I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was hard. After eating only 980 calories the day before, I woke up HUNGRY. I have absolutely no idea how many calories I consume on an average day, but let me tell you Bob… it’s a lot more than 980. In fact, I’m not even sure if the milk and sugar plus the two sweets a day I normally shove in my face is less than 980 calories.
Anywho, I went to bed hungry, and I woke up hungry. 
Breakfast – Multi Grain Cereal 160 calories
The cereal itself was fine. But I sorely missed the brown sugar and milk I would have poured onto it under normal circumstances. And life without a little sugar to get you going in the morning is actually a little depressing. On the positive side though, both the strawberry malt o meal {19 servings left} and strawberry oatmeal {10 servings left} have sugar in them. 🙂 So I’ll get my fix.
During the morning hours I drank 2 cups of hot tea and 3 bottles of water.
Lunch and Dinner Pasta Primavera {760 calories – 380 calories per serving}
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always liked pasta on the second day better. And yesterday, was no exception. I really, really like the pasta primavera dish Valley Foods offers and will no doubt be looking forward to the next pouch of it I get to eat later this month. It’s yummy, and something I highly recommend having in your emergency food storage.
Throughout the rest of the day I drank 5 bottles of water.
Total Calories Consumed on Day 2 – 920
Total Beverages Consumed on Day – 2 cups of tea 8 bottles of water {I’m using this to drink out of}.
The hardest part about day 2?
I found a cough drop in my husbands nightstand and SOOOOO wanted to eat it. I swear to you it was talking to me. The cough drop wanted to jump in my mouth. I even brought it to my nose and gave it a good sniff. But I didn’t eat it.
And then I started reading everyone’s comments about supplementing the Value kit with beans and rice. You know, the way it was meant to be eaten in the first place.
I really struggled with the fact that if this were a real life scenario, and I had forgotten the beans and rice in my food storage kit, it would have been TOO BAD FOR ME. I really wanted to stick to the whole I meant what I said part of the deal. Because in real life, I am an incredibly stubborn person and rarely go back on my word. 
But then I realized, I wouldn’t have forgotten the beans and rice because 1. I already have them in my {real life} emergency food supply kit and 2. I’m not that dumb. I was just excited about the fact I could recognize all the ingredients on the food storage products that I ran to my computer and wrote and post about it before taking two minutes to think about it.
So I’m going to add 28 servings each of beans and rice to my food supply box {1 for each day}. BUT NOTHING ELSE. No spices, no fresh vegetables, no CANDY… nothing else.
28 Days to go. I can do this!
~Mavis
More Posts-
Living off a 30 Day Supply of Dehydrated Food
Living off a 30 Day Emergency Supply of Food – Day 1
Irene says
This will probably end up being a really effective weight loss plan for you. 980 calories is nothing and I’m glad you’re supplementing with rice and beans. Otherwise you’d send your body straight into starvation mode.
Deborah says
So glad you are adding the rice and beans! 🙂
I was wondering though, when you said you would be adding “1 serving each of beans and rice to my food supply box,” do you mean per day??
I love that you’re doing this. It’s so interesting!
Mavis Butterfield says
Yes. A serving of beans and rice a day. 🙂
Em says
Yay!
Karen says
Mavis, you may want to weigh yourself to see how this reflect ts on the scale too. I am thinking this is a pretty good cut on calories and it would be interesting to see the difference a month will make.
diane @smartmoneysimplelife says
Definitely a good idea adding the beans and rice. Less than 1000 calories per day is not enough if you’re active. You might manage it for a week or so but it will impact you sooner or later in very negative ways.
And, even *I* have beans and rice in the pantry – and I hate beans! OK, ‘hate’ is probably too strong a word, maybe ‘dislike immensely’ is better… However, they’re good for filling out meat dishes so I use them. Anyone serious about being frugal or having a well stocked pantry has them. So I say add them in!!!
How many calories do you expect they’ll add to your daily intake?
