I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘groceries’ Category

A month ago, my spouse as part of a class he is taking was put on a specific and regimented meal plan for 12 weeks designed to help him lose weight, lower his cholesterol, and lower his blood pressure. None of those three things are in the “danger” zone, but all three are a little higher than they should be. The good news is, he’s lost 13 pounds so something is working (and in fact, if he loses more than a few more, he’s going to talk to the nutritionist about changing the diet to a “maintaining” plan vs a weight loss plan). The less good news was that the meal plan really wreaked havoc with our budget. Which is okay - but we’re trying to figure out ways to minimize the diet’s impact a little more financially.

Before the meal plan, our budget for food was $75 a week for a family of four, two adults and two kids (3 and 1). The first week shopping for things on the meal plan, I spent about $135. So it was a bit of an adjustment. Some of that was buying things that would take many weeks to use up (still working on the same bag of frozen flounder) but some of it was just that primarily fresh food with some select frozen items vs a mix of fresh, frozen and processed foods was just more expensive for us. Because the meal plan is very specific, I couldn’t really shop for things on sale at first, and had to buy them as they were. Now that I know the meal plan and know what to expect, I can shop around sales a bit more, and stock up on certain items (my freezer has a lot of frozen salmon right now) when they are available.

So, this week, I spent $36.19 at Aldi, $33.07 at Walmart, and $6.71 at Kroger for a total of $75.97. This brings my average per week for this month to about $98, which honestly, is better than I expected after the first week of shopping. The meal plan only lasts for 12 weeks, but a number of the meals and snacks from it are going to end up being incorporated into our general rotation of foods, so I expect a permanent upswing in the grocery budget as a whole. I think with planning and creative shopping, I might be able to meet my original goal of only raising the grocery budget by $10 per week. We’ll see what happens in March.

I probably should get on the diet train (although I’d need a completely different menu) because I’d like to lose 13 pounds in a month, too.

I also think that buying more expensive foods is also going to be balanced out in the long term by smaller portion sizes. The biggest impact the meal plan is having, I think, is showing what realistic portions are. And they are a lot smaller than either of us thought. My spouse is adjusting really well though, he is doing a great job. When he gets frustrated and hungry he cheats on his meal plan with an extra stalk of celery. If celery is the worst cheating you are doing, well, I think you are doing good.

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So far, buying groceries according to my spouse’s specific meal plan has been… interesting. I think, in the long run (once the 12 week meal plan is over), it will only add $10-20 a week to the grocery bill. Or at least, I hope so - but it isn’t blind hope, I have been paying attention to what types of things go on sale that I can plan meals around in the future. Really, all the fish is killing the budget. But, after the meal plan is over, I doubt my spouse will eat fish 4 times a week. He’ll be eating more fish than he had been (not hard to increase from zero) but I can also buy frozen fish on sale. This week Kroger had frozen cod and salmon on sale, so I bought some. But since he hasn’t tried either cod or salmon yet, I couldn’t buy a huge amount. If I knew he’d eat it willingly, I could have really stocked up.

This week I spent $78.47 at Aldi, $18.51 at Walmart, and $11.82 at Kroger for a total of $108.80. Kroger was mostly frozen fish on sale as well as frozen whole turkey breasts on sale (a few of my spouse’s lunches have turkey breast with them). The big spending was at Aldi, and that is because they had a canned Minestrone soup as a special item last week, and my spouse liked it much more than the Campbell’s version. The stats were almost identical, so I bought ten cans of it this week (special items are only available for a limited time) to last the rest of the meal plan (he has one can a week for lunch). So that was $14.90 more than I would have spent otherwise. We’d also run out of a lot of “plastic” items all at the same time (ziploc bags, freezer bags, trash bags) so that added a bit extra to the bill.

It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either. I’m already $25 over my monthly grocery budget and we have a week to go. Eeek! I’m averaging about $105/week for these three weeks so hopefully I can get that down a little next week. Or down a LOT. One can hope.

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So it is week 2 of the meal plan for my spouse. Last week I spent about $60 more than my pre-meal plan budgeted grocery amount, so the next few weeks will show if the spending will average out over a month to close to what we used to spend, or if we will have to seriously reevaluate our grocery budget for March.

