Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I am only eating twenty-eight dollars worth of food. This is because February has twenty-eight days. It’s all in the name, really. I hope I do not die!  

I know what you're thinking! "How did Peter find such a large set of scales??" Well, truth be told, I didn't! It's the magic of photoshop!

69.2kg (29.6 pounds) means that I’ve essentially regained all the weight that I lost yesterday. I’m not even going to pretend to understand what happened there.

If the general trend continues, I'll get down to that weight again in a few days.

Today was my first day working again; I was out on a film shoot all morning, and spent most of this afternoon having a sleep. When I got home,  I had a conversation with my Dad, and a bowl of rice, before vegging out and watching movies for the rest of the evening.

Before leaving for the film shoot this morning, I had four of my slices of bread, which provided me with enough energy to operate the camera, and even do a tiny bit of acting. On the way to filming, the other guys in the crew stopped at a corner store, and bought some burgers for about 5 or 6 dollars each. Apparently they were inedible, and they had a few bites and then threw them out. I’m constantly being surprised by how much food people throw out.

Poo News:

I know I said that I’d try to avoid talking about my feces, but sitting on the toilet this morning, I realised how unfamiliar it felt. I’ve been drinking plenty of water, so urination has been a common occurance, but actually sitting down and “going number two” hasn’t occurred for several days now. 

I remember my housemates discussing that we were out of toilet paper, and the fact that I was completely unaware of this fact should have clued me in, but going to the toilet isn’t something I’m acutely aware of.

So today, I went to the toilet for the first time in a while. Also, when I did go, it was that strange sort of yellow colour.

My Dad is a nurse, so I rang him to mention the unusual poo.  He wasn’t worried – he said that if nothing’s going in, nothing’s going to come out, but it wasn’t anything to freak out about.

Incidentally, Dad mentioned that when he was my age, he used to fast every now and again. He’d have nothing but water for three days at a time, and then have a big meal at the end of it. He didn’t mention why he used to do this. Perhaps he was just bored? The burger at the end of the fast, he claimed, was invariably the most delicious burger he’d ever tasted.

Also, we were talking about rice, he told me that the rice was probably where I was getting most of my calories, and that I should start eating it again. I looked up rice in the “Calorie Book” that Em lent me, and apparently half a cup of white rice has 355 calories. 355! That’s insane! No wonder half the world lives on it.

Camera update:

My camera was returned today, which means that photos will return to the blog! To celebrate, I went down to get some bread, and splurge out on a tin of sardines as well – I haven’t been eating my eight slices of bread/day, so I don’t think I’ll spend the rest of my money on bread alone.

There are two major supermarkets in Australia, Coles and Woolworths. I personally prefer Woolworths, but live closer to Coles, so that was our first stop. The two tend to be quite competitive about prices, so I expected to find bread there for around the $1.09 mark, maybe a bit cheaper.

The cheapest loaf of bread I could find was around $3. I couldn’t find a special “Coles Smart-buy” loaf of bread, but even looking at the price labels on the shelves, there were none there for less than $2.50. I don’t know how Woolworths keeps its bread prices down, but it guaranteed my patronage for at least one more day.

Woolworths, while definitely ahead in the “Bread” department, loses to Coles when it comes to sardines. The only single-pack sardines I could find were upwards of a dollar each; Woolworths-brand sardines only came in packs of three:

It works out slightly less per packet...but I don't have $1.53 to blow on sardines!

So I didn’t get sardines, only bread. (for the standard price of $1.09.)

My main concern at this point is running out of butter. I have less than a quarter of the packet left. 8 slices/day means that you really go through butter quite quickly!

In other news, Scott Adams, the creator of the comic Dilbert has a blog – yesterday’s update was an interesting entry about food and willpower that’s well worth checking out. I think the suggested technique could be used to help people diet – every time they resist having a treat, they get a treat to reward themselves.

Tomorrow: Daily update!

(total money spent so far – $24.46. Remainder – $3.54 - enough for three loaves of bread, with 27 cents left over!)