Future Food Documentary: Living on Complete Foods Solely in Liquid Form For 12 Months
Last week, I came across the Instagram profile @futurefooddocumentary which is run by Matthijs Diederiks. Something on the profile description caught my eye: “12 Liquid Months.” A quick review of the posts intrigued me. He has been dieting on liquid food for 12 months.
Let me briefly explain, so you know the context that made Matthijs’s experience appeal to me. I come from an academic background. In fact, I earned my PhD in Chemistry in 2015. Since the fall of 2013, thanks to Dave Asprey and his detailed blogs and podcasts on the bulletproof exec webpage, I become a biohacker. I had been fascinated to learn how this Silicon Valley CEO with no academic background in Life Sciences has so much to offer to the world regarding dieting and practical tricks to become a human with a higher efficiency. Using his tricks, you can significantly up your physical and cognitive performance — not kidding.
He has basically applied practicality to all the scientific research done in academia and has extracted all those research findings by making his body a laboratory and sharing his findings with the world. Yet again, now I learn about Matthijs who has conducted this experiment of 12 months of eating liquid food and wants to share his findings through his Instagram profile and his YouTube channel. I love these sorts of experiments, and I had been asking myself what it would be like if I went liquid, and then, here is Matthijs with his experience.
I fixed my own immune system problems by eliminating gluten in the first step and later adopting a diet individualized to my genome and immune system response. I 10xed my cognitive performance, following Dave Asprey’s high fat diet combined with two days of intermittent fasting per week. However, over the years, by including carbs, I created a modified keto diet that works best for me. When I started biohacking, I weighed 85 kg, and within five months I had lost 20 kg. In fall 2014, I started my individualized diet (curated for me based on my sensitivity and allergy test reports). I healed my hay fever by spring 2015. Through experimentation, reading, listening to my body, and studying the scientific research, I have learned the following:
1. We need to acquire new food habits, and the psychology of eating should include a rotary diet — meaning that no food should be consumed consecutively two days in a row. The best practice is every four days! We also naturally desire seasonal changes of food due to the ingrained influence of historical cycles of accessible produce.
2. Fasting while hydrating is not only good for the immune system (puts it at ease), but it also clarifies your mind and increases your focus.
3. You want to ingest foods in the rawest, simplest (not altered) form to avoid additives and contaminants introduced during the food processing stages and to avoid loss of nutrients during the denaturing that occurs while cooking.
4. If you are seeking higher performance, you want to give your body food in a form that can be directly used by your mitochondria (the power plants of the cells), not in the form of whole protein (meat or beans) that must be digested first in order to be broken down to its building blocks (amino acids). How do you do this? By taking protein powder. Protein powder contains amino acids in their free form — ready and available for your body to use to strengthen the muscles and for mitochondria to burn for immediate energy production. Go for saturated fats like medium chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil or, even better, octane oil with shorter chains of eight carbons.
5. If you want to lose weight and be rid of mood swings, energy crushers, and food cravings, you would do better to avoid quick-source energy foods filled with carbs and sugars.
6. Complex foods and big meals produce byproducts when digested that often are poisonous and give you brain fog.
7. If you want to start your day and your work shift sharp and energetic, eat simply for your first meal of the day (for some it’s in the morning, for some with different work schedules it could be lunch). For example, have a simple, high-fat breakfast like bulletproof coffee (made with French-pressed coffee blended with organic, grass-fed butter and either MCT or octane oil). This keeps you up and running for six hours without craving food, and feeling full, focused, and energized without the brain fog and moodiness that usually comes with a big breakfast.
8. A high-fat breakfast (no carbs), also trains your mitochondria to burn fat more efficiently. This way you’re going to lose fat (weight) without working your ass off in the gym and going on ridiculous diets that require you to count your calories or require you to be starving. You can eat wise (diet high in good fats) without torturing yourself by forbidden eating.
Another thing about Matthijs’s @futurefooddocumentary Instagram that caught my eye was a comment where there was a mention of micro-dosing with LSD. I had first learned this concept through a radio show (Day 6 with Brent Bambury on CBC radio) not long ago. It was this past summer during one of my morning runs at UofT’s old campus. This practice started in Silicon Valley, like many other biohacking tricks that started there. Anyways, if you’re interested, you can still listen to that CBC interview here. The title of the interview is: “A Really Good Day: How microdosing with LSD helped Ayelet Waldman fight depression.” It’s a 10-minute interview — give it a listen. Ayelet is an author, mother of four, and a former public defender who has tried this for a month. She wrote a book about this experience called A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, Marriage and My Life.
Ok! Let’s not get off track. I was telling you about reading that IG comment with the mention of micro-dosing. My immediate reaction was that I wanted to know more about the amazing person who runs this Instagram account — who turned out to be Matthijs. I asked if it would be okay to do a podcast interview because both my Instagram audience (@BiohackReal) and I would love to learn more about his experience with 12 months of liquid food and with micro-dosing. I have experienced incredible results with my simple ingredient smoothies, and it’s going to be fun to learn how this fellow found the experience of going liquid for a year!
I am super pumped that we agreed to have Matthijs interview with me, and I cannot wait to have plenty of questions to ask him. We scheduled this interview on Friday, December 29th, 2017 for 1:00 pm (EST), 6:00 pm (GMT). It’s going to be a Zoom call interview. Opt in with your email here, so I can send you the link to the recording afterwards.
