Before reading any further, please note that adopting any of the habits that I describe below is not recommended. Ingesting any of the foods and supplements mentioned below could result is adverse health effects, from an upset stomach to death. It is my non-professional opinion that should always check with your medical doctor before undertaking any type of changes in your diet.
Ok, now that’s out of the way…. My friends and colleagues often look at me a little funny when they see me drinking my lunch (I don’t mean, the weekend beverage type). For the last few years, my lunch has been a DIY version of Soylent. When I first heard of Soylent, I quickly ordered my first batch. One bottle had 20% of all macro and micro-nutrients one needs in a day. No blender required. It was life changing; I no longer needed to spend time and energy thinking about assembling a lunch. Moreover, I never believed in buying food daily at a fast food location, regardless of how healthy they advertise the meal to be. It takes valuable time to walk over, wait, order, eat and walk back to the office while not being a very frugal practice. You also never really know much about the quality of the ingredients (and hand washing, gross). Lunch with people is an essentially fun part of life, so this doesn’t discount those special days.
Now I already eat quite the healthy breakfast of organic oats, matcha green tea, flax, hemp hearts, chia seeds, Ceylon cinnamon and berries. This breakfast is easy to make in portions that will last for a few mornings. For dinner, I tend to try and eat “normal” foods with a good balance of fish and a low amount of red meat. Dinner is a great opportunity to get lots of nice greens in too. Who doesn’t like eggs for dinner? My focus is thus on lunch.
So a few year ago, I bought a neat little digital scale on Amazon and went through quite a large number of iterations.
Over the years, I tested what made me feel good, reduced the 2pm slump, kept me full, was easy to digest, tasted acceptable, mixed well in water without a blender, etc. Once I landed on the right combination of ingredients, I stayed with it for a few weeks to a few months, sometimes rotating in new ingredients. I even tried adding in ground nuts but found that they never mixed well and irritated my throat. The solution was quite simple since Costco has unsalted mixed nuts. The right amount of fat that was required for a lunch is a generous handful. What an elegant solution!
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| Shaker bottle for my DIY Soylent. |
This was all well however, I wanted to further optimize. I had looked at various weight gainers as the base for my lunch but I already have about 20-30g of Whey protein per day and most of the gainers had a lot of this type of protein. I don’t want to over strain my kidneys with protein and believe that to optimizing nutrition, you need to maximize variety. I already eat a protein bar for a snack every day that includes Whey. I also don’t like the type of carbs that most weight gainers contain. Seems like they are looking to keep the cost as low as possible for those giant buckets/bags of food. This is when I stumbled upon an organic vegan weight gainer product that looked like a quality offering: Iron Vegan Athlete Gainer. Add some independent lab tested multivitamin (I like https://labdoor.com/): Garden Of Life Vitamin Code For Men, mixed nuts and you have yourself a lunch.
Sometimes, I also like to add some supplements that have minimal scientific research, like Lion’s Mane.
I fully subscribe to the belief that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. I need a healthy mind to attain my life goals which means that my out of the office habits come above all. I exercise for 7-8 hours per week, try to eat as healthy as possible, sleep a minimum of 7h per night during the week and longer on weekends. However, I don’t let myself miss out on an opportunity to eat a delicious poutine when I see one (especially with smoked meat). Live your best life folks.
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