Week 1 Review - Ration or Ruin w/ IC, NBC Guy, FD & Bankster Breaker

[00:00:11] So we got Ben the Breaker of Banksters, we got Future Dan, and we got the Intrepid Commander all waiting to tell you how their week was. So let's start with Future Dan. Future Dan are you there? I'm here Dave, I'm here and I'm surviving. I have had a good week I would say. Oh, a good week. Okay, I was not sure we get that kind of report. Do you want to start with just telling us how you feel?

[00:00:41] I feel pretty good. The first weekend without food was a shock. Uh huh. Because I have not been fasting. I have not been on a low calorie diet. I have not been on a sugar free, fat free diet by any means.

[00:00:56] And I gotta be honest, I went cold turkey. And the first two days were a little bit tough. But then I ate my first bit of ready hour on Monday, had it again on Wednesday, and I have not eaten yet today, but I have right here in my hands, you can hear it.

[00:01:20] I have a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a stomach pain. And was that because of gas, diarrhea, what? No, just hunger pang, really. And that was about a half hour ago. It lasted for about 10 minutes. Okay.

[00:01:49] Uncomfortable, but went away. Yeah. And fully functional at work. No problems there. Yeah, a little bit of the lethargy, I gotta admit, but I can deal with it. I'm coping with it. Yeah. Well, we'll see how you do on week four. Let's go to, uh, Ben, the breaker banksters. How you feeling, Ben?

[00:02:13] Hey, Dave, I'm doing pretty well. I'm feeling about as normal as I would on a Friday evening. It's a May 9th. It's Friday, like 630 Eastern had a long, long week of work and just grinding it out. I even went for a long run yesterday. And I would say in terms of like physical energy and mental clarity, I feel about the same as always.

[00:02:40] Now, morale standpoint, I'm down a little bit because not only have I not had, you know, a lot of, you know, salads or chocolate or red meat in the last week. I also know this weekend, I have nothing in front of me. Uh, so technically, unless I find some fish or forge a little bit tomorrow and Sunday, there's no reprieve.

[00:03:04] So this last five days hasn't been that bad. I'm feeling pretty good right now, but next couple of days, let's just say I better catch some fish. Yeah. So yours is more psychological than physical. So you're, you're, yeah, you're looking at the weekend as yikes. Yeah. No rest for the weary, no, uh, cold beers, no steak on a grill, no going out and getting tacos.

[00:03:33] So that's really what's getting me, but I could power through that for sure. Um, yeah, you've done fasting with that. Yeah. You've done fasting in the past. You're, you're accustomed to this and your biggest hurdle is psychological rather than physical. Right now. But as you said, week three, week four, it might really catch up. And I've done fasting for five and a half days as long as I've ever gone.

[00:04:01] I've only done that once, but I've done two or three day fast for like 10, 15 times before. But after that week of fasting or so, then I reward myself a little bit, not with donuts or candy or something, but with good meals, good times, whatever. Right. I still got three more weeks of this going ahead, but I'm trying to power through that. I think I will power through it. So that's where I'm at right now.

[00:04:25] Okay. Well, let's go to the intrepid commander who is very familiar with fasting. And he also has the added benefit of being in a different category. Uh, what is it? The, uh, cultivator cultivator. Yes. And that is the main reason why cultivator days, cultivator days feel like cheating for sure.

[00:04:51] But you guys are doing way better than I'm doing. And I even cheated on Tuesday. I mean, you guys sound like you're not even having hardly any issues. That's phenomenal. I've been, I mean, the calorie amount, I guess has been the same, but obviously the nutrient, the nutrients are different because I get to eat real food on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

[00:05:14] You know what I mean? Yeah. But you also have a workout routine that you did not, uh, limit whatsoever. Oh, I killed myself today. Yeah. Everybody was gone. I killed myself today and I wouldn't stop. And I just, I knew I was going to pay for it. And that's, that is what's killing me the most.

[00:05:36] What's killing me the most is that because I get these like, uh, waves of tired, like not tired, like, Oh, I'm a little tired. Like I needed to go to bed. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. It happened to me Wednesday, actually Wednesday night. I had work to do Wednesday night. I had a writing job. I had to finish and I worked out with my wife.

[00:05:56] And if, if anybody wants, when I say workout with my wife, I, I, I try to reiterate this all the time. Check out Sydney Cummings Tabata workout. Okay. I did that with a 60 pound kettlebell and I felt, I felt decent. And in about two hours I was leveled. It was like, it was, my body was like, you're done for today, Bubba. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh.

