‘I’m actually feeling pretty good.’ Lexington man eating Taco Bell for 30 days over halfway through

LEXINGTON, Va. (WDBJ) - Three weeks ago, the country was introduced to the Lexington athlete-turned-filmmaker setting out to perform a super-size-like experiment where he will eat nothing but Taco Bell for 30 days to see if he can improve his health.

This past Sunday, Sam Reid passed day 15.

“I’m actually feeling pretty good. As of right now, I’ve actually been able to maintain my weight,” he says. “Some numbers have been better than I was expecting and some have been a little bit higher than I was expecting.”

It took Reid a little over a week to order every item on the Taco Bell menu, a stipulation he set for himself while testing the validity of ‘healthy’ fast food.

“I’ve gotten to know the drive-through employees really well and we’re on a first name basis,” he adds. “Sometimes I’ll pull up to the drive-through speaker and instead of hearing ‘thank you for choosing Taco Bell’, I’ll hear them say ‘hey Sam, you can go ahead and pull around.’”

Reid’s been getting a lot of attention for his experiment, including a mention on a late-night television show.

“It’s been really fun. I’ve had friends from different parts of the country reach out to me and say that they saw the story on their local news station which has been really exciting. I think with some of the coverage, you get a lot of people weighing in on different aspects of the experiment, whether that’s how I’ll be affected long term or my bathroom habits.”

Something he has been tactfully sharing in daily Instagram progress videos.

“I think part of it has to do with the fact that Taco Bell has maybe an undeserved reputation for having a certain affect on your body. What I’ve experienced so far has been very normal digestively and I think a huge part of that is just saying away from some of the hot sauces.”

A documentary including detailed food logs and weekly medical test results will be used to analyze the impact the fast-food diet had on Reid’s health.

All of this is in an effort to change the narrative surrounding fast food and eating habits by starting a different kind of discussion.

“There are definitely some people that may have had a different experience with their own health journey that have looked at what I’m doing and said ‘that’s never going to work’ or ‘this is a publicity stunt’, but what I’m interested in doing is more than just the Taco Bell,” Reid notes. “It’s about opening the door to that conversation about a more nuanced view of our health.”

Reid will complete the experiment in a few weeks at the flagship Taco Bell location in Las Vegas.

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