Two days ago, Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson took a vow to spend a week eating nothing but Soylent, a nutritionally complete meal replacement created by engineer and entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart. He's documenting his freedom from solid food by day. Read about Day 1 here

Day 1 recap: Like trench warfare in France

I ended the previous entry saying that I was going to head out running, but that did not happen. As it got nearer to 7pm, I started feeling ominous rumblings in my belly—the kind that could either be the sign of some harmless gas or the harbinger of the poopocalypse. I stayed in, instead watching a couple of episodes of The Wire with my wife, who ate a fine healthy dinner while I sipped my Soylent with an ever-souring gut. A bit after 8pm, the gas started.

It was bad. These weren't mere ha-ha toot kinds of emissions; this was hair-raising. It was room-clearing, horse-killing, World War I mustard gas-type gas. I migrated from room to room in the house like I was giving up territory to the Kaiser, my face fixed in an expression of horror as green hell-fumes trailed behind me, peeling paint and wilting plants. My wife, bless her heart, said nothing. At some point, I made my way back to the computer and pulled up the e-mail correspondence between Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart and me.

"Other than a bit of gas at first (some people's gut bacteria are not accustomed to the soluble fiber) there have been no adverse reactions," he wrote in response to my question about potential adaptive side effects. Then my eyes started to water from the gas and I had to run back into the living room.

Chemical warfare farts aside, I closed out Day 1 with absolutely zero issues with hunger. In fact, other than a few brief twinges, I didn't feel actual for-real hunger even once. It even felt like there was too much Soylent in the pitcher—it was a challenge to eat all of it.

Day 2, 07:30

I woke up with a light headache, which is unusual for me. I haven't gone off coffee, and it doesn't feel like a caffeine headache—it's just kind of a barely-there annoyance. I trundle into the office, catch up on overnight e-mail and tweets, and contemplate my breakfast serving with increasing dread.

My stomach has never been particularly receptive to breakfast, and right now we've got the most uneasy of truces going on—any wrong move could spark an incident. As I sip coffee, several Soylent farts issue forth and I pull my shirt up over my nose. My wife has a bit of a cold and slept in the guest bedroom last night, and I'm actually pretty grateful. If I'm still gassy now, I was likely gassy all night. Fortunately, I was unconscious and did not notice.

The inevitable part where we talk about poop [skip to the next subhead if squeamish]

Regularity has never been a problem for me—even as I push ever further into my late 30s, I continue to be blessed with clockwork bowels. My first post-Soylent poop happens right about at the usual time—8:30-ish—and it feels like business as usual: neither a wild spray nor a rocky hard squeeze. I'd give it a four on the Bristol scale. From a quantity perspective, it was definitely less, but it wasn't particularly different. Maybe a few shades lighter than usual, but still a normal brown.

The bathroom business is accompanied by much inspired tooting as well. I imagine my gut bacteria are all wired up and dancing their little gut bacteria hearts out. My large intestine is humming and thumping like a Soylent-fueled discotheque.

Day 2, 09:00—Soylent Green

I savor my second cup of coffee, putting off the Soylenting as long as possible, but as 9am draws near I can put it off no longer. I approach the bag and blender slowly, bargaining with myself. Just a small cup this morning, I think, my gorge rising as I imagine downing another large serving like I had on Day 1.

Again, the ritual: bag in bowl, mix contents. One liter of water in blender, half of powder into blender, half of a vial of oil. This time, I add a capful of vanilla extract and a dash of green food coloring. I have at this point received approximately nine hundred hillion jillion squintillion comments, e-mails, and tweets talking about "SOYLENT GREEN LOL." So on Day 2, my Soylent will indeed be green. This time, I use ice-cold water and the lowest setting on the blender, letting the mixture rest after a few seconds.

Out of the blender and into the pitcher, then repeat with second liter. The pitcher has almost no froth today, for which I am thankful. Slowly, I pour a coffee mug-sized serving and sip.

The vanilla makes a huge difference in taste perception. The weird non-specificity is gone, as is the yeasty breadiness—in its place, there's simply a hint of vanilla. The sweetness is a lot better now too, feeling like part of the light vanilla flavor rather than an artificial afterthought. There's not much to be done about the clinging chalkiness though, and the sediment coats my mouth like mud in a riverbed. Still, I power through the mug of thick pistachio-green slurry and actually feel OK about it.

