Lessons From the Spend Less, Eat Better Project

I'll freely admit that the spend less eat better project has gone by the wayside for a while. But the reason is that while yes, it is entirely possible to eat very well on a limited budget, it takes a lot of effort and planning and herein lies the first lesson. When you have an option, exhaustion wins over healthy and budget conscious eating every time.

It's easy to judge people who habitually eat junk. I'm guilty of it myself sometimes. Often it's a matter of not knowing how to cook. Too many people don't know how these days, and many don't have the slightest desire to learn how (I have a friend that falls into this category and I must say, it makes me crazy!). But I know how to cook and it's something I actually enjoy doing, so that's not an obstacle for me. For me, it's that theme that we keep coming back to, balance. When I'm working late and I reach that certain level of exhaustion that it takes a while to recover from, honestly, there are evenings when taking five minutes to nuke something feels like too much effort. Even when I take extra time on the weekend to clean and prep as much as possible so that all I have to do is toss it in a pan and cook it, that can still seem like too much. And yes, I know I could cook things and freeze them, but there are a lot of foods that I just don't care for frozen. And cooking a week's worth of food on the weekend takes the better part of a day, which is that much less time I have to try to rest and recuperate for the week to come.

And so, I have a much better understanding of and empathy for those that resort to fast food out of convenience. It's a god awful habit, to be sure, and we suffer the consequences. And yes, sometimes it doesn't even take less time than fixing something. I know that I could saute a piece of chicken and some veggies in less than a half an hour if things are ready to go. But there are an awful lot of times when its easier to drive to my local fast food emporium and sit passively in my car at the drive-through waiting for my burger for 15 minutes (hey, at least it's a few minutes of calm and peace and quiet in my day!) than it is to cook and have to clean up the mess later. I hate to say that. I *really* do. But it's true.

That's not to say that I've become a fast food junkie, but I will admit that my shopping cart at the market this week was almost exclusively convenience foods. It's been busy and I feel awfully tired. I knew, when I couldn't even begin to come up with ideas for what to make for dinner this week so I could prepare a shopping list, that it was a sign that I shouldn't be trying to cook. Because it would end up like too many weeks have, recently, with a lot of fresh food that has turned into a science experiment getting dumped into the trash, untouched, on trash day. I hate spending more than I should have to for food that doesn't taste nearly as good as I could make myself, but when the alternative is a Big Mac,large fry, and a coke, it's money well spent.

I work pretty darn hard, but so do a lot of people. I'm at least lucky that I have the option to spend the extra money to buy convenience foods that are somewhat healthier than the standard fare (god bless you, Whole Foods!); a lot of people don't have that option. I can now totally appreciate how just getting enough decent tasting food into your body to make it to the next day trumps all the messages we hear about health. I think it's awful. And I wish, like crazy, that there was an easy answer to making healthy eating both easy, affordable, and as convenient as going through the drive through. But I get it. Going forward, I plan to really give some thought to solutions that will work for me, because I'm not ready to give up. But I don't think anyone should underestimate that challenge. I know I won't. Not anymore.