Whether you’re unemployed, a college student, or maybe even still in high school, and money is a little tight, this blog post will serve as the ultimate guide for you to get the healthy body you want without breaking the bank.
General Tips
The way that I want to do this is by first giving you some general guidelines on what you can do to save money while still eating a healthy diet that helps you feel great and look the way you want to look. After that, I will be listing the most affordable food you can eat to get every macro and micronutrient you need into your budget-friendly plan.
Meal Planning
Let’s jump right in with the first tip which is to plan all of your meals ahead of time and only buy what you know you’re going to use. By planning ahead of time you avoid buying a bunch of food that never gets eaten.
Cook at Home
The second tip is to cook all of your food at home. It is way more expensive to eat out at a restaurant than it is to cook the meals yourself. Also, you have no idea how much extra oil and other ingredients the chef is adding in the kitchen so that makes it pretty hard to track your calories correctly. Another benefit of cooking the food yourself is that you’ll end up with plenty of leftovers, saving you more money.
Buy Generic Brands
The next tip that can save you a ton of money at the grocery store is to buy generic brands. Generic brands are available for almost any product and the majority of them will include the same exact ingredients as the more expensive brand name counterpart. Make sure you compare the ingredient lists and as long as they look close enough you should be fine going with the cheaper brand.
Explore Alternative Cuts of Meat
Certain meat and certain cuts are way less expensive than others. When trying to save money you want to go for the cheaper cuts. You can also replace fresh-cut meat with other cheaper sources of protein. I’ll be going over the specific examples of what exact foods you want to get at your grocery store but first I want to give you a few more General tips.
Stop Buying Junk Food
Avoid junk food. Junk food is expensive and it contains very little nutritional value.
Bulk Purchasing
You can also buy in bulk to save big bucks. Whether it’s buying your water, your grains, or even your meat and then freezing it, buying in bulk will save you a lot of money. Another example is shredded cheese. You can buy the block of cheese and shred it yourself.
Couponing
Couponing can also save you a good amount of money at the store, it just requires you to take the time to go through and find the coupons you need.
Frozen Food
Also, another tip even though I don’t usually recommend this you can buy frozen fruits and vegetables. They are less expensive and you’ll still get pretty much the same nutrition out of them. Please keep in mind that fresh fruits and vegetables that aren’t organic are still pretty cheap.
Shop With a Plan
Stick to the outside aisles of the grocery store and stick to your grocery list. The worst thing you could do is go shopping while you’re hungry. This turns into an expedition through all the inner Isles. Most of the food there is processed, unhealthy, and expensive.
Macros & Micros
Okay so now I want to give you specific foods you can get for each macronutrient. Here are some ideas of what food you can eat to burn fat and build muscle on a budget.
Protein
Protein is very important to repair your muscles and help you recover for your next workout. Most healthy meal plans oriented towards helping you burn fat and build muscle will include a good amount of protein. Many people think vegetables are expensive, but the truth is that protein is the single most expensive thing on our grocery lists.
There is good news. There are budget-friendly alternatives. Beans are a very affordable source of protein. This is especially true if you make your own and don’t buy it in a can. But even in a can it only costs around a dollar and you get over 30 grams of protein. Canned fish is another extremely cheap protein source. You can get wild-caught salmon in a large can for just as cheap as canned tuna.
By the way, just on a side note, you want to avoid having canned fish and canned food, in general, all the time. They make for an inexpensive alternative for you to supplement your main protein sources. They should not be your main sources of protein.
Other cheap sources of protein include whole eggs, Greek yogurt, ground turkey, lentils, cottage cheese, pretty much any kind of chicken, especially the thighs, and, last but not least, whey protein is very cheap per serving size.
Carbohydrates
Carbs are very important for providing you with the high-quality energy you need to have great workouts and to carry you through the day. Some cheap, healthy sources of carbs include oats, brown rice, fruit, sweet potato, grits, regular baked potatoes, and, occasionally, whole wheat pasta.
Fat
We need at least 20% of our diet coming from fat to make sure that our bodies are functioning optimally and for our hormones to be produced and regulated properly. Great cheap sources of fat include almonds, olive oil, flax seeds, fatty fish, egg yolks, coconut oil, and avocados, which can be pretty cheap when they’re in season.
Micronutrients
For your micronutrients, make sure you get a variety of different colored fruits and vegetables into your eating plan. Fruits and veggies are very seasonal as far as their price point goes, but remember you can always get them frozen any time for a low price.
Some really cheap fresh fruits that stay cheap pretty much year-round are bananas, pears, watermelon, honeydew, plums, and oranges. Budget-friendly vegetables include cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, onions, celery, and, usually, green beans.
A Final Thought From DigEnet
That’s it for now. I really hope this post has helped you figure out a way to blend healthy eating with your budgetary constraints. We can’t all afford grass-fed ribeye and fresh wild-caught salmon, but we can all make the best choices that we can afford if we apply the info from this post.
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