Healthy Eating on a Budget

I have been slacking on posting updates about my weight loss. There is not a lot of news to report. I have been off of the Medifast program for over three weeks now. This really came down to financial considerations rather than personal choice. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently unemployed and spending at least 40 hours a week looking for a new job. When not job searching I am focused on healthy eating on a budget.

Vegetarian ChiliSo, you may be wondering what I’m doing as far as food and diet. I was determined to not fall back on a college-student type of diet consisting of ramen noodles, cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While on my Medifast journey, I have learned too much about nutrition to start eating that kind of food again. Instead, I have been eating lots of salads, vegetarian chili and Gardenburgers (minus the bun). I haven’t really been keeping track of how many calories I’m consuming, I’m just trying to keep the food as healthy as possible and eating around 5 mini-meals per day. I try to buy as few processed foods as possible and have completely cut out sodas and coffee.

I have definitely succumbed to junk food and beer more often than I did when I was 100% on plan. This is mainly because I have been invited to dinner fairly often by friends who know about my precarious financial situation. When my friends are feeding me, I pretty much eat what they are serving. When you are really broke and depending on the kindness of strangers, the best thing you can do is provide some great conversation. Be entertaining, and you will get invited back again and again.

If you’re broke or just trying to reduce your food budget, I can’t recommend vegetarian chili highly enough. I get the ingredients for this every Sunday (tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn and other experimental vegetables) and cook it up in a huge pot that night. I usually spend about $15 on ingredients and it lasts me almost all week. I’ve got it to a point where I can easily get 15-20 meals. Mid-week, I usually add some chopped up Gardenburgers or some lean ground turkey and that helps it go even further. I think I prefer the purely vegetarian version, but the mid-week addition of meat does help the chili go further. (Here’s a good vegetarian chili recipe that I used as a starting point.) I’ve also been eating a lot of Quinoa with steamed broccoli. Delicious. Healthy eating on a budget really is possible if you put enough thought and planning into it.

My weight has remained pretty consistent. I’ve actually gained about 2 pounds. I’m currently clocking in at 212 pounds. But I think this may actually be due to muscle gain because my fatty areas seem to be getting smaller. I started a home exercise program a couple of weeks ago and have been having some great results. It’s very simple, but I’m already noticing quite a bit of muscle growth. I’ll be posting about my home fitness program soon. It’s quick, easy and doesn’t cost any money.

Even though things have been going pretty well, I’m really excited to starting Medifast back up so I can burn off the rest of this weight and get down to my goal of 190. I actually miss the Medifast foods. When I hear people complaining on Twitter about how boring and bad-tasting the foods are, I can’t help but laugh.

I would kill for a peanut butter crunch bar right now!

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