This may sound tedious, but I've been planning my meals a week in advance and making a list and only buying what's on the list. The only exception is in the health section - which is "conveniently" located in between the ice cream and the booze. Aside from a couple of Healthy Choice "All Natural" meals I haven't bought anything that comes in a box. I've been making my own everything...which again can be tedious, especially when I'm not used to cooking.

It can be tough when you are on a budget too. I feel it's a little messed up that in this land of plenty called America it is so much cheaper to buy food that is bad for you than it is to eat healthy. The stuff for Hamburger Helper is what...$5.00, while the ingredients to for me to make homemade spaghetti sauce with spaghetti squash came to almost $20.00. I've been trying to make things that will stretch for several days which offsets the more expensive ingredients.

There is nothing wrong with having a little junk food here and there as long as you are in a place where you think you can control how much you are eating. I was at the store last week and I almost picked up these WW carrot cakes. I picked up the box, discovered it weighed less than a pound and figured I would probably eat the entire box in less than a day - so I put it back. I am not in a place yet where I can casually eat junk food.

thanks guys

i'm not trying to make excuses, and to me they are reasons, not excuses.

but i think i need pro help now
i like to talk to people about my issues, but i can't seem to find anyone who can relate =/

I don't really advocate restricting food, I'm just laying out what works for me, which does include restricting food groups and certainly cutting out super-processed "food" devoid of any nutritional benefit. I also had an eating disorder when I was younger (and lost well over 100 pounds through very, very unhealthy disordered habits) but I don't find that restricting myself to whole foods triggers me. Personally, moving on to a whole foods way of life helped me move beyond the guilt/binge/restrict cycle of disordered eating, and I strongly suspect that getting adequate nutrition for the first time in a long time did wonders for my mental state. It's worth noting that I did not lose weight on whole foods alone - I actually gained 50 pounds when I first transitioned to a vegan diet (which I no longer eat, for other reasons) - but I do think I reaped a ton of health benefits, including mental health benefits, from rewiring myself to see processed junk food as something inedible. There are many ladies here who are developing a healthy lifestyle that includes peanut butter cups and potato chips and ice cream in moderation, and I think it's wonderful if it works for them, it just doesn't work for me.

Obviously, you are the only person who can know what behaviors trigger disordered eating for you, and you shouldn't try to follow any plan that you don't feel will help you develop a healthy lifestyle.

If you feel that seeing a professional will help you (and honestly, I feel like seeing a professional is helpful to most folks! I would SO be seeing a counselor on a regular basis just to help me cope with life if I could afford it!) then certainly do the things you need to do to set that up.

I also dislike some of the censorship that happens on this site and if it were my forum I certainly wouldn't be bleeping out curse words - but as Arctic Mama brings up, this is a private website that we're allowed to use (for free!) as a courtesy. Someone else's house, someone else's rules.

I get that you don't feel like your making excuses, and that road-blocks can seem very, very daunting while we're experiencing them, but from what you've written out it sounds like you're going to need to re-work a lot of factors in your life to be successful on the road to a healthy lifestyle. If you have severe income restrictions that are unlikely to improve, then you're going to need to find ways to do things on the cheap/for free. There's a lot of ways to do that, but you're going to have to figure out what works for you and then potentially network with folks who already know how to do it - dumpster diving, container gardening, farmer's market/co-op seconds. Here is a list of Food Not Bombs groups in New Jersey - they often get all of their ingredients for free and are likely to know more about the outside-the-lines food scene in your area than I do, and you can get free healthy food at their events. If you don't have room to cook and move in your house, y'all might want to consider reducing the amount of things you own. There's also a number of websites devoted to DIY organization for small spaces that you could browse for ideas - even screwing (free!) milk crates into your walls to store folded clothes, stuff taking up counter space, etc. would potentially give you a lot more space.

