Eating Healthy on a Budget Costs Time Instead of Money

Eating healthy is almost as daunting as it is expensive.

Walk into any Whole Foods and cruise the aisles for a few minutes.  It won’t be long until you fully appreciate the wry humor of their second name, ‘Whole Paycheck Foods’.

Yet fear not, my intrepid friends, for my wife and I have forged a path through the suburban jungle, and I’m more than happy to share the fruits and vegetables of our labor with you.

First and foremost, I must share the catch.  Really, it is THE catch, one shared by all budget-oriented blog posts.  It goes like this: Any time you are attempting to do something on a budget, the substitution you have to make for money is time.

There’s no getting around it, and for that I am sorry.  I know exactly how hard it is to eat healthy when life is going a million miles an hour.  When my son was first born, I was still going to college, and my wife was recovering from labor.  It was a trial just to eat or sleep at all, let alone spending the time I didn’t have preparing meals that were healthy instead of horking down high-octane garbage whenever I stood at a the fridge for a ‘meal’.

Yet there is an upside to the time you invest in your healthy eating habits.  It’s easy(er) to set aside something you’ve spent money on and go straight for the comfort foods when times get tough.  Forcing yourself to spend a far more valuable coin curating what you eat makes you far less likely to consume the sugary nonsense which has brought about your dietary necessity in the first place.

Think about it, when was the last time you were willing to jeopardize something you’ve invested a significant chunk of your time into?

It’s time to make the sunk cost fallacy work in your favor for a change.

So, despite the fact that I’d rather be doing anything else, I spend the requisite time in the kitchen cutting up fruits and vegetables and washing the bottomless sink full of dishes.  I’ve successfully tricked myself into believing that it is far more costly to abandon good habits than to do menial and time consuming chores in the name of food prep.

As far as what fruits and vegetables you choose to imbibe, or which ones you choose to eschew, that isn’t the point of this article or any other article I ever write.

Dieting is an extremely difficult and above all dangerous thing to attempt.  Rapid weight loss can be just as dangerous as rapid weight gain.  Plus, most fad diets are so focused on what you eat that you never learn how to eat correctly, which is why most weight loss on such programs are ephemeral at best.

Your diet is something you and your doctor need to find out together if you want your weight loss to stick.

I’m just here to let you in on all the tips and tricks which make buying the food your doctor recommends possible if you live on less-than-stellar income.  I’m married to a stone-cold badass of a wife, we both work well above average jobs, and I still fall into this category.

I believe I am not alone in wanting cheap, healthy num-nums.

To obtain all the fruits, vegetables, and the attendant healthy substitutes for every-day meals you’ll need to spend time shopping around.  Figuratively, literally, and most-especially digitally.  You must become familiar with all the ins and outs of your area and each potential source of healthy food.  Do you have co-op shops, farmers markets, or locally sourced grocery stores?  Do you have an area where such individuals gather, either weekly or monthly, to sell their wares?  Or, are you in an area where such options are restrictive and you have to rely upon chain stores for your needs?

Regardless, your mission is to find out.

It has been our experience that most bargains are to be found at the smaller mom-and-pop shops which populate farmers markets or small-retail centers.  While big-box stores can occasionally dig deeper into their margins for sales, the smaller stores will often match or exceed those offers.

My wife often dictates the meal plans by what is on sale where.  She crafts labyrinthian grocery lists, hitting each stores deepest sales for each specific good, factoring in travel times when considering what is or isn’t a good deal.

The price you must pay for such savings is the time you spend shopping.  My wife, bless her everything, spends upwards of four to five hours shopping with our tiny human every two weeks on Saturday mornings.  She battles traffic, crowds, and a four year old to make sure we have everything we need to make the meals for the week.

At the Rivermarket (a unique Kansas City feature) she hits multiple establishments, bringing up competitor pricing and haggling with the various grocers while tiny human cranks up the charm.

I understand that not everyone is comfortable with the extra lengths that eating healthy on a budget requires.  Clipping coupons, scoping online advertisements, and catching sales just to get the right foods in your pantry is a burdensome activity at the best of times.  To those used to the razor’s edge between success and failure it can feel impossible.

It’s not impossible though, because I am the proof.

I am nothing special, but this year alone I have turned my diet completely on its head while losing fifty pounds.

I’ve also done everything this year under some of the most intense financial pressure of my entire adult life.

Believe me, giving up comfort foods has been a daily struggle.  Spending the time I don’t have on the things I don’t want to do all in the name of some nebulous goal that might not show results for months or years is awful.

You’ve no idea how much I want to take a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs and upend it over my face just to shower myself with deliciousness.  The desire gnaws at me.

You know what used to gnaw at me though?  Waking up each morning aching in various spots for various reasons which seem as amorphous as they are endless.  Finding myself making excuses for not going anywhere or doing anything.  Feeling every minute of every day the suffocating weight of my failures, PLURAL, with keeping my body in order.

I cannot describe the shame and self-loathing I felt as I pushed more and more garbage into my face in some Quixotic quest to fill the hole in my heart through my stomach.

I can’t tell you your weight loss journey will be easy.  I won’t promise that you’ll come to enjoy the time you spend in the kitchen and the store and in front of a  monitor preparing, and preparing, and preparing.

I can promise you this though: if you’re willing to put in the work, if you’re willing to make the effort, you will find success.

If I can find my way through to good health, you can too.

All it’s gonna cost is time.

Vegfully,

The Unsheathed Quill