Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and I love food.

Some delicious cupcakes that my housemate Cannibal Kate made, to celebrate the end of the 28 Days, 28 Dollars project.

28 Days, 28 Dollars:

You may have noticed that the follow-up 28 Days, 28 Dollars posts haven’t gone up yet. The first week of this month has been quite busy for me – I’m catching up on projects that I couldn’t work on while I was food-deprived, editing the Celibate Sarah posts, and above all eating. God I love eating.

The last few 28 Days, 28 Dollars posts will go up in the next week or two, when I get some time to sit down and nut them out. Don’t worry, they have not been forgotten.

Impro:

In other news, I’ve been performing in some short-form improvised theatre lately, in shows run by Edge Improv and Impro Mafia. Here are two scenes from this past week – one starring myself and my cousin Gavin Core, the other starring Gavin, myself, and a local Brisbane improvisor called Joel Gilmore. Enjoy!

Two Line Vocabulary – Cairo, Egypt

Should’ve Said – Up a Tree

Celibate Sarah:

From the comments I’ve received so far, everyone is enjoying the Celibate Sarah posts. (please don’t be shy – leave questions! She is looking forward to answering all of your sex-related enquiries.)

I’ve even had a few people comment that they wish she updated more than twice a week. I was having a chat to her today, and due to uni commitments, it doesn’t look like the comic she was intending on making will be happening as soon as she hoped – as such, we have decided to increase the number of updates.

I can’t say exactly how often there will be updates, but they’ll be slightly shorter and appear more often. If enough comments are left with interesting and relevant questions, we might even be able to increase the frequency to once a day! Go, ask her everything you’ve ever wanted to know about celibacy! She’s not shy!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I spent exactly twenty-seven dollars and ninety-three cents on food. I did not die.

A graph showing exactly how I spent every dollar.

 Here’s today’s Daily Cheesecake – I’ve included the first photos taken (way back on Day 2) for contrast. You can see quite a marked difference:

Notice also hair and beard growth...if you can stop looking at my stomach in that bottom photo for long enough.

Today I woke up at half-past noon. On the plus side, I got a lovely long sleep, but it also meant that I only had half an hour to get to impro classes. I quickly weighed myself and took the daily cheesecake, put my chocolate biscuits in my bag of bread, and ran out the door.

I got to class, and joined in with the activities, still yet to have anything to eat. The man running the class knew about my experiment, and was alternately lovely and very cruel about it: we were doing an activity where we had to pretend we were walking on the beach. I happen to hate the feel of sand under my feet, and so I was grimacing and holding my head, imagining the noise that sand makes when it rubs together. He came over and checked to make sure that I was okay, which I thought was rather nice.

The next few activities we did were all about pretending to eat food.

“Imagine,” he said, grinning at me, “the texture, the taste, the smell. Picture the food as it slides down your throat…”

About an hour later, we were miming a game of tug-of-war. I get extremely involved in mimes, so I started panting and sweating and going a bit red – I “lost” the tug-of-war, fell over, and tried to get up again straight away.

I got as close to passing out as I have all month. The room started throbbing, I couldn’t see anything, and I’m not sure how long I actually sat there, clutching my head. The next thing I remembered was the instructor coming over, and asking if I was okay.

I sat out of the next few games.

During the break, I went to eat my bread, and discovered it was full of ants. I picked the ants off of two slices, used up the rest of my butter, and had a stale chocolate biscuit for dessert. I still have two pieces of bread left, but I’m not gonig to eat them. They’re a bit stale, and I don’t really want to fight the ants for them. I have also finished off my chocolate biscuits.

On the way home, we went to the shops. I was determined to spend my last 57 cents, or as close to as I could – to my surprise (and dismay) none of the chocolate there was less than 70 cents. The only thing affordable from the confectionary aisle was lollipops, and I don’t much care for lollipops.

In the fruit section, they had limes for 50 cents (limes must be much more in demand than they were 3 weeks ago) but a lime isn’t exactly my idea of a tasty treat. I asked one of the service guys what he would recommend, and he showed me that they had kiwi fruit on sale for 50 cents as well.