So, this week I spent $49.50 at Aldi and $30.50 at Walmart for a total of $80.00 exactly. Which is $5 over my pre-meal plan budget. That’s not too bad, although it makes my two week average about $108, which is not all that great when my budget is $75. I am willing to raise the grocery budget for our family to eat healthier foods (I have been incorporating some of the same things my spouse is eating into my kids and my diet as well where appropriate) but I was hoping it would be more like a $5 to $10 increase per week. There is the fact that right now, I am following a specific meal plan and therefore cannot really take advantage of sales and plan the meals around those, so when the 12 week class is done, I’ll start having more flexibility which will help me save money. My spouse is taking a 12 week class through his workplace and is committed to following the exact prescribed meal plan as well as he can for that period, but when that is over he is happy to start varying the order of the meals and reincorporating other things he used to eat (healthy things, of course, and in the correct portion sizes).

We’ll see what happens - I’m encouraged that the total went down, but I was hoping it would go down a little more than it did. On to next week!

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Or at least, that is what I have to tell myself today. I stuck to my (insanely long) list, I did not stray one bit, and at the end of the day, I spent $134.06 this week on groceries: $63.14 at Aldi, an insane $55.80 at Walmart, and $15.12 at Kroger.

The new diet has begun for my spouse. He’s on a special diet to reduce his cholesterol and blood pressure designed by a nutritionist through his workplace, and I had to buy a whole lot of new foods this week. The positive side to this, budget wise, is that there were a lot of things I bought this week that I won’t have to buy again for weeks or months. All of the meats I needed to buy, I bought enough to last at least a month if not two based on portion sizes. There were also a number of other items, like reduced fat peanut butter, salt free seasonings, and different bakery items, that I won’t have to replace for a good long while (the extra bakery items will go in the freezer until use).

But will it all even out? I have no idea, but I am positive it won’t be this expensive every week. Buying frozen flounder and tuna at Walmart really drove the total up there, and that won’t happen every week. And I had to buy “Power Bars” which my spouse has for a snack every other day, and I bought a box of them that should last two weeks.

I do know this though: shopping only the perimeter of the store is much more expensive than the aisles, if this week is any indication. I bought almost no prepackaged foods (the power bars were about it) and I spent a ton more than I usually do when I by about half prepackaged and half fresh.

So… the diet has begun, and we’re not bankrupt yet. We’ll see how things go next week.

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My spouse is participating in a 12-week long class sponsored by his employer that is focused on teaching him how to eat healthier, exercise in the most beneficial way, and overall, improve his general health. This class is not mandatory by any means, but we feel like it is a good idea, not only because his employer offers health insurance premium deductions for meeting certain health criteria (he currently earns all 5 of the 5 available $10/pay-period credits, and would like to keep it that way) but because his cholesterol and blood pressure are both on the higher side of normal, and this class provides meal plans tailored specifically to him and his needs by a nutritionist and personal trainer.

If you want a laugh, head on over to my family blog, where I talked about the forms my spouse had to fill out with his likes and dislikes. You’ll see why I find it a huge challenge to cook anything for him that he’ll eat which has the word “healthy” anywhere near it.

Yesterday at his class, my spouse got his first week meal plan. This weekend, I have to shop for a specific list of foods, and start preparing meals around the specific guidelines in his meal plan. I am really hoping that budget wise, things will work out, because although I am buying many new-to-us foods, I’ll also *not* be buying some of my spouse’s snacking staples (sorry honey, no doritos on the list!). And although the list actually states specific name brand items, I’ll be comparing those to the generic equivalent and if there is no appreciable difference in nutritional information, the generic is coming home with me. The nice thing about the list is that it has the protein, carbs, fat, and calories for each item right on the list, so I can even compare in Aldi where I won’t have the name brand to look at, since I have that information on my list. What makes me extremely nervous though is the “meat” portion of the plan.

First off, the plan has no instructions on how to cook anything other than a general method. It just states a meat and the amount. I have said before, I am not very experienced at cooking meat. I don’t eat it, so I never bothered to learn to prepare it. And for that matter, I am not the greatest of people in the kitchen in general. I get by, but I’m not going to be serving anything at a restaurant anytime soon. So, there lies my dilemma. First, are these meats going to completely break my budget? Second, am I going to completely destroy them trying to cook them? And third, can I make them in a way that my spouse will actually eat?

Yikes. I am willing to spend the money, if it works out. I just hope it works out. Here are my “meats”, suggestions are welcome (there are not 7 because some I make more than one day, and one day he actually gets pizza) :

• 3 oz Yellowfin Tuna, cooked with dry heat
• 4 oz Flounder, broiled
• 3 oz Cod, Pacific, broiled
• 4 oz Flank, braised with fat trimmed off

Good luck to me.

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