This week really took me outside of my comfort zone. The £10 challenge. 7 days living off a £10 shop. That’s roughly £1.40 a day, and about 47p a meal. It’s worth taking into account my usual ‘meal deal’ lunch from tesco normally comes to £3 and I’m normally suspect to a Nando’s that I wouldn’t even be able to cover on my budget.

I always knew I would do this, but just how hard it would be, I wasn’t sure. I foolishly didn’t plan too well before heading to the supermarket to do my weekly shop. It became quickly apparent, fresh meat and veg was off the table. The tinned section was screaming out to me, 20p for a meal, was bang on. Accompanied with eggs, bread, porridge, milk and rice, I had everything I needed to get me through the week. In hindsight, spending 10p on a bag for life, wasn’t my finest moment – but it wouldn’t be one of my challenges if I wasn’t a cretin for part of it.

So what was on the menu? My days would consist of a banana and coffee in the morning, egg on toast and porridge for lunch, and whatever I could find in one of my tins and either rice or toast for dinner. Some of it wasn’t pleasant, meatballs in a tin being a real low for me. Some of it, however, was surprisingly edible. Chicken Curry from the tin was actually quite pleasant, believe it or not.

It was do-able and just goes to show, if times were tough, you can really cut back on food. Was it enjoyable? Not really. The lack of breakfast in the morning, really began to affect my mood and apparently my appearance. On the Friday morning, I was asked three times ‘are you okay?’ as I looked I apparently looked ill. Not ideal. One thing very noticeable, was my skin becoming horrendous over the week. Maybe it was the quality of food and lack of vitamins, maybe it was all just the placebo effect and my mind is just playing big tricks on my body, who knows!

What I do know, is that I love my food. I’m not a big eater but I’m fortunate enough to be able to eat mostly what I want and when I want. The say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, well I can concur, you will not make me love you by starving me.

This challenge marks the end of the food challenges. Having thrown up from a hot curry and given up my beloved added sugar, I’m not sure I can put my stomach through it anymore.

I was inspired to do this challenge by a blog post by Christina, where I read that as well 6000 children in the UK are being brought up on £1 a day and over 1, 000, 000 adults and children have received three days’ emergency food and support from Trussell Trust foodbanks in the last 12 months, a 163 percent rise on numbers helped just two years ago. A few of my challenges, have given me an idea what it would be like to live without a home and without food, with this in mind, I’ve decided to dedicate the whole comfort challenge towards causes to help this. I will be hoping to raise money for The Seaview Project and Surviving Christmas, who both do great work with homeless people in East Sussex. Hopefully you’ll be be kind enough to donate.