{8.4} Eating Well on a Budget: 6 Steps to Feed your Family without Breaking the Bank
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Until a few weeks ago I was a meal plan dodger all of my adult life. Despite it being my no. 1 piece of advice for clients to (a) stick to their goals (b) save money and (c) avoid having to use willpower to stop eating junk. While it's true that meal planning can do all of those things, I'm also a very creative cook, and it's genuinely one of my most favourite things to do. Plus meal plannings felt boring, limiting and time consuming.
But I knew I was spending way more on food than I should, I was spending way too much time cooking and I was starting to lose motivation for coming up with interesting meals on the fly every day. And I was definitely snacking on the sweet stuff more than I care to admit.
So two weeks ago I decided it was finally time to take my own advice. And the difference it's made to my headspace and our budget has been transformational - not to mention how much less often I've reached for sugar in between meals.
In this episode, I'm diving deeper into the 6 steps you can take to save money on your weekly food shop. I'll cover:
Setting your initial budget and what to take into account
The pros and cons of online food shopping
How to prioritise what you spend on your food based on your values and what's important to you
Shopping in season and what to look out for
Switching to cheaper plant-based protein without compromising on nutrition
Why ignoring the hype around nutrition claims to save you money
“How much you decide to spend on food for your family is quite personal.”
I recognise the privilege I have on the choices I make when it comes to health and food shopping, but I also believe that most of us make a choice of some sort based on our values when it comes to the price we pay for food and so I hope this episode can give you some guidance on how to focus those choices to avoid over-spending unnecessarily.
And if you'd like to learn more about the benefits of meal planning, have a listen to my interview a couple of weeks ago with Claire Gillies of Delicious and Real. She has also generously offered a 10% discount on signups to her meal plan service using the code HealthyMothers10 when you sign up here: https://deliciousandreal.com/membership-levels. (This is an affiliate code!)
Other episodes you'll enjoy:
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