Some of the frustrations I have been having with the challenge is the lack of variety and lack of choice. I did not have much variety in my diet this week. Every morning I have oatmeal. Lunch is either beans or soup. And dinner has been bean or soup as well. Also, I feel like there is a lack of choice in my good. Because of our minimal budget, it doesn't now allow to you have much choice in the food you can purchase.
Today my teacher mentioned to the class that she has been reading these blogs! We ended up having a small discussion about the snap challenge. We discussed how food is essential to the development and hunger will impact every aspect of your life. I was very thankful for this experience because it made me realize how important advocacy was. This experience made me want to discuss this challenge with other types of people and explain why I am doing this. If you are curious.. I am doing this because when I first heart about this challenge it made me anxious and its a little embarrassing for me to admit this, but I did not want to do it at all. Once I realized how anxious and nervous I was.. I realized that I needed to do this. I needed to step outside of my own comfort zone and re access my relationship with food.
Thankfully I am not worried about my food running out. Lexa and I were originally worried in the beginning of the week, but our food is going to last! I actually do feel like Lexa and I are eating a pretty nutritional diet. My diet typically has more nutritious value, but this week was pretty close to normal. We have been eating alot of vegetables and having a fruit every day. This happened because Lexa and I were very intentional about trying to keep our diet nutritious. With this being said, I do wish we has some more carbs in our diet to keep us going.
Lexa: After some in depth discussion and analysis, Colleen and I decided to trade our rice for some left over pasta we had on our shelf last night. It was a very wise decision, as it provided us more energy than we had experienced for most of the week! While I felt energized during the morning and most of the afternoon, i noticed my energy levels subside around 4pm today. I was sitting at the library, enjoying some research when the tiredness hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt my eyes glaze over, and at that point, I knew it was time to pack up and take a nice walk home. The walk proved to be beneficial, and although I felt hungry, I embraced the feeling of simply walking and enjoying the surrounding environment. Taking my mind off food has been a rather meditative experience, and has demonstrated that we are capable of doing anything we put our minds too. Instead of being concerned about what Colleen and I were going to prepare for dinner, I chose instead to enjoy walking and catching up with a friend, and even fixed up my bike. For some reason, I was able to transfer the energy of feeling hungry and tired to more productive and engaging activities, which was helpful today. Granted, I was not able to do this in all cases of feeling tired, but this proved to be a positive experience. This week has also been a cleansing or detoxing week, in that it has shown much light on the privileges present in my life. Going without my normal food schedule and diet has been very enlightening when observing the wide range of emotion experienced just within the course of a day.
Colleen and I rationed our food for the rest of the day tomorrow. We steamed some carrots with honey and cinnamon and cooked some zucchini, squash, pepper, onion, and garlic with red kidney beans for dinner and tomorrow's lunch. We also saved a whole banana for tomorrow as well! Hopefully, this will get us through one more day.