Today was Day 20 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.
Two-thirds of the way done! Today, I confirmed that doing something new does help chase away the blahs. A sunny and relatively warm day helps too. Although my weight is stuck, shaking off the February blahs does make up for it. Once again, I'm posting early because I'm attending a meetup this evening: Blockchain Law & Regulations.
Today's Meals
Alternating yet again, the breakfast was the Granola with Blueberries and Milk:
Half a cup of cold water, a good stirring, and it reconstituted:
Unlike the last packet of this type, these blueberries did not turn out crunchy. The last one was an outlier, perhpas because I didn't stir thoroughly or didn't wait long enough before eating it. This packet was normal: moist granola and soft blueberries. Again, there was a fair bit of blueberry-colored fluid at the bottom of the packet.
The dinner was the Beef Stew:
After the standard two cups of boiled water, stirrings and waiting, it lived up to its name:
and a bit more. The broth was almost as thick as a sauce. There were a lot of potato cubes plus some peas and carrots. The beef cubes were small; a few of them were tough but not many.
The Nutrition Facts boxes for both of them show that today's packets were on the low side for calories:
As per usual, the granola breakfast's box is on the left and the beef dinner's box is on the right. The values for the dinner are per half-packet. Since the value for Calories is only 260, the full packet had 520 calories - the same as the granola's. The total for both is 1,040 calories.
Calorie-wise, it was a light day. Not so for the sodium. Interestingly, the vitamin C count for the stew was higher than for most packets.
The daily weighing shows a wee bit of a gain:
which means that I'm stuck on one of those plateaus. Consistent with the trade-off, a better day seems to match with no weight loss.
Effects, So Far:
In line with the "no suffering, no weight loss" trade-off: as explained above, this was a better day than yesterday and yesterday was better than the day before. I did discover that tackling a new task does help. Today, it was brewing home-made beer with a beer kit. Last night, reorganizing the cold-room closet I use as a pantry for my regular stored food to pack away a new batch of foodstuffs I got because of some accommodating sales. They're prolly excess-inventory-offload sales, but that's not much of a bother for me because I eat through my stored food.
Activity has helped, although the pick-up might have been a result of shaking off the February blues instead of a way to successfully fight them.
The relatively warm weather has helped: as I write, March is slated to come in like a lamb.
Conclusion
Although my troughing late last week may have been aggravated by the shock of going back on the diet after a Hiatus Day, I think it's been seasonal. I'd like to credit a more active day for shaking it off, but the start of the shake-off began a bit before I upped the activities. As per the new normal, a sluggish day correlates with a real drop in weight.
As said above, I'm going to the Blockchain Law & Regulations Meetup this evening. That's why this post is up earlier than usual. As always:
Thanks for reading.
And feel free to comment below!
Day 0
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26