Healthy eating on a budget

Most overweight or unhealthy people can come up with a reason for why they can’t better their health. “I don’t have enough time.” “I don’t like vegetables.” “It’s too hard.” With the economic recession, one of the biggest excuses is “It’s too expensive to eat well.” And now for the big news:

Eating healthy on a budget is doable.

It may take more time and effort, but eating good, healthy food (and food that isn’t boring, at that) is not hard even if you have a tight budget. In this post, I’m going to give you some guidelines to help you get the best bang for your buck, and the best food for your body. So let’s get started!

Cut the Junk

If you haven’t yet, you need to cut back on the amount of sugars and refined carbohydrates you eat. That means fewer cookies, candy, chips, bread, fried foods, and crackers. Soda should be eliminated entirely. If you’ve got a tight budget, you need to make sure the food you are buying is nourishing your body. It’s better to spend $5 on a couple crowns of broccoli than $3 on a bag of chips.

Limit How Often You Go Out to Eat

Restaurant food can be very expensive. Sure, there are some places that provide great food at a low price, but you can stretch one night’s cooking into 3 or 4 meals depending on what you make. Last night I made sautéed chicken breast with wild rice/quinoa veggie pilaf and green beans, and it fed me and my boyfriend, gave me today’s lunch, and extra chicken and pilaf.

Fast food may be cheap and quick, but you’ll pay for it in the long run with your health. It’s fine for the occasional, and I really do mean occasional, meal, but it’s full of additives, bad fats, unnecessary calories and non-nutritous food. As for typical restaurant food, you ultimately have very little control over what goes into your body when you eat out. You might not know how your chicken breast was prepared, or how many calories are packed into that quarter cup of salad dressing. When you do eat out, take measures that will cut back on calories (grilled meat over fried, balsamic dressings instead of creamy ones, etc).

Planning ahead

Planning ahead is the most important thing you can do to eat healthier. With weekly meal plans, you will seldom end up having to scrounge around in the freezer for those burritos you bought four months ago, or resorting to McDonald’s out of convenience.

If you’re going to a grocery store, see if you can find a weekly ad either in your paper or on their website, and plan meals for the week around what is on sale. Right now, Draper Valley chicken breasts are buy one get one free – I could get one for this week, and freeze one for later use, or use them both this week. I tend to adjust the food I eat to what is cheap that week – when broccoli is on sale, I’ll buy a few crowns and roast it, or use it in stir-fry.

Plan out your meals so that they incorporate these discounted items, and stock up on non-perishables that are on sale, if you can afford it. I love flavored, unsweetened sparkling water, so when they’re on sale at 50% off I’ll get a couple and store them in my garage. It only saves me about $.50 per bottle, but it’s better than nothing.

If you’re able to, spend a couple hours one day of the week prepping and cooking food for the rest of the week. You don’t have to cook every meal ahead of time, but if you can get some of the prep work out of the way, and even some of the cooking, it can give you more free time during the week. I stayed with some family friends for a few days in Ireland in 2011, and since the mother and father both worked, and the kids had school and after-school activities every day, they would cook all the dinners for the week on Sunday. The food that would be eaten Monday-Wednesday would stay in the fridge, and the Thursday and Friday meals went in the freezer. If you can figure out a way to incorporate at least a little bit of food preparation for the week, and it will make your week go smoother, and you’ll be less likely to resort to something unhealthy but convenient.

Whenever you go grocery shopping, you should always have a list. Try as hard as you can to stick to your list, and don’t give in to impulse buys.

Stick to the Perimeter of the Store

When you go grocery shopping, stay primarily on the perimeter of the store. It’s where you’ll find fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs and dairy. The inner part of the store is where you’ll find junk food, condiments, and basically all the sugar and empty calories. There are only a few things you should get from the inside of the store – oils for cooking (but never vegetable oils), spices, dried herbs, tea, coffee, healthy bulk foods like nuts, canned/frozen fruits/vegetables (these are fine as long as there’s very few additives – they are frozen/canned at peak ripeness and nutritional value). Okay, so that’s more than a few. But all of those things together probably won’t make up the majority of your diet.

Eating in Season

One factor that you might not have considered is buying produce in season, especially locally. Doing this can drive your food bill down a lot, since the foods that are in season are going to be less expensive because the grocery store  has an abundance of food that they don’t need to reach out 5 states away for it.

