How an Australian woman used her birthday to get free food for a week.

Who doesn't love free stuff on their birthday? 

An Australian woman has taken it to the extreme with an ingenious plan to eat for free at restaurants for an entire week. Yep, you can do that.

Lucy Sweeney from Brisbane set up a challenge to eat free meals for a week during her birthday, with a Facebook event detailing all that she managed to eat without paying a cent.

How, may you ask? By utilising the free meal on your birthday offer that many restaurants have as part of their loyalty or rewards programs, according to Sweeney. You'll need to sign up for these programs, and likely hand over some personal information — but hey, free food for a week.

"It's taken me a decent amount of time to suss all of this out, but it never hurts to ask at your local place of eating if they have a loyalty card and what's included — it could totally be a free meal," writes Sweeney on her event page.

Throughout the week Sweeney was able to treat herself to a burrito, burgers, ribs, ice-cream, juices and more. You could be eating better (or worse) than you do in a normal week.

There are some catches however, according to Sweeney, with some venues requiring ID or booking ahead of time. Some restaurants specify a timeframe before you can use a birthday offer, and some only offer a free meal on your actual birthday, whereas others give you a month to use it. 

You might be required to bring one or more additional paying customers as well, where as some restaurants only offer the free birthday meal at certain locations.

At the end of the week, Sweeney wrote on her Facebook event that there was a considerable lack of breakfast options (she resorted to ice cream at least twice) and that some venues refused to honour the offer.

One restaurant ran out of food and Sweeney said it was physically difficult to complete the challenge of eating as much free stuff as she could for a week. 

"I'm actually quite glad it's over and I can go back to feeding my body like normal," she wrote.

The big winner of course is her hip pocket — if Sweeney ate as she did, she would've spent A$364 that week. So go forth children, and use all of the vouchers.