Will it adversely affect my health if I consume nothing but peanut butter and jelly and water for 1 month?

Question

I'm thinking about starting an experiment to see the what effect a very low budget diet will have on my wallet, and possibly weight / general health. I'm sticking with only PB&J to minimize the chance of trying to rationalize spending any extra money "just this time". I plan on alternating breads between white, wheat, and possibly pita. I also plan to use Grape jelly and Strawberry preserves and smooth peanut butter.
I'm doing this because I spend too much $ on food I don't really like because i'm too lazy to make lunch for work, then I come home and get fast food because i'm tired. Not a good diet to start.
Questions:

1. Will I be in need of medical attention in a month?
2. Is there anything I should add to my meal plan to safeguard my health?
(Keep in mind LOW BUDGET)
3. Is it realistic to think that I can survive on $25 worth of food for a month when I normally spend about $600? (@ $20 per day x 30 days)
4. Will my wallet get fatter and waist get smaller?

Right now my diet is already bad:

Breakfast: Coffee and a pastry.

Lunch: Typical midtown manhattan... Hero, Pizza, or something similar and soda.

4:00 break: Soda

Get Home: more soda or juice

Dinner: Fast food, Chinese, Hero, or Pizza. More Liquid sugar to wash it down.

Sometimes i'll have yogurt if i'm feeling hungry after dinner.

I doubt it could get too much worse...

A few more points:

This will only be for a month, mostly to show myself how much money I actually waste on garbage.

I'm not in a financial crunch by any means, (but also not doing so well that $600 a month is something to be taken lightly.

I was made aware through other sources and here that i may have some problems with "regularity"

The main thing is it's not easy for me to change my routine, i'm hoping that this will make it easy for me to find the middle ground, and stick to it. I've tried working on my meal spending, after a few days of forgetting my lunch in the refrigerator i forget that i'm trying to save for another week.

Answer 1

Document it .. so if you loose lots of weight you can sell your "How To"

Answer 2

You will not adversely effect your health. Its just 1 month and the peanut butter is actually a good choice. You will save money but I don't think you will loose weight unless you eat less.

It will cost a lot more than that, unless you have an Aldi in your area to do your grocery shopping. I would estimate about $80 a month. Keep in mind that is all you eat, you will probably go through a couple of jars of pb&j every week as well as several loaves of bread. If you buy only discount brands or shop at cheap stores maybe $50/month.

If you want to do this more than one month you need to add vegetables and maybe a little skim milk and you can do it as long as you need to. I also suggest beans, which you can purchase very cheap dried.

Answer 3

You pull out all the stops when you do something, don't you!

Instead the the PB&J diet (which will definitely do not-nice things to your colon), please consider this ...

Make yourself a budget. Plan on spending, say, $70/week on food. Think about the food pyramid. You need a certain amount of green vegetables, of meat or meat-substitute (protein), etc. Make yourself a nutrition budget, a calory budget, a money budget. You can eat well on $10/day.

When you have that under control, you can decide whether you want to try to eat well on $5/day.

It's a lot of work to figure this out, but you only have to do it once and you are set for life. And it's doable. I'm willing to bet you $600 that you wouldn't be able to stick to your dreary PB&J diet for more than 6 days.

Answer 4

1. PB & J is a great choice, actually. While I was in the military we were told PB would be much better for a human being than steak if stranded with a choice of the two items.

2. I would add a small snack or fruit, and milk.

3. $25 a month, I seriously doubt it. $75, yes.

4. No doubt you will lose weight and gain some savings.

Answer 5

You really need to speak to a physician regarding a severe change like this, but think this through. You're asking us if a high sugar, high fat (peanut butter averages 12 or more grams of fat per serving) and low nutrient diet will be damaging to your body? Yes. How damaging and if you'll be permamently injured in a month I can't say. I doubt the latter - people survived for years in concentration camps with only broth and bread to eat and occasionally a potato. The effects of malnutrition are often slow...it may take years to find out you damaged your kidneys or liver permamently, or lost brain or muscle mass as your body turned on itself for nutrients.

I eat at a bare minimum when it comes to healthy eating - lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and protein and carbs, with few processed sugars. I average around 35$ a week for groceries myself. If you're serious about doing this and not willing to consult a physician do a few things first:

Make sure you're hitting your caloric intake minimums for each day.

Take a multivitamin with your meal every day to offset at least some of the malnutrition. This is NOT going to offset your damage entirely...you're still looking at some bad shock to your body.

Expect to undergo two things...first, extreme starvation...when your body needs nutrients, you'll crave foods high in those nutrients like a junkie craves heroin. Then expect some waisting. Your body is going to hold on to what fat it can, and convert all the calories you're eating to fat while reducing it's muscle mass.

Frankly, I don't think you'll gain any money from this experiment...you'll risk medical bills and they cost a heck of a lot more than 600$!

If you want to cut your food costs, get into planning your meals. Chose something you want to eat that week, and then look at the ingredients and see if they lend themselves to any other potential meals. Buy family packs if possible on meats, etc, and store what you can or make similar meals. Large packs of meats and the like are often several dollars cheaper than buying smaller packs...often $3-4 dollars less per pound! The important thing is tto vary your diet, and hit your food pyramid requirements. You'll find your craving fast food dies out that way and your budget will tighten up on it's own.

Answer 6

With your $25 dollars go buy a huge bag of beans, and another of brown rice. Together they give you all the essential amino acids.
Then you won't have to worry about spending money on social situations, your flatulence will keep others away. You will not be getting enough variety to supply all the vitamins and minerals. If you are serious about this, I suggest supplemental vitamins also. If your experiment is only to last one month, it is doubtful that any long term effects will be felt. Also, it will be very enlightening to see how the very low income group suffers.

My husband got through college on this program. Glad I did not know him then, PEE-YEW!

Answer 7

I really hope you are taking a multi-vitamin! Peanut butter is healthy to the extent that you get plenty of protein and a few other vitamins, and the same with the bread, but your body needs lots of other vitamins and nutrients to thrive. I don't know if you will need medical attenion after a month or not, but I really don't think it is a very healthy diet.

Answer 8

You may not need "medical attention" - but it is not healthy. You will be missing out on lots of other important nutrients and vitamins. There are plenty of other things out there you can add to your diet like cereal, oatmeal or nutrition bars just to name a few. I can't believe you spend $600 a month on food - if you stopped going out to eat that would help a lot.

Answer 9

You'll probably be o.k. w/'PB & J with water, if you can stick to it. You're not going on a Psycho diet like the guy in "30 days" did when he darn near killed himself eating only McDonald's for 30 days. Good Luck and let us know what happens!

Answer 10

I doubt it during the civil war confederate soldiers lived on peanuts for 3 months.And that was without the bread and jelly. I would recommend you get in touch with a church that might provide you with some additional needs if your having a rough time.

Answer 11

Well, it doesn't seem to harm the people on the show Big Brother too much. I say, "go for it".

An even better idea is to shop with coupons if you are trying to save money.