Going back to solid food sucks…

I’ll get back to why having to revert back to solid food for every meal sucks in just a moment.

Having just watch the highlights from the Virgin Disruptors debate I felt compelled to highlight why I am conducting these experiments with powdered food.

The reason why I started making Musclent is that I experienced a problem:

I found my bodybuilding diet was too hard maintain. 

• Expensive: It was too expensive for my limited student budget. Chicken, Tuna and other sources of protein  were simply draining my budget more than I could refill it.
• Time Consuming: Preparing the 5 or 6 meals every day of the week, took up a ridiculous amount of time that could be better spent.
• Tiring: Eating the right amount of calories with the correct protein/carbs/fat ratios, at the right times, is tiring, it’s a whole lot of munching. I used to cut my lunch breaks short at work so I could have a second lunch break later on in the day for another serving, needless to say people thought I was slacking.
• Transporting: Carrying tuna, rice, chicken and veg around in Tupperware all day long is down right cumbersome and annoying.
• Tracking your diet: Although there is a wide selection of apps that will track you diet and how well you are sticking to it, ensuring the right amounts of P/C/F are going into you is hard work.
• Storage: I didn’t have space in the fridge to store all the meals I had prepared.
• No Kitchen: Probably my biggest problem was the fact I was sharing a tiny kitchen with 15 other people. It was ridiculous come meal time, hence I took to preparing meals at 6am or midnight.

Bodybuilding diets can drive you mad.

So with all these problems you might ask why did I not just give up with my bodybuilder style diet?

Well the long and the short of it is I had set myself a goal. I wanted to look and feel the best I could and for me that meant going to the gym, pounding out weights and carving out a body that I was proud of. Where will that goal stop who can say. Is it quite simplistic, probably so. But it makes me happy and makes me feel good about myself, so I had to carry on with it.

So with my problem I had to find a solution, and that’s where powdered food and Musclent came in. Taking inspiration from Soylent (and part of their name) and the DIY Soylent page I want to develop a powdered food which would solve my problems and enable my bodybuilding goals. Hence using the DIY Soylent website, I carefully trolled through all the recipes and started making my version, Musclent. In the process Musclent solved all of the problems I was having.

• It cost 30% less than my normal shopping bill and when I get back to the UK I am expecting that figure to drop to 50%
• It takes me 1-2 hours to prepare the whole weeks worth of meals.
• A meal can be consumed as easily and quickly as sipping a cold glass of milk.
• I carry a 1l container of Musclent around with me that can contain up to 3 or 4 meals.
• Using the DIY Soylent website, tracking and changing my diet is ridiculously simple.
• All I need to store is a 2l container in the fridge and the pre-made powders can be stored anywhere that’s dry.
• Best of all I don’t need a kitchen whatsoever.

Which leads me on to my original topic of why it sucks having to go back onto normal food.

As I am just about to finish studying here in Hong Kong I knew I would have to run down my stock of protein powder and multi vits etc and thus I always knew there would be a period of time where I would have to revert back to my old diet. Although three days doesn’t sound like that long, but once you’ve experienced the ease of Musclent it’s hard to go back.

I liken it to sending letters and Emails. Everyone likes to receive and send a letter every now and then but most of us would never give up the ease and simplicity of Emailing. That is how I feel about powdered food. I will always want to eat solid food, as it tastes brilliant and I love it, but for the majority of time I just want a quick and nutritious fix which allows me to carry on with my day with ease.

Big love

Ruaridh

Crowdfunding Ambronite – Real Food Drinkable Supermeal

Interesting development in the world of powdered food today. Ambronite are hosting a crownfunding drive on Indiegogo in an attempt to get their all organic powdered meal bags into production!

Ambronite

Basically Ambronite comes in the form of a one meal bag that contains nutritious meal of 500Kcal. The ingredients they use are all organic and they meet the nutritional notes by using oats, nuts, herbs and berries. Sounds damn tasty doesn’t it. 