Farmer's Markets in your area that accept EBT: The closest farmer's market I found to East Brunswick is Von Thuns County Farmer's Market in Monmouth Junction - Z Food Farm in Lawrenceville, West Orange Farmer's Market in West Orange, Wednesdays at Washington Park in Newark, are also in your area-ish. There's a link under the photo on this page that lists farmer's markets across the country that accept food stamps, in case anyone else is interested!

Have you looked into ED support groups/group counseling in your area? They're typically free & could help you find someone(s) who better understands what you're going through. Maybe a professional could help you find a group.

Do you have a food bank/food giveaway type place near you? The one where I live is very flexible; if you say you need food, they give you food. And the vendors from the farmers market donate their produce at the end of the day to the food giveaway place. There are also a few churches in the area that do a community garden - you volunteer a few hours a week to work in the garden and you take home a basket of veggies.

There's got to be a lot of ways to stretch your food dollar and get heaps of healthy stuff!

i found one support group so far and it's $50 a week.





i have no idea where to find a food bank within walking distance of my house,
in fact i don't know of any food banks less than 20 minutes away by car. and the one i did go to once required proof that i had no income, which, of course, i have no idea how to provide that information. there is one church by me and it has no garden, just a preschool. i try to buy only things on sale, but it's hard because i'll be looking at my 90-calorie-a-bar granola bars for $4, while the 200-plus-calorie-chocolate-chip bars are on sale for $2.50... and i tried buying some kohlrabi the other day, but even my grandma said "put it back" because they were $2.50 each and they weren't even very big. and i've mentioned earlier, the farmer market by me does not accept food stamps. luckily we constantly have tomatoes and mushrooms, but they're all mushy and half-bad, because my friend's mom keeps buying massive amounts of them on sale (we think she's starting to go a bit off, just a week ago she bought THIRTEEN packages of mushrooms and NINE of tomatoes, with about 7 tomatoes per package). she gives them all to my friend, her daughter, and she gets overwhelmed and gives them out to the neighbors because she is not physically capable of eating all of them before they go bad. i eat the ones that are okay if i have a BLT or a salad, but more than half of them are usually quite moldy. my grandmother cuts off the moldy parts and liquefies the rest and makes it into tomato sauce for pasta sauce and soups. now, i love mushrooms, but i'm actually to the point where i am SICK of them, i've been eating them so much. on spaghetti, in lasagna, topping steaks and pizza, or even just pan-fried in olive oil. so, yeah, i always have tomatoes and mushrooms, it's the raspberries and blueberries and cherries and strawberries and peaches etc etc etc that really get me. i love fruit, you're supposed to eat fruit, yet they make it so. damn. expensive. i can buy a package of chicken that will last 2 days for 2 people for the same price as one cup of raspberries, which i will eat slowly, but still eat the whole thing within the half hour. it's just not fair. and i WANT to eat organic, but that's more expensive. i accidentally bought organic milk for my bf once, and i was expecting to pay $3.50ish, and ended up paying nearly $6.

Make a list. And stick to it. I go shopping and buy what's on the list. I hate grocery shopping so the shorter the list, the better!

Even obvious things we need e.g. milk, don't get bought unless they are on the list.

You can imagine the arguments when I get home!

Alyssa...I can relate to where you are coming from to an extent. When I was in school full time and working part time and my husband was laid off we had extremely limited resources when it came to food. Even though we were well below the poverty line for close to year I didn't qualify for food stamps because I was a full-time college student and I didn't work enough hours to qualify - which seemed silly because if I was able to work more hours I wouldn't need the food stamps. And that's part of the reason I gained so much weight. I formed some really unhealthy eating habits because of the financial stress I was under and my inability to buy good food. It can be very frustrating trying to stretch $200 over the course of a month.

If food banks and farmers markets are out, have you thought of maybe starting your own garden in your back yard if that's an option. I live in a townhouse in a very urban city where a garden isn't really an option, but my parents have one and they love it. They grow tomatoes, beans, strawberries, potatoes, and my Mom wants to plant an apple tree this year. It gives my parents who are retired something active to do and they are rewarded with healthy food in return. I know that doesn't solve your problem right now, but it's an idea for the future.

