I moved to San Diego at the start of 2023 and have been Too Busy To Write. TBTW is a lie I tell myself, but here I am on a Saturday morning with the desire to Do Something.

Chicken Shakes

I’ve always been skinny. I couldn’t find fitting jeans as a kid. I was called Chicken Legs in the varsity locker room by someone on the football team while getting ready for swim practice. I hit my hip bone against something and I shout in pain. I’m always cold. Etc., Skin and bones is how I’ve mostly always been.

There was a period of my life in 2021 where I was holding 5-minute planks and gained 20 pounds in a few months. I went from 160 to 180 and then ended up at 170.

I’ve set a goal to get to 200 pounds by 2024. I plan on achieving this with a threefold method.

• 🐓 Baseline Diet: Chicken Shakes
• 🐔 Personal Trainer
• 🥚 Daily Affirmations and Committment to the Goal

Inspiration for this came from the Poundstone Shake video I found on YouTube. People in the comments were skeptical about whether or not he actually drank it.

The alternative to blending and drinking the chicken is to sit and chew it. I’ve timed how fast I can chew through 2.5 pounds of chicken and it takes at least an hour. So being able to gulp down a shaker bottle of chicken in a few minutes saves me a lot of time.

The easier the diet, the more likely I am to do it

So here’s a video of the first chicken shake I drank. I drank the whole batch in one go (and that’s a little too much liquid to ingest). I kept MOST of it down… It was a good way to break the ice on this whole chicken shake thing.

Here’s a short montage of making a chicken shake with spinach.

Nutrition of the Chicken Shake

2.5 Ibs of chicken breast is approx:

• 4 to 6 breasts
• 250g of Protein
• 1360 Calories
• 30g of Fat

Cost of the Chicken Shake

Costco sells 10 pound bags of chicken for about $23 dollars here in San Diego. With the cost of chicken stock, it comes out to a little over $6 a day.

Good luck finding a protein powder that supplies 250g of protein for less than $6

I can easily and safely cook my chicken breast, frozen, without thawing it, in 23 minutes using an InstaPot.

I find that blending the chicken fresh out the instapot produces the best texture.

Results

Over the course of 2 months I was able to put on 20 pounds with my signature chicken shake (among a working out daily, taking naps, and eating 3 additional square meals).

I’ve recently injured my wrists which I haven’t handled with much resillience and have slacked off on both working out and diet for the past few weeks— plateauing just under 190 pounds. I plan on reigniting the engine by June and succeed in reaching my goal of 200 pounds by 2024.

Bonus: Raw Eggs

Once I hit 180 pounds, I plateaued a little bit. My buddy had told me about his raw egg diet where he eats 3 dozen raw eggs a day. I started to eat 6-18 raw eggs a day after reading this Vince Gironda article that he sent me.

I spent years eating many scrambled eggs every morning. But in the spirit of An Easy Diet, raw eggs certainly were “easier” to eat than cooked eggs (no cooking or cleaning required!).

Salmonella? The FDA has pretty elaborate regulations to prevent salmonella. There’s still a chance, but I haven’t gotten it! 🤞

Vince Gironda links to some studies that I found persuasive to give raw eggs a try:

• Dietary Cholesterol and the Lack of Evidence in Cardiovascular Disease
• Rats: oxidised cholesterol decreased spermatogenesis and organ weight, as well as testosterone, whilst non-oxidised cholesterol did not show these effects