VIDEO.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feeling of nothing in your stomach really is different than feeling hungry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Definitely headaches. People call it a hunger headache. Probably two days out of the week, I get a migraine. My brain starts to pulsate. You get them, you can feel them throbbing. It goes from the eyebrow to the back over here. A ball of pain in the front of my head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like something is holding on to your brain, almost. I will feel so tired, as if I cannot move a limb in my body. It\u2019s like going into a power-save mode. I feel like my stomach\u2019s going to eat me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it actually feels like it turns to a ball and it just keeps turning. I can\u2019t be relaxed. I can\u2019t be calm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanksgiving is on Thursday. What are we eating on Monday? I wanted to make some chicken soup,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
but I literally could not afford out of my income or out of my SNAP benefits to go out and buy the chicken necessary to do that. You really have to choose: Am I going to pay this bill or am I going to eat? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t eat anything at all today. I don\u2019t eat breakfast. I don\u2019t eat lunch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Skipping breakfast and lunch, and dinner, I\u2019m a little worried about. I still only get the set amount of the SNAP benefits, and it just seems to be going quicker and quicker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I eat a lot of peanut butter because it\u2019s protein and it\u2019s cheap and you can carry it around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I\u2019m hungry at night, I\u2019ll drink water. I would drink four bottles of Poland Spring water every day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That typically just makes me forget about the fact that I haven\u2019t really eaten much of anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll look for anything. Even if I have a pack of gum on me, I\u2019ll sit there and just chew the gum until I know that the flavor has compensated something and made me feel OK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All I eat is snacks or chips. I have three kids, so I\u2019m mostly thinking about them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since my daughter\u2019s been born, I\u2019ve just missed a lot of meals. There are times when I\u2019m so hungry I can\u2019t focus with my daughter. I can\u2019t be present with her because I\u2019m literally so hungry, that\u2019s all I can think of. It\u2019s one thing not to be able to feed yourself, but when it comes to your kids and stuff \u2014\u2014 It\u2019s a man\u2019s duty to make sure his child, his children is well taken care of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I can\u2019t do that, then \u2014\u2014 It feels like you failed. If I\u2019m walking on Eighth Avenue and I\u2019m walking by the shops or the bars or the restaurants, most people will think that I will probably be going into those places, not to the food bank. I do get the exorbitant sum of $23 a month for food stamps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea of a grown man sustaining themselves on $23 a month, it\u2019s a joke. If it weren\u2019t for the food bank, I don\u2019t know what I would do. During my time as a teacher, I was still going to food banks. Everybody that comes there really showed me you\u2019re not the only one. You\u2019re not the only one out here struggling to be able to feed your family. I just felt like a failure. I did. Because I did all of these great things. I went to school. I did all the things I\u2019m supposed to do. I\u2019ve never been to jail. I\u2019ve never done anything that\u2019s going to put me in jail. I don\u2019t do drugs, I don\u2019t drink, I just want to live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When people just say, go out and get a job \u2014\u2014 Oh, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Well, that\u2019s difficult if you don\u2019t have any boots. Once you\u2019ve experienced food insecurity, it\u2019s something that stays with you. Just that constant kind of negotiating with yourself and the numbers. If I don\u2019t do these calculations right, then it\u2019s not just a math mistake. It\u2019s, you don\u2019t literally have food. I am terrified whenever it comes to Christmas. We can\u2019t afford it right now. I just took all my credit card for food. I don\u2019t know if there\u2019ll be a Thanksgiving or a Christmas. We won\u2019t have a Thanksgiving. We won\u2019t have a Christmas meal type of thing. And that\u2019s really hard to wrap my head around. I can\u2019t cook a turkey. I can\u2019t make stuffing and mashed potatoes. It does feel that you\u2019re not part of it anymore. That\u2019s an easy way to kill somebody\u2019s hope. You take the only thing they have, which is food, what hope is there? [MUSIC PLAYING]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One in seven people in America lives with hunger. These are their stories. By Emily Holzknecht and Adam Westbrook November 27, 2025 VIDEO. TRANSCRIPT Feeling of nothing in your stomach really is different than feeling hungry. Definitely headaches. People call it a hunger headache. Probably two days out of the week, I get a migraine. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17386"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17442,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17386\/revisions\/17442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}