Food bank diet, day three

Man. I feel totally crappy, in a way I'm not at all accustomed to. I know all about feeling overworked and underslept and stressed, but I'm really not used to piling bad nutrition on top of that, because whatever the other conditions of my life, I get a fair bit of nutrient-dense good food. I feel heavy and sluggish and slightly breathless. I desperately want fruit and fresh vegetables, and I desperately want to eat something with some flavour. (Interestingly, at first I was fantasizing more about cheese and nuts and tofu, but now it's more about tomatoes and apples and salad, and things with tasty sauces.)

I couldn't finish my Kraft Dinner at lunch. I ate enough to plug up the hole in my stomach and then realized that however hungry I still was, I could not eat another mouthful of that crap. Maybe I'll try mixing the last of my onion with the remaining KD, on the grounds that it needs the help more than rice does. I don't know if that will make it edible or not.

I did an interview with someone from the college magazine today, in which I had to tread the delicate line between stressing what an inadequate and in fact socially harmful diet this is, without making it sound like I myself am actually suffering in any serious way. "It must be a horrible experience for you!" she said, and sure, in a transient way it's very unpleasant, but I'm doing this because I *chose to*, and it's for a very limited time, and I'm going into it well-nourished and can be well-nourished again afterwards.

NOTE: mental alertness impaired enough that I posted this before it was actually finished. I may write more later. But just to note that I've decided to make this and other food bank diet posts public, since public education is part of what I'm supposed to be doing here ...

Food bank diet, attrition

The agreement on which everyone signed up for the food bank hamper diet is that we'd commit to a minimum of three days (which is the period of time a hamper theoretically covers) and a maximum of a week (which is how long some people have to make a hamper last sometimes).

As far as I can tell, nearly every single person is stopping after tonight, even people who'd really been planning to go for a week. People are quitting while they still have a fair bit of food left, because they just can't handle the poor quality of it.

I am determined to get to the end of four days (as are a handful of the other divs, I guess because students are tougher than other people and more used to bad food); I might even make it through half of Friday, but all I'm likely to have left for Friday lunch is half a loaf of white bread, a packet of instant oatmeal, and maybe a bit of leftover KD. So I may not hang that tough.

It's really interesting to observe how hard people are finding this, much harder than many of them had anticipated, and in a very short period of time.