Day 10-16 !!!!!

First of all, I have to say. I wasn’t absent because anything bad happened to me. My sister became quite unwell and I had to look after her and her 8 year old son, so I didn’t have time to do my daily blog updates.

Now, here’s what’s been going on the last week.

I’m still on Joylent, but not 100%. I’ve added 1 meal back into my daily schedule. Sometimes lunch and sometimes dinner. That one meal in generally MUCH more healthy than I was eating in the past. So my weight is hovering around 85kg at the moment (187lb). I find I’m eating a pretty big meal each day so that probably stops me from dropping more weight. I’m going to start swimming each day as of Wednesday. I’ll put get my updated blood tests done in a few days as well.  I always intended to add possibly one meal a day back into my diet. I just did it a little earlier than I was going to. This was also partially because I had to cook for two other people for the week. I found that 3 meals a day of Joylent was getting a bit old, I needed the variety. I really wish Joylent would do a neutral flavour, that way I could add some stewed apples, or other fruits and instead of eating a meal per day I could sort of add food to the mix of my Joylent.

Anyways…. so how do I feel…. I feel amazing. I feel better than I’ve felt in many many years. My thinking is much clearer, my mood is stable, I haven’t had a single “crash” as I would call them. My high and low crash moods are completely gone. It took a few days to get used not being up and down, it was a little weird at the start but now it’s the norm. The anxiety which I usually get is GONE, I’m not sure what the exact cause of this is, but I can suffer pretty badly from anxiety at times, I haven’t had a bout of that since I started Joylent. My skin is a LOT better. (psoriasis update coming in a day or so with updated pics). I’m sleeping more normal now. I get to sleep a lot easier, and i stay asleep mostly through the whole night. This is another thing I haven’t been able to do for many years. I’m pooping normal again… daily, without strain. Once again, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. I just feel great. I even fed it to my sister when she arrived at my house very unwell, the change in her skin after 3 days on it was remarkable! Red skin patches that she has had for years were almost gone in just 3 days. She mentioned how when she looks in the mirror that she feels strange, like she isn’t looking at herself anymore..I got this same feeling when my red patches went from my face!

I can honestly say that I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Joylent in my kitchen. I need to have at least one serving a day of it now. It’s the first thing I do every day now. I get up and drink my Joylent. I’ve changed the way I like to drink it, I now prefer it after it’s been in the fridge for a few hours and I don’t like to drink it freshly mixed anymore. I really hope my next order gets here before I run out. This is my new worry, I need to stay up on my ordering so I always have some here.

The above sounds like a bit of a sales pitch…. I assure you, I’m in no way affiliated with Joylent, it’s just my experience. I’m sure I could get what I’m getting from Joylent by eating certain foods etc, but no way near with the ease and cost of what I get with Joylent. That’s part of the reason that I don’t eat so well, I don’t want to buy, cook, clean after cooking. It just works for me.

So everything is going well!

Day 9

OK today I have a bit of a warning for anyone thinking of going on Joylent 100%. If you are going to eat ONLY Joylent, you need to make sure that you are eating the whole bag per day. If you don’t you are probably going to be deficient in things that are probably going to make your body unhappy. Yes, the weight loss is great but I can’t advise doing what I’m doing, just because I don’t know how it’s going to effect you. I don’t mind experimenting with my body though….(that sounds a lot dirtier than it’s meant to)…. I’m just saying, I can’t comment on how only eating half a bag is going to effect you when you’re supposed to be eating a whole one.

Woke up at 6:30am 85.4kg!! (188.2 pounds). Nice sleep hours, will be trying to keep it that way. Weight has been falling off!!!

I decided I better up my intake today, half a bag might see me deficient in something so I’m going to add at least another serving today so I’m eating 4/6 of the bag.

