Well, it was tricky but I made it to the end of the challenge! Although a lot of sites offer recipes for cheap meals, they invariably require a larger initial spend, e.g. £15 for a range of meals that will last 3 weeks, which is no good if you don’t have £15 to begin with.
I cooked all my meals (apart from breakfast) on the Sunday night, and then portioned them out for the course of the week. They were all vegetarian but to ensure the meals were still all ok to eat, I froze Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's portions and defrosted on the day. This meant I had 3 small meals a day - nothing more - apart from Wednesday when I was at home and had an afternoon snack of rice (I was volunteering in the evening, and knew that if I didn’t eat before then I would be an absolute joy to be around!).
As you can see from the pictures, it seemed like the food was quite beige. It became a way of keeping me ‘healthy’ whereas I am used to food being a pleasurable experience, so I found myself following the same routine everyday in order to have something to look forward to. My favourite meal was the bean stew, so I would have that in the evening.
Although I found myself hungrier than usual, I got into the habit of knowing when meals would be and knowing that I could wait. It was also a good opportunity to remind my body that when I think I'm hungry, I actually need a drink. Each day, I drank at least 3 litres of water having cut all other drink from my diet - I generally don't drink enough water on a daily basis and I found this helped my skin as well as my hunger. In the morning, if I wanted a hot drink I would have a mug of hot water.
Reading this back to myself, I know it doesn't sound as though the week was too difficult, but I'm an everyday carnivore who thoroughly enjoys sugary treats. Throughout the challenge week I was basically a sugar-free vegan and it really had a physical affect on my body. It was a bad week for me to choose as I was recovering from a cold, and had some travel vaccinations on the Tuesday, but I did find that my cold seemed prolonged and I had a headache all week. The connection is purely speculative, but I think the lack of certain vitamins didn't help.
Going back to my normal habits has been tricky. I've found myself considerably cutting down on anything even slightly greasy because it makes me feel ill (I had cooked everything in water over the last week!). In fact, we took the Brownies out to Mcdonald's on Sunday and I ended up having carrot sticks - sad, or what?! It's weird how quickly your body can get used to new habits, though, on Saturday I had a fresh orange juice and my lips came out in a rash (presumably because I hadn't had any sugar or citric acid for 5 days!)
It was difficult to calculate my exact spend because, in reality, if I was living on this budget I may not have access to the cooker (to initially cook my meals), microwave (to reheat my meals), or a hot water heater (at work we have a magic water tap rather than a kettle so it's tricky to work out the precise spends). Despite this, I have tried to work out the basic costs to the best of my ability!
Total spent including water:
£4.33 on food (although I do have some potato soup left - only one portion!)
£1.44 on drink (tap water - 15 litres over the course of the week - based on figures from Thames Water)
= £5.77
To put the costs into perspective, when I went out with my mum on Saturday, we had a lunchtime snack at M&S and it cost £14.90 for the two of us! I have found myself thinking about money increasingly when I look at the costs of food, and it's something that I'm going to bear in mind for as long as I can.
It wasn't the plan, but I am going to try and keep some of the habits I gained from last week for my everyday lifestyle. Avoiding some of the sweet treats at work wouldn't be a bad thing, and neither would eating smaller portions! That said, I'm not going to intentionally force myself into eating beige food because it's cheaper.
Thanks so much to everybody who donated and supported me throughout the week, you helped me raise £180 from this alone, which is incredible! It's not too late to donate if you would still like to, check out my Just Giving page for more info: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Francesca-Jones1
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