result.

[1] I've gone from almost 20st 5-6 years ago to just under 11st.

I wouldn't want to do it on an ongoing basis, but the act of calculating out a few meals can be helpful to calibrate one's sense of how much they should be eating.

It can be easy to miss how calorie rich certain foods are.

> It can be easy to miss how calorie rich certain foods are.

That's exactly why weighing myself every day worked for me; I wasn't able to kid myself about how much I was eating. I also found that the odd big meal didn't matter, as long as I didn't make it a habit (which I didn't do thanks to having a tight feedback loop).

"The explicitly stated purpose of Soylent is NOT to live on."

That's an odd thing to say considering Rhinehart initially got all this attention because he was LIVING OFF OF IT. It's almost like he was trying to make a statement. Hmm...

> exactly what your body needs and nothing else?

Soylent's main ingredient is maltodextrin which is certainly not essential to any diet.

Carbohydrates are, however. From the Soylent 1.0 ingredients list:

> Maltodextrin (165g) - As the primary source of energy for the body, carbohydrates are the largest component of Soylent by mass. The starch in Oat Flour makes up the bulk of this nutrient and the rest is provided by Maltodextrin.

http://blog.soylent.me/post/68180382810/soylent-1-0-macronut...

>Carbohydrates are, however.

Carbohydrates are in no way essential to a diet if replaced with proper amounts of fat and protein. http://eatingacademy.com/

There are NO essential carbohydrates. Carbs are not the only source of energy.

"Boring"? While they aren't particularly pleasant those boring products come in a variety of flavours and styles (soup; juice styles; shakes).

Everytime Soylent comes up and someone mentions the existing product Soylent supporters claim that Soylent is a peoduct you can live on. (Ignoring the fact that you can live on those other products) you've just removed the only differentiator.

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