What's going to taste best today? FREEDOM TOMORROW.

I feel weak. I feel as though I've failed somehow, despite completing the SNAP Challenge successfully. At times I was frustrated, other times I was just hungry.. sometimes it felt easy, and other times it felt like torture.

Today is the last day of the SNAP Challenge and I'm already looking forward to eating "normally." Andrea and I are already plotting our next dining moves. We're knee-deep in excitement at the thought of going to CostCo and Schnucks to buy food. 

I was more than ready for dinner about halfway through my workday. I texted Andrea asking her to describe the pork loin, haha. I had a plan to briefly live vicariously through her. Unfortunately, the only satisfaction I had during the afternoon was a bowl full of bagged salad mix.

Andrea was gone at a concert, and I enjoyed the pork loin and potatoes all by myself. It felt magical. It was the first decent portion of protein I'd had all week, besides the chicken tacos. 

As the SNAP Challenge concludes, I reflect back a bit on my experience. I now have a taste of what it's like to live in a SNAP recipient's shoes. Just a taste. I had freedom to look forward to on Monday. I had an end in sight. Many SNAP recipients live in the situation on a long-term basis. The SNAP Challenge is a SNAP recipient's life. It's not a game.

Looking Back on the Past Week

As we finish the last day of the SNAP Challenge, I wanted my final entry to be a reflection of all the things I learned from my experiences. 

I have worked with people seeking food assistance and helping them through the sometimes complex process of applying for SNAP, but I didn’t have complete understanding until I walked in their shoes for a week.

Some key realizations I had during the process -

Freedom – I have definitely taken for granted my ability to buy a variety of nutritious food.  This freedom goes out the window on food stamps.  I was concerned about what was cheap and what would stretch.  I got sick of certain types of food and I was only eating everything for just a week.  Also, I missed the freedom to run out and grab a snack or a drink.

      Effort – We put a decent amount of effort into planning a menu and calculating to make sure we were within budget.  I think about someone who might be juggling 2 or even 3 jobs and whether they would have the time or energy to meticulously plan all their meals and budget to make sure they had enough for the whole month.

      Hunger – I never thought this much about food in a strategic way and I haven’t been that hungry in quite sometime.   I never realized how the little snacks I eat here and there kept my appetite under control until I didn’t have the luxury.

After taking this challenge, it further solidifies my support in the SNAP program. I have increased appreciation for all the awesome, interesting people I get to meet and the amazing job I have the opportunity to do everyday. 

I highly recommend you take the challenge to see if you can live on $4.26 a day.  I guarantee it will open your eyes to those experiencing food insecurity.

That Brownie is Taunting Me

Today I experienced temptation at its finest.   A few months ago my mom asked me, as she had done a few times in previous years, to attend the annual Women’s Health Conference at John A. Logan College in Carterville, IL.   This year I decided to give in and I am glad I did. 

I am getting older and clearly do not have the same metabolism as high school.  I need to start being more concerned about my health and this was the perfect opportunity to find more information and also have some free health screenings done as well.

I had my blood screening done and was finally able to eat breakfast.  I breezed through the morning sessions and when 11:30am rolled around, my normal lunch hour, I was ready.  But, little did I know what they were serving for lunch and obviously I wasn’t able to partake.    

I had been doing good the whole week, even though I was tempted to stop at Ted Drewes or go grab a snack out of the pantry, I did not falter.   But, when we sat down for lunch and there were brownies on the table, I felt myself getting weak.  I had not had any splurges throughout the week and my level of irritability was higher than usual.  I just watched my mom eat her brownie in silence.

Luckily, the lunch was the exact same thing that I brought – salad, except their salads had chicken, nice leafy greens and a variety of vegetables. 

I am happy to report that I stayed with what I brought and didn’t cave.   I am looking forward to Monday even more than ever!

Pizza... Dear Pizza

How I've longed for you. How I've pined for you in your absence. 

Okay, that's a bit dramatic but I sure was excited for a familiar dinner, even if it was frozen pizza. It was delicious and satisfying.

Work was busy, again, and though I got to eat lunch I was still not quite satisfied. The salad was good and all, but like Andrea previously mentioned I prefer additional vegetables and perhaps a different kind of lettuce in my salad. It just didn't seem complete to me. 

This SNAP Challenge sure has been eye-opening for me. One more day to go!

