Day Four – Lunch

“Soup and Bread”. I went for Chunky Beef and Vegetable soup.

The problem isn’t really eating different things to normal, or attempting a strict diet to improve my health, or performing kooky eating challenges, its about exploring willpower, self-discipline and commitment in the long term against desires of the short term. It’s about the rigidity of values.In which case, am I really doing that well, have I completed a single task without argument, deliberation, exception, allowance or amendment? Hardly.

Still, I like chunky beef soup, but was it what I wanted the most then? No. It’s exploring that strange dynamic of “sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do”, a phrase from my childhood that I would always counter with “but why?”, and I still find it difficult to understand. It’s wants versus needs. But “need” is conditional, it has a weight dependent on values within contexts. “I want to leave the house now BUT I need to find my keys first”, and yet, need is just a want of greater value, greater importance – I want to leave the house now, but what I want MORE is to be sure to be able to get back in again later.

Morality, willpower, conscience, all correspond with needs; temptation to wants (Of course this challenge isn’t a moral one, but it is analagous to morality – it provokes a conscientious process of though). but if needs are just wants of different value, then being tempted, or ‘cheating’ is simply choosing one value system over another, normally according to immediate revelence.

Of course, “regret” is understanding the wrong value system was prioritised.

Day Four – Breakfast

Zoe’s menu had said “Shreddies and yoghurt”. I had weighed up yesterday at the supermarket the comparative merits of buying Shreddies, or Sainsburys home brand: “Malties”, which through crunch-sensitive marketing were advertised as “at least 20% cheaper than the leading brand”. On the one hand I would have an exactly correct specification, on the other I was saving money. Another value conflict. In the end I went with Malties, as surely they were the same to all intents and purposes.

I couldn’t find any plain, natural yoghurt (honestly! it was weird) so I used cheap strawberry yoghurt. I almost bought a crunch corner.

Day Three – Dinner

“Salad Nicoise”

Never heard of it before. Starting with today’s bangers and mash, these six consecutive meals would be based on two recent days of Zoe Stanton’s (of Uscreates) diet. An earlier challenge had been to swap eating habits for two days but I hadn’t ever got round to it. I often forgot until after breakfast by which point I considered it too late. This time however, forgetting to include breakfast was no excuse – I had scheduled myself to begin at lunch, knowing I would need to do a big shop beforehand (an understanding between the organiser and participant – both me, in this case – was turning out to be critical).

I had googled a few recipes before leaving the house and bought all the ingredients I needed, in fact, i got enough different kinds of ingredient to fulfil three online variants of the recipe. [1] [2] [3]

I don’t prepare or consume salad very often, almost never in fact, but this was enjoyable on both counts, if not a bit time consuming and fiddly to make (by my standards at least). I made quite a large one, which I shared with housemates in front of the television. They seemed to genuinely quite enjoy it, perhaps I’ll cook communally again. I was in fact finding cooking in general quite fun. I felt as if I was learning and being quite productive which made the end results quite satisfying. It could be that three days in I was experiencing a shift in perceptions: one of the purposes of this trial?

Day Three – Lunch

Lunch was to be “Sausages and Mash”. I didn’t have either, or much food from the menu for the next few days. I needed to go shopping. Left for Sainsburys straight after breakfast to get what I needed. It took a few hours altogether, and cost twice as much as a normal weekly shop. This project was beginning to use a fair bit of time and money.

It was quite a fun meal to cook, and very tasty – I don’t know why I dont have it more often. I added gravy, shallots and garlic to the base requirements, and I added cheddar cheese, mustard and ground pepper to the mash. I can’t seen any harm in that.

Observations – Self-improvement like incentives have costs. Personal resources: time, money etc. may need to be sacrificed by the subject in order for them to meet goals outlined by themselves, or others in holistic intervening projects. Consequently, audiences may begrudge these kinds of projects (unless recompensated), or cite these sacrifices (exchanges in values) as reasons to discontinue. Once again, this is an example of conflicts in personal values.

Day Three – Breakfast

Woke up feeling a bit hungover, quite liked the look of my housemates bacon sandwich but I was supposed to have…”peanut butter and chocolate spread on toast”. Bit of a weird one, honestly I don’t know what posessed me to write that.

Day Two – Dinner

So the day had gone well, my parents had left, I’d had a few drinks at the pub with my fellow graduates and the evening was setting in. Dinner was to be “Burger, chips and coke”: I had predicted this situation when writing up the challenge, and had imagined I would visit our friendly local Southern Fried Chicken in New Cross and I was looking forward to sampling the new “half-pounder burger”.

We were on a train heading for Shunt, a nightclub below London Bridge station when i remembered the project. I carefully explained to my friends that it was very important that I get a burger, chips and coke immediately. Somebody suggested the Burger King at the station.

When I got off and whilst everyone else got in the queue, I ordered a Meat Beast meal. Bizarrely, The waitress told me that would take ages and handed me an equivalent burger. I wasn’t really in a suitable state to argue. There were no seats at the station or on the way to the club (which was only downstairs) so I sat down in an empty corner, laid my meal out on its wrappers in front of me on the floor and tried to eat it quickly so I could catch up with my mates.

I was half way through, engrossed, when two shiny £2 coins were lowered into my periphery. I looked up an arm and saw a kindly, very smartly dressed forty-something man at the end. It took me slightly too long to figure out what was going on…

Me: oh…uh, no i’m fine, i’m fine, thanks,

Man (insistantly, with pity): It’s alright, it’s ok. Take it. Where are you from? (he had a slight Polish accent)

Me: no, really…really, it’s ok. I’m not…I’m just eating, i’m meeting friends, uh,

Man: where are you from? (still not raising his hand)

Me: uh…Nottinghamshire?

