It all started when my wife got a new job. For years we had both worked from home, and having lunch together was a daily tradition. For the most part, my wife fixed lunch (I'm in charge of dinner) and every day we'd have something different: Quesadillas and salad, veggie wraps with lentil soup, grilled PP&J with fruit. Good, pretty much healthy, stuff.
As soon as she started going into work several days a week though, I noticed that my priorities started to change. I didn't want to spend time cutting up lettuce, heating things on the stove, or stir-frying vegetables. I wanted something fast and easy, and most of all I didn't want to have to think about it.
My default solution was microwaved frozen burritos. I'm a guy that can eat Mexican food three meals a day, so burritos held me over for awhile. After a few months though, I started thinking, "Are these fifty-one cent burritos really what I want to be putting into my body every day?"
So I embarked on a quest to come up with something fast, simple, and easy that would fuel my body with everything it needs. After taking many different approaches, I put my knowledge of computer programming into play, and RoboShake was born.
I've described the concept behind RoboShake here, and answered some common questions about it here.
This report describes my wife's and my experiences drinking RoboShakes for six weeks, for a month of which it was our only source of food.
Overall
I can say with certainty that the four weeks we exclusively ate RoboShakes was the healthiest period of eating in my life. We ate virtually no processed foods and no animal products. And yet, because of the RoboShake algorithms, we weren't lacking in nutrition in any way.
Today my wife said that she felt better than she can ever remember feeling while we were drinking RoboShakes. I have to agree. Aside from a few bad shakes and a mild adjustment period, I felt light, happy, and energized.
Difficulty
I've never put myself on a long-term strict diet, but I know how challenging they can be, so I expected RoboShake to be a real test of willpower. Surprisingly, this was not the case.
The strongest cravings I had were for salty foods. I believe that this was directly due to the fact that I was leaving out most of the salt called for in the shake recipes in order to make them more palatable. I started drinking an appropriate amount of pickle juice to offset this deficiency, and that fixed the problem.
Early on, I also craved normal foods, especially rich ones like pizza or enchiladas. This subsided over time though. Interestingly though, my wife found pizza commercials repulsive (normally she loves pizza.)
Despite occasional food cravings, I was never hungry during the experiment. I wanted the sensation of eating, including the tastes and the chewing, but it wasn't because I was hungry. Before RoboShake I didn't know that there was a difference.
Overall, the six week RoboShake plan wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected. We didn't come even close to quitting, and I feel like I could easily do it again right now.
Physical Changes
I lost 5 or 6 pounds during the experiment. I think this is about the same as I'd lose if I was keeping an eye on what I ate and choosing slightly smaller portions. The goal of the experiment was not weight loss. However, the 2,000 daily calories that the shakes provided were probably less than what I'd need to maintain my weight, so the weight loss was not a surprise.
I normally exercise vigorously five days a week. I deliberately made no changes to this routine during RoboShake, so that I could observe any changes that the diet might be having. However, I did not notice any significant increase or decrease in my athletic performance.
Cost
The average cost of RoboShake was about $5.80 per person per day. For me and my wife, that adds up to a weekly grocery bill of just over $80. We usually spend about $120 per week, which amounts to about 33% savings. In reality though, if we eat out even occasionally, our total food bill would be more like $150 or $200, so RoboShake would be a significant overall savings.
Time
We rarely eat out even when eating normally, so we make breakfast, lunch, and dinner at home every day. Between me and my wife, I'd estimate that adds up to about an hour of cooking per day. We probably spend another hour or so each eating and doing dishes.
For RoboShake, I made all of our shakes in the morning, stored them in Nalgene bottles in the refrigerator, and drank them during the day. Depending on the complexity of the recipe, all seven liters of shakes took 30 minutes to an hour to chop, measure, and blend every morning.
This might seem like a time savings but it didn't feel like it. I am a morning person and often get a big chunk of my day's work done before 8:00am. I found it slightly annoying that I had to make food as soon as I woke up, rather than getting right to work. Additionally, because we needed such a high volume of fruit, I had to go shopping every three days instead of once a week, which also seemed like a burden.
Overall, I'd guess that I did in fact save time with RoboShake, but not as much as I hoped, and I lost time in the morning when I'd rather be focusing on work.
Energy, Mood, and Productivity
One area in which RoboShake was a resounding success was my daily energy levels. Normally, I peak at about 10am, need a nap after lunch, and am pretty much useless after 4pm. In fact, in the hours before dinner, I consistently get cranky and unpleasant to deal with. With RoboShake though, my energy levels and mood were much more even. I was tired by the end of the day, but usually not irritable. As much as I'd like to attribute these benefits to the nutritional quality of RoboShake, I believe that the energy stabilization I experienced was mostly due to the fact that I drank my shakes in eight servings throughout the day, keeping my blood sugar stable. I'll discuss this more later, but more frequent, smaller, meals are an aspect of RoboShake that I absolutely intend to integrate into my regular diet.