2/6 bag banana at 7am

1/6 bag choc at 1pm

1/6 bag banana at 6pm

I did another one of those pain saving enemas today, massive amount of poop followed. Very very easy to pass when it got started.. I think I crapped more today than I would usually do in 2 weeks…. It seems that My body doesn’t have a problem digesting the food and getting it down and almost out, it just doesn’t come out, but this isn’t a new problem for me..I had this issue way before I started on Joylent. I’ve been reading online and it seems that it can take up to 20 days for your body to adjust to dietry changes, and sometimes longer depending on what the changes are and the state of your gut health etc. I’m only at day 9, so I’m still holding out hope that my body will adjust and I will start pooping at least once a day, with no extra…err….stuff needed to make that happen.

I should add at this point that before I started on Joylent, I had a badly sprained ankle. I couldn’t walk at all for 8 weeks, and I’d only been back on my feet for 3 weeks when I started. So I can’t really do any exercise. I can walk about, but I can’t walk fast and I cant walk very far so everything that’s happening is with pretty much 0 exercise. Just an FYI. Exercise also might assist in pooping… if I could do it.

Bed at 10

Day 8

Woke up at 7:30am 86kg (189lb). I’m now down 4kg (8.8 pounds) since starting a week ago. My morning blood glucose as soon as I woke up was 4.8 mmol, which is fine.
I’m not going to test my glucose much anymore, mainly because of my testing and investigation yesterday pretty much confirms that my levels are fine and my body is working the way it should be when it comes to blood sugars. I might do a test here and there but not daily, and my fingers still hurt from all the pricks yesterday.

1/6 bag of banana for breakfast. At around 8:30am

1/6 bag strawberry at 2pm

1/6 bag chocolate at 7pm
I won’t be reporting on how I feel for a bit, simply because I can’t accurately tell if any not so nice feelings are due to having a cold / sore throat / cough or if they are due to what I’m eating, so for now I’ll leave any commentary like that out. I am continuing to eat just Joylent though…
Only at half a days serving in total (again) today…I’m sure only eating half a days worth of food is going to catch up with me, if it hasn’t already, but we will see in a few days.
Sleep at 10pm

Blood Tests – Before Starting.

Here’s my blood tests from before I started. There seems to be one missing that I asked for… doctor screw up. I wanted the one that shows you the vitamin levels, I didn’t get it… so below it all I got. I don’t really know much about blood chemistry so I can’t really comment too much about them, I’ll just list them up for reference.

Full Blood Examination.. I’m not really sure what these are so I’m just posting for the sake of it.

Fasting Glucose…. 5.3. Little higher than it has been the last few days, so it appears that this may have dropped a little already? Not that the below readin is bad though.

Mix of various readings below, nothing to be alarmed about, everything seems fine.

Cholesterol…….This isn’t an unexpected result. My Triglycerides are almost 2 x the maximum safe ceiling reading. You can read what it should be on the chart below. Trig should be <2.0 mine are 5.8!! My HDL (the good ones) could also be higher. I must admit, I’m tempted to run out and start dosing things that will up my HDL after seeing this result. I won’t though, I’m just going to assume that my Trig’s will come down as a result of my diet change and weight loss and I’ll revisit this at the end of my Joylent trial.

Day 7

Woke up at 6:30am today. I guess I forced my body to sleep last night because when I woke up I was wide awake straight away. So I at least got 6.5 hours sleep last night at a normal sleeping hour, even if it was forced. The trick now it to make sure that I take no naps at all during the day. My aim is to be getting 8 hours of sleep every night at pretty much the same time. It would be nice to wake up at 6am every day.

Weight this morning was 86.6kg. Pretty much the same as yesterday. I did drink a heap of water yesterday though. I was constantly drinking bottles all day.

So now that I have a cold and sore throat, it kind of screws me up a bit because it makes it difficult to know if I’m feeling anything strange from the Joylent as opposed to just generally feeling crap from having a cold.

Now for the blood glucose. When I woke up this morning and tested my glucose levels, it measured at 4.4mmol. I’ve had this testing machine for a few years now and I’ve never tested that low before. I can’t recall ever having tested in the 4’s before. Always 5’s, even when fasting. I was surprised by this so I tested again, 4.4mmol. Hmmm. I decided I was going to do some more readings before meals and then monitor my levels after the meail for a while and see how it effected my blood sugar. I have a little glucose tester here where you prick your finger and use the testing strips, so I can perform these tests easily.

