This is what $30 buys.

As she predicted, an anti-hunger activist who put herself on a $30 food budget for the past week is feeling kind of lousy. Alexandra Ashbrook, the director of D.C. Hunger Solutions at the Food Research and Action Center, says that after six days of attempting the so-called “food stamp challenge,” she’s getting a bit lethargic.

“I’m feeling more tired than usual as well as more forgetful,” she says. Ashbrook says she missed a meeting at work on Friday, and part of her kid’s soccer game the following morning.

Last Tuesday, Ashbrook went grocery shopping and limited herself to $30, the average weekly benefit for a recipient of D.C.’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. She wound up with just a little bit of fresh food and a smattering processed items like shredded cheese and turkey bologna.

The produce went first. “No more spinach, no more bananas,” Ashbrook says.

Ashbrook got a little break from her weeklong diet on Saturday evening when she attended a friend’s wedding, but aside from that she’s found herself to be off her game. Still, she will resume her normal diet tomorrow when her one-week venture ends. The point, of course, is to alert people to the hardships faced by the 142,000 District residents and 45 million across the country who receive SNAP benefits.

“While it’s an eye-opening experience to do the challenge for a week, it can’t in any way compare to the challenges people on the program face,” Ashbrook says.

Ashbrook and her fellow anti-hunger activists are meeting with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton tomorrow as the roll out a new push to preserve federal funding for food assistance programs. The House of Representatives committee in July passed an agriculture bill that would cut SNAP funding by $16 billion over the next 10 years. Ashbrook says she and her associates will ask D.C. residents to lean on acquaintances around the country to lean on their members of Congress to oppose cuts to SNAP benefits.