I am glad you didn’t walk out of the challenge with the judgmental attitude that poor people are doing things wrong, because you were capable of successfully meeting the challenge. I’m glad you realized that you did have certain privileges like the lack of children, and private transportation.

I lived like that all through my twenties and for most of my thirties. Being poor like that requires a heckuva lot of planning, especially when you have no car. And this was me, with no kids, no car, and living in a big city, with lots of places to buy fresh food, so even those couple of things were advantages others don’t have. (Also, having cooking skills is a total plus. Not everyone has those, or were shown how to cook well, having grown up in poverty themselves.)

I think to get the real effect, a person needs to take the challenge for at least thirty days, and without a car, because it’s the commute time between places, using public transportation, that eats up an incredible amount of one’s time.