It's been about 18 months now since I started living below the notorious $1 mark. It's been difficult; but how have I fared, and will others be able to handle it just the way I am going about it, or would they do better or worse?
Having nothing to survive on can be life threatening but I have used this neediness to master some techniques that I bumped into online. I dare say it worked well because I didn't have a choice which would have made it difficult for me and I'm sure others as well (it's hard to reduce/readjust what you feed on with cash at hand) we typically go for what we enjoy, it's natural.
Having been going for up to 3 days without food (sometimes 4 never got to 5 if you call eating a handful or two of nuts or having a plate of cereal; without milk, in a day as feeding) and not dying and even not having those crazy hunger pangs, I came to the conclusion that there had to be something to learn from this because I would never have believed it were possible, though I've never really thought about it (We usually hear about people in places like Somalia where there's massive hunger and starvation but I never really, really get to think about it, now I know they actually (manage to) survive without food for days on end).
After a couple of months the body goes down because of massive loss of fat and muscles and you feel weak while the body adjusts (this is the important part), it goes through this adjustment because it is used to converting glucose to energy and later I found online that the body learns how to utilize fat for energy since there is no longer any carbohydrates or glucose which typically depletes after 2 to 3 days. I had to start using this knowledge to make choices in feeding. The good news is I now had a choice the bad news was I still didn't have money. To make the change I needed to avoid carbohydrates and live on fat which made sense since my body was now using fat for energy production.
It was still difficult because I needed little protein which was expensive for me. In my carbohydrate days I loaded up on carbs and fought with hunger till I found food but feeding on fat you stay satiated since there is no hunger because there is much fat contained in the body to feed off. Incorporating protein in the meals made it hard but I still learnt further that we could survive on one meal with little protein but the proper way was to go through the transition of eating thrice a day and adjusting gradually, usually done by increasing our hours of staying without food so we have fewer hours of the day in which we can eat, they call it intermittent fasting (IF). Well without the money I jumped to the end and started eating a (one) meal a day (OMAD) sometimes with the carbohydrates sometimes without, and it works pretty well especially since I don't get to feel hungry or starved even if it looks bad on the outside.
The good thing is after a while you get used to it and your energy levels improve but you have to be strict with yourself and stay in your feeding bracket which forces your body to go in search of fats that it is now getting used to, or else it will crave carbohydrates and the hunger pangs could make you indulge in snacks, that is if you have the cash at hand.
Thanks for reading all this, hope I may have inspired something or the other in you, feel free to ask me any questions if you want to understand better.