Long day yesterday

Thursdays are my longest days of the week. Yesterday, I had an exam at 5:30. I stayed on campus from 8am-7pm. I brought some snacks, the usual poptarts and crackers, to hold me over throughout the day. I have to say oatmeal is a great choice for breakfast because it fills me up and I don't get hungry for a while. Plus, it's cheap obviously. The hardest part for me was my exam. I had been stressing out about it all day. It was an oral exam, meaning I had to meet with my professor one on one and he asked me questions and I would have to answer them and explain things to him. So a lot more stressful than my usual exams, and it was pass/fail so... Obviously after my exam I wanted to hit up the closest Taco Bell or McDonald's because I was starving and because I stress eat. Nothing sounded better than a root beer and something greasy. And now I am imagining eating a big mac right now... Seriously, I don't even like big macs that much. Anyway... I got home last night and made some mac and cheese, with a side of toast. Healthy. One thing that I have to confess I have "cheated" on is butter. When I went to walmart I didn't buy butter, but I have had to use it several times. This is something to think about though, because you need butter for a lot of the things you cook but I didn't factor it into my budget. Yes, I have four dollars left so I could have bought some but if there was something else big that you needed it would be hard to decide what you could buy.

I think I'm going to have a hard time this weekend. I'm really bad about eating out on the weekends, so this will be a struggle. I'm trying to decide what to eat for dinner... maybe another frozen pizza.

Good luck this weekend, everyone!

I Cheated, Kind of?

So....long story short my roommate gets a lot of free Red Bull every month. I was up late working on a project, so I went ahead and drank a Red Bull to help keep me awake while I finished a project. However, I never would have had enough money to actually buy an energy drink had my roommate not had a bunch of them lying around. This is hard, a lot harder than I thought it would be. Like, eating turkey sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches everyday may not seem that bad on the surface. But it's like I'm not even eating real food anymore.

Shaking things up Elvis Presley style

Normally I'm a peanut butter LOVER.. I eat it straight out of the jar or put it on anything possible. However, when faced with a week of at least one meal a day consisting of peanut butter, I have to admit, it gets a bit boring. Today I mixed things up, though. I took a lesson from the King, toasted my bread first and added slices of banana to my peanut butter sandwich. So delicious! Not much variety in my diet this week in terms of nutrients, but I've been trying to add a bit of interest to my meals. Any other delicious meal ideas out there??

Community

I'm sort of getting used to this being hungry thing. I just try not to think about all I have left to eat is some turkey and peanut butter sandwiches through Sunday. This is just all so weird, and the only thing stopping me from cheating is knowing that I don't want to let down the other people who are doing it.

It was fun last night meeting with other people participating in the challenge and talking about our experiences and struggles. But then I got to thinking, what if I didn't have anyone to talk to about it? How long would it take for me to give up on myself if it was just me?

Free pizza!

The highlight of my day was finding out that the blood drive was happening AND there was free pizza and soda. Now I usually donate blood when they are on campus, but I was overly excited about the free pizza this time. And I was also more nervous about getting turned away because of low iron. This makes me think about all of the events I hear about with free food. Would I be on the lookout for these if this was the budget I had to strictly follow every week?

Totino's pizza success

Day number 3 and going strong! When you buy cheap food, you don't get good quality. Had a frozen burrito for lunch. I think it cost a dollar and now I know why. Pop tarts again for a snack. That was by far my best purchase. Thanks Evan for the idea! Totino's pizza for around $1 was my dinner and it wasn't too bad! It was small and I'm still kinda hungry though. Who else is craving some serious fast food? Or a soda? And I don't even drink soda. Being on this challenge makes you miss food you didn't even know was that important to you. Still upset about my bread purchase by the way...

I'm nervous about tomorrow because I have class from 8-12:15 then meetings until 3. Then I have a test at 5. Probably going to stay on campus until after my exam is over but I'm going to have to figure out what to bring to eat. Probably pop tarts...

Big Mistake

Turns out, eating peanut butter sandwiches everyday sucks. Being a self-proclaimed peanut butter fanatic, I really believed I would not get tired of it. But I am, and I'm not even halfway through the week yet. I have a remaining $3 left. I have no clue what to spend that on, should I go to McDonalds and get a couple of McChickens for lunch and dinner?

My biggest mistake is when I bought expensive roast beef, thinking it would be more filling than cheap roast beef. Boy, was I wrong. Not only was it no more filling, but it had very few pieces of roast beef. I'm barley going to get 3 sandwiches out of the $4.50 container of roast beef. Yikes. I also worked until midnight last night, and then had to be at my other job by 8:00 am. I could really use some caffeine, but I do not want to use my last $3 on it.

AM