Cravings galore!

Day 13 - normally one of my favourite numbers, but today has not been so lucky for me. It seems my stomach is revolting against rice. This morning I wasn't feeling particularly hungry (my metabolism has slowed waaaay down - which may be a problem when I start eating normally again, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!), but I knew I'd be out all day so talked myself into starting the day right and having something to eat. The problem was, my stomach did not particularly agree, so it promptly hurled my breakfast straight back up again.

The last few days have been interesting. It's definitely becoming easier and easier to ignore other foods...they don't even really tempt me to eat them any more, but last night I was out at a restaurant having dinner with dad and 3 aunties and uncles, and I was definitely eating vicariously through them! At one point I suddenly became aware that as I sat there and sipped on my glass of water, I was staring at their dinner plates, unconsciously watching my poor aunty sitting across from me eat every mouthful. I then had to deliberately make the effort to not stare at someone as they ate every time there was a slight pause in the conversation!

I had a red-eye flight down to Sydney, which means that the airline serves breakfast at about 4:30am. I have no idea what was on the menu, as I deliberately kept my eye mask on so I couldn't see it, but man...it.smelt.good! I was very aware of the ridiculousness of salivating over airline food, especially at 4:30 in the morning, but i couldn't help it really! Still, there was nothing to do but keep my eyes closed, hope the guy next to me would stop elbowing me as he tucked into his middle-of-the-night breakky, and fall back asleep - so that's what I did!

Over the last few days I haven't been craving a wide range of foods like last week. Instead, part of my brain has been grabbing hold of the idea of one particular item, and obsessing over it like it's the most important thing in the world...my brain reminds me of a teenage girl with her first pop-star crush - any time it's not being used it's dwelling on something it can never ever have! I notice a sign advertising something out the corner of my eye, and even if it's something I would never normally contemplate eating, all of a sudden it's all I want. So far in the last few days I've obsessed over pumpkin soup, chicken and vegetable pies, quarter pounders (ugh!), steakburgers, caramel fudge, strawberry quik (which I haven't thought about in years), meringues, chicken & avocado sandwiches, blueberries, and teriyaki marinade. Oh man, I'm getting hungry just typing this!

Anyway - the brain is a funny thing. While my head is telling me it wants any or all of these things, my stomach is threatening to expel anything I try to feed it today. Lucky for my stomach, it's not going to get anything fancy - just more rice.

I refuse to start a countdown this early in the game, but if I WAS counting down, I'd finish up by saying...27 days to go!!!

What kind of friend are you anyway???

I wish my friends would stop offering me coffee. Sometimes it's really hard to say no! I mean really, what kind of friends are they anyway??? I come up with this crazy idea to eat crappy food for 40 days and instead of saying "you're an idiot" or "great idea, but we'd be impressed if you did it for a week, 40 days is a bit of overkill", they encourage me! Thanks guys. You know who you are! :)

In the last few days, I've really started to see some of the side effects of what I'm eating (or not eating). The main change I've notices is in my brain - it takes just a little bit longer to process thoughts and get the right words out, and I have to really stop and concentrate when someone is speaking to me sometimes. It's like everything in my head is working just half a beat slower than the rest of the world. I've also notices my motivation and energy levels have dropped, and I'm wanting to sleep a little more - I'm definitely feeling lethargic these days - and it's not due to lack of sleep for once! While I have not yet been to a refugee camp, I have read a lot about them, heard a lot of stories from people who have been in them, and seen a fair amount of photos and video footage, and the one thing I'm starting to understand (even just a week in to this thing) is how easy it is to lose motivation and hope. My life is still extremely interesting - I'm busy, I have friends, plans...I have hope - yet the effects of eating the same thing day in and day out are already starting to have an impact on my outlook on life, and the amount of energy I can muster to enjoy what I do have. I cannot imagine a life with out hope, or a live lived in fear or despair, where every day is the same, and with no view to change any time soon. How blessed I am!

The next 10 days or so will be interesting...I'm off on a trip south to spend some time with relatives. I'm sure they'll think I'm a little strange for embarking on this journey, but they're used to my strangeness by now!

