Losing weight and staying healthy are the hardest challenges many of us will ever face. Yet by making small changes in our eating habits, not only can we shed the excess pounds but we can also save money in the process.
Here are some of the the small ways that we can slim our waists while fattening our wallets.
Watch Out For Those Liquid Calories
Liquid nutrition in the form of shakes, smoothies, slurpies, and energy drinks presents a clear and present danger to our waist lines. It takes time for your stomach to tell our brains that we’ve consumed enough food. Typically about ten minutes.
Drinking our nutrition causes us to take in calories very quickly. In the process our stomachs don’t have enough time to inform our brains when we’ve had enough. The result – we take in too many calories before we realize that we’re full.
Instead of drinking your calories, try water instead. EAT your calories. This gives the body time to tell you when we’ve had enough.
Chew Your Food
Based on the same principle as above, the faster we eat, the less time we provide our stomach to tell our brain we’ve had enough. This again causes us to eat more than we need to.
Taking your time to completely chew and enjoy your food solves the problem. This may mean of course that you’ll have to stop eating on the run, in the car, or quickly between business meetings. Ironically, by relaxing and enjoying your food instead of gulping it down, you’ll eat less, save more money and keep the weight off.
Switch to Smaller Plates
According to behavioral scientist and author of Mindless Eating, Dr. Brian Wansink, some of the cues that tell us when to stop eating are visual.
Take a typical plate of food. As Americans we use the plate as a visual cue. When we finish eating everything on the plate we tend to stop eating. Make the plate larger and we’ll tend to eat more. Make the plate smaller, we’ll tend to eat less.
The problem is that over the last decade our plate sizes have grown rapidly. 10 inch diameter dinner plates were the norm, but now 12 inch plates are becoming increasingly common.
According to Wansink, by moving from a 12 inch plate to 10 inch plate you serve yourself 20-22% less food and still feel full when done!
Don’t have smaller plates – save the tray from a frozen dinner and use it to measure out the right amount of food that should be served on your dinner plates. Eating out – try ordering and eating from the kids menu instead of from the adult menu.
Green Your Snacks
Snacking is a common but often overlooked source of waist busting calories. Yet we fall for the myth that eating healthy snacks is more expensive than eating chips, cookies, or candy.
This simply is not the case.
Lets take the price of a typical candy bar. In most stores a Hershey’s candy bar can be purchased for 69 cents. Yet for the same price you can purchase much healthier alternatives for snacking.
Now let’s take one of my favorite money saving stores, Aldi Supermarkets. Here you can purchase a bag of baby carrots for 99 cents. The cost per serving of baby carrots, a mere 33 cents! Much less than the 69 cents for the candy bar.
A dozen eggs at Aldi’s costs 99 cents. Boiled eggs make a great snack. In this case two boiled eggs would set you back a measly 17 cents, nearly 52 cents less than the candy bar.
Air popped popcorn is a great crunchy snack without all of the butter, salt, and artificial ingredients of microwave popcorn. One serving will set you back a mere 8 cents, nearly 61 cents less than the price of the candy bar. Make your popcorn ahead of time (it only takes a few minutes) and portion it into several sandwich bags for later snacking.
As you can see, eating healthy snacks can save you money.
Savour Your First Few Bites
Researchers claim that the first few bites of any food are the most enjoyable. Your taste buds quickly dull to new edible sensations and each bite after the first doesn’t provide the same delectable taste experience.
Don’t deny your urge for that chocolate cake. It may lead to rebound binging later on. Instead, take a very small piece of your favorite cake and fully enjoy the first few bites. Your craving will be fulfilled without the seriously packing on the calories.
Don’t Eat Straight From the Bag
Eat chips straight out of the bag or ice cream straight from the tub and you’re likely to eat much more. Save money and help shed the pounds by taking a portion of chips and placing them in small bowl or sandwich bag.
Do the same for ice cream and other snacks. Take a small amount from the carton and put the rest back in the freezer. Your waistline and wallet will thank you for it.
Cut Out the Soda and Fruit Drinks
Cut down on your soda and fruit drinks and watch the pounds melt away. Drinking water instead of a soda just once a day will cut out 240 calories from your diet – nearly 7,200 calories a month. Enough to shed more than two pounds a month!
Save money at the same time by drinking chilled filtered water from the tap. Brita water filters are my favorite. Substituting a soda for water just once a day could easily save you $30 a month or nearly $360 a year.
Eat a Classic for Breakfast
Surprisingly rushing way from the house without breakfast can lead to weight gain. Researchers believe skipping breakfast leads to the craving for high calorie foods later in the day.
For an inexpensive AND healthy breakfast try an old time favorite like oatmeal. At 11.6 cents per serving oatmeal is one of the cheapest breakfast foods around.
Add some fruit or nuts and you have a delicious treat. But better yet, oatmeal is high in fiber and helps lower bad “LDL” cholesterol. In fact, its one of the first foods that doctors encourage for people with elevated cholesterol levels.
Simple, small changes in our eating habits can lead to a slimmer figure as well as more money in our pockets. What are some of the ways you eat healthy while saving money at the same time?
We’d like to know. Share your experiences below.
Update: We’d like to thank Momma’s Blog for including this article in the recent edition of the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights.
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This is a really informative post of yours. I think a lot of people could relate to this and would find this very useful.
Also what I’ve read is that often times people mistake thirst for hunger. If you think you’re hungry try a glass of water. This will often solve the problem and help you from over eating.