[00:06:26] Things are catching up with me for sure. But other than that, you know, it's not, not been the worst. Uh, we, we struck out, we fished, my son and I fished two spots. We'd never fished before over the weekend came away with one bluegill that was so small. I told him to cut it up and use it for bait. So that was a surprise. That was how I expected that day to go. You know what I mean? Might be different this weekend.

[00:06:50] Well, talking with the intrepid commander, the lesson learned here is PBN family. If you have to ration something, ration work as opposed to food or calories. So he, he's working way, way. I mean, he did not tune down his workouts or anything like that and he's powering through. So his fatigue level is going to be way harder.

[00:07:20] So let's go. So future Dan set out some attributes. Let's go to future Dan with his attributes of the products themselves. When you got to eat, how was it? Yeah. Yeah. So we went over this, introduced it last Tuesday on Patriot power hour. So I'm not going to get into what the scales mean.

[00:07:44] I refer you back to our podcast where we kind of introduced these 10 attributes and Ben and I gave our preliminary report card on these 10 for the ready hour product. Longevity to me is still, this stuff is obviously has the longevity. I know, no reason to think that it wouldn't match the 25 or 30 year shelf life.

[00:08:07] That's advertised nutritionally low on protein. It definitely, you know, low protein amounts. And, and as, as I said before this began, I'm supplementing with, I'm personally, I'm supplementing with muscle milk, 160 calorie size, one, one serving containers.

[00:08:28] And I'm averaging three to four of those a day every day. Oh, okay. Yeah. So nutritionally I'm supplementing for the protein because, because ready hour, in my opinion, it's, there's not enough there.

[00:08:40] Um, I think the variety has been decent. I haven't had to eat a repeat of anything and, um, you know, decent variety in this two week stash. The question is if you had this product after 30 days, after eating several of the types of meals repeatedly, would the variety be enough for, you know, to prevent food fatigue? Uh, I don't know. That's, that's sort of scoring a five on a 10, 10 point.

[00:09:10] Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I was jumping into because I have to tell the PBN family that watching you has been comedy central for me.

[00:09:26] This has been comedy gold, uh, prep prep preparing these foods and getting them ready to eat. Now the end product looks pretty good. You know, when I get, get the pictures of the end product, but tell me about preparation. Oh, you saw the videos I posted in our back about, yeah, it's hard to film while you're cooking with one hand with a can.

[00:09:52] Well, yeah, your hand. Yeah. Yeah. I was messing stuff. I was spilling stuff. Uh, it put me in front of a stove, whisking and simmering more than I typically do in the kitchen. So there's work there. Nothing you can adjust to. It's not, it's not ready to eat food, but the preparation is, is tolerable for, for what you're getting.

[00:10:14] I think in, on the dimension of cost, this ready hour seems pretty cost effective. Now we're going to compare it in future weeks to three other alternatives. Mountain house, uh, XMRE and you made you for cost. This looks like it's, it's an effective cost.

[00:10:36] So, uh, probably six or seven on that scale packaging, the packaging solid. I have no doubt it would maintain the longevity. The portioning is perfect for a family of four for one guy doing this. Now I'm in the, you know, measuring and measuring carefully.

[00:10:54] Right. And if you don't measure carefully with the water and the, and the, the powder, it's a challenge. Uh, but I, I think I've mastered that. Uh, storage wise, we talked about Tuesday, you know, these, these ready hour products come in, uh, you know, buckets, very storable. So definitely.

[00:11:14] Yeah. Well, now I did notice that you have an induction stove. Did you, did you think for a second, Hey, if I had to make a fire and put this in a canteen cup, did you picture yourself doing that? What I pictured is that would be some trial and error and you got it prepared with any of these powdered ready, you know, emergency foods to be able to cook like that.

[00:11:42] And I think until you mastered it and anybody that was hungry enough and dedicated enough would, would figure it out. But in the meantime, there's going to be waste and poorly prepared food. And if you don't get this, you know, with the right amount of water and cook it for the right amount of time, it's still food. It's still edible. It isn't going to, it's going to be as easy to eat. Yeah. Okay. Let's go to Ben, the breaker of banksters.

[00:12:11] Do you have anything different than Dan? What did you experience differently? Hmm. Not much that is different that can really pop out. I feel like I might've rated the taste a little higher than he did on a couple of them, but we both agreed that we did not like the strawberry cream of wheat, which you can see right here. We did agree though.

[00:12:37] We did agree though that, uh, just like the pictures show strawberries, not included mint leaf, not included, whatever cranberries, not included. If you did have a very small amount of cultivator or forage to include in the oatmeal include in the rice, right? It'd make a lot better.