I think the fact that Andrea and I are looking at it as a challenge is somewhat telling. We're finding it a challenge to live like others do on a regular basis. We're finding it challenging to eat, be happy, and removed from hunger. We look forward to Monday. We know there's an escape. We know we COULD have cheated at any time. 

For most, there is no escape. There is no cheating. This isn't a challenge for those people, it's life. 

Tired

I don't have much to report about today. Work was ridiculously busy, and I had no time to think about food or being hungry. 

Andrea and I had budgeted for soup and grilled cheese, but I was too tired to worry about soup. I made grilled cheese, ate, and then slept. Maybe if I'd have been awake I'd have been hungry again, but who knows... 

I don't feel like I'm being nourished well enough. I probably don't have the greatest diet, but I feel like it was well-rounded enough to provide me with the necessary protein, and vegetables. Fresh vegetables sure are conspicuously missing from our diet... and I miss them dearly. 

I think it's interesting that a distraction was necessary for me to not notice my hunger. What happens when hunger is my distraction? That's a reality for a lot of people. Work suffers, school suffers.. the emptiness in their stomach is all that's on their mind. 

Inspiring Trip to southern Illinois

I travelled to southern Illinois on Friday morning to visit a soup kitchen in a town not too far from where I grew up.  I truly loved growing up in southern Illinois, but the dynamics are clearly different than where I live now.

It is an extremely rural area and there is a narrow scope of opportunity – health care, mining, farming, public service, and teaching.  Part of the reason I moved out of southern Illinois was to go to school in St. Louis, but also it made it that much easier for me to stay due to the lack of opportunity back home.

Work is even harder to come by and therefore, being able to have adequate funds to feed yourself and your family is an added challenge.

When I pulled up to House of House soup kitchen in Herrin, IL, I knew the building and area pretty well.  I had dined at this establishment, when it was an Italian restaurant, many times with family and even went there before my Junior High School Prom.  It was now converted to not only a soup kitchen, but also a thrift shop. 

I met the man behind the mission, John Steve, and he immediately took me around on a tour to show me what sets this soup kitchen apart from all the other soup kitchens in the southern Illinois area.  It is set up just like a restaurant.  He walked me through the kitchen and showed me the charts and regulations on the wall.  They have waitresses and waiters serving individuals for a few hours 3 days a week.  A typical soup kitchen, you don’t have much of a choice of what you eat and it is usually cafeteria-style where you go through a line and they hand you a tray with food.

At House of Hope, you are waited on and there is a menu you can select what you would like to eat.  Anyone can dine-in, the only difference is – you pay if you can and you don’t if you can’t.

I am always inspired when I do outreach in agencies like this.  You see volunteers that are meant to help people and those behind the scenes that created a space that provides an opportunity to bring all of those good people together to help the community.  It makes me realize there are still people out there everyday helping others and, in my mind, doing what is right.

I told Chris we will have to visit House of Hope sometime in the future when we both have a day off and have lunch.  The food looked amazing and smelled so good, but don’t worry, I didn’t cheat!  I ate my tuna salad sandwich, crackers and banana after I left in the comfort of my grandparents’ kitchen. 

A Day Off

I thought today would be my most difficult day. I was off of work and had the whole day free. I figured my mind would wander towards all of the good food I've been missing.

It went pretty well, actually. I had cheese and crackers for lunch, and for a mid-afternoon snack I ate my leftover serving of meatballs and bread that I didn't have from Tuesday. I was able to make it through the whole day quite comfortably. Since I wasn't hungry, I didn't think about food so much.

I was able to wait until Andrea got home from class to eat dinner at around 9:15-9:30pm. Days like today make me forget a little about the frustrations and hardship of living on a SNAP diet, but I try my best to remember what yesterday was like, and what tomorrow could be. I, while participating in the challenge, don't have the security afforded to me to eat whatever I want whenever I want.

Food Access Issues

In doing this challenge, I am not only committing to experience how it feels to be restricted in the amount or types of items I can afford, but also taking into consideration if I lived in different area of the city or even in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Living in South St. Louis City, we have an Aldi at the end of our street that we can walk to every week or two, a Shop n’ Save and 2 Schnuck’s stores all within a 5 minute drive or less.  There are also multiple bus routes that could take us to where we want to go.  But, what if we didn’t have stores within walking distance and had no means of transportation to even get to the grocery store?  This is too often a reality for those not only living in rural areas, but also within areas like St. Louis as well.