With your limited resources I would again stress the importance of lists - I use them for everything from shopping to housework. Maybe try buying your monthly staple foods in bulk so you always have them on hand. If you can't afford fresh or frozen veggies canned veggies are pretty cheap and you can get them now with no salt added. Canned fruit with no sugar added is also a lot cheaper than fresh. All natural peanut butter is more expensive, but it is so much better for you and peanut butter streches for quite awhile if you use it in moderation. Iceberg lettuce, while not ideal for nutrition, is pretty cheap and so are apples and they keep for awhile.

Really, just trying to stay away from processed foods like Hamburger Helper and frozen pizzas will make a big difference.

i live in a condo, there's no place for a garden. we have a porch, but it doesn't get enough light, even the bushes in front of the house looks sickly.

i use lists, but bulk isn't really an option as all 3 adults in my house have different diets (i'm lo-cal, grandma is healthy crap i don't like such as quinoa and asparagus, boyfriend is high-protein) and we only have 1 fridge and a kitchen the size of a lilypad. We have so little room that we found a bookshelf and sawed it shorter and put it under the kitchen table for extra storage, and it's constantly full AND we have food just sitting in bags under he table because we have nowhere else to put it.

i get frozen veggies on sale all the time(only $1 per bag), and i have canned veggies (with no salt added) for when i run out of those, but i rarely do as i buy veggies constantly. my grandmother makes me salads all the time so i don't have to worry about lettuce. i constantly have apples. and i've been avoiding stuff like that (and freezer meals, i used to have 2 a day) for a while now, i don't even buy instant mashed potatoes anymore, even thought they're cheaper, i buy regular potatoes and cook and mash them myself. no pancake mix, do it from scratch.

This is what happened to me, too! I wasn't a student, but I was working part time, husband was on unemployment, both of us were looking for better work right when the economy tanked. When I applied for food stamps, I was told we didn't work enough hours to qualify - whaaaaat the....?!

Later, a friend of mine told me they routinely turn folks down the first time, assuming that people who really need food stamps will re-apply. Jerks.

I started to leave a note saying it worked fine but what is it. I see from the labeling from the picture that it's an obesity map.

Yes, there are a lot of items at the store that I don't need. But I'm either very well disciplined or else just lucky in that I make a list and I'm what I refer to as a blitzkrieg shopper; i.e., I don't even look at things that aren't on my list because I just want to get the stuff and get out of there. Of course, that means that I hear about new things from the true shoppers who look at every item, but I swear an elephant could be sitting in the aisle and I wouldn't notice unless my cart ran into it.

I swear by a shopping list and never allowing myself to be hungry. My downfall comes at check out if I'm hungry because a candy bar always miraculously finds its way into my cart if I'm hungry.

thats weird, because when i told them i had 0 income and 0 assets they gave me food stamps right away

I think it may be for people who are still working and earning money but I could be wrong. When I first applied, they gave it to me right away since I had 0 income and 0 assets as well but when the time came to re-apply after a year, I was denied at first because of my disability income (which isn't that much after rent and utilities, etc) then I appealed and got $16 dollars a month.

This may be too personal to ask so I apologize in advance but after reading the whole thread, I am wondering- why can't your boyfriend get his own food stamps? Surely, that would help out you all a bit more?

I wish you the best of luck.

I just thought have you looked at any of kaplod's posts or shoestring meals forum? Kaplod's has had to work with very low budget and successfully have lost weight.

And good luck getting disability. My sister in law has had to re-apply like four times (bipolar, ADHD, mass issues in body, and a ankle that can't bear weight for more than 30 minutes at a time).

he just got a job. he's not making much, but as long as he can get the hours he needs he'll be making slightly more than unemployment. and he doesn't want to be on welfare and is embarrassed that i tell people that i am. i think he's going nowhere right now (he's 28, only works out an hour a day, wants to be a fighter and run his own clothing line... it's not happening but idk how to break his heart.)