I had forgotten how much eating kiwi fruit stings the tongue.

I came home, and remembered that I had one piece of devon left. When I was young, another of my favourite treats was fried devon, so I turned on the electric frypan, and cooked a piece up:

I got impatient while the frypan was heating up, and nibbled around the edges.

It was quite nice. Slightly better than un-fried devon, but not as good on a sandwich.

It’s almost 8pm, and (except for rice and a tiny bit of soy sauce) I’m completely out of food that I can eat. In four hours time, I’ll be chowing down on (in this order) a Snickers bar, Bavarian Apple Crepes, a cup of tea, and a steak.

It will be a good time. You should come too.

From the comments:

Several people wrote in to explain the (really simple and obvious now that I’m a bit more clear-headed) explanation of the rice’s calorie listing:

“goddess_amy”, over at the livejournal feed:

Rice swells when it’s cooked so 1/2C of dry rice magically becomes over 1C of cooked rice. I don’t know about rice cookers, but with cooking rice on the stove, you put rice + water in and get out just cooked rice. The water has to go somewhere! 

Water doesn’t have any calories, so the amount of calories in 1/2C has decreased. Or to put it another way, the 1/2C cooked rice is measured after it’s cooked. 

Also your sis is totally wrong on bread. It’s disgusting to eat plain, but plain toast is actually quite pleasent. I almost prefer dry toast to toast with butter.

“Dan Beeston”:

You mutton-head. It’s saying if you take half a cup of raw rice and cook it. The resulting meal has 355 calories (or galleries as you’ve written somewhere above). But it also expands. It’ll be, like, two cups worth of cooked rice. If you then take half a cup of that cooked rice. It’ll be mostly water and thus only 105 calories.

Friend-of-the-blog Em:

It’s your fuzzy brain, you twit…
More dry rice fits in a half-cup than cooked rice!
You have a LOT MORE big, squishy, moist rice grains when it’s cooked!

In my defense…no, I’ve got nothing. It’s really pretty obvious. Who eats raw rice, anyway?

“Michael Griffin” hasn’t read the rules.

$28 covers every solid and liquid that enters your mouth for a month. Have you made allowance for the cost of water? Don’t know if you pay for it or your landlord (though that wouldn’t matter I don’t think), and how much a person drinks in a month, though.

I decided before I started this that water would be free. I kept track of exactly how much water I had each day for the first week or so, but got a bit sick of it. My housemate Cannibal Kate thinks that alcoholic beverages shouldn’t have counted either. There is no logic behind that suggestion.

If I was out and about without water, I would go and buy a bottle without counting that as part of the money. I didn’t want to risk dehydration – we get a lot of our liquids from the foods we eat. Eating much less food, I needed to drink a lot more water.

“Em” likes my beard:

By the way, I reckon you need to check how much the beard has added to your weight… do a penultimate weigh-in, then shave it, and weigh again!
Another reason your skin may have cleared up = less shaving/soap

I love the idea of weighing the beard, except that I’m planning on doing a final weigh-in about a minute or two before midnight, outside the pancake manor. After that, I am not going to be shaving. I am going to be eating. (which will obviously affect my weight.)

Still Em:

You are looking very naturally-Amish…

Amish Beards!

Gay Beards!

Until I saw heaps of them one after another, I never consciously noticed that Amish men shave the face part of their face, but still have huge beards. That’s why it’s such a distinctive look.

The Amish page for Wikipedia tells me that ”Moustaches are forbidden, because they are associated with European military officers and militarism in general.” It doesn’t explain why they shave below the mouth though. Anyone have insider Amish knowledge?

How I feel:

At the moment, my tongue is still reeling from that kiwi fruit. My brain is distinctly un-wooly – fuzziness of the brain is a feeling I’ll be happy to see go.

I’m not particularly hungry at the moment, but I’m still looking forward to some delicious foods in a few hours. Especially tea. I have really missed tea this month.

