Friday morning – Oaty McOatface

To open with, another note of thanks to those who have donated so generously throughout the week. You’ve currently given £410, which is far more than I ever hoped I would raise through this week, so thank you. As a result, my promised target of writing for today and tomorrow is 2,250 words, which is quite a lot to spread over two blog posts, so today I’ll be doing three (one per meal). In each post there will also be a more serious reflection on the week from some angle or other. To set this out from the usual moaning, I’ve invented the serious box which all such thoughts will live inside.

This is the serious box.

This morning was a very sad day – it was the last time I get to wake up and look forward to a wonderful bowl of tasteless mush to begin my day with. Never again will I get to pour sawdust into a bowl, fill said bowl with water as if I were simply cleaning it out, but instead of tipping the sorry mixture away I get to microwave and eat it. Well, of course I’ll have the option to make porridge with water if I so desire, but the key words “if I so desire” may prevent this option from ever occurring.

Le Porridge de Friday

Adding just a small amount of water to the dish can give it a nice, solid texture and make it perfect for a long walk in the country.

Ingredients: oats, water, a man with his will to survive

1.       Take a clean, innocent bowl that’s never done anything wrong in its life, and pour oats into it. So far it just thinks it’s dusty.

2.       Pour an appropriate amount of water on top of it, so now the bowl is dusty and damp.

3.       Put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, so now the bowl is dusty, damp and warm.

4.       Google the phrase “dusty, damp and warm” and discover that the first three results are for the habitats of possums, booklice and headlice respectively. Check the mixture for all three.

5.       Remove possums and lice to taste.

6.       Be disappointed that, even having taking stuff out of the bowl, there are still some things left in there.

7.       Eat said things.

Going in to this challenge, I was fully expecting the porridge phase of the day to be the hardest, since it’s the first meal of the day and also consists of the food I dislike the most out of the (many and varied) options on the menu. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed from the way I write about the porridge part of the day that this did in fact turn out to be the case.

It’s a shame, because I do love porridge as a concept. It’s got loads of good stuff in it, it’s low effort to make and it’s very inexpensive. This is why bizarrely I’m almost looking forward to my porridge tomorrow, made to the best of my abilities with a selection of more interesting ingredients. So far, I’m thinking of making it with milk instead of water (a relative no brainer), and adding honey and some berries to it. If anybody has any further suggestions of ways to make porridge even more exciting, do let me know – I’m happy to try many things tomorrow. (Although if you suggest having it plain with water, I may not be responsible for what happens to you).

Anyway, here comes the serious box for the first phase of reflections on the week.

I wasn’t entirely sure how this challenge would affect me physically. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve not had to work this week, so I’ve not had to try and do anything strenuous at all on the limited energy that I have. I know that some people who do the challenge end up with quite bad headaches due to caffeine withdrawal from no tea or coffee, but as somebody who doesn’t really drink either this wasn’t going to be a problem for me either. So I was largely expecting it to be fine.

It turns out that that wasn’t really the case at all. The combination of taking in substantially fewer calories than usual (probably around a third of what I normally eat), and those calories being rather uninteresting at that, turned out to have a few side-effects. The lack of energy was something I was expecting, but I definitely noticed that. The physical sensation of feeling hungry hit a few times, but perhaps most significantly yesterday. I suspect, having accidentally omitted breakfast, that my calorie intake was even lower, but I felt quite hungry all afternoon, and going to sleep on Thursday evening was probably the lowest part of the whole experience for me. It took a long time to get off to sleep just because of how hungry I felt – which naturally in turn meant that this morning I was not particularly well-rested.

Food seemingly also has a relatively big impact on my mood, which has been swinging fairly wildly this week as well. Of course, there may well be factors other than the food which impacts that, but I can definitely attribute some of the psychological low points of the week to that. It’s not that hard to see how being stuck in poverty for an extended period of time can completely sap your motivation and your energy, in a way that perhaps I hadn’t appreciated until I took this challenge.

It’s not all been bad, though, and perhaps this blog has focused unduly on the negatives (mostly because they’re more entertaining to write about than “everything’s basically fine”). Although the food is definitely not interesting, the lack of taste stopped bothering me particularly after the first couple of days. Humans are great adaptors, and this is one thing I seem to have got used to relatively quickly (although part of that naturally will come from the fact that I only have to do this for five days, rather than indefinitely; one of the many ways in which my experiences in this challenge don’t really echo the challenge faced by those in poverty at all).

Also, despite the lack of calories, I’ve not really massively felt the urge to eat different food throughout the week. I’ve had some food-related dreams and things like that, but I’ve not been particularly tempted by anything left in the cupboard or the fridge – turns out in this case at least, my willpower is stronger than I thought it might be.

So those are how it’s affected me physically over this past week. In the next couple of posts I’ll talk about my reasons behind taking on the challenge, and what I think can be taken away from such an experience.

 Note: As part of my Mean Bean challenge I will be writing about my experiences each day – the more money raised, the more I write. At the time of writing, people have generously donated £410, which means I’m aiming at 2,250 words per day (excluding the ones in this explanatory paragraph). This will hopefully come in two posts, one in the morning and one in the evening. If you would like these posts to get even longer, and support the excellent work of Tearfund at the same time, please click here.