Food Stamps Challenge, Canadian Edition: Day

I'm finally finished! (And I beat Gwyneth!)

Weight: 145 (down 3 pounds)

Meals:
Breakfast: Piece of frozen pizza, 2 pieces of toast (with butter and peanut butter) and a banana
Lunch: 3 little cracker samples (free), granola bar
Snack: Cookie
Dinner: Vegetable soup, toast with peanut butter

I had quite the day.  I was asked to stay and work 3.5 hours of overtime at work when I was originally going to work a 5 hour shift; 8.5 hours altogether.  However, I only packed a granola bar and a cookie in my lunch which would then have to last me 8.5 hours.  I really wanted more hours, so I took it, but I was unsure of how well I would do on that amount of food, deciding that I would have one snack on my first break and the other snack on my next break.  I ended up sort of cheating and going to the free sample stand which amounted to 3 little crackers but I'll take what I can get.  I don't know if it's cheating since it's free and it wasn't very much food.

Later, the store got extremely busy, the supervisor got sick and couldn't continue her shift and it was a stressful shift with the store sorely understaffed.  With all the chaos and the need to focus on being as efficient as possible, I must have had an adrenaline rush because I did not feel hungry at all throughout my shift but I ate because I felt that I needed to.  All in all, it was a weird day and I relaxed with dinner and reading in the bath.

And now for the moment of truth.  What is left over?  Well, obviously you already know because you probably skimmed the text to look at the picture.

My leftovers:

For $35 in one week, I'd say that I did pretty well.  But now, let's think: could this feed another person?  My brothers or my dad, all around 6 feet tall and 2 of them overweight?  My guess is that this food would provide 11 very modest meals and a lot of milk and cookie snacks.  That would last a person 4 days at the most.  So, no, I do not think SNAP is feasible for more than one person and even then it is definitely a tight budget.  Maybe I didn't budget correctly and maybe with some adjustments I could have fed two, but I find it unlikely that it would feed 3 or more people.  I won't rule it out; there are very cheap cuts of meat and packages of produce out there, but, to me, it doesn't seem possible.  I believe that it's possible that I could still survive on this budget for one person if I were also buying toiletries and toilet paper but it wouldn't be easy.

What did I learn from this? 

- Living on a food budget requires very careful planning; no impulse buying or giving in to cravings. 

- I have a better understanding of food budgeting.

- If I want to do overtime at work while under a tight budget like this, I need to pack extra food just in case.  

- From an overweight person's perspective, I am eating too much.  You don't need that much food to feel full.  

- PC Spinach pizza is awful and I will not buy it again.

- It is possible for one person to live on $35/week, $140 a month of food but it requires discipline and planning.  It is extremely difficult for 2 or more people to live on $35/week, $140/month.

- Coffee is addictive and the withdrawal is not fun but it's over in a couple days.

- And, most importantly, SNAP (Food Stamps) desperately needs more funding...

Now that the challenge is over, since it's past midnight and I've had all my meals, I feel like I'm stepping into a fantasy world with so many flavours that includes coffee, beer, wine, Parmesan, sour cream... (and I wonder why I'm still fat)

But I'm being melodramatic.  Thousands, maybe millions of Americans (and Canadians and other nationalities that do not have the SNAP program) do this for a good portion of their lives.  I will be donating to a local food bank in my community now that the challenge is done.  Since I'm on the internet, I'm not sure whether I should say that I donated or not since I am tooting my own horn if I tell people, but I'm just doing this for attention if I did the challenge without people knowing that I donated.  Maybe I'll leave it at this: Don't worry.  I'm terrible.  I realize that donating to a food bank or a charitable organization benefiting the homeless or the poor does not make me any more special or moral than anyone else. 

And with that, I will say thank you for reading (if anyone bothered to)!

Food Stamps Challenge, Canadian Edition: Day 1

Today I begin the challenge...  After a long shop at No Frills, armed with shopping list, notepad, calculator and pen, this is what I got for $35.15, just 10 cents under the $35.25 ($29 American) allotted for food stamps.  

Honestly, I think that's pretty good for $35.  I bought 19 items, consisting of 5 bananas, 5 apples, bag of pasta, 2 boxes of PC Mac and Cheese, cookies, eggs, Mr. Noodles, granola bars, small pack of butter, bread, milk, peanut butter, 3 soups, tomato sauce, frozen pizza and a box of Mini Wheats.

