Being sick, I figured the best course of action would be to make myself a giant pot of chicken soup and live from that for a week. My ingredients included chicken broth (two for one with your Safeway card), 2 russet potatoes (of which I only used one so far), an onion, and fresh garlic. For breakfast/snacks I also bought a large container of yogurt, saltine crackers, and peanut butter.

Even during the shopping process, I found myself making compromises with my rules in order to satisfy the requirements of both my budget and my recipe. I already had a 1-pound bag of baby carrots at home that I had bought beforehand for $2* and I had half a container’s worth of chicken breasts sitting in the freezer that I estimated to cost $7 (as I had bought the original package for around $12). I marked it up slightly as penance for cheating on a technicality, but buying a completely new package of chicken would have put me over budget.

In some ways, I almost wonder whether this challenge would work equally well (or poorly, given how mine has been going so far) to do it as more of a thought experiment than as an actual experiment, because it is simply too easy to cheat and justify it to yourself.

I had already broken rule #3 by day one (but via rule #5, so I told myself it was okay)**. I realized too late that I had not bought any fruits for the week, so I ate an apple and later added some frozen berries to my yogurt. It’s sort of that conundrum, do you follow the exact wording of the rule, or do you follow the intent of the rule, because each option my lead you down a different road. It also highlights the fact that this challenge is a matter of choice and not necessity, and as such, how impactful can it truly be?

 

 

*I factored this cost into my budget, and while I am kicking myself now for not buying the 2-pound bag of regular carrots for the same price, I can’t help but also think “what single person is going to be eating that many carrots?!”

** Rule #5 was that, if I did cheat on my budget, it would be by eating food that was already in my kitchen before the start of the challenge (and Rule #3 was simply to stay within my $22 budget).