Archive for May 2012

The Story So Far

Right....things that I've noticed

1) weighing out portions
Reading the back of packets and finding out what the real size of a serving is has stopped me over eating and also means my food is lasting longer! Sounds simple but it goes further than that; by eating the recommended portion sizes it stops you from over eating, which means you don't stretch your stomach making you feel hungrier later!

I've chosen not to prepare my lunches at the same time as I do my meals as I know that i'd just eat my lunch... I have no self control!

2) Splashing out a little has mad ALL the difference!!! Pesto for 98p, cream cheese for 50p and it sounds silly but cake mix for 22p have been the highlights of the past week. With basic staples that had absolutely NO flavour....[wall-papper paste I'm sure has more gastronomic appeal than cous-cous I'm SURE] but hey ... slap a bit of pesto in and you're away!

3) The whole week I've been craving sugar! That's where the cake mix coupled with the marmalade came into play! 22p basics cake mix would have been awful and dry....very dry! I had wanted to but Lemon curd so I could do a makeshift lemon drizzle cake but neither supermarket had any. which is why I ended up with marmalade. I boiled some down and added it to the mix along with one of my eggs and the rest of the orange-jam-syrup concoction was poured over the cake once it was done! I WAS SO HAPPY! Was it the best cake I'd ever eaten? NO Did I care? NO! I had cake! I was happy!

4) It is REALLY hard to eat healthily on a budget! Cheap food is not healthy! I could have bought 20 sausages for a pound apparently...NO THANKS! Pizza's for 40p! chicken nuggets for who even cares! I don't want it! I want fruit and veg! I walked past the market and there was a stall with the most beautiful apples! I think I may have to indulge this week on some fresh fruit and veg but then there s the risk of it going off! Right now it's a risk I'm willing to take!

5) Something else I've noticed is that there is pretty much NO VARIATION in my meals! I saved up some of the more 'exciting' foods till the weekend so I had something to look forward to! The joke was on me! It got to Saturday and my stomach  had shrunk! I made myself a breakfast of two fish fingers, an egg, half a tin of beans and two slices of toast......I ate.......most of the beans, half the egg, a fish finger and one slice of toast...I WAS STUFFED! I ate the rest for lunch I wasn't going to waste it!

6) I do not drink anywhere near enough water! The first few days I had a constant headache and often contemplated just going to bed so I didn't have to think about food!

6.5) I snack ALL THE TIME! I recognised all of the times during the day when usually I'd have had a biscuit or a tomato or an apple or some sushi...I don't snack on normal things...which is probably why I nearly jumped a five year old with a pear the other day!

7) Alot of people at some point in the life have lived on less than a pound a day! My favourite stories coming from students that have lived of chopped tomatoes and toast...and I thought I had it bad!

8) Some of my friends are not the kind of people you really want to be around when doing this challenge. Having bananas waved in your face or dominoes pizza just being left beside you....NOT FUN!

9)It is worth it! On so many levels that I couldn't have comprehended before I started it is SO worth it. I have had loads of interesting conversations and had so much support not only for this but also my Global Poverty Ambassador venture for this year!


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Current Mental State


So I don't post here forever and all of a sudden there are two in on day...

currently craving
biscuits
and  
apples
basically any type of sugar

I think by the end of the week Hanger will be starting to set in!


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Day 5 of the Hunger Games



Ok So this is the second year I have taken up the live below the line challenge; last year I didn't document it and up until this point I hadn't documented this years challenge either....so here I go. This year I am taking up the challenge as a Global Poverty Ambassador, but for Restless Development.

The Challenge (if you choose you accept it) Is to live below the extreme poverty line (country specific) for 5 days. In the UK that means £5 for 5 days food and drink, thats breakfast lunch and dinner....33p per meal. My goal is to raise £365 which is the equivalent of living a year below the line.

When I tell most people what I'm doing the question they all ask is why; I'm doing this for the same reason that I present the 1.4 billion reasons presentation, to give a glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line everyday- and who have to make £1 cover a lot more than food and drink.

My shopping list for this week is as follows
loaf of bread - 47p
pasta - 30p
cous cous - 68p
pesto - 98p
cream cheese w/ garlic and herbs - 50p
pasta sauce - 39p
fish fingers - 60p
frozen mixed veg - 75p
instant mash - 20p
marmalade - 22p
gravy granules - 20p
6 eggs - £1
tin of beans - 27p
sponge mix - 22p 

the grand total of £6.78 leaving 22 pence to treat myself during the week WHOOP!

Ok today wasn't the most memorable day in my 23 years of living...

Breakfast - toast and marmalade
Lunch - 2 toast pizzas (surprisingly tasty)
Dinner - mixed veg and cous cous with a little bit of pesto......absolutely no flavour what so ever 

Tomorrow will be interesting to say the least! Over the past week I've had a constant headache that I'm going to put down to dehydration and a lack of sugar. My favourite meal last week (although it wasn't planned) was my left over chilli with pasta ...yes, it sounds vile but hey, small mercies!

Lets see how this goes!

If you'd like to sponsor me you can HERE
You can find out more about live below the line HERE
Find out more about Restless Development the charity I'm doing it for HERE

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Tina Fey

Thank you facebook for making me realise that... as much as I may have thought I needed to read Bossypants by Tina Fey...I DEFINITELY need to read this bad boy! “But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—BeyoncĂ© brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

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"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting"

- e. e. Cummings
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