In your meal bag you will find a whole lot of everything, which probably accounts for the costly price tag:

organic gluten free oats 
organic coconut 
organic lucuma 
organic wheatgrass 
organic chlorella
wild bilberry
wild sea-buckthorn

organic brown rice protein 
organic hazelnut 
organic stinging nettle
organic rice bran
nutritional yeast
organic spinach
organic spirulina

organic almond 
organic walnut 
organic maca 
organic apple 
mineral salt
organic brazil nut
organic blackcurrant

What gets me excited about Ambronite is the fact that they are going to be providing some competition to Soylent. Although they aren’t exactly targeting the same market, the general idea is the same. They also have done an excellent job of promoting their product with some excellent branding and classic Scandinavian style. Damn them for their impeccable taste. 

Hope it works out for the fellas and they raise the $50,000 and get this into production. Anything of such quality as this spreading the good word of powdered meals is great news for the industry.

Big Love

Ruaridh

 

P.s more info: Ambronite

Musclent, possibly the easiest way to Carb Cycle for a six pack!

It’s getting to that time of year again when the short shorts can be dusted off and the beach season is just round the corner, alas it’s time to start digging for those six packs again. Or if you’re like me the short shorts are always on the table, no matter what the weather conditions. Don’t let anyone ever tell you they are a bad thing, it’s a scientific fact.

Everybody loves short shorts.

 

I’ve been reading up for a while about the various methods of carb cycling and I think it’s exactly what I need to loose those last few pesky percentages of body fat.

So what is Carb Cycling:

Carb cycling is nothing more than eating more carbohydrates on some days (High Carb days) to help promote muscle growth and eating less carbohydrates on other days (Low Carb days) to help minimise fat gain and even promote fat loss. For instance:

Monday: High Carbs

Tuesday: Low Carbs

Wednesday: No Carbs

[and repeat for the rest of the week]

The training plan I will following will be like this:

Monday – Chest (High Carb)

Tuesday – Back (Low Carb)

Wednesday – Rest (No Carb)

Thursday – Legs  (High Carb)

Friday – Shoulders and Arms (Low Carb)

Saturday – Swim (No Carb)

Sunday –  (Low Carb)

As I am already quite lean I don’t have to particularly worry about going to mental with the no carb days or incorporating too much cardio in the routine at the moment. But this could all change if I’m not seeing results, in which case I’ll either adjust the diet or incorporate more cardio. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

The reason I said that Musclent was possibly the easiest way to carb cycle was that already I know exactly how many carbs I intake and measure them out when I am preparing the powder so it will be exceptionally easy to cut out carbs and will save me some money on Masa Harina. All I have to do is put less powder in the mix.

My plan to cut the carbs is to have 100% to 120% of my normal carbs on high carb days. To ensure that I am getting an adequate amount of carbs to kick start the old Insulin to direct the nutrients to my needy muscles for recovery. On low carb days I’ll go to around 40% to 50% of my normal carb range, although this should technically be called medium carb day. If 40% isn’t low enough then i’ll alter it. On no carb days I’ll simply have no carbs, however depending on how I am feeling I may bump my protein up on this day alittle if I need a pick me up.

Since this is the first time anyone has ever carb cycled on a DIY Soylent style recipe it will be really interesting to see how the body reacts to this, hopefully what I will find is 6 abs and potentially the worlds easiest method to get a six pack. I’ll be logging my progress so stay tuned.

Big love

Ruaridh

P.S here are some useful articles for carb cycling:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par30.htm

http://www.cutandjacked.com/Carb-Cycling-Made-Easy

How to make DIY Soylent / Musclent (Part 2)

Sunday Chest Day was a success! Only got pinned the once, thank the good Lord for squat racks and their safety stops. Missing my training partner, motivational playlists and pre-workout can only take you so far.

 

Arnie smashing dem pecs in style.