More than anything, I’m feeling glad that is going to be finished very soon, and a little bit proud that I accomplished it. It’s not something that I’ll ever, ever do again…but it’s something that I’ll always be glad that I did. I discovered a lot of interesting facts throughout the month, discovered how vital food really is to the brain, and really tested my will-power.

I spent $27.93 on food this month. It’s a strange sort of accomplishment, but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless.

I spent $27.93 on  food this month. Tonight, I will be spending more than that on food in less than an hour.

Misc:

• I forgot to mention this in other posts (or I’ve forgotten if I did) but from time to time this month, to conserve energy, I would catch a taxi. The experiment wasn’t “Only spend twenty-eight dollars for a month”, it was specifically about spending money on food. All in all, I’d say I spent about $30-40 on taxis in the month – I only caught them if it was particularly hot, or if I had to walk a particularly long way, but it’s an expense that I wouldn’t have normally had.
• I’ve found myself short of knives all month. Not forks or spoons, just knives. Most of the food I’ve had this month I’ve been able to eat with my hands, but you can’t butter bread without a knife. I own a number of tiny plates that I don’t normally use (you can see one holding the devon in the above photo) – I’ve used them more this month than I have in the last two years.They’re convenient for all types of tiny food. Normally I’d be using big bowls and plates, but I haven’t been eating any meals that have required them.
• One day, while I was buttering my bread, I accidentally picked up and used a knife that Cannibal Kate had been buttering cupcakes with. I didn’t notice until I was eating the bread, and I tasted something quite sweet. It wasn’t really big enough to mention, but if it really bothers you, pretend that I paid 7 cents for it, and call it even.

And now, the picture that you’ve all been waiting for…

Daily weight:

66.8kg. That's 0.9kg less than yesterday.

Perhaps because I haven’t eaten rice for two days now, perhaps because my body has an acute sense of drama…for whatever reason, I lost almost an entire kilo since yesterday, meaning that I’ve lost a total of 6.5kg this month.

Remembering that the camera weighs between 0.4 and 0.5kg, this puts my weight at around 66.3, maybe 66.4kg. (146 pounds)

I stand 188cm tall, so my BMI is now 18.8 – still (barely) in the “Normal weight” range.

As I mentioned, I’m going to weigh myself tonight outside the pancake manor. I’ll also do a follow-up post in a month or two, which will include how much I weigh after a month of eating properly.

Here’s the final “Daily weight” graph:

I lost, on average, 0.24kg/day. The red line shows what my weights would have been had I lost that much each and every day.

Tonight is the “End of 28 Days, 28 Dollars Celebration”. A lot of big names (on this blog, anyway) will be there – Cannibal Kate, my cousin Gavin, friend-of-the-blog Em, RIUM+, and the star of next month’s project, Sarah Morgan.

You should come too! Pancake Manor, 11:30pm tonight, I’ll be the one carrying a penguin, dressed in a far-too-loud Hawaiian shirt. There’s a Facebook event and everything!

Hope to see you there!

-Peter C. Hayward

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the last 27 days, I have only spent $27.43 on food. I have lost 5.4kg, and eaten way too much rice. In 24 hours, it’s all over.

I hope I do not die!

The same weight as yesterday!

67.9kg! I haven’t lost or gained any weight since yesterday, as you can see on this convenient graph:

I suspect that by the end of next month, I will have put all of this weight back on, and considerably more.

Daily Cheesecake:

I love these boxers. They are new!

Today I ate more than my quota – tomorrow at midnight, I’m going to be chowing down on all of my favourite foods (well, two foods I quite like, anyway) and so I spoiled myself a bit today. I had 7 slices of bread, and 6 chocolate biscuits! (but only one slice of devon.) It was like all my Christmases had come at once.

I didn’t even bother cooking up rice today. With one day to go, it doesn’t seem worth it. I could quite happily never eat rice again, to be honest.