– 7:45am – 4.4mmol

– 8:11am – 5.6mmol – (this reading was taken just after drinking Joylent for breakfast. I drank 1/6 of a bag of choc, half a regular serve)

– 9:17am – 5.7mmol

– 10:00am – 6.1mmol (straight after shower)

– 10:10am – drank another 1/6 choc joylent serving (total 1/3 of a bag had today now)

– 11:28am – 5.9mmol

– 3:08pm – 5.2mmol – just before drinking joylent 1/6 of a bag vanilla.

– 4:04pm 7.0mmol…….. retested due to higher reading (wtf?) retest 7.0…. This is almost 1 hour after drinking joylent vanilla 1/6 bag.

– 4:15pm 7.5 mmol (never seen this high before)

– 4:48pm 5.9 mmol… I walked on the tread mill for 6 minutes before I took this reading.

– 7:12pm 5.2 mmol

– 8:05pm 5.2 mmol (this is just before I drink my last 1/6 choc for the day)

– 8:27pm 5.2 mmol 20 minutes after drinking 1/6 joylent serve.

– 9:02pm 8.2 mmol (err… kind of freaking out here, this is my record high test ever)

– 9:31pm 6.4 mmol

– 10:11pm 5.7 mmol

Ok, so lets talk about the blood glucose tests. I’ve read a LOT of literature about blood glucose and how food effects it since I saw these results, and I will just say it straight up. What you see above is PERFECTLY NORMAL. I freaked out when I saw my level has spiked into the 7’s and then the 8’s I was really freaking out, this is perfectly normal though. Basically after you eat, the carbs in your meal will convert to sugar and enter your blood stream and this causes a spike in your blood sugar levels. I spoke with my doctor about the above results and he also said it was perfectly normal. He told me that if I spiked above 10.5 mmol after eating a high carb meal then he would start to want to investigate more, however my levels are fine. The key points when testing for diabetes are your fasting blood sugar levels (8 hours fasting) and your level 2 hours after your meal. Your blood sugar should come down to a reasonable level within 2 hours of it spiking after eating a meal. Of course if you eat a meal that is very low in carbs, then you will have a lower spike in your blood sugar levels after a meal.

If anyone reading this is interested to read some more about blood sugars, take a look at the below link. It has a very good chart detailing what range your blood sugars should be at various points of the day (fasting, after meals etc)

http://healthiack.com/health/what-is-normal-blood-sugar-level

Went to bed at 10:30pm took 10mg of temazepam to get to sleep. I slept until 3am when I woke up and was WIDE awake…stupid body clock. I took another 10mg of temazepam (still trying to force my body clock into routine) then I had a glass of chamomile tea with half a teaspoon of honey. I wasn’t craving it, I just wanted something to soothe my sore throat a little, so I had that at 3am, then I went back to sleep until 7:30am. That’s about 8.5 hours sleep! So I’m not sure if you can call that glass of tea a “cheat” or not. I don’t really call it that, it was a necessity.

2 days had gone since I’d pooped and still nothing happening, I sat and tried for a while but nope… no luck. I “administered” another one of those dastardly little enemas… this got things moving. It appears I just needed a little assistance, I pooped a lot….it was pretty soft and passed pretty easily, so I think it’s safe to assume that I’m now pooping 100% joylent. It came out like it had been through a roller…little strange! Anyways, I’m just glad to have been able to poop. The reason I decided to go the enema route today rather than wait and see what happens is that I’ve had times in the past where I have increased fiber in my diet in order to try and fix my not so good pooping issue, and it had a majorly constipating effect on me. I got to the point once where I was backed up so bad…. it was HORRIBLE. I learnt after that exercise that when you are changing diets, it’s better to give things a little push along if they aren’t going on their own than it is to wait and see what happens. I’m still hopeful that my body will adjust over time and things might start to work on their own. Oddly enough, I had almost stopped farting as well, until I pooped and then I started farting again, not stinky ones, pretty much odourless, but definitely percussion instrument worthy in tone.