 

But back to the serious business of making DIY Soylent / Musclent. In the previous post  we went through the initial stages of working what you need to do and buy.

 

For this post I will actually take you through what I do to make my Musclent, which is the diet i’ve been thriving off for the past 2 months. The stuff has been proving itself everyday i’ve been taking it. Not only  have the scale been increasing but the mirror is also showing great results, Maybe one day i’ll post some progress pics, but first I’d need to investigate the wonderful of spray tans, cause Casper aint got nothing on me.

 

Steps for making Musclent

 

This version of Musclent makes up a 3000 kcal diet that is split into 30/40/30 macro split of Protein/Carbs/Fat and the various micronutrients for 1 DAY.

 

Musclent Ingredients

 

Step 1: Start Measuring

First you will want to set your scales up with a container to decant the powders into and have the DIY Soylent recipe ready so you can read how much of which ingredient you need. I usually start by measuring out the list of ingredients from top to bottom ( Missing out the oil ) and placing them into the a plastic food bag as I go along. I will not get into the various ways of speeding this up (i.e if you’re making a batch for the week it’s best to measure each ingredient for each day and then moving on to the next ingredient, as this allows for a super simple and fast production line). I can usually make a weeks worth of food in 45 minutes. Which is ridiculously fast and that includes cleaning up, try doing that with your tubber ware and chicken.

 

Musclent Powder

 

Step 2: Shake up

Now that you have all the dry ingreidents in the plastic food bag, give it a little shake up to get the powders all mixed up. Don’t worry about them not being perfectly mixed up. DO WORRY about the bag opening whilst shaking, this never ends well.

 

Full day worth of powdered food all shaken up.

 

Step 3: Oily Business

Now you need to measure out the oil. In this example I put it straight into the 2l jug but you can measure them out into individual containers if you don’t want to measure them out every time you prepare a day’s batch. Don’t mix the oil into the dry powder until you are ready to match a day’s batch, as they will not store well.

 

Currently trying Granola Oil.

 

---

Now that you have done all of that you are ready to prepare your first batch. I usually make my nexts days worth of musclent the night before. As I don’t have much storage space to keep lots of 2l containers in the fridge. This means for a typical week I usually prepare all of the powder and bag it and then each night I decant it into the jug for the coming day.

---

Step 4: Add it all together

Add it all together and include some cold water so that it forms a liquid, it really is as simple as that! Depending on your container or whether your using a blender, it will vary how you are mixing the ingredients. Just make sure that what you end up with in that container is the powdered ingredients, the oil and some water.

The amount of water that you put in depends on how thick you like your shake. I generally fill the container to the 2l mark, so overall I have 2l of liquid Musclent.

Step 5: Chill it.

Though not essential I find that leaving the container over night in the fridge lets the flavours settle and helps with the consistency.

Step 6: Skull it.

Now that it’s the morning after and you are super excited to try some of your super nutritious food you should bare in mind these little tips that I found out from living off the Musclent.

2 litres of tasty Musclent ready to go

1) For every serving of Musclent dilute with the same amount of cold water. I find that works best for me, but others may have different preferences

2) Drink your Musclent like a meal, don’t have lots of little sips here and there. I usually sit down and have 4 Musclent servings a day.

3) Don’t drink it too fast. You are ingesting alot of nutrients, so give your body a break and just sip it.

4) Keep it cold, it tastes better.

Now that you know all of that you can go and start making your first batch!

Big Love

Ruaridh

P.S I am missing a couple of micronutrients due to a late amazon delivery but you get the idea.

How to make DIY Soylent / Musclent (Part 1)

Thought I would give you a little insight into how you actually go about making some DIY Soylent as I was talking to a friend about all this and he was really keen to try this but had no idea where to start!

So I’ll take you through everything from having nothing and no idea of where to begin to having a cold glass of nutritious food.

