As a professional idiot, I am often asked “Alasdair, has your brain stood on end and shat itself? Again?”

And I am forced to admit that yes, yes it has.

You see, I’ve just bought a month’s supply of this stuff.

It’s Huel. A UK equivalent of that Soylent stuff that all the weird Bay Area people who are too intellectual for food have decided is the future and we’re all to learn to enjoy out delicious beige slurry now, because it’ll be mandatory later.

So why the hell have I bought it? I mean, I like food. I really like food. I like everything about it. And I’m about to spend most of a month living on vanilla flavoured sludge, and pretending that it’s somehow a replacement for a thing that didn’t need replacing. I am not excited about this concept. What the hell am I doing?

Well, obviously, I’m curious to see what happens, that’s why I’m doing it. I want to know what’ll happen if I spend a month eating an actually properly balanced diet for the first time in my adult life. I’m not doing it for weight loss (although I suspect I’ll lose some) I’m doing it to see what it feel like to eat properly healthily, to give my body all the nutrition if actually needs, as opposed to just shoving some variant on red meat in it more times a week than is recommended by anyone with an ounce of sense.

What’re the rules here, then? I’m not doing this to self-flagellate, and I’m not going to pretend this is the future and a good thing. I am aware this is a mad thing to be doing. So I don’t feel the need to be ultra strict about how I approach this.

With that in mind, over the next week or so, I’m going to build up to living on a 2000-calorie a day Huel diet. (Doing it all at once would by my personally preferred approach, but I understand that can cause the toxic shits, so I’m going to ease in with one Huel meal a day for the first 2-3 days, then another few days of 2 meals a day, before I get to the all-Huel stage.) Once I am on that diet, I intend to operate under the following loose rules.

1) I am allowed to eat other meals, if I am in company (assuming I skip the equivalent quantity of Huel, obviously). Ideally not more than once a week. If I go an entire week without eating in company, and I find myself craving real food, I may allow myself an actual meal.
2) If I am at the pub to be social, I am allowed up to 2 pints of beer, or equivalent, if I really want it. I am allowed as much lime and soda as I’d like.
3) I am allowed as much fruit juice and coffee/tea as I’d like.

I’m obviously going to track my weight and a few other metrics as I go. I might post a vague summary of them at the end of this. Otherwise, well, yes, I am going to keep a diary of this, so you can all point and laugh at the idiot as I go. I imagine you’ll get the first installment tomorrow, after I’ve had breakfast.