I often hear that it isn’t possible to eat a healthy diet because it is simply too expensive. Thanks to government subsidies of many processed foods, eating healthy on a budget can certainly seem impossible when organic and natural foods can be more expensive.
This doesn’t mean that they have to break the bank though … and you can eat healthy real food on a budget!
We’ve been eating a real food diet for years, and many of those years we were on a tight budget. Along the way, I’ve discovered a few resources and money-saving tricks for stretching a budget while eating healthy foods, so I’ve compiled them in hopes that they can help you too!
Eating Healthy on a Budget: Tips and Tricks
My encouragement to you would be this …
Make real food a priority as a line item in the budget and do the best you can. But don’t stress if everything isn’t perfect all the time. Get enough sleep, sunshine, and exercise (all free) and support your body nutritionally the best that you can.
Tip #1: Embrace Simple Real Food Meals
Convenience foods are almost always the priciest items to buy, and the best way to cut costs while eating real food is to give up convenience foods and learn to enjoy really simple, real food meals. If you haven’t always eaten the healthiest food (I certainly didn’t once upon a time), you may need to redefine how you think about meals.
Oven-roasted chicken, baked sweet potatoes, and a field greens salad piled high with colorful veggies and doused in a delicious homemade dressing? Yes please!
Baked spaghetti squash boats with pastured sausage, sauteed onions, and peppers? Done!
I found that once I made the switch to this type of cooking, I enjoyed not only how I felt but the ease of preparation (30 minute meals in 1 pan anyone?), fewer dishes, and most of all, the quality of the ingredients.
Tip #2: Always Meal Plan!
This alone has made the biggest difference in reducing our food budget and staying on track eating healthy foods. Meal planning allows me to make some foods ahead and have them available for lunches or to repurpose for dinners.
This tip saves not only money, but time. With meal planning, I am able to only go to the store once a week or less and can often prepare most of the food for the week in one day, which cuts down my overall food prep time. I’ve estimated that it saves me over 3 hours a week!
Use a meal-planning app:
These days, I use Real Plans for all of our meal planning, since I can do it all on my phone. I love the ability to browse new recipes, save my own, and create a shopping list at the touch of a button.
Not into meal planning on the computer or phone? For years, I planned meals by hand using a recipe card system and it worked really well too.
To make your own (non-digital) healthy meal plan system: