Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I have only eaten twenty-eight dollars worth of food. I have two days to go. I hope I do not die!

Down 0.3kg from yesterday!

I was surprised to find that my weight had dropped down below 68kg today! I now weight 67.9kg (149.69 pounds) – 5.4kg less than the first weigh-in. If we estimate my starting weight at 74kg, that means that I’ve lost 7.3% of my total body-weight over the month.

Graph:

As you can see, today is the least that I have weighed all month.

I can’t imagine I’ll lose much more weight over the next two days. (two days! Only two days to go!)

For the past week or so, my first thought upon waking up and my last thought before going to bed has been “How many more days to go?” (just before/after falling to sleep are when I’m least astute, so it can take me three or four guesses before I get it. I have to count on my hands.)

I am really, really excited about getting to eat again.

What I ate today:

I’m starting to think that buying a variety of delicious food was a bad idea. I have a plate of rice that’s been sitting next to me for upwards of 10 hours, because I just can’t eat it. I’ve tried soy sauce, I’ve tried nibbling at it, but ( even though it was quite a small portion to begin with) I can’t motivate myself to finish it.

I blame the chocolate biscuits, personally. They are delicious, but further highlight how undelicious the rice is.

Last night, after going to bed, I was thinking about the various foods that I was going to have in a few days, and anything involving meat was suddenly extremely unappealing.

Since I started this, “unappealing” has not been a word that I would use to describe any food that isn’t rice or terrible tomato soup. “Unappealing” had become a word of the past. But when I visualised a pizza, it wasn’t tempting me. The thought of eating one actually made me feel very slightly ill.

It took me a while to work out why this was; I think I had far too much ham last night.

This morning, I felt much more friendly about the idea of meat, and when I couldn’t finish my rice, went and got the ham bone out of the fridge, and started chewing on the gristle.

See my beard in all its glory.

I’m a chewer. Not gum, but I like to have something around to munch on. I pulled most of that white gristle off the end, and I’ve had that rolling around my mouth for most of the day.

I also had my five chocolate biscuits, my slice of devon (on bread), two slices of buttered bread, and (as you’ll see shortly) some toast.

A photo left over from yesterday:

My remaining butter: I finished off that smaller lump this morning, to butter my bread. The larger lump only has to last me two more days!

I’m having a bit of trouble comprehending what life will be like when I can just eat whatever I want. It’s going to feel weird for a couple of days.

My friend “Em” continues to send me links about anything even vaguely food-related that she can find. I thought this one was pretty interesting:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090225172639.htm

” “It is generally accepted that diet and obesity are accountable for 30 percent of preventable causes of cancer, but nobody really knows why,” Cheng said. “These findings demonstrate that an increase in lipids leads directly to a rise in cancer metastasis.”

Researchers have theorized that tumor cells need more lipids than ordinary tissues to provide energy and material for tumor growth and metastasis.

“Before this work, however, most of the evidence was anecdotal, but here we present a mechanistic study,”"

And consuming excessive amounts of polyunsaturated fats may be an even worse idea:

“The researche[r]s used the imaging and cell-counting tools to document that linoleic acid, which is predominant in polyunsaturated fats, caused increasing membrane phase separation, whereas oleic acid, found in monounsaturated fats, did not. Increased membrane phase separation could improve the opportunity of circulating tumor cells to adhere to blood vessel walls and escape to organs far from the original tumor site. The new findings support earlier evidence from other research that consuming high amounts of polyunsaturated fat may increase the risk of cancer spreading.”

It looks like I’m pretty safe from cancer! I’m not consuming excessive amounts of anything at this stage. (except possibly ham, which I have now run out of.)

I also discovered today that February is “American Heart Month”, and Health.com has celebrated with an article called 28 Days, 28 Ways to Slash Your Risk of Heart Disease. Only eating $28 worth of food is not on the list, though a couple of them are relevant to what I’m doing:

• Eating oatmeal for breakfast. (an incredibly cheap breakfast)
• Losing 5-7% of your current body weight. (thus far, I have lost a bit over 7% of my body weight at the beginning of the month.)
• Replace cheese on sandwiches with avacado. (cheese is ridiculously expensive. Other than butter, I haven’t had any dairy products since starting this experiment.)

My favourite was Monday, February 9th’s tip:

The more a juice stains, the better it is for your heart.

Dream:

I had a dream several nights ago, but forgot to blog about it until now: I was at a chocolate shop (the location of far too many of my dreams lately), stocking up for chocolate for when the project was over. The shop-owner was stressing out, because someone had brought a block of Cadbury chocolate to the counter, but then decided not to buy it.

“Please,” she was begging, “You’ve got to buy this. You’ve got to!”

My inital instinct was to say no, but then I realised how cheap it was, and added it to my pile of purchases. Somehow, even though the other chocolate was for when the month was over, the block of Cadbury had to be included in my twenty-eight dollars. It was cheap enough that it wouldn’t break the bank, so I decided to have a piece.

I put it into my mouth, and here’s the part that amazed me…I could taste it. Even though I was asleep, and clearly dreaming, I could distinctly taste the chocolate.

I woke up with the taste of chocolate still in my recent memory.

What’s up with that? I didn’t know you could taste things in dreams. But unless one of my housemates slipped some chocolate into my mouth last night, I managed to accurately imagine the taste of chocolate.

Odd.

Earlier in the dream, someone had been cooking a cream bun, and had roasted the cream nicely. I ate it, forgetting about the project, but then spat it back out immediately as soon as I remembered. This was on the night of the 22nd – more than three weeks in, and I’m still having dreams where I forget the experiment and accidentally eat something. They’re annoying more than anything, and it makes me wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

(the taste of chocolate later in the dream more than made up for it.)

Body Odour:

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a few days now – my body odour has changed. Significantly. I can’t particularly describe the “before” or “after”, but I know how I smell, and it’s changed. It’s a bit unnerving…I feel less like myself. I suspect this is due to the changes in what I eat, not the changes in quantity. Does anyone know anything about how food affects your scent?

Poo news:

I don’t think I’ve gone to the toilet in a couple of days. As I’ve said before, it’s not something that I pay special attention to, but I can’t really recall the last time I went to the loo.

End of Project Party:

Just a reminder, I’m celebrating the end of this little project with a trip to the Pancake Manor, Brisbane’s 24-hour pancake restaurant, located in an old church. It’s one of my favourite places to eat, and (by chance) was where the project kicked off in the first place.

I’ll be there from about 11:30pm, dressed in this shirt, carrying this penguin – you are invited to attend! I’d love to meet some more readers; come and join us as we celebrate in true pancakey style! Here’s the Facebook event, if that helps you to organise your social calendar.

Hope to see you there!

There was going to be a toast-related video going up tonight, but it’s taking too long to upload, so I’m going to hold off until tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Daily update. Also, toast-related video!

(total money spent so far – $27.43. Remainder – $0.57 – enough for a tiny tiny elephant!)

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