Can I Eat Right on A Budget?

By David Francis


Sometimes life throws you curve balls. For whatever reason, some things just really don't manage to work out the way we long for them too. Frequently, these curveballs cause us to strike out when it comes to sticking to our health and wellbeing goals. We start to interrupt the good dietary and workout habits which we worked so faithfully to build, extra weight returns, pain creeps back and depression starts to smother initiative and ambition.

It's happened to the best of and we all know what this feels like. Luckily, there is always a solution. Although it probably won't regularly be the perfect solution we would like, we should instead open ourselves to trying new things or adjust our perspective to allow a bit of creativity to spark a whole new and effective approach.

Before I get in to the meat within the post (pun intended) I would like to produce a quick frame of reference. I just discovered the personal situation of someone who has been thrown a number of major curveballs by life. Everything was going smoothly, fat loss and great energy were the outcomes of a proper diet and physical activity program until a terrible surgery and exhausted insurance funds resulted in a group of four in the lurch.

My challenge was to find out if you are able to provide four adults a comfortable, real food diet with limited funds of $400 a month. It had been reported the family eats out twice every month. I am about to have the recommendation of cutting that back to once per month so as to improve the overall monthly budget up to $448.Using a daily food budget of $17.04, I began to ascertain precisely what was possible. For just a quick philosophical aside. The prioritization of selecting things to eat flows with this order: Could it be real? Is it within the proper nutrient proportions? Would it be properly prepared? Would it be from the proper source? At the grocery store, its pretty easy to find real foods that may be combined within the right proportions to build and maintain an advanced level of health (ie. healthy weight, good energy, positive mood, etc). It is harder to locate pre-made real foods which have been properly prepared and even harder to discover real food which comes through the right sources (fewer choices that are typically a lot more expensive).

Ok, it's finally here, the budget food ideas which i promised. It's true that that this may be a super simple one day plan, but it really works, both from a nutritional and also a budgetary point of view. Breakfast - $2.80 3 eggs, scrambled or fried in two tablespoons of butter, 8 oz of whole milk. Lunch - $5.44 Tuna Fish Sandwich, tuna blended with Two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil based mayo and 1 teaspoon of mustard on sprouted grain bread, carrot sticks, celery with cream cheese. Dinner - $7.54 Taco Salad, shredded green leaf lettuce, hamburger with taco seasoning (follow directions on package), Shredded cheddar cheese, chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, canned pinto beans. Snack - $0.71 dry roasted peanuts. The grand total for the day (keep this in mind is made for four adult servings for each and every meal and snack) equates to $16.49. That's $0.55 under budget! And you just thought it couldn't be achieved, tsk tsk. Like I said before it is quite a basic plan and definitely not gourmet but it requires minimal actual cooking, it is real food and it has an abundance of protein whilst keeping carbs low.

OK, inform me of what you think. Is it possible to survive on a simple diet plan such as this? Lets hope so because what you are currently probably eating right now could be killing you ever so slowly, even though it's more gourmet. Please remember, when life throws you curve balls, keep swinging to the fence and you may eventually hit your home run.




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