Mavis Butterfield says
320
Tina B says
This addition will put your daily calorie count to the bare minimum that doctors say to eat for weight loss purposes. You’ll feel hungry, but in a week or so you will adjust. Keep drinking, as you will find that does help. If you aren’t used to drinking this much, your skin will start to look amazing, and you’ll feel a bit more energized, that is, when you aren’t rushing off to the bathroom every 5 minutes. 😉
I’m glad you considered it and decided to add beans and rice. They will help give you more energy to do your daily activities, too.
Sherry says
Now, you can make rice milk. (Lot’s of YouTube recipes. Just make it plain.) Also, Don’t toss the “spent” rice… (left from making the milk) …..you can add it to your cereal.
sheila says
Mavis, you may want to up your daily calorie consumption quite a bit or you’ll crash. As a comparison, I use the Myfitnesspal app for calorie counting. Using a “sedentary” lifestyle in their calculator and 2 lb weight loss per week, I’m allotted 1200 calories per day. If I change it to “active” (which I assume is a realistic description of your lifestyle ), 1300 calories will still give you a 2 lb loss per week. I’m not a dietician, but I imagine 1000 cals aren’t nearly enough for you.
Cheryl says
Hey, thats what I use too http://www.myfitnesspal.com…really helpful to stay on track as well. Agree with Sheila, you have way tooooo much energy to survive on the amount of calories you are ingesting currently and in the midst of planting season, you will crash soon. Take them up on the offer for another box and add to what you are already eating.
Rosaleen says
One more fan who I glad to read that you are adding the bans and rice. You will probably still lose some weight, but more safely. You DO know that if your protein needs aren’t met by your diet, your body will take from muscle what it needs. Often it is the heart that is robbed first
Stacey says
I didn’t see the first post in the series so this may have been answered there. Why did you go with dehydrated food for your emergency supply? Most people who recommend food storage would alway say your food storage should consist of the foods that you normally eat or “Store what you eat and eat what you store. ” Just wondering why foods that you don’t normally live off?
Thanks love all your ideas and blogs. Blessings to you.
Tamara says
Without going back to your initial post on this challenge to refresh my memory, I am thinking you are doing this to simulate a real life emergency situation. If so, you would perhaps not be as physically active as you are so in addition to the beans & rice (really glad you added them) you should add vegetables from your garden OR drastically reduce your activity level. Emergency rations are to sustain life in emergency situations NOT provide all nutritional elements for normal daily activities. Unless the earthquake or the zombies destroyed your garden you would still have access to it. Eat your veggies.
Lea says
I live in earthquake country. Most people that Store food for an emergency would have hard candy and spices also. It wouldn’t be cheating to add these items. A five gallon bucket is prepared and filled for easy grabbing in addition to the dehydrated it freeze dried foods. I keep dumdum sucker on hand, they last forever and work for any age.
Janice says
I am so glad to see you adding the rice and beans. It’s no wonder you were hungry – you didn’t eat nearly enough for such an active person! Regardless of how the month ahead plays out one of the benefits of your challenge is it will have people thinking about getting themselves better prepared for any emergency. As a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross and someone who lives on Vancouver Island, which is in an earthquake zone, I am constantly preaching the benefits of being prepared. It would be a huge help if people had a kit in their vehicles and places of work as well. There is a very good chance you won’t be home when disaster strikes. Please take care of yourself….
lynne says
Glad that you are adding the beans & rice…your calorie consumption is definitely too low for how active you are. I can see using these meals to supplement what you already have in food storage, but not to survive on alone. Most people HAVE spices – even in my grab-n-go 3 day emergency bags, I have boullion for the rice; brown sugar for the oats; and salt & pepper packets. Be mindful of your body while you are doing this, would hate to see you get ill. Lynne in MN
Dana says
Please add more food you already have at home to this experiment. Think about this rationally.
In most cases, when things hit the fan, you’ll be hunkered down at home with whatever supplies are on hand. If the water goes out or electricity or there is no gas available for instance. After hurricane Sandy many of my fellow New Yorkers were without water, electricity, and the few that drive couldn’t find gas anywhere. No electricity or potable water in their apartments meant the same was true of nearby restaurants and groceries which remained closed because of the lack. So, for most New Yorkers the issue was not aphaving enough potable water and/or food stored. (Real quote from a friend, “All I have in the house is alcohol and Oreos.”)