[00:12:56] So I did not cheat or supplement or add anything to it, but I know that every, essentially everything that I had would have tasted a lot better with, uh, you know, some non-storable food mixed in. Right. So, uh, just something to keep in mind. I see ready hour as yeah, sure. If stuff's hitting the fan and you haven't had electricity for months and months, this is all you got.

[00:13:20] It'll work out, but it actually could work just as nicely for, Hey, I want every other meal to be ready hour because I lost my job a couple months ago, but I still have some real food. I could supplement with, and that might help with the nutrition as well as the fatigue factor. So that really hit me between the eyes is, ah, I could make this so much better, but I'm, you know, cause of the rules of the game. I'm not. Right.

[00:13:49] And that's something I want to bring up here. Cause I called out James in the back channel because he, he sent a picture and I'm like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute here. And there was a, what was it? The chicken flavored rice or something. I said, flavored rice. Exactly. It's not rice and chicken. There's no chicken actually in it. It's right.

[00:14:15] It's rice flavored broth or chicken flavored broth thickened with rice. Okay. Now tell me about your cultivator because when I saw that picture, I'm like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute. Yeah. I mean, all I did was, uh, just, I think I poached up an egg or two and put arugula and turnip greens. And, and I think I might even have put some radish tops in that thing. Also, it all just kind of ripped up and torn in there.

[00:14:44] And yeah, that was it. It was delish. Wasn't bad. Well, yeah. And PBN family, you gotta know that he's a trained chef. Okay. So when, when he sends me a picture, I'm like, wait a minute. I think you're cheating here. He, he actually wasn't. It just looked way. It does feel like that though.

[00:15:08] I'll tell you when I, in my quiet moments after I've eaten my eggs in the morning and I'm thinking of Dan and I'm thinking of Ben, it does feel like cheating. You know what I mean? Like, Oh man. But you're only cultivating on the days that you're going to eat this stuff anyways. Right? Yeah, exactly. So, so I think between that and the workout routine and everything, I think you guys are on the same level there.

[00:15:36] I think there's just different lessons being learned. There's definitely lessons being learned. I'll tell you the big one. And go ahead. And if it's my turn, I don't want to cut into Ben. And you know, no, it's your turn. It's your turn. We're, we're up to you and the cultivator go. Well, at the, at the beginning of this thing, PBN family, and listen to this, cause there's two things here that I think are incredibly important, particularly if you're not currently on a homestead, that's producing a bunch of food.

[00:16:07] Ben said, and I don't want to opsec you or anything, but he said he had supplements and he had lots. And I thought that was a good idea. I don't have the amount that he has. And I was like, yeah, the supplementing I think is a good call. Dan brought up the protein. So I, I got the protein also, and I've been supplementing, but what, and we can talk about that too. If you want to know exactly what's nothing revolutionary.

[00:16:36] But what I think is if you're going to depend on this stuff in particular, like the, well, if you're going to depend on, on this type of food that we're going to go through, I think all of it, except maybe mountain. Well, I don't know. The MREs look pretty good too, in terms of protein. I think having the powdered protein is an, just after a week of this is a necessity. Like, I think that's a prep necessity for anybody. I'm talking to anybody who's listening.

[00:17:06] That's a prepper. That's thinking we're going to bug in, we're going to eat food storage. And that's how we're going to weather this storm. Because to Dan's point, there ain't, there's just no protein in the food. You know, when I eat the, you're getting a little bit from dairy in the soups. You're getting a little bit from lentils in the traveler's stew. Like there's nothing. But so immediately you're in a, you're going to be, if you've got any work to do at all, you're going to be cannibalizing muscle.

[00:17:34] And then you're just going to wither away. And if you get into conflict with anyone who's been eating meat or, or, you know, anything, you're going to have problems, obviously. So I think that, that was one of the big takeaways for me right off the bat was protein powder, more supplements, because this stuff, yeah, this stuff ain't cutting it if you're depending on just that. So when I say secure your protein. There you go. Yeah. You're right.

[00:18:03] You're really, really are right. Yeah. This is coming from a guy who most of the time gets more eggs than I even know what to do. So I'm not hurting for protein, but it's still, to me, it still says that the, the ease of making a protein shake, how it tastes. I don't, I don't, I never really take protein like that. Um, but the ease of making the shakes and the ease of, uh, and the taste of having them is like, it's a prep worth having. And it's powdered.

