One Meal A Day (Day 3, 8/3/2018)
Before the third day began I woke up twice in the night, at 11pm and 5am respectively, to empty out the bladder. No cause for concern, for the (not so) scientific analysis says that I'm neither dehydrated nor overly hydrated.
8am: Woke up by nature's call and decided that the sun's too high up to return to bed. Prepared 6 x 250ml bottles of water. Will see how many of them are left by the end of the day.
11am: Been at the computer for the whole morning. Neither hungry nor thirsty. Not had a drop since this morning. Does the removal of the need to cook make me lazy to even drink? My hands are cold again. Either the outside temperature is too low or my body heat is too low. Decided to heed yesterday's experimental results. Boiled water and had 500ml of it lukewarm.
12pm: Bowel movement. Black. Soft. Volume lower than normal. Lack of intestinal bulk?
1230pm: Tidied some papers. Drank 250ml more of the now lukewarm water boiled earlier. Hands still cold.
1pm: 50ml. I am no longer gulping water every half an hour like the first day.
130pm: 2nd bottle finished.
2pm: Neighbour came over with a cake to share. Apparently it was their daughter's birthday that weekend and they had some cake left. I figured it would not be considered "breaking the rules" if I didn't buy the cake myself. After all, poor people are freely entitled to accept gifts in the form of food every now and then, and they're obviously not going to wait till dinner time to eat that.
I'm reminded how lucky I am to actually have the luxury to decide when to eat what. Poor people cannot count on there being food every day, bought or gifted.
Hands no longer cold. This is the 2nd time the causal relationship hands cold = body calling out for food has been shown true. 2 data points don't make a theory a theory. Let's see if this can be further tested. Autumn is coming.
345pm: Finished watching a documentary on youtube. Watched it from start to end without getting up every now and then to do this or that. Didn't even have the urge to pause it and check other random places on the internet. Heightened concentration level.
430pm: Shut down computer. Read a magazine. Finished 3rd bottle of water.
5pm: Set off for the daily walk.
720pm: Reached home. Did 2 laps today. Drank just 250ml of water on the first lap. On the 2nd lap my legs began to feel heavy. Finished 500ml during the 2nd lap. Why in the world am I rationing water when there are refill points in the park I honestly have no clue. No, bladder isn't a problem. There are toilets. Anyway the park is just 3.5km from home.
Apparently eating before the walk instead of walking on an empty fuel tank seemed to be better. I finished the same distance in a shorter time than yesterday.
730pm: Boiled a pot of cabbage and tomato soup. How does it feel when you have a cache of perishables at home, enough volume to last you for a week, will turn bad within 3 days, yet you can only look forward to your next food replenishment by the week's end? It is summer. I have no refrigerator.
8pm: Finished 5th bottle of water. Not hungry. The lunch must have worked somehow. Would really have chosen to go without dinner if I hadn't perishables at home. Perhaps I ought to have thought ahead and started the challenge later. Then again poor people don't have this choice. They live in a constant state of precariousness. To suddenly have too much food from time to time, and no food during periods of unknown duration, must be pretty taxing.
830pm: Made a cup of apple milkshake. A bit of water, one apple, 2 tablespoons of milk power, blend to homogeneous texture. Dinner time.
9pm: Portion size = same as yesterday. Calorie content = low to medium (it is basically a cup of near-liquid and a plate of vegetables). Yet I feel so full to the point of being almost bloated. Is it normal to feel satiated after eating this portion? Remember that I last ate close to 7 hours ago, which is a normal period of time between meals for the majority of people who live on 3 meals a day. I'm only 3 days into the experiment and I cannot imagine how I could have gone to dinner feeling like I could devour a chicken after having had a regular lunch.
I still love food. To not be able to eat out because you don't even have the means to eat in thrice a day, and to not see a way out of your situation, must be painful.
11pm: Sleep.