Tuesday, 7 Sep 2004
One of the biggest, lamest excuses I’ve heard for not sticking with a healthy lifestyle is that it costs too much to eat healthy foods.
I say this is total bullshit.
For the average convenience-oriented, restaurant-going, chunky monkey American family of four, the average grocery bill alone is $500/month. This doesn’t take into account how much they might spend on dining out or delivered pizza. According to a Restaurants USA magazine article from November 2000, the average American dines out 4.2 times a week. Let’s just be conservative and say that each of these meals is a cheap $5 value meal from a fast food place, for a total of $21 per person per week for take out, or $3/day. Multiply that by 30, and you get a whopping $90 a month extra per person. So that family of four now spends $500 for groceries PLUS $360 on dining out for a total of $860 per month on just FOOD.
Now let’s take a look at YOUR food costs. How much are you currently spending on groceries plus dining out each week? How many people are in your family? If you are planning to get EVERYONE to eat the BFL style meals 6 times a day, that will make it a lot easier for you to stay within budget than if you had to buy two sets of groceries, one for the BFL’ers and one for the flabtastically unenlightened. 
I spend about $20-$25 a week on groceries for just myself, and an additional $25 or so a month for a 5 lb container of protein powder. I eat out VERY rarely now (I’m a terrible cheapskate and HATE to pay $10 for a single entree that I know only costs $1.50 to make). Anyhow, if you are spending more than $20 per person each week for groceries AND dining out combined, BFL might just save you some money. My food costs per month are in the $110-$150 range, including four take out lunch specials.
Money-saving BFL grocery shopping tips:
- Buy things like protein powder, oatmeal, whole wheat flour (if you use it) in bulk.
- Buy fruits and veggies that are in-season and substitute them creatively (but still within proper portion sizes) in your BFL/EFL recipes. If a recipe calls for spinach, but Romaine lettuce is cheaper, there’s nothing wrong with using the lettuce instead. Anal-retentive adherence to recipes is for the unadventurous, wealthy, or wasteful!
- Use reasonably-priced frozen fruits if their fresh counterparts are out of season and hideously expensive.
- Check sales ads for great deals on lean meats and buy in large quantities when they are on sale. Freeze anything you don’t use.
- Many fruits–berries, peaches, etc–can be bought cheaply while in season and then frozen for future use.
- Cook in large batches, then divvy up the servings into Rubbermaid containers and freeze them. I like to make WW pita pizzas, wrap them in plastic, and freeze them for quick lunch meals.
- Cut out pre-packaged and restaurant meals. These really add up over time. (It costs me a little over $5/day to eat 6 BFL meals. Most people I know spend that much on just one fast food lunch or two TV dinners.)
- Make your own shakes and nutrition bars. Each of these items averages $1-$2 per serving if you buy them ready-made! The ones you make yourself taste better and cost less than $0.50 each.
- Give up the diet sodas and drink water.
- Try out store brands for stuff like FF cottage cheese, plain yogurt, and FF cheeses.
- Go with cheaper sources of protein like whole chicken (I roast one each week, and use the skinless meat in all sorts of recipes–for me, at least, the major savings per pound over boneless, skinless chicken breast is worth the higher fat content in the thigh and leg portions. I just carve up the chicken and mix the meat for a more average fat content.), tuna, cottage cheese, and protein powder. Pick up beef when it’s on sale, but fresh or even frozen fish will always be kind of pricey unless you have a fisherman in the family!
- Invest in lots of Tupperware/Rubbermaid (used or on sale, of course). If you are REALLY cheap, just save all of those cottage cheese and yogurt containers you’ll be piling up and use THOSE to store your planned leftovers.
- Forget about those expensive and unnecessary supplements. As Tom Venuto says, some supplements actually work, but you can make 95% of your transformation through a good nutrition and exercise plan alone. Why pay $30+ per month extra for that extra 5% that won’t even make a difference until you knock out that 95% first?
No more Frances!
I might not be able to use this brand after all, although I think it tastes great. I tend to be kind of headache sensitive when it comes to drink mixes with aspartame. I usually only have a one cup serving, which doesn’t give me any issues, so I’ll most likely just go back to doing that. I only doubled up this time because my total calories were coming out a bit low for the day at 1150.