Step 1: Set a Target

First and foremost you have to work out what you want from your diet (btw when I say “diet” I mean what you will be eating from day to day, not the interpretation that means you can only live off green leaves and the occasional Chai Tea) So you have to work out whether you want to gain/loose weight or whether you want to just stay the same weight. Do you want a six pack or do you want a serious bulk or something inbetween? It’s all possible.

Step 2: Sign up to DIY Soylent

Now that you know what you want from your diet, you can go create a profile at DIY Soylent’s website ( http://diy.soylent.me/). This website is super easy to use and it calculates all of the individual amounts of ingredients that you have to include to ensure you made the correct recipe for your powdered food (it’s basically a very fancy excel spreadsheet). There are also loads of tips and other DIY soylent recipes on there.

 

They also have a really useful video which will explain everything.

 

Step 3: Pick a recipe

Now that you are signed up to the DIY Soylent website, you can browse through all of the recipes for DIY Soylent on the site. You can even make or edit recipes on the website. I orginally started out by modifying People Chow 3.0.1 – “Tortilla Perfection!” which lead to me creating Musclent after some trial and error. The best way to start is to pick a recipe which has been tried and tested by others which you can also source the ingredients easily.

 

What a recipe will look like.

 

Step 4: Pick a nutrition plan

Once you have a recipe thats right for you, you need to choose a nutrition plan which you will follow. This allows you to check you are getting the right amount of nutrition that allows you to meet your chosen target. There are loads to choose from, some homemade and some from official government bodies like the ‘US Gov’s recommended daily nutrition plan’.

The Nutrition Plan tells you exactly how much of everything you are getting and if you are missing something.

 

If you want to know more about nutrition or what’s what then there is loads of articles and handy calculators on Bodybuilding.com nutritional page.

 

Step 5: Tailor the recipe to yourself

Now that you have a recipe and a nutrition plan you can easily tailor the amount of each ingredient to ensure that you meet the required amount of carbs/protein/fat and all of those lovely micro nutrients. This takes a little trial and error but it means you can perfectly tailor it to yourself. You can also just use a premade recipe and use their preset values.

This handy pop up window lets you perfectly alter the amount of each ingredient.

 

Step 6: Buy some ingredients

This one is super easy. Either from amazon or your local supermarket go buy all of the ingredients you require.

Step 7: Equipment

You will also need this equipment to make and store the powder and liquid:

• Accurate Scales (At least to the nearest gram)
• 2L jug (To store the liquid Soylent in the fridge)
• Plastic food bags (To store powder)
• Protein shaker/ Water bottle
• Blender (Optional but will really help mix the ingredients)

 

With all of the above good to go then you are now ready to make your own DIY Soylent. I will continue this in part 2 as for the moment I have to break from international regulations and smash Chest Day out on a Sunday. Monday just wont feel the same.

Big Love

Ruaridh

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

 

Why…?

So why would you want to swap perfectly delicious food for some hodgepodge powdered food eh?

Why fix something when it’s not broken?

why reinvent the wheel?

Do you get enough fibre?

Your body doesn’t work that why?

Isn’t it ridiculously expensive?

You must get really hungry?

 

When people see me making mysterious mixtures from large quantities of powder they usually have a few questions going through their mind or they think some nonchalant drugs lord measuring large quantities of cocaine on the kitchen counter. Let me answer all those questions and some others. Maybe I’ll make this into an FAQ section later.

 

Q – So why would you want to swap perfectly delicious food for some hodgepodge powdered food?

A – I have personally been really interested in nutrition for some years and enjoyed experimenting with the link between the food we eat and the effect it has on the body. Most recently I have been applying this to bodybuilding. Like most bodybuilders the process of preparing food and eating the correct amount of food is challenging at the best of times. Most recently I moved, on exchange, to Hong Kong and this made it almost impossible to continue

This Tiny Kitchen is where 40 people attempt to eat, cook and clean dishes.

cooking and storing meals.The fridge space was non existent and the cooking arrangements consisted of a microwave .Thus I began looking for a different way to get the nutrition I required.

