Chris - Day One Experience

Today was the first "real day" of the SNAP Challenge. 

When I woke up this morning, I found myself craving a steaming hot cup of coffee and a fancy omelet. Not just any omelet, but one of those huge omelets you'd get at a diner like Billie's Fine Foods in Soulard. Then, reality came crashing down upon me. 

I had to consciously devise a plan on how I was going to eat today. Do I eat my much anticipated bagel with cream cheese now, or wait awhile to prolong the inevitable hunger I'd experience later? If I wait to eat breakfast, when should I eat lunch? If I eat them too close together, will I be really full and then potentially be extra hungry later? I had so many questions, and I was unsure of what to do. 

It was at that time I learned one of my first lessons. I've never fully appreciated the distraction that eating (or not eating) can be during a day. Never before have I spent so much effort deciding when to eat; I'm typically deciding what to eat. Like many other food-secure people, I simply eat when I'm hungry. I didn't have that luxury today. I had to be creative so that I could make it through the day as comfortably as possible. 

Ultimately, I decided to eat my bagel with cream cheese about 10:30am. I happened to be working an evening shift today (2pm to 9pm), so the plan I took with my lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a banana was... hold out on eating it until I absolutely couldn't stand it anymore. That lasted until roughly 5pm when I ate my sandwich, and 7pm when I ate my banana. Both breakfast and lunch satisfied me at that period of time, but by the time my shift was over I was more than ready for dinner.

Andrea cooked dinner and ate earlier in the evening, and I ate when I got home at about 9:30pm. Normally, Andrea portions out food where I have a larger serving than her. This evening, her portion was not enough. I couldn't eat all of my portion of pasta and sauce, so she finished what I couldn't eat. Both of us, at the end of the day, appear to be satiated. 

Since Andrea and I failed to budget for any other beverages, every meal was pair with a nice big glass of water. Never before has a large glass of iced tea, or a soda sounded so good. Unfortunately, those are not options for us. 

Speaking of budgeting, due to an error on my part (oops), we went over budget by approximately $0.30. Taking into consideration that we were buying only for a week, and not a month, this error might not be as big of a deal if one were budgeting on a long-term basis where the balance of the EBT account "rolls-over" from month-to-month. 

It's funny (possibly even sad) that even after one day, though I know this challenge ends for us in a week, I have slight anxiety knowing that I'll most likely be hungry for much of the day tomorrow as well. I'm slowly beginning to understand what this situation might be like to live with on a long-term basis and it's stressful, to say the least.