In this post I want to discuss “meal replacement” drinks as something to help you when you’re not in a mental state to cook which often results in chowing down on entire family-size bags of chips just to fill your belly.
Some background.
There’s no real reason for you to have heard of Huel or its close cousin Soylent. One or the other may have crossed your feeds at some point, especially if you’re a tech nerd and self-avowed “life hacker”.
In a nutshell, Huel and Soylent, ignoring the unfortunate 1984 reference, are billed as “Meal Replacements”. The idea is that a single serving of one of these things is nutritionally comparable to a balanced meal.
A single serving, looks a bit like this.
The texture is akin to a smoothie with a few spoonfuls of porridge oats thrown in and blended nicely. A bit gritty and, in my case, flavoured faintly with vanilla out of the box. It’s available in an unflavoured variety, if you prefer savoury shakes (madness!).
Meal replacement products have been in the public consciousness for a while, but usually either as protein shakes for THE GAINZ or as weight-loss/detox/fad diet aids. As a result, that’s the lens through which they tend to be viewed — only hardcore gym weirdos or health freaks use them.
Plenty of self-care guides out there list nutrition and hydration as things that you should look to do when you’re experiencing an episode of depression or anxiety and I think they’re totally right.
Without calories or water, your body and especially your brain stop working like they should, which often leads to a situation where you know you need to eat and drink but can’t even summon up the willpower to get out of bed to nibble on a biscuit and drink some water.
Food, however, is a tricky thing — if you’re in a shitty place, you might not even want to eat, let alone make delicious food because all the while your brain is screaming “It’s going to take forever to cook and will taste awful anyway”. The last thing on your mind will be “I should cook something because it’ll be good for me”.
It’s a good idea to cook something you really like and can freeze for later. That way, when you have absolutely no inclination to cook, you can defrost/warm up frozen chicken soup and sip it from a mug.
The problem with this is that it requires some forward planning and you might not always remember to take care of Future You.
Sometimes you will have been sat at your desk working or you’ve been outside and come home and suddenly The Hunger hits you. Or maybe you’ve forgotten to eat all day because you’ve been stuck in a loop of shitty thoughts for 8 hours straight.
Insta-food like Huel and Soylent is absolutely fucking phenomenal in this situation.
When you absolutely have no desire to prepare anything, it’s very easy to default to eating an entire block of cheese or a bag of chips but while that’ll make you full, it can contribute to all the shitty thoughts because now your brain has yet another thing to make you feel shit about:
“Look at yourself — you just ate a whole fucking bag of chips like some loser who can’t even cook for themselves. You’re a fucking failure of a human”
And fuck that.
Insta-food, as I like to call it, makes use of a couple of really neat psychological nudges — side note, Nudge is an excellent book on how to both get people to do things and how to help yourself form habits.
Making it Available (removing barriers to doing the thing)
Making it Easy (reducing the time between wanting the thing and having the thing)
The aim here is not to replace your entire diet with insta-food shakes — some folk do it and thrive, but I’m not convinced. It’s not even to ensure you have an absolutely perfectly balanced nutritional intake every day — although it definitely helps.
The idea is to reduce the time from realising how hungry you are and having something that’s both filling and nutritious in your stomach to as close to zero as you can.
The effort required to mix up a batch of insta-food is about as minimal as it’s possible to be short of just shovelling down spoonfuls of the dry powder. With a little bit of foresight you can stash pre-mixed batches in the fridge for a couple of days as well.
I’m not saying that insta-foods are necessarily a replacement for Actual Food, but when you’re in a shit place mentally, they can serve as a pretty fucking good starting point to get those basic nutritional needs covered so your brain can work a bit better.
It’s not a meal replacement — it’s brain and body fuel for when you’re having trouble functioning.
Addendum
I’m awful at mornings. I like to stay in bed as long as I can, especially during the winter where anything outside the duvet is a frozen wasteland full of wolves and spiders.
As a result, I’ve historically been bad at Doing Breakfast. Morning Brain considers even arranging the things necessary to make a bowl of cereal — spoon, bowl, milk, cereal — too much effort. I realise that in the grand scheme of things it isn’t but try telling that to Morning Brain.
My morning routine is therefore compressed into the bare minimum amount of time spent outside the duvet and insta-food fills the niche of Breakfast Fuel nicely. Mixed with (instant) coffee and some honey it’s great!
Thanks for reading!
I’d love to know your thoughts on this too!
