Today was Day 26 for my test of Mountain House food packets as emergency food, The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet. Lots of preppers recommend storing food for a disaster; this series tests it out. As detailed earlier, this diet has turned into a weight-loss diet too.
With four days to go, I half-managed to turn my routine into something more normal. Instead of split-shift sleeps, I'm night-owling and trying to end that by waking up earlier in the morning. The week-long weight plateau broke, suggesting that it was some kind of fluid retention that kept my weight stable. The food was good, no health concerns or symptoms related to hunger, and my energy is increasing a wee bit.
Today's Meals
In the wee hours of the morning, I once again frontloaded a breakfast to help get me to sleep. This day's was the Granola with Blueberries and Milk:
After half a cup of cold water and thorough stirring, it reconstituted:
but I've learned to let it sit for a few minutes to let the water soak in some more: doing so makes the berries soft.
The dinner was that old standard, the Macaroni and Cheese:
the old high-sodium favorite. :) Two cups of boiled water, stirrings, rinsing the cheese sauce of the spoon, and less than ten minutes' wait, and it was ready to go:
It tasted like the standard mac and cheese, including the saltiness. Of note is the fact that I had to shake the packet twice to cut along the suggested line because my scissors bumped into noodles. The Macaroni and Cheese is the most voluminous packet of them all.
It's also one of the most caloric, relatively speaking. As the Nutrition Facts boxes show:
the mac and cheese - it's the box on the right - clocks in at 480 calories per half-pouch; the whole thing is 960. Combined with the granola's 520, the total between the two is almost 1,500. The only noticeable deficiency in all the values is vitamin C: the granola has only 8% of recommended daily and the mac-and-cheese has none.
As said above, the plateau that lasted a whole week had broken:
Not by much, but it is broken. This puts a question mark on my recent opining about my body drawing down fewer calories. It could be that I've been burning some fat which has been replaced by water - fluid retention - that's had the effect of muffling what otherwise would have been (small) drops.
Effects, So Far:
Now that I'm past the three-week point, I'm relying on habit to keep me going. Even when I had to rely on willpower, it was more "grit" than exertion. As mentioned near the beginning, my energy is increasing a bit and I'm working my way out of an unusual sleep schedule. Instead of sleeping in two shifts, I'm just going to bed late.
Since I'm routinized in this late stage, there isn't much else to report.
Conclusion
Steady as she goes, more or less, with hunger pangs less frequent/noticeable than yesterday. Breaking the plateau does make my earlier speculations about my body drawing down fewer calories questionable. Live and learn.
Thanks for reading.
And feel free to comment below!
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Day 1
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Day 11
Day 12
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Day 15
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Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
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Day 30
Wow your body really through in a curveball...😂😁✌️🤔 water 💦 retention maybe because of all the sodium that is in the meals itself? Every interesting situation that you are in. Very interesting to see how things work out ..... Great post hang in there and keep it up and steem on.👍👏👏👏👏👏👏👏😁
Yeah, it could have been because of the salt. I didn't think of that.
Thanks once again.
Just now managed to set aside some time to start writing about fitness. Remind me to dedicate some time to talking about the body's energy systems if you would like some input. About to log off, was just going through sub lists, so will read up on your journey tmrw and see if I can help at all. I have a recent post related to a few of your hashtags, if you're interested. Won't word-bomb it all over your comment section, though.
Interesting niche and good job on the diary, @nxtblg
I'm following you, so hopefully I'll see them.
OK, I've read a few and got an idea. Questions: How many calories does each packet contain? Post a label pls. Need to know macronutrient breakdown. You probs already have, in one of the posts but...
Also, what kind of activity are you doing each day? Are you tracking all of this info? I'll get into ATP and energy but need to know if you're doing sustained activity, str. training, doing cardio, walking...etc.
We'll go from there. Sounds like a good project. Your data may be invaluable to the manufacturers. Have you reached out to them about this? They should pay well for this kind of research.
To be honest, my schedule is mostly sedentary: sitting in front of my computer, daily dog walk, some driving around, occasional exercise. When it was still snow season, I did a lot of snow shoveling but that's over now.
Okay. I like your work on prepping and shtf. Seems under-appreciated here. If you want the perspective of a personal trainer, I'd be glad to contribute. Don't want anything for it. I plan on doing a pile of cross-over work with personal training, health and fitness and prepping/SHTF. I don't mind also offering some free direction towards your body composition goals, but will not assume you aren't the more educated of us on any topic. Cheers - look forward to seeing the final chapter in this story and what you move on to next.
what will be interesting is to check your weight a week later to see if you gain it all back
I probably will gain some back - that's how it goes.
Got mine all stashed away👍👍
I still love your license plate... no matter your posts. Is that so insensitive?!
Not really. :)
Ok, not sure how I missed it, but I see you're living on 1000-1500 calories a day. Your body is catabolizing itself in order to sustain life - in other words, the stored fat you have is not enough - your body is getting fuel from your actual muscle cells, breaking them down into glycogen. That can be very dangerous, as a guy your size likely needs around 2k min.
So far, there haven't been any ill effects in that area.