Chris brought up a good point.  We are lucky to have access to an Aldi, a store that tends to have lower prices than Shop n’ Save and Schnuck’s due to lower overhead cost and we would have been able to buy even less food with our food stamp benefits at another grocery store.

Chicken Tacos!?

To say I was ready for dinner was beyond an understatement. I was starving today. 

The chicken tacos were amazing. Outside of this challenge, I'd probably make them again. Maybe. Maybe my taste buds were influenced by the fact that I was STARVING.

All in all, I did fairly well today. When I started thinking about dinner was when my hunger really hit me. I've been pretty dutiful in keeping it in check, but those chicken tacos really messed with my head!

I really am starting to understand what it must be like to live like this on a regular basis and it would be very frustrating. Fortunately, I have the ability to return to my normal diet. Other people don't have that choice...

Not the Ideal Diet

I feel like I am yo yo-ing between being okay one day and starving the next.  The majority of our diet has consisted of a large amount of carbohydrates, the cheapest option, and not a lot of items with a decent amount of protein or fiber that normally fills me up.

We chose items that were cheap, but also that we could eat throughout the week multiple times.  And we also couldn’t afford the healthier whole or multi-grain options, which I usually try to buy. Items like bread, crackers, pasta, and tortillas – after this week, I think I might avoid these items for a bit because I am undeniably getting sick of eating crackers with the majority of our meals to help fill us up. 

I have noticed the difference this has made in how I feel everyday and how my bodily systems are reacting to the change in food selection.  I also devour my food a lot faster than usual because I don’t have any in between snacks to maintain satisfaction.

Day Two... What a Headache!

I'm not sure if it's the lack of caffeine or the stress from work, but I've had a terrible headache all day. Andrea and I forgot to budget for anything besides water to drink so my precious, precious unsweetened iced tea is nothing more than a distant dream. 

In my line of work, pharmacy, a lunch break is a rare commodity. The tuna salad sandwich and crackers I had packed for lunch were actually my dinner on the drive home from work. Due to my headache, I didn't eat any more than my helping of tuna salad, and about 4 crackers. It was delicious and I knew I had to eat something, but I didn't feel like eating anything..  

Andrea was kind enough to have dinner prepared when I arrived home, but I opted not to eat and went straight to bed. I guess that means I'm ahead a meal this week, eh? She said the meatball sandwiches and green beans were pretty good, so maybe I can indulge at lunch tomorrow on my day off. 

I think what I miss the most are drinks. I don't usually get much of a lunch, and I only sometimes eat breakfast so I don't miss any extravagance in those meals too much. What I do miss is a soda, or a much anticipated iced tea during the day. 

It's no wonder I have that headache...

Meatball Sandwich with Green Beans

Andrea enjoyed her meatball sub and green beans!

Missing the Little Luxuries

I felt like today wasn’t as difficult as yesterday, but I did what Chris did the previous day and waited as long as I could to eat my meals.  I ate breakfast and lunch later than yesterday.  Also, I have been under the weather and I think that has worked in my favor with keeping my hunger at bay.  When I got home from work, I was exhausted and decided to take a nap.  What I was planning as a catnap turned into a 2 hour-long snooze.  I ate dinner around 8:30pm and went to bed more satisfied than the night before.

I have become more conscious over the last few days about the serving size I have been fixing, especially at dinnertime.  I have been tempted to make larger portion sizes, knowing it isn’t healthy to do so, just because I am so hungry by the time I get home.   

I have told Chris I feel like this is a learning experience for us, but it also just a glimpse into the life of someone on food stamps because we have something to look forward to at the end of the week – normalcy in our food selection, snacks, and being able to buy little things here and there throughout the week again.  We don’t realize how big of a luxury it is to be able to go grab an iced tea or coffee here and there without giving much thought to the cost.  We are very lucky to both have outstanding jobs that allow us to not have to worry about food, living expenses, etc.

Ever so often the lackadaisical tendency of my personality kicks in and I don't feel like packing my lunch.  When I go grab a salad or a sandwich, it usually costs me anywhere from $8 to $12 for my lunch.  The cost of one meal out is the same as the cost of 6 to 9 meals on a SNAP budget.  This has also strengthen my habit of consistently packing my lunch.