Eat Healthy AND Save Money!

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Is it possible to eat healthy and save money? I hear people say all the time, it’s expensive to eat well. There are many reasons why it’s much less expensive to eat high-quality, nutritious food. Let me show you a new way of looking at it. It’s another way to save money every month!

Eat healthy on a budget

You can eat healthy and save money by staying out of the doctor’s office. Refined sugars and white flour are a big cause of many illnesses and can leave you vulnerable to catching colds, strep, the flu, and other ailments like them. Trips to the doctor, over-the-counter meds, prescriptions, and time missed from work are all costly. They are costly to your productivity as well.

Another big issue is additives and chemicals that are in cheap, processed foods. Take hot pockets, tv dinners, frozen pizzas, store-bought bread, pop tarts, sugary cereals, and other things you might have in your grocery cart regularly for instance. These foods are full of nasty things like sulfites, artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and other things that make you SICK! These things are linked to many illnesses such as cancers and other life-altering ailments. Click here to read more about it.

Chronic and life-threatening illnesses hit families hard in the pocketbook. If you think healthy food is expensive, you can imagine how much it could save you if you avoided it by staying healthy. Healthy foods boost your immunity and get you on the right track to health.

Save money and eat healthy

Knowing what to eat to save money is not as complicated as you might think. You can eat healthy and save money by keeping your energy levels up. Having the energy to wake up at 5:00 every morning, work with a house full of kids for 10-plus hours, make dinner for my family, blog some more, and then clean up after that house full of kids is a wonderful blessing!

I remember before I started switching to natural food. If I didn’t get a good night’s sleep one night, I could hardly think or function the following day. I caught every cold the kids brought in back then. So, I worked my 10 hours and then fell over on the sofa, exhausted. I hardly ever had the energy to cook a good dinner for my peeps. Getting through the day was exhausting and I would spend the kid’s nap time trying to rest to do the second half of the day. Now I’m able to use nap time for much more productive things.

Now, I can get my paperwork done, and handle problems that arise, I think more clearly, I look younger, and there are innumerable benefits to this lifestyle. I have much less anxiety and depression than I dealt with before. And I sleep better. I’m nicer to everyone. I’m a better childcare provider. I do get tired, of course, this is a really hard job, but not as tired as I used to get. I’m not beautiful or thin, but I feel 100% better than I did when I ate junk.

And I know that a great way to cut down on expenses in my daycare is to serve healthier food and less expensive processed food.

Being more productive helps me be able to produce more. If you don’t live a healthy lifestyle, you lose wages from work, and lose productivity at home which could cost you money if you had to hire someone to mow the lawn or clean the house for you. (wouldn’t it be great to be able to do that?)

You can eat healthy and save money by eating at home. Fast food is full of junk and costly. You can easily spend over $5 on a fast food meal for one person. I make many meals for myself and all 7 of my kids for close to that much money. Eating out at a restaurant can be more healthful than fast food, but you still don’t have any idea what’s in your food. There could be any number of chemicals and additives used in the cooking of your food that can be costly to your health. It’s also costly on your pocketbook!

Tricks to save money on your food bill

Extra foods such as Twinkies, sodas, chips, and other foods are just a garnish to life’s real food needs. You need fruits, veggies, and proteins to live. Twinkies, soda, chips, and other “extras” make you fat, sick, tired, and broke. Leave those things in the store! Your body and your pocketbook will sigh a big sigh of relief!

There are a number of other reasons you can eat healthy and save money. I could go on forever, but let’s talk about super healthy foods that are inexpensive.

Beans are a superfood packed with nutrition. Many people have trouble digesting beans, but you can soak them for up to 24 hours and they will be much more easily digestible. Just cover the beans with water in a bowl or pan and soak them for at least 8 hours. Then wash them thoroughly and proceed to cook them. I call that washing off the fart water. Sorry, mom.

Another tip for making beans less musical and discomforting is to cook them well. Underdone beans can wreak havoc on your digestion. Ouch. Make sure they are nice and soft. Test more than one bean to check for doneness.

Beans are packed with protein. They are super inexpensive. Beans are very versatile and they are delish! We eat several bean main dishes per week to save money on protein since it can be very costly. We eat mostly free-range meat, which can really be expensive. I love knowing the animals I eat were treated humanely and raised in a healthy way.

I love to make taco soup with beans (we don’t like meat in ours), homemade bean burritos, bean and cheese nachos with veggies, enchilada casserole with beans for the protein, beans and cornbread, and just plain ole beans as a side dish. When I cook my beans, I usually do it in the crockpot on high overnight. I just put in my soaked beans, fill the crockpot up with water, and dump it in a packet of homemade taco seasoning mix. 

We love our beans with these flavors and the house smells A-Mazing! I cook several pounds of beans at once and freeze the leftovers in 1 and 2-cup portions to dump into recipes. Click here to see my world-famous taco soup recipe. It’s a favorite of the kids!

Rice and other whole grains are super inexpensive. They are packed with protein as well along with many other great nutrients your body needs. They are more easily digestible if they are soaked as well. I’m not super familiar with how to do this, but you can click here to read all about it if you want to learn.

Ya’ll know that brown rice, old-fashioned rolled oats, whole wheat flour, barley, and other grains are some of the cheapest foods out there. Learn how to make them more ways to save your healthy eating budget. These foods are powerhouses of nutrition!

I make all of our bread homemade. Click here to see why. It’s super cheap to grind your own whole wheat flour and make your own bread. You’d be amazed at how amazing this bread tastes compared to store-bought bread. The price is a mere fraction of what it costs at the store. You also know it’s chemical-free! 

Potatoes are very inexpensive and can help you eat healthy and save money. Make sure to get organic potatoes. The conventionally grown ones are some of the most heavily sprayed foods on the market. It’s ghastly how they are grown. Even a bag of organic potatoes is just a few bucks. You can make baked potatoes or potato-based casseroles with them. They are super versatile as well.

Buy quality meat and stretch them with other ingredients like brown rice, whole grain pasta, and other things that help fill your family up. Food can taste great, be great for health, and still not break the bank. One free-range chicken breast can go into a stir-fry and you have a wok full of goodness.

Fruits and vegetables are super nutritious and not expensive at all. If you buy fresh, they are usually much less expensive than their processed counterparts. Fruits and veggies can help you eat healthy and save money.

Frozen vegetables are a great buy too. They can even come on sale or have coupons to save money in your budget.

Yogurt is an inexpensive healthy food. It’s packed with protein as well. Get plain Greek yogurt and fill it with your own fruit and a little raw honey for a super healthy snack!

Overall healthy food is much less expensive than buying prepackaged foods. A bag of Oreos or chips ahoy are several dollars. You can make a dozen homemade cookies for just a few cents. Cookie ingredients are fairly inexpensive, and homemade is much better for you! Better yet, leave the desserts and just eat whole fruits and veggies with a little bit of protein and you’ll be feeling, looking, and living better. Your wallet will be feeling and looking better too!

The bottom line is healthy food DOES save you money. You may not be able to eat all free-range steaks and Portobello mushroom risotto and save big on your food budget, but even that CAN be made cheaper at home than eating in a restaurant. You can eat some more expensive ingredients with some less expensive ones to balance your way to a healthier life.

Grow your own food to save money

Grow your own food. You can save a ton of money by growing fruits and vegetables right in your backyard. A packet of seeds is just a few cents and can grow a ton of fresh food.