If the emergency is massive flooding Katrina style, getting in a blow up canoe would be your first priority, then finding dry land, THEN finding water and food.
If your house burned down you would grab your kids, pets, and car keys. NOT a box of food.
If the Zombies attack, well, they aren’t interested in your food anyway, and big dogs, a solid fence, and weapons are your best defense against looters.
Real food preppers do store spices, rice, beans, pasta, corn, wheat, packaged foods, canned soups (in case of lack of potable water to cook with), powdered mik, sugar, etc.
I know you said you are stubborn but, the way you are doing this is more, “When they BOMB us like they did Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the only non radiated food is in this box.”, so it’s not terribly ‘real’, nor healthy.
Best of luck however you choose!
Mavis Butterfield says
I can’t even tell you how much I LOVE this comment. 🙂
Angie says
I find the comment about loss of hydro / water very relevant and interesting to this experiment. If you are in an emergency situation where you need to resort to this food – it’s likely there is no hydro / water. I wonder how easy it would be to prepare this food without either – and if those purchasing these kits are realizing they should also have a portable means of cooking all this, and how much of your emergency water supply it would take up? We have a 72 hour emergency kit, and none of the food in it requires cooking or additional water from our emergency water supply – for the reason being, if we need this kit, we almost positively do not have hydro.
Isabelle says
You know what Mavis? I think in a real emergency case, Let say you would already had the emergency kit, you would also had use what you got in hand. That means, your cabinets would have still be there, your fridge also. The only difference is that. let say there is no more electricity, you would have use the things in your fridge first, then all the things that had a life range short or expiration dates and THEN you wold have use your beans and dehydrated supply and ration them or be sure that you would use everything carefully to go the further as possible. SO I think the real challenge would be to use only what you have on hand and manage to go a long way. And 980 cal per day is definitly not enough to keep you strong enough to take care clearly of all the other things you would have to take care in case of emergency like, security, managing the family, preparing to go a long way for heat, water etc… Cause now you still drink water from the faucet I guess? But in a real emergency case, maybe water wouldn’t be available. But in any case, the challenge is a good thing and maybe will help you adjust in case of a real one 🙂
Glenda says
Hi there Mavis!
First, I want to tell you that you ROCK! Now, the second thing is I would LOVE to know more about your real life emergency kit/supplies!
Marcia says
Just so you know, this is what I have in my emergency food storage – and I actually use it periodically and replace it. So I totally think it would be kosher, and way healthier, for you to include fruits and veg too. Because as someone who is prepared, you’d have it right??
http://www.costco.com/320-Total-Servings-of-Freeze-Dried-Vegetable-Variety-Food-Storage-Bucket-.product.11606929.html
http://www.costco.com/.product.11607021.html?cm_sp=RichRelevance-_-itempageVerticalRight-_-CategorySiloedViewCP&cm_vc=itempageVerticalRight|CategorySiloedViewCP
Anna says
Hi Mavis,
My hubby, who is sitting next to me, got a kick out of your post (as did I). He likes to watch Military MRE reviews on You Tube. Yes, its a thing. Specifically, Kiwi Dude, who reviews what is in them and at the end his little girl tests them out. She gives a thumbs up or down. Pretty stinkin’ cute actually. You might find some moral support over there. 😉 Anyway, power on Mavis. You’re going to survive in a zombie apocalypse!
Kathy says
I’ve gone through two real emergencies where I had no electricity for extended periods of time. The first was a major snow storm in Tennessee and the other was Katrina. I’ve been a prepper for many years and I learned from both experiences. I keep at least a six month supply of foods that do not require anything other than heating, if that. I think it is important to know how to build and use a rocket stove and/or a solar oven. They are easy to make and use. I especially like the stove made using a metal coffee can, a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of alcohol.
I do recommend that you eat what you have stored so that you rotate your stockpile. Only store what you like to eat. Mavis, unlike your experiment, my goal is to have extra calories available in my stockpile because I believe I will require even more energy in an emergency. I don’t want to exist on the bare minimum but excel on what my body requires. I recommend investing in a very good quality water purifier if you are unable to store a very large potable water supply. Water is essential for life.