Day 6

Well I definitely have a cold now. A full blown sore throat, coughing, runny nose, sneezing cold.

86.7kg Was my weight today. I didn’t actually go back to bed after last night, I stayed up all night and day. It was a bit of a rough day, but I did this to try and make sure I was sleep deprived enough at night and to hopefully kickstart a new sleeping routine. I took my blood sugar reading today during the day (forgot to do it this morning), it was 5.4 mmol. I don’t test myself all the time on this, usually once every few months, but I do have some test results from a few days ago, so for the sake of it I’ll list them here.

Feb-2-2015 – 5.6mmol
Feb-3-2015 – 5.8mmol
Feb-4-2015 – 5.4mmol

I didn’t take those results at the same time of the day so it may not really be an accurate indication of anything but from the history I have of taking readings, high 5.5 – 5.9mmol seems to be my normal range, but again, if I took those readings at different points of the day, depending on when I had eaten, it may not be a good indication. From now on, I will take it every morning and then 2 hours after a meal. (providing I remember).

2 full serves of Joylent today. (2/3 bag). I also drank a massive amount of water. I don’t know how much exactly, but I was drinking all day.

I’m getting used to the Joylent now. I think my brain is adjusting to the fact that that’s what my food source is. I just drink it. I don’t really try and drink it all at once, I just drink a bit, then when I feel like I don’t really want any more I put it in the fridge and just go back for a few more sips a bit later. I didn’t poop today either 😦

I went to bed at 10pm tonight, despite having stayed up pretty much all night and all day…I still couldn’t sleep…grrr….sleeping tablets again. I took 20mg of temazepam tonight to make sure I went to sleep and stayed asleep for at least a little while. I’m pretty sure I went to sleep around midnight.

Day 5

Woke up at around 11am today, 5 hours sleep. 87kg! (191 pounds). I’ve dropped 3kg (6.6 pounds) in 4 days. This is probably a mixture of me not eating anywhere near as many calories as before and also eating less than the daily dose of Joylent that’s recommended, so but of a double cause there. I’m sure the higher nutrient food is having some effect as well. I always weigh myself as soon as I get up wearing pretty much nothing so it’s consistent across results. I’ve got a glucose meter here so I’m going to start testing my blood sugar levels each morning as well, just for the hell of it.

Today I woke up feeling very groggy. My alarm went off and I had to get up to do some work and I really didn’t want to wake up. I felt a bit like I was drunk. I was a little light headed. I mixed up 1/3 a bag of joylent chocolate and slammed it down. Chocolate definitely seems to be my favourite flavour. 20 minutes after drinking I feel fine. I’ve set new rules for myself now in regards to sleep. I will wake up at or before 9am every day and no short sleeps in the afternoon or evening in an attempt to change my body clock out of it’s routine. I’ve also set eating times to try and get my body used to eating food at particular times. Right now I’m programmed to want a lot of food around midnight. So I’ll do 3 meals a day at 9am, 1pm and 7pm. It may take a bit to get used to this, but I won’t eat outside those times and I won’t allow myself to sleep before 10pm. If I get tired during the day or evening, I’ll go out for a walk.

