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Money

The Co$t of the Slow Carb Diet

By Jessica

This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Many times healthy diets can be pretty costly, and I’m always looking to save as much as possible while not compromising my diet. I was pleasantly surprised after adding up the totals for January and realizing just how much money we saved while we were doing the Geek to Freak Challenge.

The Cost of the Slow Carb Diet

We spent a total of $198.04 for the entire month of January on groceries. That is the least we have spent on groceries since summer. I also want to point out that we ate out at least once on our cheat days, and I fed a multitude of guests throughout the month. I like to entertain, but I don’t separate the cost of those meals from our regular grocery budget. I also don’t use coupons (don’t hate).

The most obvious money savings came from drinks. I typically only drink water, tea and wine, with an occasional glass of juice or milk, but those are very rare for me. Chuck on the other hand goes through a gallon of both milk and juice weekly. Since we can’t have fruit or dairy on this diet we abstained from buying those items, along with yogurt, and cheese. In total these items added somewhere around $15 to our weekly grocery bill which computes to $60 a month. Since my friends and family know I love wine and tea it is often gifted to me, so I haven’t had to buy tea in over a year, similarly for wine I was able to drink mostly the wine that was gifted to me for Christmas. It pays have simple pleasures people!

Breakfast

Bread items were hands down the second largest savings area.  A loaf of sourdough for my favorite stuffing, cheese garlic bread on Friday nights, and pasta all add up and cost more per pound than dried beans and lentils, which have some cost savings all their own.

Switching to dried beans was another great place for savings. Since we were eating so many more beans I thought it would be worth it to try to cook my own from dry stock, and let me tell you, it totally was. A single 1 lb bag of beans costs about $1.39 near me, while a can costs $0.79. Each bag contains 4 to 5 cans, meaning that $1.77 to $2.56 is saved by cooking with dried beans. Once cooked the beans can be used throughout the week, canned, or frozen. If you aren’t eating beans or lentils daily this might not be worth it for you, but this is one place of savings that Chuck and I are going to continue going forward. I estimate that over the course of the month we saved over $6 on black beans alone so in a year that will look like almost $75 on just black beans.

One place that might be difficult for some to save money is on vegetables. This diet is vegetable heavy, and lucky for us we already eat a lot of vegetables, so the only thing that was really added was an extra bag of spinach a week. If you don’t eat that many vegetables before making the switch to this type of diet then this would probably increase your budget quite a bit.

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I think it’s also pretty important to point out that we ate most of our meat from the freezer, which is something that happens pretty much all year round. Considering all of Chuck’s hunting permits/licenses, ammo etc. we figured the venison provided costs about $3.33 per lb. Once this cost is added in our total grocery budget comes to something like $230 which is more comparable to the average family of 2. While I think it’s important to be transparent about this stuff I’m apprehensive to add in the cost of the venison for my own records because while it does provide us with a lot of high quality food pretty inexpensively, hunting is Chuck’s hobby, prepping and preparing the catch is one our favorite things to do together. I don’t like to consider the cost of a hobby in our food cost, because if we didn’t hunt that same money would be spent on another hobby (skiing for example costs 3x what hunting cost’s us) since we are not sedentary people.

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I also think it’s important to point out that this is January in the Northeast, so my gardens are not producing right now (I didn’t get myself together enough to have a winter garden this year), otherwise we would get a lot more produce for a fraction of the cost of the stuff we buy in the grocery store.

I’m guessing in the summer we could maintain this diet for something like $100 a month, and that’s with fresh, locally grown food. My guess is that my monthly average year round will be something like $200 dollars a month for food. I’m going to do my best to keep track of it and let you guys know how the math works out at the end of the year. To keep me accountable I will put the monthly totals in each months recently posts. January’s post has already been updated.

 

Related:

20 Awesome Slow Carb Recipes

20 Awesome Slow Carb Recipes

How We Meal Plan

How We Meal Plan

How to Reduce the Temptation of Take Out

How to Reduce the Temptation of Take Out

 

 

February 8, 2016 February 10, 2016 Filed Under: Meal Plan Tagged With: Money

How We Meal Plan

By Jessica

This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

How We Meal Plan
I have been planning meals for as long as I have even kind of lived on my own. I hate not knowing what to cook when I get home from work; especially this time of year when it’s cold and dark, and incredibly hard to stay motivated to eat healthy. It also helps us save money and since we are officially on the house hunt that is a big deal.

There are a few basic steps to how I meal plan:

  • Check the fridge, freezer and pantry – what do we already have in the house?What needs to be eaten right away? etc.
  • Check the sales – I keep track of the basic prices of things like meat, produce and bread. If there is nothing good I might try to use up our freezer & pantry stock. I make a habit of buying things when they are “super-sale” and storing them for times when there are no sales or I have a special craving. Those items are typically whole chickens, turkey, and lamb. We haven’t been buying beef lately because we have a large back stock of venison.
  • Plan the meals – what do we want to eat (based on 1 & 2) for breakfast lunch and dinner this week?
  • Check the recipes – I need to know all of the ingredients necessary to make each meal. It also helps to know how in depth the recipe is. If there is  a lot involved I know not to plan it on a day that’s going to be tough at work. Being kind to yourself is incredibly important.
  • Compile the ingredient list – I usually skip this step now, but if you are new to meal planning write down every single item with the quantity of what you need for all of your meals.
  • Compile the Grocery List – Now I compare the ingredients that are on the ingredient list to what we have on hand. I cross those off and am left with just the groceries that we need for that week.
Here is a sample meal plan from last week:
Breakfasts
Egg Sandwiches & Fruit smoothies
Lunches
Leftovers, yogurt, cheese sticks, hummus & carrots, hummus sandwiches,
tuna
Snacks
veggie chips, toasted chickpeas, cheese sticks, hummus &
carrots, Banana Muffins, mixed nuts
Dinners
M – Lamb & Leek Sheppard’s Pie
T – 20 Minute Chicken Noodle Soup
W – Maple Salmon with Butternut & Spinach Risotto
TH – Crock Pot Chicken Taco Soup
F – Homemade Pizza
Sat – Fridge Clean out (Finish all leftovers)
Sun – Roast Chicken

 

February 6, 2015 March 29, 2018 Filed Under: Meal Plan Tagged With: Finance, Menues, Money, Weeknight Meals

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Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm an engineer living in the great northeast with my husband Chuck, our two little boys, our dog Brody and a flock of chickens. I'm all about real, good food and good times with awesome people. I spend a lot of time outside, in my garden, and concocting potions with my essential oils. I also like tea, reading, and about a million other hobbies. I'm so happy your here on this adventure with me.

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