Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Eat Less Food

"Eat less food?? But I love food!" This was my reaction about two years ago when I was looking at eating healthier, not looking at saving money. I read in a few different places about how Americans eat more than recommended portion sizes but don't realize it because no one actually knows what a portion size is. So I was seeing that a good place to start when you want to eat better, is to actually just eat less food. So for Christmas or my birthday that year (they're both in December so it's hard to keep gifts straight), I asked for a kitchen scale. My wonderful husband got one for me and I started measuring out portion sizes. Ok, you guys, I really had no idea what portion sizes were! I measured out pasta and realized we'd been eating like a double portion size, probably 4 ounces per person instead of 2. Oh and one whole chicken breast is actually supposed to be two servings of chicken?

So we were feeling pretty good health wise having cut our huge servings down. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this would help us out financially too. When you eat 4 ounces of chicken as one serving instead of 8, you're cutting the cost of your chicken in half. Basically it's 50 cents per serving instead of $1 per serving. When we first started doing this we were eating chicken breasts about twice a week, so cutting our portion sizes down took us from about $400 a year ($2 per pound at eating 4 pounds per week), to about $200 a year ($2 per pound at eating 2 pounds per week) on chicken. It doesn't seem like much over the course of a year, but it's still a difference of about $16 per month, just by eating an actual portion size, not gorging ourselves at every meal. Of course, that $16/month was just the difference in chicken. When you factor in that we ate pork chops a couple of times a month and saw a drop in price there as well, a small change due to cut backs on pasta servings, it all starts to add up.

 Another cut back we made as part of our trying to eat healthier, was on snacks. I am all about the salty snacks, no amount of fruits or veggies can be as satisfying to me as crackers, tortilla chips or pretzels. But we were dedicated to our New Year's resolutions and so we cut the snacky snacks and subbed in carrots, apples, string cheese, etc. Funny thing was I actually just stopped snacking because I don't ever crave carrots or apples and since we didn't have anything else, I just went without. So yay! for my waistline but again, another surprise benefit was to our wallet. It never feels like crackers and the like are very expensive, but it always adds up.

Each week you buy a box of crackers at $2.50 a box and a bag of pretzels for $1. $3.50 a week, that's nothing!  But over the course of the month that's $14ish, and over the course of a year, it's $182! If you still need snacks, some of those savings will be cut down because you'll be buying other things. But, a bag of carrots at $1 for two pounds (if you peel and cut them yourselves) could easily be snacked on by two people for a week. That still saves you $2.50 a week.

It's crazy how much Americans eat without even realizing it. When you first start cutting back on food, you won't be used to it and might feel hungry still, but your body will adjust and you'll feel better! We felt much healthier anyway. And just by eating less, you could save hundreds of dollars a year.