Around 3pm I start feeling like my nose is blocked…*sigh*. I think I’m getting a cold. I’ve been sneezing a little the last few days which isn’t normal for me, so maybe it’s been pending? It could also be that I’ve been working in a somewhat dusty environment. I have an allergy to dust, makes me sneeze, drys up my throat and makes me feel…hay fever ish… Will see how that progresses. (it’s not really that important, but I do have a thougt of possible food sensitivities that I may have so I’ll keep that in mind if it doesn’t go away). This afternoon I got the feeling that I really needed to poop… I felt very…..full. I sat down and no matter how hard I tried, nothing was coming out. Great… this is kinda normal for me though. I spent about an hour trying to make it happen and nothing. I had to go to the pharmacy to get these little enema thingies. Not the most enjoyable experience but I’ve certainly experienced worse. I’ve been really constipated before for many days and I know that when it gets to a certain point and I can’t poop, you have to move things along otherwise it gets really bad. Today I was feeling that way if I didn’t get things moving that I would end up that way…hence my little fluid filled ass squirters (enemas). That got things moving a bit. Now I hate to get into too much detail, but I’m going to assume that a lot of the people reading this are reading it because they are either thinking of trying a similar product, or because they are on a similar product and would like to compare how my experience stands up to theirs, so I will go into detail a bit more about the whole poop thing. To start with, the first half was really hard, I’m guessing this is probably why I was having trouble getting started. This is probably still leftover food from before I started this exercise. The second half however, was the tar like substance that I’ve read about that some other people experience. It’s definitely not the most enjoyable poop experience I’ve ever had but it did pass pretty easily. I’m one of those people that always uses wet wipes (baby wipes) when I clean up so for me to clean up is easy, but, I can see that if you aren’t a wet wiper and were using regular tissue paper….you would probably have a red raw ass pretty soon after wiping a few of those. Pooping is important to me because of how I was before I started this exercise (poop once every 3 days if I’m lucky), I’m really hoping I can become a little more regular with this experiment. I’d be happy to have a tar like poop every day if it meant my whole system was working better. I’ve read that 5 days is not enough time for your body to properly adjust to the new diet I’m on so I aren’t alarmed about the results at this stage. I’m sure my body is just starting to adjust to the diet change, so in good time hopefully it comes better.

After I pooped today… I started farting a LOT more. Not bad smelling, but I reckon I have at least 2x more farts. Farting, like pooping, is generally a real strain for me.. I usually feel like I need to let one rip but to make it happen I have to go red in the face just to get it out…and then it’s like I’m trying to squeeze it out through a pinhole, so to be able to freely let decent length tunes rip from my a-hole……is definitely a win.

I drank a full meal 1/3 bag at around 7pm tonight. I started to feel a little pain in the chest near my heart about an hour after drinking. I would say, having upped my dose from previous days and trying to drink a whole 1/3 of a bag at one time has given me heart burn, a feeling I’m very familiar with. I will listen to my body telling me that it was too much at one time and stick to 1/6 bag doses for now. This went away after an hour or so. I really want to try and have a whole bag in a day though, just to make sure I’m getting enough protein, carbs etc.

Went to bed around 10pm, VERY tired because I didn’t have a small sleep during the day at all. I took one of my over the counter (non prescription) codeine sleeping aid tablets before I went to bed, hoping that it would help me to sleep through the night and be a good start to my new desired sleeping pattern…..boy was I wrong. I slept for 2 hours, woke up at midnight, then I laid in bed from midnight to 4am just trying to sleep, tossing and turning. Getting really frustrated until I just got out of bed at 4am because I was way passed pissed off at this point…not gonna goto sleep in that mood. Resetting my body clock is going to be a little more tricky, but I’ll persist. I guess I’m awake for the day now? Gonna be a loooooong day…

Blood Tests

I forgot to mention this, before day one, I went to see my doctor. I mentioned what I was doing and he had never heard of Joylent/Soylent type products. I explained to him what it was and he was quite interested and agreed that due to the way I eat that it would be interesting to see the effect it had. He kind of shrugged his shoulders and wondered why someone hadn’t done such a thing a long time ago! He recommend we do a whole bunch of blood and cholesterol tests….so I got those done on day 1. I will get those done again when I’m done after 30 days and compare. I’ll post them up when the time comes.

Progress Update After 4 Days

So for a bit of an overall status update after 4 days of being on Joylent (+1 regular meal on day 2).