That seemed to be enough, confused he stood up and left for his train. I quickly finished off and went to find my friends.

Of course, such kindness was very touching, to be offered generosity and charity, but i was more than slightly confused – I thought i was dressed quite smart.

Observations – Once again, it goes to show what experiences, interactions and events crop up when you start changing your habitual behaviour.

Day Two – Lunch

I graduated from University today, and when I was writing my menu I knew there would be a lunchtime buffet. I had written “Sandwiches”. That meant if there weren’t sandwiches I would have to down my mortarboard and robes and head for the nearest cafe. I looked over the spread and my stomach churned; there were sandwiches, but there were also canapes, samosas, cakes, about 15 different kinds of salmon-based amuse bouches etc. all very nice.

Luckily, I had yesterday decided that supplementing my meals was ok. So I dutifully arranged a plate of sarnies, reassured my mum I was going to make the most of the spread, ate them and then went back for free-style seconds.

observations – the amendments certainly made the challenge easier, if it hadn’t been implemented earlier I couldn’t be sure I would have gone through with the task; if it was a regular form of dieting attempted, I imagine today would have been a fair exception.

Day Two – Breakfast

Breakfast was easy enough; marmite on toast. Though I would have rather had the crumpets that were hanging about the back of the fridge. Was able to give them to dad though. Crumpets are not on the menu, and wouldn’t have made it for another ten days. I realised, scanning the fridge, that quite a lot of my food was going to go to waste unless I could give it away – a real shame, did I say I never waste food – by raising the ‘priority’ of my menu I was suffering a conflict of values; a cognitive dissonance you might say, and it’s stressing me out.

I forgot to photograph my toast, i’m going to have to get into the habit of taking photos of my food, sorry, you’ll have to imagine how it looked.

Day One – Dinner

My dad came to stay over the night before my graduation from University. After he had settled in from the three hour car journey, and had had a cup of tea, I explained to him that it was altogether quite necessary that I have fish & chips for dinner tonight. Obligingly, he agreed, though said he wasn’t very hungry (neither was I, I’d had three or so strong pints of ale and had only just got back from central London.)

We decided to get a train to London Bridge, and pickup the takeaway, on the way. I ordered the mini fish & chips and my dad got chips and curry sauce (i wondered if that would count on Mondays “curry” night). They didn’t have any trays, so we had to unwrap the chips and eat them from the bags at the train station, sat on a shallow brick wall, in the dark below the metal staircase (we couldn’t use the benches in the shelter because they were dominated by ‘yoofs’ [as Charlie Brooker calls them] smoking weed so strong you could smell it across both platforms). Dad checked his plastic carrier bag worriedly to make sure there were no holes for his curry sauce to seep through. When we got on the train I was very aware we were stinking out the whole carriage. I was reminded of the discouraging TFL posters. We probably both ate about half our meals. I felt bad about the waste, I almost never waste food and it was especially worse as dad had paid for them.

Insights: Getting the first impressions of how difficult it can be to impose rules when they effect others/ relationships with others. Social habit, obligation, appropriateness and politeness are challenging constraints of habit.

Day One – Lunch

The brief was written on Thursday morning, but rather than wait until Friday (“to start properly”, an idea we discussed might be a bit of a diversionary/ procrastination excuse) I thought I would begin immediately with lunch. Of course, this was hardly planned “in advance”, but nonetheless I had chosen a salmon and cream cheese bagel, and a can of coke. And so off I went and bought one.

[ I mention this next part only because it was due to the timetable and the experiment that this experience occurred. In that sense, is it quite relevant?

The route took me across Shoreditch, and at the bridge where the old underground station used to be there was a blue, chipboard corridor between construction work and positioned half way along was what appeared to be a homeless person sleeping under a blanket. Except there was something slightly out of place; the conspicuous position, their absolute stillness, the deliberately-haphazardly tucked-in blanket gave a perfect yet indication of the whole body, and yet all but the top of the scalp and one grubby but perfectly smooth leg were concealed. I suspect (i hope) it wasn’t a homeless person at all so much as a (very well executed) guerrilla sculpture/ installation by a Shoreditchite with a penchant for Ron Mueck. If I’m wrong it would probably make me the worst kind of smug, jaded, post-modernist, but somewhat reassuringly, most of Shoreditch seemed clearly to agree with me, judging from their otherwise inappropriate expressions of bemusement.

Anyway…]

The very first meal raised two issues:

1.) I had specified “a can of coke”. Was I now obliged to drink only a can of coke? If they only had bottles, would that do, or would I have to go elsewhere? What If I then just had the equivalent of a can’s worth? Could I have Pepsi, or was my brief restricting me to Coca-Cola? I remembered, not all my choices were so consistently specific, in fact I had just written “curry” for Monday dinnertime.

2.) A single bagel was not enough to fill me up. Was I allowed to supplement my meal with more, different food, so long as I definitely did have what I had written down? Was I allowed to snack between meals, drink tea and coffee? Had I unwittingly denied myself any water for the next ten days (theoretically long enough to kill me!).

In both respects I erred on the side of pragmatism, but as a penance, not today. I stuck with my lone bagel and my can of Coca-Cola, but allowed myself some future leniency.

Perhaps I had already failed?

[I also forgot to take any photographic evidence – so will have to make do with a picture of a greasy, cheese-smeared paper bag.

early thoughts – setting strict briefs will encourage the recipient to explore and test the boundaries of the brief, potentially undermining the original intention, jeapordising the essence/ direction of the brief.