Day 2, 10:00: Second breakfast

This is becoming a regular refrain: I'm not hungry, but if I don't drink the Soylent, I won't finish the pitcher. Since the calories are integrated with the nutrition, I need to finish the whole day's serving in order to get everything my body apparently needs to function.

The green color isn't particularly off-putting—it looks kind of cool, actually, like it should taste of peppermint. My stomach lurches at the thought of peppermint-flavored Soylent.

I don't particularly enjoy my second glass. I am drinking it while I work, like a fast-paced modern type of guy, but I'm still full from breakfast and the more I drink of the second glass, the heavier I feel. It takes me 30 minutes to get through the cup, and the thought of that entire pitcher still waiting in my fridge is really weighing on my mind. At this point, a light lunch of a tiny piece of grilled chicken sounds terribly, terribly appealing. No, scratch that—at this point, not eating for the rest of the day sounds even better.

I'm also feeling pretty darn uncreative. Morning is usually when I work on short news items and reports, and the idea of focusing on a website long enough to read more than just a few paragraphs sounds like a ludicrous amount of work. Reports of Soylent bringing on mental clarity and improved performance and energy can be found elsewhere on the Web, but I feel the opposite: listless. The headache from this morning is beginning to intensify.

I pop some aspirin to help with the headache, and the small bit of water to make the pills goes down makes my stomach feel even more full. I try to ignore it and write.

Day 2, 13:30: I am forced to eat

The headache has mercifully faded, and more encouragingly, I'm actually feeling a very small, very faint amount of hunger. I'd love to let it simmer longer and see if it blossoms into an actual full-fledged desire to eat, but I don't have time. There's about 1.5 liters of green vanilla Soylent that I have to get through.

The pitcher has stratified much less today than it did on Day 1, too, for which I am grateful. I feel...odd, is the best way I can put it. It's neither a good odd nor a bad odd—I just feel a little off-base. I get a good whiff of Soylent as I whisk away its layers and I feel simultaneously nauseous and hungry, though a lot more nausea than hunger. Once I start drinking it, it's not terrible, but I'd really just started to shed the heavy feeling from breakfast and I'm not particularly looking forward to diving back into feeling so weighted down and un-hungry.

There's a lot of gut shifting as I drink this particular serving, too—my intestines have been mostly quiet since breakfast, but apparently that's not going to last. By the time I'm done with the cup, I've utterly annihilated any feelings of hunger I might have been feeling and I seriously believe in my heart that I will never want to put anything food-related in my mouth again for the rest of my life.

This sounds like hyperbole, but man, Saturday is looking like it's a long, long way away.

As I return to work, I want to do something to burn through the Soylent funk I feel myself falling into. Last night's aborted attempt at running really bothers me and I desperately want to get back out there tonight, but there won't be a chance in hell if my gut doesn't calm down and my brain stays this foggy.

It's possible this is a self-perpetuating cycle I'm in—Soylent's 2400 calories are more than I need for my standard "sit in this chair and write all day" level of activity. Maybe if I get up and do something, the activity will kick things into gear and I'll get a bit more energized.

Running has to wait until much later in the evening though, because I live in the geographic equivalent of swamp-hell. Plus, I've got interviews and deadlines and things—popping out for a couple of hours today really isn't an option. As the afternoon stretches on, my gut cycles into high activity, feeling and sounding like a company of dump trucks growling and skidding their way through an Ice Capades performance. It's disconcerting.

Day 2, 17:00: Do not want

Shane Snow, writing for Tim Ferris' blog, talks through his two week Soylent journey with wit and glib, glossing over the days and apparently feeling quite well through it all. He recounts that by Day 2, he's catching the scent of food everywhere and dreaming about eating, about biting into a brownie.

I feel nothing like that. Not even remotely. Food is repulsive. I feel like I want to sew my mouth shut. I don't want to ever consume anything again. No water, no Soylent, no chicken, no steak, no beer, no nothing. My stomach is done. I have broken it.

And yet, there's still Soylent in the fridge, and I still have to drink it. At this point I don't know if I feel depressed because I haven't consumed enough nutrients or if I've consumed too many. My guts continue their awful Danse Macabre, but at least I have not yet pooped myself.

As the clock strikes five, I must head to the fridge and pour another cup. Pray for me.