The Musclent powder solved all these problems. It allowed me to prepare all my meals in under 45 minutes (for a week ! Crazy I know) It saved me roughly 30% on my usual shopping bill and it provides me with the exact nutrition I require.

Q – Why fix something when it’s not broken.

A – I’m not trying to fix anything,food works and probably, for some time to come, will always be the default choice. I think it important however to look into the future of how we fuel our bodies and explore whats possible and what is not. If we stop being curious, then we stop innovating and then we stagnate. At the moment this is still an experiment and I want to share with you guys what my findings are, so you can make an informed choice about maybe whether this is right for you.

Q – Do you get enough fibre?

A – I have no idea why this is everyone’s default question when it comes to talking about diets and nutrition. Suddenly everyone becomes fibre inspectors and demands to know precise figures of how much fibre I am consuming. To answer this, yes I am getting a very good amount of fibre, in fact I know it to the nearest gram, do you?

Q – Isn’t it ridiculously expensive?

A – One of the main reasons I considered undertaking this was because of the saving you can reap from following this diet. On average I have saved 30% on my usually shopping bill and if I could order more ingredients from amazon then I would be saving even more money.

Did I also mention the time savings? I am a little obsessive when it comes to saving time and eking the most out of my day. But Musclent is ridiculously convient. I’ll go over in later. But to summarise all my food prep for the week takes 45 mins! and to consume each portion take the same amount of time as to drink a large protein shake.

Q – You must get really hungry?

A – Nope all that fibre and the fact I am on a 3000 cal diet means that I feel full and energised throughout the day.

Q – From drinking all that liquid you must go to the bathroom alot?

A – Yeah there is that problem, but then again it’s always nice to get stretch your legs every now and then.

I’ll probably expand this questions sections as more questions come in but for now i’ll leave you.

 

Thanks for reading!

Big Love

Ruaridh

I suppose an introduction is in order.

Where the heck do I start with all this…The best way to start any sort of explanation is to start with:

A tasty glass of powdered goodness.

Well…

 

So last year I heard of this idea a lovely chap in America had. He was pressed for time, bored of his poor diet and being a busy man had no time or desire to cook anything more complicated than instant noodles. Rob Rhinehart, the chap in question, wanted a solution to this and thus broke down the problem in a typical engineering way back to it’s basics.

 

He summarised food was basically just a bunch of chemical elements all joined together in lots of different configurations. He wondered since that food was all just chemicals then how would the body know which form the food was ingested. Would it perhaps know the deference between liquid or solid? If all the right chemical compounds were injested surely the body would act as normal.

 

It was from these initial thoughts and research that Rob came up with the idea of Soylent, a perfectly nutritious meal that was in powdered form. After tirelessly researching what the body needed and testing it on himself and some brave volunteers, he finally cracked what he believed to be the perfect recipe. A recipe that he went on to consume solely in his famous “30 days without food” experiment. From that moment on the idea exploded, a crowd funding campaign to develop the idea raised well over $2 million and media outlets such as Vice covered the idea.

 

What is Soylent I hear you ask?

In their own words

 

“What if you never had to worry about food again?

For many people, on many occasions, food is a hassle, especially when trying to eat well. Suppose we had a default meal that was the nutritional equivalent of water: cheap, healthy, convenient and ubiquitous. Soylent will be personalised for different body types and customisable based on individual goals. It allows one to enjoy the health benefits of a well balanced diet with less effort and cost.“

 

It was from these intriguing snippets that I first got introduced to Soylent and from that moment on I was hooked on the idea. It has such potential to fundamentally change the way we eat and live, that I simple can’t begin to explain well enough in one post.

Hopefully throughout this blog I will be explaining a little more about this curious movement of powdered food and how I have got myself involved with it. But I shall leave all of that for later (keepin’ the suspense eh?, am nailing blogging 101)

 

Big love,

Musclent