• I’m not farting toxic gas like some people get, farting a little more than usual but for the most part is odourless.
• I’m not pooping much yet… this is normal for me and I’m really hoping that Joylent changes this when my body adjusts.
• The red patches that were on my face went after day 1 are still gone! (major win number 1)
• The skin on my hands is much softer than it was, I usually have a general rough dry feel to the palms of my hands, this is pretty much gone and my hands feel a lot smoother.
• Psoriasis is still as it was on day 1, however 4 days is no way near a long enough time for any change in the status of that, I’ll update at day 10 with pictures. (it usually takes around 2-4 weeks to see any change in regards to it going away, if I’m lucky enough for it to be going away, which doesn’t really happen anymore…i pretty much always have it)
• I’m not having big highs and lows in my mood anymore, my mood seems to be a lot more linear, I’m not overly bubbly and happy (which is normal for me anyways), but I’m not crashing either. When I was stressed the last few days I should have crashed hard after that, it didn’t happen. I was frustrated, but no mental crash! (major win number 2)
• I’ve noticed my sweat doesn’t have as much of a scent to it as usual, not that I get really stinky sweat coming from my arm pits, but it just seems to have less of an odour now.
• I don’t think at this stage I can eat any more than half a bag without having to force it down, maybe this will change but for now I’m happy to just eat what I feel I need. I AM DRINKING A FAIR BIT OF EXTRA WATER THOUGH..I think this is important.
• I’m urinating a lot less frequently than when I started. Before I went on Joylent I would pee a LOT, sometimes several times an hour and a lot of the time it would just be a little bit and that’s it, sometimes I had a hard time getting a steady stream going as well. I find now that I go less and when I do go I get a steady stream and it goes for longer now. I guess I feel a bit more normal the way I go now. (I’ve had my prostate checked, no I don’t have any problems with it, i just pee a lot). Not a huge thing but definitely something I noticed.
• Im amazed at how my appetite for feeling like I’m hungry and need food is switched off on Joylent. I know I talked about craving pizza, but that was purely mental, my body didn’t actually say it needed food, it said it wanted a sweet sugar hit. Normally I would be feeling like I really need food and I’m lacking food in my body, even after I’d just eaten I would get that feeling and have a big appetite, not anymore. It’s gone quite the opposite.

Day 4

Woke up around 9am today, weighed myself at 88kg (194 pounds) again.

I got woken up by another IT company who were supposed to be continuing on from my work yesterday with their part of the job, telling me that they probably weren’t going to be able to do their half today for some stupid reason. STRESS!!! It’s crazy but almost as soon as I got off the phone….guess what I was thinking about. The taste of that BBQ sauce on the pizza that I wanted and still want. My mouth was watering just thinking about pizza. It was really frustrating. I had NO desire at all to drink Joylent this morning. I had to get ready and go and give the bad news to my client that their system wasn’t going to be working as expected so I got up and got ready straight away and forced myself to drink 1/6 of a bag of banana Joylent. It wasn’t as hard as it was yesterday afternoon to drink, but I still had no appetite for it. I didn’t feel hungry, I didn’t feel like I had no energy, I just didn’t want to drink it, but I did and off I went. Got through the day pretty well considering what was going on and came home around 3pm and had another 1/6 of a serve of banana Joylent, it was a little easier to down this time. I can’t say I really wanted it, but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. I think my mental stress state had calmed a little by this stage. I was still thinking of pizza though, and writing this doesn’t help AT ALL. I had a sleep around 7pm for a few hours, my body clock seems to favour a few hours sleep in the evening, followed by going to sleep almost when the sun comes up. I have to stress, this is NOT caused by Joylent, this is my body clock being totally screwed at the moment.

At this point, around 11pm I’d only eaten 1/3 of a bag of Joylent, 1 meal size for the day and I have to say, I didn’t feel at all hungry or that I was lacking energy. I find it amazing how such a small amount of Joylent gets me by. Sure I aren’t really that physically active, but it does surprise me. Around 11pm I had 1/6 of a bag of chocolate. It was quite a bit easier to get down this time and sat much better in my stomach. I think the stress really does funny things to my brain when it comes to food. So again, I only ate half a bag of Joylent today, pretty much half the recommended dosage…. I didn’t feel like I needed any more! I didn’t sleep until around 6am, didn’t take any kind of sleeping tablets tonight though. I felt kinda hungry when I was trying to get to sleep, actual stomach hungry…that’s probably a first since I started. As I was trying to go to sleep I was thinking about vegetables and how much I’d love to just eat some freshly roasted carrots and a salad… which was kind of random..seeing as I don’t really care for either! I would have devoured a plate of both had it been there though.