Hydration
I drank 128 fluid ounces a day while on RoboShake, which is more than double the 8 cups that conventional wisdom dictates a person should drink. I have a tendency not to hydrate as much as I should, so the forced liquid intake was good for me, especially in the Tucson summer heat.
Eliminating Meat and Dairy
I do not believe that eating animals or animal products is fundamentally wrong. All heterotrophs (animals, fungus, and bacteria) have to feed off other organisms to survive. However, I also believe that the level of meat and dairy consumption in the United States is unsustainable, leading to inhumane treatment of animals and environmental devastation. Additionally, evidence seems to suggest that over-consumption of animal products causes a range of detrimental health effects. For this reason, I think it's important for the future of humanity and the planet that we decrease, if not eliminate, our reliance on animal products.
All that being said, I do think that following a so-called "vegan" diet is quite difficult. My wife and I have attempted veganism several times, and we've found that complete elimination of eggs and dairy caused a number of problems. We felt listless, frustrated by lack of variety, found it annoying to read long lists of ingredients only to find trace amounts of milk, and discovered that it's almost impossible to eat a vegan meal at most restaurants. In theory I agree wholeheartedly with veganism, but in practice I've found it to be a lot of work without much obvious payoff.
RoboShake, however, was an entirely different experience. RoboShake is a vegan diet, but instead of a general feeling of sluggishness, I felt energetic and motivated while I was drinking them. All the ingredients (except almond milk) were whole, unprocessed, foods, so there was no reading of labels or worrying about food additives.
I really believe that the main difference between RoboShake and a normal vegan diet (if there is such a thing) is that RoboShake is nutritionally complete and balanced. A few minutes with a calculator will show you that it's pretty tough to get a decent carb/protein/fat balance eating vegan. While fruits and vegetables are generally quite rich in vitamins, they are noticeably lacking in a few important ones like iron and calcium. RoboShake solves this, and in my opinion makes it much, much, easier to be vegan.
Fruits and Nuts are Superfoods
Conventional wisdom posits that vegetables are the "healthiest" food group. I'm not a nutritionist, and I'm in no position to argue with experts, but from a mathematical perspective, fruits and nuts are the real heroes of the food world.
It's true, veggies, especially dark greens, have very high amounts of certain vitamins. A serving of turnip greens, for example, provides something like 1000% of your daily Vitamin K. Despite this, vegetables don't provide much in the way of actual energy, and the range of vitamins that they provide in large amounts is unexpectedly limited.
Fruits and nuts do not necessarily provide more micro-nutrients than vegetables, but they do contain carbohydrates, protein, and fat, which makes them great food.
I suppose that in modern society, it's pretty easy to get the three macro-nutrients, so nutritionists focus on the extra vitamins provided by veggies. But if I was stranded on a desert island, I'd want peanuts and apricots, not kale.
Back to Normal Food
Various friends and family members had all sorts of doomsday predictions for when we returned to normal food. One predicted that we'd become lactose intolerant, and several others thought that we'd have violently upset digestive systems.
None of this happened. We felt absolutely no negative effects when we returned to normal food. The only difference was that our stomachs seemed to be able to hold less than before, and we got full faster than normal.
Moving Forward
How will the RoboShake experiment affect our everyday lives now that we're eating normal food again? My wife and I plan to make a couple changes:
1. Eating several small meals per day
As I explained on Day 20, we're going to start eating six small meals per day. We'll be eating approximately every two hours. This gives us a perfect interval for taking a break from work, and will keep our energy levels even. We've already started this, and so far we've felt great. (Interestingly, I'm inclined to eat less when I eat more frequently, because I never get hungry.)
2. No vitamin supplements
I've learned that it's not especially hard to get a full range of vitamins and minerals when eating normal foods. The less processed foods are, the more of their natural nutrients they contain. So if I avoid stuff like oil, white bread, and sweets, vitamins probably won't be a problem. As I explained on Day 18, consensus among reputable experts seems to be that vitamins do not offer significant health benefits, and that they can in fact cause harm. So I'll be getting my micro-nutrients from regular food from now on.
3. Roboshakes a few days a week
We also intend to continue drinking Roboshakes, certainly not all the time, but as part of our overall diet. In fact, we have had them almost every day since "stopping" the experiment, except when we were gone on a road trip. And even then we brought some in the car! Continuing with RoboShakes goes hand-in-hand with eating frequent, small meals. I can make a batch once per day and we can have it for a couple meals.
Conclusion
There's no doubt that RoboShake was a positive experience for us, and I think that it will influence our eating habits for the rest of our lives.
I don't believe in deprivation. Life is short, and I don't want to miss out on nachos, lasagna, fried rice, or anything else that I love. But I certainly don't need them every day. What I do need every day though is something that will give me the fuel to live happily and productively. RoboShake provides that, and, even better, it taught me what to look for when I'm looking for nourishment, even if it isn't computer-optimized.
To bring this report full circle, I've definitely found something to have for lunch on days my wife is at work. I'll still miss eating with her, but I'm glad to know that when I get tired of frozen burritos, I've got something fast, easy, and healthy that I can rely on.
Bottoms up!