I managed to get some protein with the peanut butter, eggs and almond granola bars.  I also have some fruits and vegetables with the bananas, apples, soups and maybe the pizza (since it has spinach).  I wouldn't call this a healthy diet but I think it's quite likely that it will last me a week.  Everything was around $2, except for the $4.49 pizza and the butter, which was $3 for a little stick.  In hindsight, I regret buying it, since it doesn't have nutritional value and I'll only use it for the mac and cheese and toast.  I could have bought some instant coffee with that $3!

While we're on the subject of coffee, it is not pleasant being without coffee when you try to work a shift on 6.5 hours of sleep without any of that magical bean juice, I mean, that waste of money that doesn't provide any nutrition.  I didn't get coffee or tea (and definitely not alcohol) because I didn't want to spend money on something that wasn't food.  Anyway, I think this amount of food is enough for a week.

Throughout the challenge, I will weigh myself and record my meals everyday to show you how I budget my food and whether there is a change in weight.

Today's Weight: 148

Meals:

Breakfast: small bowl of Mini Wheats

Work snack: granola Bar, cookie

Lunch: Mac and Cheese (1/2 a package), 1/2 a can of tomato soup

Dinner: Mac and Cheese (1/2 a package), 2 scrambled eggs, apple

Other than the lack of coffee and sleep, the first day went fairly well.  It's hard to gauge how you're feeling when you're tired and that affects your mood all day.  I realized that in order to not eat more than 3 meals and maybe a snack, you have to plan your meals out, preferably with 4 hours between them.  I did fine for breakfast, snack and lunch but 3 hours after lunch I was already hungry, probably because I'm used to larger meals or eating and snacking more often.  Altogether I'm enjoying the food (obviously because I got to eat mac and cheese) and I feel full after each meal.   I'm also drinking water after each meal so that I can digest the food better and so that I feel more full when I'm done eating.  

I wasn't sure whether I should forego my daily B12 vitamin or Advil for headaches, but decided against it.  I suppose I was more inclined to leave them out since Advil is $3-5 and vitamins are fairly expensive.   If anyone actually reads this thing, let me know if there is an argument for including them in the comments. 

A little background on myself:

I'm a slightly overweight woman in her 20s with a vegetarian diet.  As my blogger name suggests, I am indeed a hedonistic hermit.  I love my junk food, alcohol, coffee, tea, sugary drinks sometimes.  I almost always have something sugary in the house.  For my meals, I usually gravitate toward 3 things: black bean burrito, pasta with tomato sauce and dal makhani curry with naan.  Then I'll add some fruit or a salad for nutrition.  But I eat many other foods as well.  My spread for this challenge isn't far from my current diet; I often have scrambled eggs, soup, cereal, toast, pasta, etc.  The pizza is new but I thought it would provide several meals for $4 so I went for it.

Another thing to include is that I've never encountered poverty in my life.  I've always been some form of middle-class, whether it was lower or upper middle class.  My mother was a lawyer and until she died a few years ago, my dad, brothers and I lived a comfortable, almost indulgent lifestyle.  She bought so many fancy things that we didn't need, we shopped at Whole Foods sometimes, we ate out at restaurants often and money wasn't as important as the healthiness and quality of the food when we were grocery-shopping.  

It's hard to admit but when our dad tightened our belts and we swapped the Starbucks for Folgers it was difficult for me to adjust to the change (the loss was probably part of that but it was a big change for us as well).  That was the closest I've been to anything resembling poverty.  In reality, we just started living a reasonable lifestyle where we spent modestly and focused on buying what we need.  There was no starving or hardship, just some upper-middle-class kids becoming lower-middle-class kids.  I later learned that our mother left dad with a large amount of credit card debt.  It wasn't that she didn't make a lot of money but she couldn't control her spending.  

Now I know why dad got a second job and felt anxious about spending too much.  Luckily he got rid of the debt and paid off the mortgage with the Life Insurance.  Now I still try to focus on the essentials, but I often get swept up by temptation when I see something appealing or something that's on sale.  To sum up, I have never been poor or homeless and my lifestyle is still fairly indulgent and sometimes expensive.  

I suppose another reason that I'm doing this is that I will move out of my dad's house soon and this might be my future.  I've been saving a lot of money, but it never hurts to think about your food, what it costs and how to budget for both survival and nutrition.

Well, I got through day 1, let's see how day 2 goes.  With a good night's sleep in my future, I'm feeling hopeful.