Healthy Eating On A Budget!!

     Ready for some helpful tips on how you can eat like a rockstar without hemorrhaging money like one trying to support a bad drug habit?  I promise its possible, all you need is a budget and a plan!  Try these tips out and you may surprise yourself, its easier than you might think.

1. Grocery Lists: meet your new best friend. I know it can be so tempting when you walk into the store and there are some fun new snacks or fresh backed cookies. Although these fun new items sound healthy, they can ring up your shopping bill. So, make a list and if you have budged for a fun healthy treat then choose one (but plan and put it on your list in advance).  Winging it won't cut it. 

2. Buy Whole Foods: Unprocessed foods are cheaper and more nutritious than processed foods. They also give you total control over the ingredients. Avoid anything that comes from a box 90% of the time. 

• Proteins: Ground beef, frozen chicken breast, tuna cans, calves’ liver, cottage cheese, plain yogurt, eggs, milk, whey, … 
• Carbs: Pasta, rice, oats, potatoes, beans, apples, bananas, raisins, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, … 
• Fats: Olive oil, fish oil, flax seeds, real butter, mixed nuts, … 

3. Proteins = happy budget balancers:  Foods such as eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese and chicken are going to be your more budget friendly AND healthy proteins. Buy the Cheap Proteins. You need 1g protein per pound of body-weight per day to build and maintain muscle. Eating whole protein with each meal also helps fat loss as protein has a higher thermic effect than other foods.

4. Choose your fruits and veggies that are in season. If they are not, go with the frozen ones. I love buying frozen fruit!!

5. Buy Generic Food. And store brands. Raw foods like rice, pasta, eggs, milk, cottage cheese, frozen fruits/veggies, … taste like brand name foods once you get used to them. But they’ll save you money on packaging & advertising.

6. Avoid buying those little extras while you're out and about. You know the ones i am talking about!! That scone or “whole grain” looking muffin you are tempted to buy while you are at Starbucks getting your coffee. All these miscellaneous items add up!

7. Pack your snacks and meals! This will almost always be much cheaper and healthier. You wont be tempted and you will save $$$ in the long run.

8. Buy in Bulk. Especially when you have promos running. Foods like pasta, rice and oats are easy to stockpile. If they’re on sale, buy as much as you can afford & store to last you until the next sale.  There's also nothing wrong with buying that family sized package of chicken breasts regardless of if they expire two days or two weeks from when you buy them either.  (Check out my entry about portioning and meal prep for more into those as well.)

9. Get The Customer Card. Many grocery stores hold sales for customer card holders only. Some cards save AND give you money, like gift certificates once you’ve spent a fixed amount. Signing up takes 5 mins and is free.

10. Grow Your Own Food. Cheaper than frozen, tastes better and you control what you put on them to keep bugs off. Plant your own trees that grow berries, walnuts & apples. Buy chickens for free eggs & meat. More ideas: 

• Square-Foot Gardening. Build a raised bed and divide it into sections of 1 square foot. Check Mel Bartholomew’s site & book for how to’s. 
• Container Gardening. Grow vegetables in containers on your balcony or doorstep. Check this & this guides. 
• Rent Garden Plots. If you don’t have a yard, some cities rent garden plots. Just google rent garden plots in your state/province

Emotional vs. Physical Hunger

Do you know the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger?  It's ok if you dont, i didn't either before I started looking deeper into it.  I had a basic understanding, based on my own assumptions but i definitely clarified things upon researching better.  Emotional hunger can be powerful. As a result, it’s easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for that can help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart.

• Emotional hunger comes on suddenly. It hits you in an instant and feels overwhelming and urgent. Physical hunger, on the other hand, comes on more gradually. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t eaten for a very long time).

• Emotional hunger craves specific comfort foods. When you’re physically hungry, almost anything sounds good—including healthy stuff like vegetables. But emotional hunger craves fatty foods or sugary snacks that provide an instant rush. You feel like you need cheesecake or pizza, and nothing else will do.

• Emotional hunger often leads to mindless eating. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole bag of chips or an entire pint of ice cream without really paying attention or fully enjoying it. When you’re eating in response to physical hunger, you’re typically more aware of what you’re doing.

• Emotional hunger isn’t satisfied once you’re full. You keep wanting more and more, often eating until you’re uncomfortably stuffed. Physical hunger, on the other hand, doesn't need to be stuffed. You feel satisfied when your stomach is full.

• Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach. Rather than a growling belly or a pang in your stomach, you feel your hunger as a craving you can’t get out of your head. You’re focused on specific textures, tastes, and smells.

• Emotional hunger often leads to regret, guilt, or shame. When you eat to satisfy physical hunger, you’re unlikely to feel guilty or ashamed because you’re simply giving your body what it needs. If you feel guilty after you eat, it's likely because you know deep down that you’re not eating for nutritional reasons.

     Simply put, Emotional hunger leads to alot of typically bad food decisions and can typically give itself away if you know that what you suddenly crave is in no way nutritious or will probably make you slightly hate yourself half an hour later.  Physical Hunger makes the stuff my girls usually make funny faces at look just as appealing as chocolate coated cavity givers.  Mind you with physical hunger everything looks good so you can still make bad decisions, its just alot simpler to make good ones.

Need tips on how to stop emotional eating? Keep following my blog, tips coming soon!!

Can You Recognize If You Are Emotionally Eating??

    Emotional Eating, do you think its only for overweight people? I promise its not.  Emotional eating is so much more.  Its turning to food for comfort, stress relief, or even as a reward rather than to satisfy true hunger. 

    Most emotional eaters feel powerless over their food cravings. When the urge to eat hits, it’s all you can think about.

Mindful eating is a practice that develops your awareness of eating habits and allows you to pause between your triggers and your actions. You can then change the emotional habits that have sabotaged your diet up until now.

   Ever made room for dessert even though you’re already full or dove into a pint of ice cream when you’re feeling down? Congratulations you’ve experienced emotional eating. Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better—eating to fill emotional needs, rather than to fill your stomach. 

   Using food every once in a while as a pick me up, a reward, or to celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But when eating is your primary emotional coping mechanism—when your first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever you’re upset, angry, lonely, stressed, exhausted, or bored—you get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.

     Emotional hunger can’t be filled with food. Eating may feel good while its happening, but the feelings that caused the eating are still there, plus you usually feel worse than you did before because of the unnecessary calories you consumed. Than, you feel guilty for messing up and not having more willpower. Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a harder and harder time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.

Are you an emotional eater?

• Do you eat more when you’re stressed?
• Do you eat when you’re not hungry or after you already feel full?
• Do you eat to feel better (to calm and soothe yourself when you’re sad, mad, bored, anxious, etc.)?
• Do you reward yourself with food?
• Do you regularly eat until you’ve stuffed yourself?
• Does food make you feel safer? 
• Do you feel like food is a friend?
• Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?
  
  
      So now that you can recognize if you are emotionally eating, do you think its so simple as to just stop?  Sadly not the case.  Don't worry, keep following my blog, I still need to go over the differences between emotional and physical hunger, as well as tips to stop your Emotional eating and switch over to Mindful eating instead!