Your location will determine what’s in season. In Seattle right now, asparagus, rhubarb, and lots of greens are in season. Up here, avocados aren’t cheap until the summer, and a few months ago you could buy tons of kale for five bucks. Keep in mind though that different fruits and veggies will be in season in different regions, so find an online resource that tells you what’s in season in your area.

Farmers Markets

I love farmers markets. I think it’s because I went to the market with my family when I was young and lived in France. They’re full of beautiful food grown and made by people who actually care about food quality. Farmer’s markets are a fantastic way to get produce that is local, (usually) organic, and tastes better. It is also one of the easiest ways to eat food that’s in season. If you’ve never been to a farmers market, keep in mind that a lot of the food there will look very different from its grocery store counterpart. Apples won’t be as pretty, potatoes will be dirtier, radishes will be smaller, and everything will come in more colors (hello purple carrots!).  Big farms grow food to last as long as possible, and look as traditionally pretty as possible, but it’s usually at the cost of taste. Your pears from the market will most likely taste better than the ones from the grocery store. Buying food from the market is also cheaper.*

Another benefit from markets is the community. You’re supporting local farmers, and get a chance to build a relationship with the people who grow your food. Sometimes you can even get better deals by establishing rapport with the people working the stands, but don’t try to low-ball them for their awesome products – they’ve put in a lot of hard work.

*In Seattle, the farmers markets are more expensive than buying from grocery stores. I looked it up to find out why this is the case, and it seems like it’s a combination of very little illegal labor being used, and high real estate prices. The best alternative I’ve found is an awesome place called Top Banana, where their produce is super cheap ($.069 for a red bell pepper instead of $2.00), there’s tons of it, it’s all really good quality, and more local than a grocery store.

Buy the Right Things in Bulk

When I say buy in bulk, I don’t mean go to Costco or Sam’s Club and get all the flour you could hope to use in your lifetime, and 40 pounds of coffee that’ll go stale before you get through the first pound. But if you love chicken breast, then buy a big Costco pack! Keep one or two portions in the fridge, and put the rest in the freezer with the date purchased marked on them. Here’s a list of things that work well in bulk, and how to use them properly:

• Raw meats – chicken breast/thighs, pork shoulder, ground beef/turkey/pork etc.  Put what you’ll use that week in the fridge, and store the rest in the freezer. For ground meats, you can portion them into specific sizes, like quarter-or half-pounds, and store them in separate containers.  
• Fruits and vegetables – only buy what you can use. If you’ll eat two pounds of broccoli before it goes bad, then go for it! If you have a hobby like canning, you can make jams, jellies, pickles, fruit butters and conserves with what you have leftover.
• Oils – if you buy olive oil, funnel it into a smaller, easier to use bottle, since their jug is about a gallon. You can now get coconut oil at Costco too, but make sure you can use it before it goes rancid (not sure how long this is, but heat may be a factor).
• Dried goods, like beans and brown rice or quinoa.
• Canned goods – look for low sodium and minimal additive options.
• Packaged frozen foods – one of my favorite new finds is the frozen mackerel that Costco carries. They come in a big bag of individually sealed half-fish portions, and they’re a breeze to make. I bake them when I have a side, but no protein for dinner. Other things you can get include frozen chicken breast, sausage patties/breakfast sausages, etc.

Grow your own food!

A great way to save money on seasonal food is to grow it yourself. You should take a look at what grows well in your region this time of year. Don’t forget to check for herbs – whenever I buy a bunch of parsley or cilantro from the store, I can never use all of it. So having a plant you can just pick what you need from can help reduce food waste as well as save you some money. I prefer plants that don’t just give you one harvest – think pepper and tomato plants, pea vines, and berry bushes/fruit trees. However you can plant every week or so over the planting period, so you can have a harvest once a week, as opposed to more food than you can eat, all at once.

You should also look into the produce that tends to be pricier in your area. Red, yellow, and orange bell peppers tend to be on the pricier side, so those would be a good choice for me in the Seattle area.

Recipe Resources

• Poor Girl Eats Well – an awesome blog with lots of cheap meals, which have per recipe/ serving/ingredient cost breakdowns.
• Budget Bytes – similar setup to PGEW, but different recipes from a different lady!
• reddit.com/r/fitmeals – a great resource for healthy meals. Users post blog recipes or their own creations, and you can search by using various tags, such as “low cal”, “high protein”, and “cheap.” They sometimes have tips on there as well.

