For five days I decided to challenge myself to live on $1.50 a day. The $1.50 went towards the food I would eat during those five days. 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty. 1.4 billion people are going to bed hungry tonight. I decided to take this challenge because this has been an issue that I have taken to heart for a long while, well since college, since I broke out of my little bubble that I kept myself in for years. Hunger is a thing that should not exist, there is so much food being produced and so much food being thrown away everyday… How are 1.4 billion people going to sleep hungry? I chose to participate in the Live Below The Line challenge to help open up peoples eyes to one of the issues that have been simply swept under a rug to be ignored.
Shopping for the challenge was both easy and difficult. I had only $7.50 to spend. Here are the things I bought: Rice, black beans, corn meal, eggs, mixed frozen vegetables and bananas. A while back I bought a large bag of rice, so I made calculations and set aside the amount of rice I would need for the week and subtracted the amount that would cost from the $7.50 I was allowed to spend. When I got home from shopping I did more calculations and made out a meal plan for the five days. It was nice to know what I was cooking for the week.
At the end of last week, I asked for people to send me questions about my experience in living below the line. I received two questions, however, those questions were big. So here are my responses to those questions.
Question One: “What were your best and worst moments living below the line?”
I am going to start with the most difficult day for me, which was Sunday, the first day of the challenge. Why? Simple, I was going from eating whenever I was hungry and eating whatever I wanted to eating strictly three meals a day and a snack before bed if my daily budget allowed. Sunday I was the hungriest and my metabolism definitely was not happy. I thought the rest of the week was going to be just as difficult. Which gets me to the second half of the question. What were my best moments? Those were the last four days of the challenge, my body had adapted to what I had available to eat. During this challenge I realized how much I have, I may not have any current employment, but I do have a house to live in, food to eat everyday, clean water to drink, a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear and shoes to protect my feet. I don’t have much to complain about and you won’t ever hear me say that I hate my life.
Question Two: “How did the live below the line challenge affect you physically, mentally and spiritually? And would you do it again?”
I think where I had problems with the challenge was the physical side of it, I remembered to drink a lot of water and also had to factor in salt into my meals. By the end of the week my already incredibly knotted muscles were incredibly uncomfortable and angry feeling, although I am not sure if the challenge was adding to it. And as I mentioned in question one Sunday was rough. Mentally the challenge was easy for me, because it was raising awareness to an issue I take to heart and the more I get to talk to people about the challenge the easier it was to get through the week. Spiritually, that is a tough one. Doing something like this even for a short amount of time makes you realize the things we are privileged to have, and even when things seem to not be going as we want them to be we can’t hate our lives for that because we have so much to be thankful for and the resources we have at our fingertips to make our lives easier. 1.4 billion human beings do not have those resources.
I thank the lovely people who have taken a few minutes out of their day to read this and I hope that you share this with everyone!
Lastly it is not to late to donate! The challenge is actually happening 29th April until 3rd May! Even if you donated a dollar that could be food for someone for a day!
Here is my page! https://www.livebelowtheline.com/participant?lang=en
And please share this your friends!
PaperDaisyGirl 