Keto diet, paleo diet, no-carb diet- the world is full of suggestions on how to get healthier
and lose weight, but how are you supposed to know what's real and what's bunk?
It’s another Challenge episode of The Infographics Show, and today we're going to help you on
your quest to live healthier by once more using your favorite, and our least important,
staff writer as a human guinea pig as we challenge him to drink his food through a straw for
a whole week!
Monday: Well, this is definitely a different type of challenge, and I can't say that I'm
upset about that.
The thirty day challenges can be kind of brutal, and definitely take a toll on my personal
life, and by comparison doing a single week seems like a cakewalk.
At least that's until I really started to think about the exact challenge- drinking
your food through a straw for a whole week.
I'm not much of a nutritionist, so this is going to take some serious research to figure
out how to drink my food and not starve to death.
I've done fasts before for a day or two at a time, and typically the health nut girlfriend
will fix all kinds of juices to get us through the fast, but I gotta admit that I'm always
left feeling absolutely famished even after drinking a nice thick fruit smoothie.
I guess I'm just hard wired for solid food.
Fasts by the way turn out to have some pretty great health benefits, it's not all just new
age'y feel-good mumbo jumbo, and evolutionarily they make a lot of sense.
In the wild you don't get to eat as regularly as we do in civilization, so everyone scoffing
a the idea of a fast for health benefits is out of touch with reality.
So I've decided to break this challenge up into days since I typically do weekly reporting.
This time I'll just report on my day to day meals and how I feel about not eating solid
food.
I have a little bit of a leg up since I've worked closely with a pretty well known fitness
model as her photographer and videographer and have the benefit of her health knowledge
rubbing off on me.
She used to fast for up to 72 hours at a time and would regularly eat liquid meals during
her fast, so I'll be passing on some of her tips here in this challenge.
Hopefully they'll be of help for anyone interested in recreating this challenge themselves, or
just starting their own habit of fasting.
Today (monday) and tomorrow I'll be following a medical liquid meal diet which includes
hot cereal with milk, soup, more soup, and oatmeal.
This already sounds so boring I want to kill myself.
Wednesday and Thursday I'll be drinking juices from a juice cleanse diet and a few bottles
of Soylent, which you can order online as a meal replacement.
Friday and Saturday I'm going to be eating a milky rice thing that the girlfriend swears
by and learned to make in Spain, consomme, and yogurt.
Sunday is the wild card, and I'm going to be trying the one thing that I know everyone
watching this video is thinking of: eating an actual meal through a straw.
In other words I'm going to take real breakfast, lunch, and dinner options and put them in
a blender and try to eat them.
I expect this is going to be disgusting and I am in no way looking forward to this, but
I thought it only fair because to be honest, even I'm curious about what that would be
like.
If I clicked on this video I'd expect to see someone actually try this, and lucky me, I
get to be that lab rat.
I'm already gagging thinking about what that's going to be like to be honest.
Well, see you guys in two days.
Tuesday: I'm not as hungry as I thought I would be.
Typically when the girlfriend and I do a monthly two day fast or something like that I'm always
starving because liquids just don't fill me up.
Either she's the best liar in the world or she really honestly feels completely satisfied
drinking just juices- she's insane.
I thought that a liquid meal plan would basically mean I'd be starving all the time, but turns
out oatmeal, hot cereal- which I found it is different from oatmeal- and soup can be
pretty filling.
Then again I made my oatmeal pretty thick, and I got clam chowder and tomato soup.
I was going to go for chicken noodle but there's no way I can slurp the noodles and chicken
up through a straw, and that's the main stipulation of this whole challenge.
Sucking up the oatmeal alone was a task and a half and I swear I almost ruptured a lung
trying, but then I got the idea to run olive oil through the straw first and it worked
like a charm.
Now I'm thinking about just buying a bigger straw, pretty sure if I cut up steak small
enough I could suck it up through a large straw... and no that's not cheating, the rules
specifically say that the food has to be drank through a straw, it's not my fault Infographics
forgot to stipulate how large the straw could be.
So far I feel.. fine I guess?
As far as challenges go this one's pretty easy, and for once the girlfriend is relieved
that the challenge isn't something ridiculous/dangerous and actually kind of healthy.
Thursday: Please send help, I am starving to death.
The last two days have been the polar opposite of the first two days.
Juices are terrible for filling you up, my body literally craves solid food and I think
its actually eating itself.
I always get like this during a fast, but I always tend to stuff my face immediately
after the 48 hours are up so I have something to look forward to.
Typically we end our fasts early in the morning after starting at around 5 am 48 hours prior,
so I'll go for a huge breakfast burrito with bacon and ham on the side, or a giant waffle
with syrup and lots of butter.
Oh my god I think I'm actually getting sexually excited thinking about solid food.
Anyways, the point is having something to look forward to can help you endure a fast,
but this time I don't have anything to look forward to but another three days of liquid
crap to drink up.
I'm so hungry the dog is starting to look delicious, I honestly don't understand how
people like yogis and monks can go for weeks just drinking nothing but juices.
I need to immediately kill a wild animal and eat it raw.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to take my phone into the bedroom and lock the door
while I look at pictures from a Denny's breakfast menu.
Saturday: If anyone offers you milk rice, or arroz con leche, immediately throw it in
their face and run for your life, because that person is not your friend and is trying
to hurt you.
Knowing how poorly I always do with just juice and fruit smoothies during our fasts, the
girlfriend made me the milk rice thing she learned from Spain, thinking it would be solid
enough to satisfy me.