I had to go to the supermarket earlier today to pick up a few things I need for my trip, and I must admit I spent a few minutes wandering around in the produce section, inhaling the aromas of bananas and tomatoes and oranges and avocados and dirt (past the potato section!)...man oh man, it smelt great! My nose is becoming fine tuned to anything that smells like not-rice...last night at the markets was a veritable feast for the olfactory nerves! Can't wait to dig into dinner from Mr Potato Man next month!

Day 5 - Variety is the spice of life!

I did a silly thing tonight.

I sat on my couch next to my bookshelf full of recipe books, marking all the pages of all the delicious things I'm planning to make when I finish this ridiculous 40 days. So far, there are about 100 pages marked. Let me tell you, there are some good recipes in those books...they make my mouth water just at the thought of them!

I'm amazed at how quickly I miss having a variety of foods. I think most of us tend to stick to the same sorts off foods anyway - cooking our favourite meals, having our favourite breakfast cereals or sandwiches, or visiting the same cafe's for coffee or lunch...but when even that range of choices is taken out of the mix, it's easy to stop and think about what else we might be missing out on.
I started out doing this because I wanted to experience what it would be like to live with no choice of what to eat - just eating enough to survive. But I'm discovering how much I take food for granted - not the fact that I have it, but the options I have to enjoy - meals out with friends, the satisfaction of spending time preparing a proper dinner, the convenience of chucking leftovers from the freezer to the microwave and having a good dinner ready in 5 minutes, or the option of thinking 'what do i feel like tonight' - then having exactly that. In my situation I get to save up those ideas, and in another 35 days I can play catch up. Right now 35 days seems like a long way away - I can really only imagine how depressing it would be to stare at my bowl of rice and chick peas and know that I'm going to be eating this for an unknown length of time.

One of the things I looked into a bit before I started this whole things is the whole barter/black market system that goes on in camps...how much rice do I have to trade for fresh fruit or vegies, or for some tea or coffee. I'm so glad I did...because tomorrow to celebrate my last day at work, I get to have a coffee and an orange...I CAN NOT WAIT!

So, 5 days in...I'm still craving an orange, I'm aware that I take many things in my life for granted...and I can't wait to try out some new recipes!

Day 3 - the monotony sets in

I haven’t actually eaten yet today. While I’m very aware that I need to eat regularly, there is absolutely no incentive to chow down on yet another bowl of rice. I’ve always been a slow eater, but last night it took about an hour to eat my meal of chickpeas and rice. Even though I was hungry, there was nothing appealing about my dinner, so I was easily distracted by anything and everything going on around me.
Sunday was not so bad...we had a big combined meal happening for lunch, so I had rice, with a bean mix and green mush on the side – made by one of our African families, so I figured it would count as part of the experience. While it did taste pretty good, I unfortunately had a mild allergic reaction to something in it, and spent the good part of an hour wanting to scratch out the insides of my throat. However, instead of doing that I headed up to the supermarket to by my staples for the week. The first thing I smelt as I walked in the doors was banana. I’m not normally a huge fan of bananas, but the smell was overpowering, so naturally I spent the next half hour convincing myself that I didn’t really want a banana at all...I only thought I did because I knew I couldn’t have one!
I headed home and cooked up my ration of rice for the next day – it seems like a lot of rice, but then again, I figure it’s all I get - so maybe it will be easier to get through than I think.
It’s not.
There is no way I want to eat that much rice in one day. Maybe the trade off of one days rice ration for an orange will be worth it after all! After Sunday’s dinner of plain rice, and Mondays breakfast and lunch of plain rice, I was ready to give something else a go, so I cooked up some chick peas, mashed them up, and had them...with rice.
I’m lucky though...at least I get to drink as much water as I like each day, and it comes from a tap or a fridge, not a well in the ground. At least I can microwave my leftovers to have them for the next meal, rather than gathering wood and cooking them over a fire. At least I can take a panadol to mask the ache in my head that is a result of withdrawals from the normal sugars and preservatives and crap I feed myself every day. At least I’m doing this by choice, to experience what life is like for millions of people in the world, and not because this lifestyle has been forced up on me.
So despite the monotony of the food (already!) and the ache in my head, I’m very aware of how lucky I am to be in this position.

The Last Supper

Well...this is it...the last supper!

I just finished the 40 hour famine this afternoon, breaking it with my all time favourite – a cheese and vegemite sandwich...helgas pumpkin 5 seed bread, thick vegemite, mainland vintage cheese...mmm...food of the gods!

