Today was Day 30, the last day, for my test of Mountain House food packets as emergency food, The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet. As detailed earlier, this diet has turned into a weight-loss diet. With this post, the test is over. Tomorrow, I'll post the final findings.
It's finally done! As of the time of this post, I've reached the thirty day point; all sixty meals in the Mountain House 30-day box are gone. Fittingly, I arranged the last meal to be yet another packet of mac and cheese. :) This last day was like the others in that there was nothing to complain about with the food and no health effects. I had a normal energy level albeit with a night-owl tilt. My weighing today shows another drop, which experience with dieting has taught me to be misleading.
Before I get into it, I'd like to make a special thank-you to everyone who's followed this series - for continuing to drop by despite the formulaic writing. As I hoped I showed in the comments, I'm really glad y'all kept stopping by.
Today's Meals
As I have for some time now, I frontloaded the breakfast to the wee hours of the morning to send me to sleep. This last one was the Granola with Milks and Blueberries:
Because it only requires a half cup of cold water, it was quick to reconstitute:
But I have found out that it's wise to let the packet stand for several minutes before eating it. Doing so gives extra time for the blueberries to soften up.
As mentioned above, the dinner was the last of quite a few packets of Macaroni and Cheese:
As with all of them, two cups of boiled water, a few stirrings and less than ten minutes' wait got it ready:
Just as it looks like the others, so did it taste. The cheese part was mild and dominated by the plentiful salt.
Speaking of salt, the Nutrition Facts boxes for both - with the granola breakfast on the left and mac dinner on the right - show the notoriously high sodium content of the latter:
Since the right-hand box's values are per half pouch, they have to be doubled for the whole thing. For the sodium, this means 86% of the daily value. Happily enough, the granola has hardly any; the two balance each other out.
The two are fitting in another way: they're close to the highest calorie counts in their classes. Combined, they make up a bit less than 1,500 calories; this makes for a somewhat easy exit back to normal food.
The regular weighing showed a drop from yesterday:
but I'm not taking it seriously. Almost certainly, there'll be a significant rebound tomorrow. That's why I'm waiting until then to put a number to the pounds I've lost.
Effects:
As a thumbnail preview of tomorrow's sum-up post: except for the night owling, which likely is a response to stress and for which YMMV, like's been pretty normal. Leaving aside a three-or-so day attack of the February blahs, and recurrent pangs of hunger, life's been much the same as pre-diet. I've been able to do what's expected of me and things that I like to do. Granted, this was because I was psychologically girding myself for a diet anyway. Nevertheless, living on the Mountain House emergency food for a full month (except for a hiatus day when I had to attend a family dinner) did not drag me down health-wise.
I managed to keep my spirits up. This was in part because of the supportive comments I've gotten through this series. I have good reason to thank everyone: the comments sections acted something like an online support group - which does help in staying on the track. Again, thank you all: you did help!
Conclusion
I'm leaving a full conclusion to the entire series to a summation post tomorrow, which will go into how it went and what I've found out. Because I suspect a rebound, I'm saving the tally for tomorrow too.
Overall, I found out that if you're overweight to begin with you can get by on these meals alone for thirty days. I do not recommend it - certainly not for people who have no spare flab! - but you can do so in a real emergency. Since "ordinary" SHTF events like power outages and natural disasters almost always last for less then a month, this 30-day pack will suffice unless things get really bad. With this angle in mind, I can report that I was not sick or whacked down by hunger this last month.
I'll expand on this finding tomorrow. See you then!
Thanks for reading.
And feel free to comment below!
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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
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Day 21
Day 22
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Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
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Day 28
Day 29
Day 30