The Spend Less, Eat Better Project

The challenge? The name says it all, really. But how much less, is less? Well, a quick perusal of my bank statements tells me that I spend, on average, about $100 per week on groceries. Add another $60, give or take, when you consider my daily bagel and coffee every morning and workday lunch at any of a dozen places near my office. That’s a lot of money. And really, I don’t eat that well, at least not most of the time. Not recently, anyway. But I know that I can with a bit of effort. And now I’m feeling like making that effort. So, the new goal is to spend half of what I normally do on groceries, while still maintaining my values of purchasing organic and/or locally made products whenever possible. Dining out will be reduced to the bare minimum, meaning special occasions, when traveling for work, or when it’s really just not convenient to haul my lunch around, such as on a day when I’m working mostly with clients out of the office.

Can it be done? Well, I’ve actually been doing it for four weeks now and the answer is yes, but it does take planning and work. No more blindly tossing stuff into carts without paying attention to the price. No more convenience foods. No more frozen dinners. This requires getting back to basics. Actual cooking. It requires getting up a bit earlier so I can eat at home instead of stopping for a bagel and coffee on the way to work. It requires brown bagging it instead of checking out the daily special in the cafeteria. It hasn’t exactly been easy, but there have been rewards.

Reward number one: extra money in the bank. Every week I stick to plan, I will put the difference between what I’ve spent and what I would have normally spent into the bank. For the first four weeks, that added up to $500! (which is a little misleading because I relied quite a bit on a pantry that I hadn’t realized was as well stocked as it was, so I was actually spending less than $30 each week instead of the planned $50.). At whatever point I decide to end this little project – and I have no idea when that will be – I should have a nice little nest egg in the bank to treat myself to something special.

But here’s the interesting reward number two. Doing this for the last four weeks has had an interesting impact on my IE practice; it has fine-tuned my appetite. I’m realizing that I need far less to be satisfied than I realized. That’s something I hadn’t expected at all. It was just an interesting side effect that I noted about three weeks into this. I had been struggling so much with this and I feel like my brain came up with this interesting challenge as a way to help me get IE concepts without it being so emotionally charged. And that’s fricken’ awesome! Now, I still struggle with leaving food on my plate and I think that still might take a while to get, but I feel like this is a big step for me, all while enjoying the challenge of eating better and cooking. It’s a win-win and it’s fun! How could I ask for more?