I currently have a full belly thanks to a birthday BBQ this evening, where I enjoyed every little bite of flavour – I’m very aware that while I won’t starve over the next 40 days, I will REALLY miss having an extremely wide variety of foods to choose from!

So, exactly what will I be eating you ask? My daily ration is basically 400 grams of either rice, corn meal, lentils, cracked wheat, or chick peas plus a tablespoon of salt, a tablespoon of sugar, 25 mls of oil and vitamins. To work out what I would be eating, I researched different refugee camps from all over the world, and this seems to be the standard. After talking to a few families who have experienced life in camps, I will also have the option of trading some of my staple (rice etc) ration for a piece of fruit or vegetable, or spices and flavouring – so less food, but more tasty. I guess I’ll see if that is really an option I want to explore after the first few days.

Why am I doing this? Lots of reasons, but right now I’m thinking possibly stupidity is the highest on the list! J It started with a random train of thought a few weeks ago as I was discussing the 40 hour famine with some friends...don’t get me wrong, I think the 40 hour famine is an awesome idea, and as a kid I remember how hard it was to ignore those hunger pains (and how even dozens of barley sugars don’t hold them off after the first day), but as an adult, I didn’t really think it would be that much of a sacrifice to not eat for 40 hours...40 days on the other hand, would be huge! Over the next couple of days I thought about some of the families I know who spent years in refugee camps, and recalled a conversation I’d recently had with two kids – one was complaining that we always have fruit for morning tea, and why can’t we have more biscuits, and the other saying how much she looooooooves fruit, and in Africa we never had apples – 2 seven year olds with such a different life experience already, and such a different viewpoint on things they encounter every day. Then (perhaps stupidly!) I blurted out to a couple of friends that I was thinking about eating refugee rations for 40 days, just to see what it was like. They thought it was a great idea (for me to do it – I’m suddenly aware that they aren’t joining me...hmmmm...), and the rest is history!

So...here I am...it’s almost midnight, and there’s time for one final delicious flavour in my mouth. There’s been a hot debate raging in my mind for the last week as I tried to decide what it would be, so I settled with an orange at 11:30 (getting the last of those good vitamins in, and I love oranges lately!) and now I’m ending the day with my favourite cold drink in the whole world...a can of good ol’ Dr. Pepper!

40 days of blah food – bring it on!

Getting started...

Did you know that every year 15 million people die from hunger? Or that for the price of one missile, a school full of hungry kids could eat lunch every day for five years? That there are 195 million kids in the world who’s growth is stunted by malnutrition. My head is full of crazy info like that at the moment - I’d have to be blind, deaf, and more than a little stupid to not realise there are billions of people in the world who don’t live anywhere near as well as I do. If my entire world fell apart tomorrow, and I spent the rest of my life living in the streets, at the end of it all I’d STILL have lead a pretty great life. I’m sure you know the feeling!
I’m a big fan of walking a mile in another persons shoes (at least metaphorically). I’m also a big fan of sharing the things I care about with the people I know. Which brings me to the reason you’re reading this...
An August, the 40 hour famine is running. You all remember it from primary school right...an excuse to eat nothing but barley sugars for 2 days? Well, this year, with you’re help, and in conjunction with the 40 hour famine, I’m hoping to do two things I love - walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and share about what I learn with the people I know (and maybe even a few strangers).
Here’s where you come into it...if you help me raise $2000 for World Vision, through the 40 hour famine, I’ll go a little extreme, and spend 40 days living on the rations a person in a typical refugee camp is given, and I’ll share about what that’s like with you all through a blog (argh! no coffee! how will I survive???).
If all my facebook friends donated just $10 each, I’d exceed my target.
If you decide to donate a little more, or even decide join me for 40 hours and do something like chow down on barley sugars, give up technology, or live without furniture for a day and a half, well that would be awesome.
And if you forward this email on to another friend, and they decide to rack up an extra tax deduction for next year by donating as well, or get a bit educated by following my blog, that’s even better!
You have till 15 August to decide to donate, and if we’ve hit $2000 together, I’ll be starting when the 40 hour famine ends, on 22 August.
If you’d like to donate, you can do so online at:
http://40hf.com/wattsie
Even if you decide not to donate, please bookmark this page, and follow along over the journey!
Thanks! Have a great day!