It’s Saturday morning, which in many ways has played out just as any other Saturday morning: a slow breakfast, radio, and endless tea refills as we catch up with ourselves after a busy week. Except it’s not quite as normal today as this picture implies. Fruit and yogurt – normally something I’d grab as a quick snack whenever I feel a suggestion of hunger – tasted like heaven, and buttered crumpets with jam were more buttery and fluffier than they ever have before. It’s good to notice how wonderful this small selection of choices can be, and how much enjoyment and satisfaction can be found in just a simple (but healthy and varied) meal.
This challenge got easier for me as the week progressed. I was tired, cold and unable to concentrate for the duration, but it became less noticeable, and my appetite had almost disappeared by Thursday – possibly from food boredom, or possibly due to my body getting used to the smaller quantities. It’s funny to see how quickly we adapt to new versions of normal – my fear now is that I’ll get used to having quantity and variety again too quickly, and start taking it all for granted as I always have. We are so much more privileged than I had even realised before this challenge started. I knew it would be tough to reduce the quantity and the variety of the foods that I have access to. I knew I’d feel below-par and frustrated, and that I’d struggle to battle with cravings. What I didn’t know was how important food is to my existence on a larger scale, and how it costs so much more than I had imagined to keep one healthy normal adult functioning properly. This cost was meaningless to me, but over the past five days its meaning became a bit of a burden.
Yesterday I took myself out for a 16 mile run – part of my training for the ultra in June. It’s the only ‘real’ training run I did during the challenge, and I was cautious to save up some of the week’s food allowance for Thursday and Friday, so that I’d have as much in my stores as possible beforehand, and enough to replenish with afterwards. While breakfast was as substantial as it would ever be before a long run, it wasn’t long before I felt the deficit that had been building since Monday. I was tired and found it hard to focus, and by mile 9 I had searing hunger pains which made it difficult to move forwards both in terms of morale and physical discomfort. I ate 3 custard creams while out, which didn’t really cut it, and I felt so much worse in the last 3 miles than I’d felt at any point during last week’s 20-mile run. At this stage, 16 miles usually feels like an ‘easy'(ish) day, squished between weeks of much higher mileage, but yesterday there was nothing easy about any of it, and it certainly wasn’t a relief from the training I’ve done over the past few weeks.
The main issue, however, was the return home, to a very small quantity of food. Normally I’d refuel with a large glass of milk or a protein shake right after the run, but there was none of that: I had a quick shower and then rushed back downstairs to make some lunch. A large plate of spaghetti with some leftover lentil dhal – very tasty and plenty of food to tuck in to, but hardly any protein (11g) and so not a good recovery meal at all. More importantly, the run left me with 2,500 calories (the ones I burned on the run + the ones I need anyway to function – breakfast) to get back over the course of the day, and with only 85p left in my daily meal budget this was not looking realistic. Luckily a few extra pennies from Monday and Tuesday meant that I could tuck in to a toasted bread cake topped with peanut butter without going over-budget.
While running 16 miles sits towards the more extreme end of the exercise spectrum in the society I live in, doing this much physical activity on little food is the reality for many of the people who live at the extreme poverty line: manual labour, collecting food and water, lack of access to transport – the list goes on. I made the (possibly not very sensible) decision to take myself out for a run yesterday, and more importantly I did it for fun, while actually this is nothing compared to what people have to do on a daily basis in many parts of the world just to get by. What has been equally striking to me is how the variety and quality of my diet allows me to do, and to be, so much. Being fit, healthy, academically successful at school or work, sociable: all of these things require physical and mental capacity, which is provided by the foods we eat. Over the past five days we subsisted mainly on refined carbohydrates: every day MyFitnessPal warned me that I’d ‘eaten too many carbs’, while my protein, vitamin and mineral intakes were minimal for the duration. If we live in a world where fruit and veg is so much more expensive than processed food, is it surprising that people who don’t have all that much choose not to buy these products? And, in turn, is it surprising that young people are not concentrating in school, or getting any exercise?
I’ve learned a lot from just five days of relative struggling. And I genuinely hope that this stays with me for a long time. I don’t want to stop spending my money on good quality foods, ethically-sourced or local products, unprocessed and wholesome ingredients – this is something that I value above, say, buying the latest iWhatever or going out to nice restaurants. And that’s my choice, which I realise is a privilege that many people will never have. But through recognising this I hope I will be able to enjoy it more mindfully, which perhaps in turn will lead me to do more to help others who don’t have choice or much else to keep them going.
Last night’s tea, and our last meal of this challenge, was a pile or white rice topped with lentils, beans and mixed veg. It looked gross, and upon first mouthful it tasted pretty gross too, but a few spoonfuls in it seemed like the best meal I’d had in ages: we savoured it, and scraped the pan clean afterwards. I realise that the things we enjoy are always relative to what we have at any point in time, and perhaps this means that the more we have, the harder it is to find enjoyment in things. To me, it seems obvious that constantly striving for more and more is a road to a world where pleasure is very hard to find in the simple things; the more we have, the more we need. So while I don’t intend on living on £1 of food a day for as long as I don’t need to (despite the fact that I realise that it really is possible to eat very cheaply), I hope that I’ve learned a bit more about the gap between what I have and what I need – a gap that I realise is much larger than it could be – and how to keep that in check.
I have genuinely been humbled by this challenge, and while it was much harder than I thought, I do think it’s worth giving it a go. The money that we have saved on our weekly shop is being donated to relief efforts in Nepal. Find out more and donate at www.dec.org.uk.
#BelowTheLine recipe of the day – Broccoli ‘Pesto’ with Spaghetti, 25p
Running, Naturally 