Food Tips

How do you manage eating a variety of healthy foods while eating/buying less overall?

DH and I consistently spend $600 per month on food, no matter how hard we try to budget. That is $300 in food per month that I am consuming into my body!! No wonder I can't shed these 15 pounds!! That sounds ridiculous. Yet, I like to have a variety of options in the house. But we don't want to waste any food (because food is money... and there are people who don't have food), so we are always eating more just so that we don't throw anything out.

I don't know how to change what I do or how I think about things to be able to buy, spend and eat less.

Tips?

Re: Food Tips

The only thing I've found that helps is to make a weekly menu. When I do this (about every other week, I really should do it every week), I loosely plan out lunches, but I have dinners mapped out for the week. I usually do a few complicated recipes, and a few easy recipes, and I have enough leftover for a few lunches/dinners during the week.

I would love to hear other suggestions too.

Re: Food Tips

I also agree with a weekly menu.

I try to buy alot of fruit, however some fruit can get expensive. I only buy grapes when they are on sale. I usually buy bananas because they are cheap. I buy green or red peppers instead of orange or yellow.

I buy my meat in bulk @ BJs- I feel like that saves me money.

Also, I use the Stop and Shop scan it- they always give me coupons for chobani so its cheaper.

Re: Food Tips

I have a spreadsheet taped to the front of my fridge that has lists of foods based on things I need to be concerned with:

Lutein-rich foods (for eyes - there is hereditary eye disease in my family)
High protein
High iron
Foods that help the absorption of iron
Foods that prevent the absorption of iron

We shop at Whole Foods and have a lot of prepared fresh food options. Each week we change it up so we don't get bored.

I don't remove any one group out of my diet completely so every day I can eat carbs, cheese, etc. but just not in excess.

Salads are a great way to put a bunch of things together and not break the bank. My current salad:

Baby spinach base
Kale
Grape Tomatoes
Garlic croutons
Basil flavored goat cheese
Tuna fish
Light italian dressing

Sometimes I throw in cranberries, nuts, slivers of romano cheese, chicken, hard boiled egg, etc. I know salads are kind of blah but when you put a bunch of stuff in it, it makes it more interesting.