Watch me spend only 50 cents per day for food in the month of February.


One upping random people on the internet.

I'll get right to it. I was greatly inspired by Evan's Hungry For a Month blog. Just to recap his journey, Evan restricted his food budget to $30 for the month of November, averaging out to a dollar a day for food. He did not consume any free food that may have been available to him at his job which made it more of a challenge. He did not include items such as coffee, sugar, salt, pepper (the type of stuff easily jackable from your local fast food joint). I feel it was a great undertaking and it taught him a lesson or two. I'm going to one-up Evan. My food budget for the month of February will be $15, averaging to out 50 cents a day. Being a caffeine-aholic I'm going to keep coffee in the mix just like Evan did. I'll also keep the salt, pepper and ketchup as items available for free (not that I eat much of those things anyways). Any free food available to me at my job is also off-limits. This may be a problem. Working at a refinery, there is an exorbitant amount of free food. We have lunch meetings, product vendors bring free food, and there is almost always food left over from other people's lunch meetings. But I also feel that I have an edge in this whole issue. Being a Muslim, I am required to undergo fasting in the month of Ramadaan. lasting for about 30 days, these fasts require that I do not eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk. Ramadaan was in October 2006, and I feel I did pretty good. It was a challenge, but I managed. I am going to show that a 50 cent a day diet is very much possible, and even comfortable. Evan wrote in his blog that he did not really plan out his meals nor do any prior research. That's where I will also do things differently. I've already started to evaluate what foods are most cost effective. One-upping Evan is not my only motivation. This experiment will also be conducted to show that using a proper budget and planning, even low income people can live comfortably. I will try my best to provide as much information as I can. Lets see how this goes. Note: Read the Days from the bottom of the page to the top.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Day 18 - Arbitrary Information

Today I've put up a graph of my weight loss so far. It doesn't really provide any significant insight into the matter, but charts and graphs are cool (says the engineer within).


The standard deviation for this data is 0.54 lbs, which is essentially the average weight lost per day. Since there are approximately 3500 calories in 1 lb of fat, I would say that I am short 1894 calories in a day (if I wanted to maintain my existing body weight). That goes to show how much I was eating to begin with.
You'll also notice a point (Feb 12th) where my weight actually goes up. This is probably due to the fact that body weight typically fluctuates throughout the day.
My weight as of tonight: 153.4 lbs (factored into graph).
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