Being healthy is one of the most important ways in which we can look after ourselves and our loved ones. It involves exercising regularly, being careful how we treat our bodies, and eating a proper, well-balanced diet every day. Of course, there will be times to enjoy a treat—a special occasion or just because you can—but as long as this is a rarity, and most of the time you are eating carefully, you should be able to stay fit and healthy for much longer.
Yet, this can be more of a problem when you have a limited budget. When you start grocery shopping you might spot that the healthier items, the ones that are fresher, for example, will be more expensive than those that have more chemicals and preservatives in them. This latter type of food isn’t good for you, but because it’s cheap it can be ideal for a small budget.
Is it possible to eat healthily on a budget? The answer is yes; here are some ideas on how.
Plan Ahead
No matter what you do in life or what your career happens to be, there will be some months that are tighter than others when it comes to your budget. Celebrations such as Christmas or a birthday can take a big chunk out of your monthly funds, and some months you might have less work or less overtime than others, which can have an impact on your food choices. However, it doesn’t need to be this way if you plan ahead.
Planning ahead so you know when you are going to have less money and when you are going to have more is crucial if you want to eat healthily. In the months when you have a little more money, you can purchase additional items to freeze at home. Or you could buy more and bulk cook and then freeze that. Alternatively, in your better months you could buy yourself Target coupons to keep for those months when you will have less money. That way, you can still buy fresh, healthy food without having to spend additional cash.
Shop After Eating
It may sound strange, but the time of the day or the week when you choose to shop can have an impact on how healthily you eat for the rest of the week. If you head to the store after you have eaten, you will be less hungry and therefore less likely to be craving all the food that is bad for you. If you are able to focus on the shopping you are doing and not get distracted by quick, unhealthy snacks, you will come away with a much healthier basket of food.
If you go to the store when you are hungry, it’s easy for much more unhealthy foods to catch your eye, even if they’re not on your list, and you are more likely to buy them and eat unhealthily at home. This is bad for both your health and your budget.
Don’t Buy Brand Names
Advertisements are everywhere, and no matter where we go or what we do, we are going to be affected by them in some way. This is definitely true when it comes to brand names. The name itself makes up most of the cost, but we often don’t realize that because the names are so familiar and we trust them; either because we’ve always used them or because the advertisements have worked as they were meant to. It’s easy to believe that brand names are better quality than more generic ones, so we pay the price.
The truth is, a lot of the time the product’s quality is no different whether you buy a well-known name or not. If you want to spend less, try buying more generic foodstuffs. You will be able to buy more if you cut out the brand names because your budget will stretch, and this makes eating more healthily much easier, as well as cheaper.