Eating healthy on a budget isn’t impossible. It may be harder, since you need to plan things out ahead of time and cook at home, but it is doable. Taking just an hour or two out of your week to shop, prep, and cook can spare you from making poor last-minute food choices.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – Kick the Cardio Bunny Routine for Better Results

I had been writing a post about Fitocracy, but I’m going to put it on the backburner for now because I think addressing cardio is way more urgent (although I can’t wait to post the Fitocracy one either!).

For as long as I’ve remembered, I’ve hated cardio.  Most of the women at every gym I have ever gone to do a slow-pace workout that lasts for upwards of 20 minutes, sometimes as long as one to two hours and it is just so terribly boring to me. I’ve done the same thing before, and it’s just a long, dull struggle of “when is this going to be over!?” I’ve never understood how someone could be content just swinging their legs along the elliptical for an hour.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people who absolutely adore running a few miles, or cycling for long distances or doing other endurance sports, and that is fantastic. But I’m trying to get through to the women who think long runs and long machine workouts are the best way that cardio can burn fat, and that they’re the only way to get in better cardiovascular shape. I think a lot of women do these workouts because they’re never told otherwise. That’s why you see most women spend over half their time at the gym on a treadmill or elliptical or bicycle, with many of them reading a book or magazine, or watching TV, utterly unengaged.

So what should I be doing instead?

I’d like to introduce a novel, somewhat-new concept: high intensity interval training, or HIIT. The idea is that you do shorter bursts of intense work (say, sprints), followed by longer recovery work such as walking or resting. This can be done with sprinting/walking, bodyweight exercises/rest, most things really, as long as you’re exercising at a really intense level, followed by recovery. Then you repeat it. It typically lasts no more than 20 minutes, and I’ve seen programs as short as 4 minutes.

In my opinion, the best part of this is that it’s done for a much shorter period of time than your usual cardio workout. I’ve never seen an account of anyone going for longer than 20 minutes, mostly because you’re just working so damn hard. You no longer have to set aside an hour to get your cardio in, hell you can get your cardio done in under 10 minutes.

There have been tons of studies done on HIIT vs. long, slow-pace cardio – fat loss between the two, cardiovascular improvements, etc. I’m going to pull a lot of my stats from a bodybuilding.com article on HIIT found here,which quotes a number of these studies. One of the most mind-blowing ones reported that:

females following a 20-minute HIIT program, consisting of 8-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of rest, lost six times more body fat than the group who followed a 40-minute cardio program performed at a constant intensity of 60 percent of their maximum heart rate.

I’d like to let that sink it. By spending half the amount of time working out, women were able to lose six times as much fat as the women doing steady-pace cardio. I haven’t found the exact percentages lost, but even if the women doing the 40 minute sessions only lost 1% of body fat on average, the other group would have lost 6%. That’s the difference between marginal fat loss (sure it happened, but you can’t tell) and noticeable fat loss.

After doing HIIT, you will burn more calories in the 24 hours following your workout than if you did steady-pace cardio – about 10% more calories. There is also less muscle loss with HIIT, and it is a much more efficient means of increasing cardiovascular fitness as well.

Okay, I’m sold. How can I start doing HIIT?

Another one of my favorite things is that there’s tons of ways to do HIIT. If you don’t have access to it, you don’t need equipment, or even proper running shoes, so there’s an option for everyone. (Although if you’re going to be running, you should definitely have good running shoes.) Here’s a list of ways to start out:

• follow the 8-week program outlined in the bodybuilding.com article . You can use an elliptical, a treadmill, stationary bike, or run outside. Their program starts with a 1:4 work-to-recovery ratio, working up to 2:1.
• do 8 seconds of sprinting followed by 12 seconds of walking or resting, and repeat for 20 minutes
• Use the Tabata method – perform bodyweight exercises such as burpees, lunges, squats, pushups, tricep dips, v-sits, etc. for 20 second intervals, followed by 10 seconds of rest. Do this for 4 minutes.
• Crossfit – it’s based on functional fitness and high intensity exercise that incorporates weightlifting, plyometrics, and gymnastics. Be sure to research a reputable Crossfit box – you want to make sure your trainers are focusing on form and not reps or time, because doing Olympic lifts and gymnastics with bad form will hurt you. It can be very expensive, but it is less focused on the work/time ratio, and can be a way to incorporate weightlifting and cardio into the same workout.

Since I started HIIT, I no longer dread cardio, which is damn huge for me. Besides cutting my cardio workouts in half and getting a better result, I feel more accomplished afterwards, similar to how I feel after a hard session of heavy weightlifting. So give it a try, and stick with it for a few months. You’ll probably find you’ll have more free time and faster results, so what’s there to lose?