After the holiday season, our pockets always seem to be a little more empty and our stomachs are a little more full. In Ten Fitness Tips to Start Your Year Off Right, we briefly talked about Food being a part of your fitness routine. Being healthy isn’t just about working out, you should also put in food that will make it easy to reach your goals. Eating healthy can be one of the most challenging feats when it comes to being healthy. Sometimes just one day of unhealthy eating can seem to undo an entire week of workout progress. We bring you Eating Healthy on a Low Budget This New Year so you can start the new year with healthy food that won’t break the bank.  

One: Meal Prep

We touched on healthy eating and intake in Top 8 Fitness Products for the Absolute Best At Home Workout but it’s so important. Meal prepping is when you make all or some of your meals on 1 or 2 days of the week. When you have already had your meals made, you’re less likely to stop at a fast food restaurant and eat unhealthy food. Not only does meal prepping save your time, but it also saves you so much money.

“The average American is spending nearly $100 on fast food in a typical month — $1,175 on take-out meals every year. When projected across the typical 60-year adult lifespan (18-78) that equates to an incredible $70,500 dished out in the name of fast food.” –NY Post

Think of how many time you see a fast food restaurant and just think, ‘yeah why not, it’s convenient’. Fast food is one of America’s greatest impulse buys, and meal prepping helps to aid our impulsivity by already having our options set.

People tend to think that eating healthy on a low budget means that food can’t taste good, but this is a myth. Healthy food can taste great and has an added bonus of not leaving you with a feeling guilty after.

Not sure where to start? Check out some of these meal prep cookbooks. 

Divided into sections based on meals or type of food, these books will surely give you some good examples of healthy, delicious meals that you can meal prep for your week. The practice of meal prepping will also help you learn to control your portions. If you are looking to start meal prepping you can find pretty much anything you need for your preferences, whether it’s a certain diet, a certain food you like, or allergies. 

Make portion sizes clear by using meal prep containers. These will make it easy to control your portions by having a specific section for each type of food. These are also awesome tools because you can take them with you on the go. If you want to be true to how much you’re eating, a scale will come in handy so you can measure all of your grains, meats, and vegetables. These will make eating healthy on a low budget easy and save time.  

Two: Plan your Menu

Planning your menu is something that goes into meal prepping, but even if you don’t meal prep planning is a great way to eat healthier. Especially if you are cooking for a family, preparing meals in advance is not always an option. So planning your meals to cook is the best thing for you to do. To plan your menu, a food journal or a whiteboard on your wall that announces all of your planned meals so that you don’t stray from it.

One of the biggest tips for planning meals in advance is limiting yourself to going to the grocery store only once a week. When planning your menu, research the sales of the week for your local grocery store you are going to and you can plan your meals around this. When you only go to the store once a week you are set to a strict budget, a certain amount of food, and making sure that you are having balanced meals. Before you go to the story, write every one of your needed items down so that you don’t stray from your list. Also, make sure you eat before so you don’t buy things just because you’re hungry. This will make eating healthy on a low budget much easier.

Three: Create a challenge 

Going into the new year, challenges are a great way to start eating healthy on a low budget because you’re already motivated. Go vegetarian, give up soda or junk food, drink a gallon of water every day, you can test out different things to see how your body reacts to it. 

Doing a month-long challenge is the most effective way to see if something is effective because it takes 21 days to make something a habit. Not everything will be a challenge that you want to make a habit but it’s still good to challenge yourself. It’s best to give yourself a reasonable goal and at the end give yourself a reward such as a cheat day. 

Some challenges like going vegetarian are going to be difficult while some are easier such as eating breakfast every day. Everything will depend on your preferences and what your daily habits are, but make sure you actually challenge yourself. 

Healthy food challenges tend to encourage you to cut out something or put one food item in the place of another. This will save you money in the long run and that could be another way to encourage you to change your lifestyle.

Four: Use smaller plates

In America, one of the biggest plagues of diet is portion size. When we see a plate of food we tend to overestimate how much we should eat and our intake is much more than we need. Portion sizes are so important when it comes to eating healthy on a low budget, it’s not necessary to stuff yourself until you are totally full, just eat enough until you are satisfied. Most of us don’t have the discipline to do this, so a great tip is to use a smaller plate.

“Studies have found that the average size of the American dinner plate has increased 22% over the last century, from 9.62 inches to 11.75 inches.” -Small Plate Movement

Taking about 2 inches off the size of a plate can take about 200 calories off of the average balanced meal. Think about using a 9-inch plate rather than a 12-inch plate for 5 days, that’s already around 1,000 calories less in one week.

We all know the saying that ‘we eat with our eyes’ and this is an absolutely true statement. When we see extra space on our plate we feel like this should be filled and leads us to overeat.

If you go to a restaurant, ask for a side plate and put the only the food that you need to eat on that rather than eating off of a big plate and take the rest home. You will realize you are satisfied much faster and not eat just to eat. 

Keeping our diets in check is hard when there is so much temptation to eat unhealthy foods. Following these tips will help you create healthy eating habits and will help you save money! It’s a win-win. If you keep these healthy habits along with meeting your fitness goals, you’ll see changes in yourself in no time.

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