Day 4 - Planning really is the key.

The thing is that you just don't know what it's like and what your reaction is going to be until you are really into it.

For a family, we have discovered that there are 3 ways of doing this - but you will find more:

1) clear out all your cupboards and just spend your money for the week and live on that

2) work out how much everything in your cupboards costs and then live on a £1 each of what you already have

3) Spend your weekly money on staples and try to live on that and soon realise that you ARE going to run out of something and begin to tweak from the pantry.

The tweaking has got more and more throughout the week - we have still lived on £1 each a day, but the lack of variety for most of us who lack the willpower has been really hard.

Reading back on Day one, we were excited and anxious. Today I was just anxious. There is no bread!

Joe seems to be continuing to cope well with the lack of food, but in his enthusiasm, he is policing the rest of us quite hard.

We are all tired and a bit grumpy with each other, so misunderstandings get big pretty quickly. Even I have raised my voice in a fight or flight situation, when normally I would have let it wash over and just walked away.

Keith has really missed out on some relationship building during his first week in a new job, when he could be socialising over a bacon butty. The team know why he is not joining them in the canteen, but he doesn't feel he knows them well enough to ask for sponsorship.

Essentially we have expected Elyse and Thomas to live in a world that they do not understand, one where there is little or no choice and definitely NO chocolate, or chips or chargrilled burgers and all the other delicious things beginning with 'ch'.

The other thing I have noticed is how we use food for entertainment( we eat when we are bored, or just because the food is there) and how much time it normally takes to prepare family meals and therefore how much time we/ I have had on our/ my hands this week. I have nearly read a whole book!

Going into Sainsburys today (to get loo roll) and fretting over whether to buy bread, I became aware of how much stuff there is to buy that just makes life feel better, but isn't really that necessary...but it does make life feel better and, again, how much of it there is - loads!

I bought bread ( Basics 47p for 22 slices).