[00:18:33] You know, I think it gets like, well, you would know, Ben, how long does your, did your protein powder get? Did you get five years on that or something? Um, yeah. So I think there's a few ways to look at it with, for the muscle milk, the actual, I think that's weighs so much and it expires. Yeah. The pre-made I wouldn't do. I wouldn't either. However, I have that, I would have that as kind of my normal pantry or I would have that normally and I rotate it out. And so the first month or so while stuff hits the fan and that's available to me, then I'd

[00:19:03] be moving to massive amounts of powder, like a year's worth. And of course you have the whey protein. Uh, but what I was experimenting with are is peanut flour, peanut protein. If you're looking at it here, it has 14 grams of protein, a little bit of fat, but not much at fiber though. Look at the fiber, five grams of fibers, a lot. So the protein is a huge gap in that storable food, but the fiber is really a big gap.

[00:19:32] So, um, I absolutely agree even more than ever. That protein is needed to be stored. And by the way, though, uh, I have been supplementing some with cod liver and I will next week with some canned tuna, canned fish. I think that stuff lasts years and years. That's a great way to secure your protein. If you're trying to do it without a freezer or, you know, that, that next level. Yeah.

[00:19:57] So, uh, the picture that you sent in the back channel for the PBN family was powdered. I think it was peanut butter, right? Yeah. Powder, peanut, flour. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, we have that on the shelf here at the Jones homestead and you can mix that up with water and add it to just about anything. And it increases your, your protein for whatever you're drinking.

[00:20:23] So, uh, before we end this week's check-in or whatever we're going to call this, does, does anybody have anything else that they want to say about the first week that could be a lesson learned for PBN family? I, uh, cooked the ready hours traveler stew. Yes.

[00:20:50] At the same time that I made, uh, what did I make on Wednesday? Something with rock, rock, cheesy, broccoli, cheesy, broccoli. I remember that because it accounted for the total 2000 calories. Yeah. A little bit shy 2000 that I was aiming for that day. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But because I fasted for two days, eight on Monday, fasted again on Tuesday with the exception of the Muslim milk supplement.

[00:21:18] So not complete fasting, but no solid foods for three out of those first five days. I cooked too much and then I was full. And then the traveler stew sat and I was thinking, well, I don't need these. I'll just eat it later tonight. Right. And did it turn into paste? Couldn't do it. Couldn't. Yeah.

[00:21:44] And among the attributes, taste is to me of lesser importance. You gotta remember this is survival food, right? Right. But, um, I truth is you gotta cook it when you need it and you gotta want to eat it when you make it because this isn't the type of stuff that sits around and gets better in a dish. Yeah.

[00:22:08] So, so your stomach actually shrunk and you got fuller quicker because you had fasted those three days and, and your, your mind was saying, Hey, cook this and eat this, but you couldn't do it. Uh, you know, I, I could have eaten, but I could not have eaten the traveler stew from ready hour under those circumstances. So in a survival situation and we're exercising a scenario.

[00:22:36] Well, one of two things has happened. Uh, the first scenario is you have been on emergency supply food for a period of time and you're running short and now it's time to ration or ruin that. That's a common scenario. The other one I could envision is, uh, a very, very, very severe calamity has struck planet earth. Yeah.

[00:23:06] You take a look at the impact and say, uh, I'm going to need to start off rationing just from the beginning. We should not be eating full courses every single day. I don't have enough. I didn't plan for this that deeply. And now we're going to be on limited calories because it's prudent, right? Right. Either scenario that you're exercising, uh, in rash, you know, whatever the scenario is,

[00:23:34] it would lead up to doing an exercise like ration or ruin. My takeaway this week is, uh, only cook what you need when you need it. Otherwise you cannot afford wastage. And that's what happened to me with the travelers too. I cooked it. I thought I was going to eat it. My stomach had shrunk and it ended up. It went to waste. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's a great lesson. Anybody else? Real quick.

[00:24:02] If I could, I think, uh, the last year where I did some keto and I cleaned up my diet, generally speaking, allows me to deal with more volatility and more, you know, going without food and also having a whole bunch of carbs and salt all at once going from one extreme to the other being in better, uh, physical shape, I think will allow you to deal with that shock.

[00:24:28] Uh, if you have diabetes or prediabetes or you're overweight or have other health problems going into the apocalypse, you're not going to get healthier. So that's just, you know, as an example, get healthy now so that when you eat this crap, if you have to, you won't be, you know, having a heart attack or a stroke within a week or two. Um, that's definitely something that I definitely, uh, I'm glad I did.

[00:24:55] And also I go into future Dan's point fasting or like the way he put it is rationing, but I see it as fasting in between that is going to be my default from now on. And if, if I ever get in a situation where I have to worry about my food supply, I'm going to start rationing immediately with a slight calorie deficit on the days I eat. And then the days I don't eat, I'll have a pretty big calorie deficit. I'll say this.

