For me, dieting has saved me money in the long run. Although diet foods can be expensive,I eat less now so I'm buying less. Also- I used to go out to eat 2-3 times a day, basically for every meal, now i go out to eat twice a week only, so I have extra spending money now

Whether or not dieting will save you money or cost you more (and by how much), really depends on what you were eating/doing/spending/earning before and what you are eating/doing/spending/earning now.

When I was working for a large company, making decent money, I was living alone and eating out frequently. I signed up for Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating (a fresh food, delivery program) and was coming out ahead, even though the cost of the program was $115 per week (which was a pretty hefty pricetag at the time, nutrisystem food at the same time was less than half that).

Then about eight years ago, I got sick and couldn't work. Hubby lost his job (because of the time he spent taking me to doctors' appointments... FMLA makes that illegal but all the company had to do to get around it was give a different reason for firing him). We had to file for bankruptcy and I had to quit working. We went from having a combined income of almost 6 figures, to less than $24,000. Then a year later, hubby fell and tore his rotator cuff (the surgeon said it was the second worst tear he had ever repaired). The fall we think exacerbated and excelerated the degeneration of his joints (he inherited a progressive, degenerative joint disease from his mother. Who despite being thin and active has had four hip replacements and has had several other joint replacements by her early 60's (she looks great). Hubby had been told he'd be in a wheelchair by age 35 (he's 42 now, and still walking under his own steam, but mostly out of sheer stubbornness, relatively low doses of narcotic pain meds, and an incredibly high pain tolerance (which has allowed him to avoid the kind of pain meds that would interfere with functioning).

We weren't eligible for food stamps (because the govt takes into account your income, not your expenses. All our expenses were low, except for our medications. Our medications cost us about three times as much every month as our rent).

Our monthly budget for food averaged about $50 at our lowest point (and we had several months when we had only $25 for the month to spend on groceries).

We lived on cabbage, chicken leg quarters, onions, carrots, beans, rice, potatoes, pasta and bananas (because our Kwik Trip convenience stores sold bananas at 39 cents per pound), and stuff we could find at a salvage grocery store.

As hubby and I both had blood sugar issues (at the time he was insulin-dependent diabetic, and I was insulin resistant pre-diabetic), it was very difficult to eat healthfully and lose weight on this carb-heavy diet.

There's no way short of dumpster diving in a large city (saw a netflix documentary on the "freegan" lifestyle of reclaiming discarded food from grocery store dumpsters), to do low-carb on a $25 per month grocery budget.

Hubby and I are now both on disability and our budget has loosened considerably, though we still budget carefully. Because we don't have tons of room in the grocery budget, we have to budget carefully on all of our other expenses, so that we have the extra to spend on better quality groceries.

On the tightest of budgets, it's difficult to eat anything but processed carbs. White bread, white rice, pasta, beans, potatoes and cereal are cheap (and even cheaper if you can find a salvage grocery store). About the only non-starchy veggie that is dirt-cheap (in the midwest at least) is cabbage. We'd wait until cabbage went on sale for 33 cents a pound, and would buy several heads.

When we applied for food stamps, we learned that we made $50 too much (per year) to qualify, but what shocked me was the food budget if we would have qualified. Somewhere around $350 per month. At the time, we were averaging around $50 to $100 per month. So $350 seemed like an astonishing amount of money.

^^This!

Processed diet foods are expensive (and loaded with a bunch of crap). I shop at the farmer's market each week and spend less than $20 on fruits and veggies. I also buy dried beans (way cheaper than canned) and grains in the bulk section of my grocery store and sometimes I'll splurge on tofu or tempeh (I'm a vegetarian). I probably spend the most on herbs and spices, but that's just a large up front cost that lasts for a while. My best suggestion is to aim for the least processed foods you can find. And compare produce prices if you don't have access to a Farmer's market.

Processed diet foods are expensive, but processed foods are not.

Many people (who can afford unprocessed fresh foods if chosen carefully) mistakenly think they can't afford to diet, because they cannot afford "diet foods."

However, there are also many people who cannot afford to feed themeselves and their families entirely on whole, unprocessed fresh foods. If you can barely afford pasta and beans, then broccoli ans asparagus seems exorbitantly expensive.

Unfortunately, we as a culture, also encourage an "all or nothing" attitude about eating for health and weight loss. There are many people who believe that if they can't afford free-range chicken and eggs, grass-fed meat and organic farmers' market produce then there's no use even trying to eat healthier.

I see a lot of you live in Canada as I do; and ya, food is more than double what you all pay in the US. Plus, like Dee up there in Alaska, I live in northern Ontario, so we have to pay more becuz of the transportation costs too. To get around that, we shop at one large grocery store and one bargain department store that has a food & produce department in it.

I scour the flyers each week and buy what is on sale first, and we know what kind of things are better priced at each store. Between the two, we save a lot on groceries. I start with the best price on fresh veggies and back that up with frozen; and like others here, I buy the meats in bulk when they are ON SALE ONLY, and re-package them at home to put in our energy efficient freezer (which we bought on sale).

I focus more on fresh stuff too, but I do buy spices & herbs in bulk to save money too. We buy much less packaged food than in the past. I only have a few canned items as emergency back-up; and buy condiments on sale too (buying 1 or 2 extra to tide us over to the next sale). The department store has good buys on those types of things all the time.

Again, we buy household & personal items on sale too -- ie toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, laundry soap, etc. We buy some of the no-frill brands for things like dog food, pasta, brown rice, etc (or whatever is good quality, but the best price) to save even more.

I don't buy laughing cow cheeze or other specialty diet foods becuz they are just way too expensive here. I just sub them with something else instead. We do have the odd splurge, but I still look for the best bargains I can find on that too, ie pop & snack items for DH.

TIP: I buy basic veggies like celery, onions, carrots, turnips, and cabbage to make a base for soups or stews or other meals; roasting them in the oven when I bake some meat (these veggies are usually lower priced & also last a long time in the fridge too). I buy veggies & fruit on sale and put them in the freezer in baggies for another time as well, so they don't get wasted. I put ripe tomatoes in the freezer whole and use them in soups & stews & sauces as well. Sweet Peppers can be diced & frozen to use in anything you want (even salads). Plus, I always buy romaine lettuce becuz it lasts longer than the iceberg type; a bag of 3 will last me a whole month. :D

I incorporated changes to my diet fairly slowly over a year or so and since we're a 2-person household and my husband's eating has changed, too, I'm not really sure if we're paying more or less now than we did before we went through these shifts. I can see arguments either way for processed foods, but shouldn't you just try to eat the least processed food possible (for your lifestyle)?

I've found a LOT of ways to save on groceries, though, and I recently wrote a mega blog post about it on my personal finance blog. If you incorporate cost-saving strategies I'm sure you'll spend less money no matter what your chosen way of eating. You just have to put in some time, effort, and creativity - very like the entire process of losing weight.