A for effort, but it's one of the most disgusting things I've ever tasted, and I can't fathom
how it was created.
Seriously, bear with me here and imagine the following: some guy is sitting in his medieval
kitchen and staring at a sack of rice.
Then he looks at a pitcher of milk.
Then the rice again.
Then the milk.
Rice.
Milk.
Rice.
And for some god-forsaken reason his primitive little brain decides this will be a pretty
cool combination to try out, and millions of people agree!
Rice does not belong with milk.
Ever.
It doesn't even remotely ever come in contact or in the proximity of milk in the wild, and
it is an abomination to combine the two.
Sorry, I feel like this all-liquid diet is starting to wear on me and I've developed
an unreasonable hatred for milky rice.
I still ate it both days the girlfriend made it though, because when you live with someone
in a long-term relationship you make those kind of sacrifices when they think they're
doing something really nice and sweet for you, even if it kills your soul.
You just grin and suck more milk rice through your straw, that's called love, folks.
It's a stupid invention but we're stuck with it.
Also though, I gotta admit, I crave literally anything semi-solid, and the milky rice has
the consistency of pudding, which makes me feel more full then juice ever did.
Thank god only one day left.
Sunday: Today was a disaster beyond measure.
Today was the day, D-day, the day literally all of you have stayed tuned for- what's it
like to drink a real meal through a straw.
You think you know, you think you have some vague idea of how disgusting it would be to
blend together a cheeseburger and then suck it up through a straw.
You know nothing.
You are ignorant of the pain and suffering that is life.
I decided that this was the most important part of the challenge, and it was only fair
to give it as good a try as possible.
To that end I went online and had a menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner automatically
generated on a meal planning website, and then let it randomly select a dish for me.
My rules were simple: whatever it selected I would make, I would stick in a blender,
and I would drink as much as I could.
You think you know how disgusting this was, you know nothing.
For breakfast I was automatically assigned pancakes, a delicious treat of fluffy bread
stacks topped with syrup and melting butter- if there's a meal more traditionally American
than that I don't know what it is, aside from apple pie I guess?
Normally pancakes are an absolute favorite of mine, a real treat that I look forward
to and enjoy with all my heart.
Today, pancakes were hell.
I made them the way I normally do, even topped them with butter which I let melt and then
poured syrup liberally all over them.
Next, I took the delicious smelling stack of flapjacks and stuck them straight into
the blender, set to the highest setting, and mixed.
The pancakes turn into a brownish-whitish goop which vaguely smells like syrup, a bit
like butter, and looks 100% like vomit.
The first problem was immediately obvious- it was way too thick to suck through a straw
and I nearly had a coronary until the girlfriend suggested I 'water it down' somehow.
First I tried just pouring more syrup in, but that barely did anything to dilute the
thick sludge.
Then I resorted to milk, and after another thorough blending that did the trick.
Let me tell you, it wasn't pleasant, but I did manage two mouthfuls before I had to quit.
The smell and even the taste remind you you're eating pancakes, but the sludge in your mouth
makes you think you're eating pancake vomit.
For lunch I randomly selected bean burrito, and I was more relieved than you can know.
It almost felt like a cheat because let's face it, a good bean burrito is already halfway
to being drinkable with a straw.
I fixed up the beans and rice, added sour cream, wrapped it up in a flour tortilla,
and into the blender it went.
If the blended pancakes were awful, the bean burrito was... actually not that bad.
It was actually easier to drink up because the taste of the beans is so powerful, it
really just felt like a thick bean paste which I had to water down with salsa to make it
easier to drink.
I managed a few mouthfuls until I made the mistake of looking down at the beanie slushie
I was drinking which reminded me of drunk vomit and I nearly lost it.
Next was dinner.
I don't want to talk about dinner.
We shouldn't talk about dinner.
Dinner was hell.
I randomly selected a cheeseburger, which made me really happy because I'd kill for
a cheeseburger right now, but then I remembered how I had to eat my cheeseburger.
I was already pre-gagging before I was even done cooking it.
I decided that fair was fair, so I made a cheeseburger and topped it with lettuce - mistake,
mayo - mistake, ketchup - mistake, and even some bacon strips - even bigger mistake.
Then you guessed it, into the blender it went.
I almost ralphed the moment I saw this beautiful, amazing, delicious cheeseburger turn into
a brownish sludgy mix.
There were streaks of different shades of brown, like a poop rainbow, and even before
I sucked some of it up I knew that this was the moment I would regret this stupid, idiot
challenge.
I pressed on regardless, and the girlfriend watched me with her mouth slightly open incredulous
that I was actually going to do it.
She had bet me I wouldn't dare after I saw what the blended mess looked like.
Well, I proved her wrong.
Sort of.
The moment the meat sludge hit my mouth, I lost it.
I puked up some juice I had in my stomach straight into the blender cup, and then the
smell of the blended cheeseburger and fruity juice both hit my nose at the same time and
I ralphed again.
The girlfriend went bright red on seeing me go a second time and she ran away to the bathroom,
I heard her dry heaving for a while afterwards.
I can't explain to you the mixture of taste and smell of blended meat, and I'm already
gagging remembering it.
That's it, my challenge is over and I can finally go back to eating like a normal human
being.
For anyone curious I did manage to lose a pound and a half, but was it worth it?
No.
I hate juice now, and I hate milk rice, and I hate whoever invented the blender.
I'm starving but way too nauseous to eat, and I don't think I'll ever be able to smell
a burger again without vomiting.
Challenge over.
Would you ever try a blended meal through a straw?
Think you got what it takes?
Let us know in the comments, and as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to
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