[00:25:24] That's if it's a pretty sedentary, if I'm doing 10 mile hikes, I don't think I'll be doing any fasting days or, you know, minimal, but, uh, it depends if I'm bugged in or bugged out if stuff's blowing up all outside and I'm stuck inside for a month or so, or there's big pandemic, who knows what, uh, I will immediately start on, on ration and, and yeah, intermediate, intermediate, what is it? Intermediate fasting. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:52] Well, that's, that's what we do here at the Jones homestead normally is the intermediate fasting. And we've done several, several days of fasting, you know, like every quarter. And this has been for the past, I don't know, maybe two, three years, something like that. So your experience level with fasting helped you understand what you can do and what you can't do. It did.

[00:26:20] It understood my body a little bit more, gave me more confidence that I'd be able to push through some of those hunger pangs that future Dan talked about and he's able to power through them too. And we could all power through, but it's, uh, knowing you can, you can get through and that energy will return. And, and just that mental, it's, you know, it's mostly mental at this stage. If you haven't eaten for months, maybe it's more physical, but it's mental right now. Yeah. Okay.

[00:26:49] Well then, uh, James, do you have anything to add or we want to end this? Definitely. Definitely. Go ahead. Go on the, so on the forging slash fishing side of things and, and also on the murdering side of things. I know what you're going to say. Go ahead. I learned lessons on all three of those. Yeah. Because I'd fish all the time. You know what I mean? Been fishing my whole life.

[00:27:16] One thing that happens when you go fishing after a big rain is it's usually tough. And it was tough on us the day that we went out over the weekend. And I think that had a lot to do with it. But normally you have a bad day of fishing, you go home, who gives a shit? You know, it was good to get out. So what, what, what really changed in that moment in my head was like, oh, this is a, this is eat or not eat. So it's not just a rough day, you know?

[00:27:44] And on the foraging side of things. Well, here's the other thing though, too, also. And, and the guys made a good point about this to me because I was kind of griping about it in the back channel. Or no, I was griping about it on a podcast. And it was like, if I didn't have to work for a living, then I could go fishing every day. You know what I mean? Like I can, I could just spend the mornings fishing instead of writing, doing podcasts.

[00:28:08] But they made a good point about, you know, you're probably not going to run out to the fishing hole with everybody in an SHTF scenario. You might wind up getting, you know, taken advantage of. So that was a good thing to wrap my head around.

[00:28:22] But anyhow, what really paid off for me, man, and it's funny because the most calories that I got from foraging this week all came from a tree at the end of the freaking, yeah, a tree at the end of the freaking road that we always eat off of all the time. And what it's, what it taught me was have those, have those like predetermined foraging spot.

[00:28:50] I don't know if a lot of people have these, but like if it were, if it were June, if it were end of June, early July, I'd know exactly where I'd be. I'd be at a couple different spots that have blackberries because it's easy. There's a ton of them. You know, this happened to be, happened to be mulberries. And we went down there almost every other night that, you know, that we were foraging. Even on nights when we weren't. And yeah, we went out, we went out right after the rain during the week.

[00:29:19] My neighbor even texted me and said, I found some what looked like oyster mushrooms popping. And I said, oh, I'm going to go in the, into the woods by our house and we're going to look because there's mushrooms there a lot. And I was like, all right, well, me and my youngest went in there and we spent 45 minutes looking at logs, going up hills, coming down hills. We didn't find Jack. Yeah. Then on the walk back, I'm thinking, how many calories did I just burn? Right.

[00:29:49] And didn't replace anything, you know? Yeah. So. And that goes back to. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, I mean, that goes back to the saying that I always have. Hope is not a strategy. You know? Yeah, there you go. These people that think they're going to go out and forage or hunt or trap or fish. That's hope. Hope. Okay. So if you're counting on that, you can't count on it.

[00:30:19] And it's different, different times of the year. That's awesome. I'm just saying a lot. For me to come away empty handed is that even though it was new place, even though it was after rain. I mean, I caught fish, but they were tiny. I could have ate them like I could have swallowed them. You know what I mean? That's how I wound up putting a tiny hook on a tiny bait and a bobber and was just pulling these tiny bluegill. And I was like, I'm not even bringing these home.

[00:30:45] But to your point, it wouldn't have done a hell of a lot of good either way if we were working on a family's food. So Dave, I hope that Ben and I catch some fish tomorrow because we're going fishing. Okay. Well, we'll be anxious to hear how you made out maybe Tuesday night on Patriot Power Hour or maybe next week when we do another update. Yeah, I like it. That's the plan. Okay. Guys, take care.

[00:31:15] And PBN family, stay tuned to PBN. To get all this information that you won't get anywhere else. These guys are suffering. So you don't have to. Take care and prep on.