I am a huge fan of the Biggest Loser and I have seen the tips that Bob and Jillian give about preparing you own meals at home rather then buying prepared products, but I am finding it extremely hard as a single mother to be able to afford all the items needed in some of the low cal recipe books I've found. I've recently received a Hungry Girl recipe book with 200 recipes under 200 calories as a gift, but it calls for so many odd items, some things I've never even eaten before, and I'm finding grocery shopping for every single item needed for each recipe is getting to be too expensive. Am I crazy or doing something wrong? Am I the only one who feels this way?

It *can* be expensive, but doesn't have to be.

Check out our "Shoestring Meals" forum...it has a ton of ideas on how to eat healthier on a budget.

I attribute this to one of the causes so many American's are overweight or obese. Particularly poor Americans. It's just cheaper and easier to buy ramen or macaroni and cheese to feed the kids. It's not like parents want their kids to be fat, but I know growing up, we had a very restricted budget, and my mom had to buy what she could afford. Even canned veggies (which have more sodium and preservatives) are less expensive than fresh.

I count calories & actually my grocery bill is less cause I eat smaller portions of what I always ate & There is no diet meals, plans ,dvd's,exercise equipment or anything that cost me any extra~I walk for exercise indoors from room to room & do my own exercises.


also my kids eat less~We eat the same basic things just in more reasonable portions & We deleted out the junk food such as little debbies cakes & cookies~stuff like that. So I actually find it cheaper

And on top of it, if you want to REALLY eat healthy... you should buy organic. Which is through the roof expensive!

I think it's very expensive unless you put a lot of effort into it. I feel like health and frugality don't HAVE to be mutually exclusive, but for me they are.

It can be expensive getting going. After you have a lot of the things your keep in the pantry it gets better.

I have decided things like fresh produce aren't so expensive IF I finish the amount that I buy. If things don't go to waste they are a bargain.

My personal viewpoint is that food can generally be any two of the following three at once, but not all three at once:

Cheap
Healthy
Fast

You can get healthy, fast food - but it isn't cheap.
You can get cheap, fast food - but it isn't healthy
Or you can get cheap, healthy food - but it isn't fast.

I actually find that I spend less on my food bill. Of course, my eating out expenses are all but gone. And I do not mind eating what is cheap or in season for a couple of weeks in a row even if it means that I eat the same meal a few times during the week.

I think it depends on where you live and the options available to you. I've seen certain things organic cost regular than non-organic foods in different super markets.

Overall, my food bill is pretty low except if I decide to splurge on some specialty products and I eat a lot of organic produce. I think I have a lot of options here as well as we have pretty good stores that have bulk bins for grains and legumes as well as all organic produce stores and local farmers that use organic growing methods.

i find the exact opposite true. I LOVE fast food, and meals use to cost me around 6-8 dollars. Now that i'm eating more natural foods, i can buy a bag of beans for less than 2 dollars! My meals are now costing me cents instead of 6-8 dollars, for reals.

Do any of you have any cheap recipes? Something that you would live by? See, I have a problem with getting bored with the same old meals week after week. I love to try new things, but I hate having to keep buy new things that I don't already have in my home on a regular basis. I guess I could agree with 2Bees. I'll have to work on it slowly.

I eat lots and lots of legumes which are generally cheap.

Here is a recipe with chickpeas and quinoa
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2010/04....html#more-793

Here is a recipe for stuffed collards
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2010/04...beans-and.html

Here is a yummy looking polenta, chickpea and asparagus recipe
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2010/03...ragus-and.html

Here is a barley mushroom soup recipe
http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2010/02...annellini.html

And I love this ethiopian lentil recipe. Awesome served over brown rice
http://vegandad.blogspot.com/2009/11...n-lentils.html

I have recipes on my blog (in the right hand column, you'll see under categories

Food and Recipes (19)

left click on it and you'll find my recipes and food finds. Budget-friendly dieting is the main focus of my blog because hubby and I are on disability and the food budget is fairly tight.

http://www.3fatchicks.com/diet-blogs/kaplods/

We do buy some organics, but I do not buy into the notion that you have to buy only organic to be "really" eating healthfully. If you search online you will find lists of the most and least contaminated fruits and vegetables (for some fruits and vegetables the difference between organic and nonorganic are minimal).


I follow an exchange plan, which like calorie counting can be easily adapted to any budget. In an exchange plan, I have an alottment of protein, starch, dairy, fruit, vegetable, and fat servings. I have an exchange reference that allows me to look up most foods (and a worksheet to calculate the exchanges for any food with a nutrition label). When I make my grocery list, I take my exchanges into account.

For example, I am alotted 21 servings of fruit each week, but I can use any fruit to satisfy that requirement. The "cheapest" would probably be dried fruit like raisins, but concentrated sugar doesn't work well for me, instead I look for the cheapest fruits that aren't junk food or binge triggers.

I buy apples, oranges, bananas and frozen strawberries most often, because they're usually the cheapest. I look for sales and specials to take advantage of the best prices.

I do the same for my other exchanges. For example, 95 - 98% lean ground beef is very expensive. 75-80% lean ground beef is much cheaper (but higher in fat). So, I combine it with tvp (soy protein - and fat free). I can make a ground beef mixture that has the fat and calories of 98% lean beef, but cost me less per pound than the cheapest ground beef (because tvp is about the 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of the cheapest ground beef per serving).

That recipe is also on my blog. I make the ground beef mixture in huge batches (up to 10 lbs at a time). I brown the ground beef (or ground pork) with dry tvp and a couple seasioning veggies like onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, diced carrot, mushrooms and water or broth to reconstitute the tvp then freeze the mixture in ziploc bags. "Smushing" the bag around every so often during the freezing so that the mixture freezes into crumbles, rather than a solid chunk. Then I can just scoop out what I need for recipes that start with ground beef (I bought a couple ground beef cookbooks I found dirt cheap on amazon.com and in thrift stores).

I also cook large batches of beans in the crockpot and freeze (also using the ziploc bags and the shake and freeze method so that the beans freeze seperately rather than in clumps. It works for pasta too).

There are tons of ways to save money and eat for health and weight loss. Eating healthy/cheap is possible, but it does take planning and preparation.

I agree that there are very few healthy/cheap/fast options, but there are shortcuts that can give you all three. For example cooking huge batches of beans or tvp/beef doesn't take any longer than cooking tiny batches. So if you make a huge batch and freeze (either in meal-sized batches, or in a scoopable form).

I love the crockpot, because while it takes time to cook, it's not time-consuming. You may spend 5 minutes or less in the kitchen to cook a nice meal. I checked out and even ordered slow-cooker recipe books and wrote down some recipes and also the names of books I want to buy. When I go to used bookstores and thrift stores I look for books on my list or similar to them. Right now I have three low-carb crockpot cookbooks that I checked out from the library. One of them, I've checked out at least three times (it's on my to-buy list, but I haven't gotten around to it, yet).

Eating anything but junk is insanely expensive where I live, because the ONLY grocery store in my small town doesn't carry a lot of that type of stuff. And when they do...WOW. For example...I wanted to buy some fresh blueberries for my cereal. They have little packs of them - LITERALLY a cup at best. $7.49. Insane. The frozen are still $6. I can't win here.