I was reading through a Calorie-counting book that friend-of-the-blog Em lent me, and for the first time, I noticed this on the rice page:

White Rice:

Raw: 1/2 cup, 100g: 355 calories
Cooked: 1/2 cup, 80g: 105 calories

I’ve been eating the rice cooked (obviously). I put in about half a cup, and then cook it…does this mean that it then turns into only 80g worth of rice, and loses two-thirds of its galleries? Do you have to re-measure the rice when it’s cooked? Or does “raw” just mean “half a cup when it’s raw, with the same calories when it’s cooked”?

Perhaps it’s my fuzzy, fuzzy brain, but I don’t understand this at all. Is anyone able to decipher this?

From the comments:

“Katydid”:

For the record, there’s a precedent of throwing up in the Pancake Manor bathrooms – my sister did it two New Year’s Eves running.

I have nothing to add to this, just thought that it was amusing enough to re-post. I really don’t think I’ll be throwing up, but if it does happen, I’ll have people with cameras on-hand to record the experience.

My sister Elizabeth (you may know her better as MeatGirl, from StinkyPete 1.0) disagrees with the way I have been distributing my butter (I only use it on bread, because toast doesn’t require it)

You have it all wrong! White bread can be eaten plain (though is delicious with butter!), toast, irrespective of type, is far too dry to be eaten plain!

She is so wrong that I had to make a video, showing the correct way of eating toast. (I actually made this last night, but I didn’t want to wait up while it uploaded.) Watch and learn:

How I feel:

I’ve been okay today. A bit hungry from time to time, and my brain’s really fuzzy at the moment…I have rewritten almost every sentence in this post three or four times. That could be because it’s 3:30am: I  went to my friend’s 21st birthday party tonight:

It was quite a lovely party, with a lot of delicious food...that I couldn't eat.

It was a cocktail party, so there was a generous array of alcohol laid out:

You can see my cousin Gavin there, behind the drinks.

I’m not really much of a drinker, but I do enjoy the occasional cocktail. Throughout the night, my friends invented all manner of delicious-sounding drinks…and of course the more they drank, the more that they forgot that I wasn’t allowed to have any. I turned down more food and drink tonight than I have for the rest of the project put together, mostly from people who already knew about the experiment.

I got a few compliments about the beard, and also several people noted that my skin had cleared up. I suspect that this is because my diet lately has been “rice” and “bread”, and very few greasy or sugary products. Weight-loss and clearer skin – maybe I should sell this experiment as a diet. It has everything you want, except…well, except food.

One more day to go! One more god-damned day.

Watching every bite of every meal I eat has become second nature to me now. I predict that it will take a few days to switch back. I’m going to be mentally keeping track of every cent that I spend on food for a while now (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.) I can still quote exactly how much every piece of food I have eaten this month has cost.

Tomorrow there will be three posts:

1. Immediately after I’ve weighed myself and taken the daily cheesecake, those will go up.
2. I have impro classes in the afternoon, but after I’ve finished that, the first post of next month’s project – “Celibate Sarah” – will go up.
3. After I get home from the pancake manor, in the wee hours of the morning, I’ll try to put up a post with some of the pictures and video from that. This may have to wait until after I’ve had some sleep.

If you want to come along and celebrate the end of this project with me tomorrow night, it’s at the Pancake Manor, Brisbane City, at 11:30pm. We’ve booked a table under the name “Peter”, and you are invited to come and join us! I will be carrying a giant penguin, and wearing an extremely loud blue and green shirt.  (Facebook event.)

I still have 57 cents left over, so if I see anything food-related for less than 60 cents tomorrow, I’m definitely going to buy it.

Tomorrow: The end of the project!

(total money spent so far – $27.43. Remainder – $0.57 – enough for at least a dozen grapes!)

The “End of 28 Days, 28 Dollars” celebration is taking place at the Pancake Manor, at 11:30pm on Saturday the 28th. It will probably rage on until 1 or 2 in the morning. You are welcome! I will be this guy, wearing this shirt, carrying this penguin – please come and join us! Here is a Facebook event, for ease of organising.

The project that starts next month will be related to sex. On the 28th, there will be a post introducing the project, and it will have strong sexual themes. If that’s a problem, avoid any posts tagged “Celibate Sarah”.

Hope to see you Saturday night!

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!)