The Thirty Day SHTF Test Diet: Day 4
Today was Day 4 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.
Day 4 saw my pep diminish and the hunger more pangy. The weight-loss component is beginning to bite. No health worries, no faintness, dizziness or any other symptoms. Instead of the vim, I plowed along in a routinized manner. The food again tasted like real food, but I discovered something about the distribution.
Today's Meals
As with Day 2, a packet of scrambled eggs with ham and green pepper.
Reconstituting took 1 cup of boiled water, which left about three spoonfuls of excess fluid. The eggs and the ham were small cubes,
but the egg cubes broke apart easily. As per usual, it tasted like real food.
Dinner was a packet of the notorious macaroni and cheese:
As many cooks know, macaroni is a bit of a challenge to cook properly. If the timing's off, or if the heat isn't distributed right, you wind up with crunchy or soggy - sometimes both. The macaroni in this packet was a bit on the crunchy side, but only a bit. The sauce was thick and salty: unlike the other types, this packet had a lot of salt.
I mentioned distribution above. After a quick check, there were six varieties of dinners - and about 40% of them were mac and cheese. A bit disproportionate.
Effects, So Far:
As said above, my pep was gone today. It looks like the energy I had during the first three days was in part due to an adrenaline jag.
It was replaced by routinization. Today was a physical day for me, as I had to shovel a lot of at-times heavy snow, and the hungries started up late morning. I found that it was easier to stick to a routine as I went through my day, even if the routine entailed shoveling. I'm actually a veteran dieter, albeit of the yo-yo type, and I've seen this phenomenon before: sticking to a routine makes the diet easier, or less difficult.
[This might be due to self-discipline: as some of you may have seen, I forgot to take a pic of the reconstituted dinner before eating it.]
Speaking of dieting:
The weight's still dropping a bit. But as veteran dieters know, it's only a matter of time before I get blocked by one of those infamous plateaus.
Conclusion For Day 4
To an extent, yesterday's mystery has been solved. My boost of energy did come from the novelty of this diet, which upped my adrenaline. Today was different: the first day that I had to concentrate a bit on enduring. Nothing to worry about health-wise, thankfully.
Still plowing forward. 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
Very interesting diet, I'm interested in the outcome so keep up the everyday updates. Upvoted and following you for more 😊
Thanks, and likewise. :)
oh maaaan, no more forgetting to take pics before eating your money shot, lol.
Hang in there!
~ @bluerocktalk
Will do. Keep pumpin' out the shows. :)
I just picked up 5 packs of the new Mountain House Turkey Dinner Casserole but I put them away for when the SHTF. Good luck on your diet. I'm sure you know this already but there is a ton of sodium in most of the freeze dried meals.
Congrats: just remember to consider how you'd boil water in case the S really does hit the F.
Actually, I didn't! Not until you told me. Info much appreciated.
My main way I plan to boil water is a rocket stove. Localish guy by me makes them by hand and they're great. http://www.shtfandgo.com/store/en/stoves-and-fire/25-bullet-proof-308-gravity-feed-rocket-stove.html?search_query=rocket&results=4
I'm interested in rocket stoves myself, albeit the ultra-DIY kind you can build with bricks. The kind that alllows ya yo fuss around with the intake lengths and chimney heights. :)
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I read all the comments and I agree with them don’t really have anything to add except I am still rooting for you, keep up the good work and another great 👍 post. 👍👏👏👏👏😃
that's a lot of mac and cheese, is it more like kraft or velveeta? Do they have survival hot sauce?
Ha! Good ol' mac and cheese...
This is something that is quite important to a prepper (making sure that your plan works), yet something that not many people think about. Keep up the good work! Just upvoted & followed you.
Thanks a lot! I'm following you too.
One of the reasons I stuck to the crash-diet part is that it's a kind of stress test.
Its not good if your hungry, you need to keep your energy levels up plus that mac n cheese doesn't sound very appetizing, all that salt won't help.
That's a good point. Thankfully, I haven't been famished - bent over from an attack of hunger - but I'm watching.
Right. It was out of the ordinary, which is why I called attention to it.
All that salt will make you thirst. Can you eat fruit just to curb the hunger pangs
I could. Strangely enough, coffee helps them go away.
Drinking coffee will give you a little energy. Are you craving anything yet or thinking about a certain food. Its what happens to me when i can't have it
Not as of now; at least, it's not noticeable. But thanks for asking.
Maybe take some vitamins, too.
I do have some. Had I had a real prepper larder, I'd have a lot more: at least a year's supply.