food stamp challenge update from Jonathan Berg
September 19, 2007 – Day Five
I am starting to feel a change in my moods. I am getting irritable, easily distracted, and more easily annoyed. This is not something I had really counted on.
I am getting enough calories. At least I think I am. I am not going to bed hungry, which is a positive thing. But something is missing, and I am not sure what. I am not a nutritional expert, so I can’t tell you if it is Vitamin B, C, D, A, Q, X, or any other. But those are the things that are absent in my diet this week. My one windfall is my orange juice, which is basically saving my sanity (and health).
I was interviewed this morning by Mike Cassidy from the San Jose Mercury News. A thoroughly enjoyable experience all in all, he asked me a question that got me thinking. He asked if I had big plans for my first meal after this Challenge, which will be Saturday evening after the end of Yom Kippur. I said that I hadn’t really thought about it, but that I was looking forward to really eating again.
Thinking on that now, I guess that is really the point of this whole Challenge. For me, this all has an end. I know that, come Saturday evening, I will be back on a normal diet. My mood will get better. My focus will return. Those people really living on $21 a week don’t have that. When this week is over, they will go shopping again for next week. My “game” is their life.
I can’t even imagine that.
