Changing Our Eating Habits

Originally published at Jingwen. Please leave any comments there.

Mr. M and I do not eat heathily. It’s a lifestyle thing – we spend a lot of time just lounging around in the evening, and by the time we actually realise that we’re hungry, it’s usually around 9pm or later. It’s not a time that’s conducive to cooking up a healthy feast in the kitchen, nor to even slapping together a simple sandwich. Instead, we find ourselves driving out for take-away food: chips with gravy, KFC, Macca’s, kebabs, basically whatever’s fast, unhealthy, and still open at that time. We’ve found ourselves driving to Macca’s at midnight for their soft serve and apple pie much too many times.

We can’t keep doing this. Not only is it really bad for our overall health, but it’s really unhealthy for our wallets. If we’re going out for both lunch and dinner, we can easily spend $20AUD a day on take-out food each, which is ridiculous when that same amount could buy a few day’s worth of groceries. Neither of us are financially able to support this kind of habit – he has student debts to pay off, I have a house to save up for, etc.

So, we’ve decided to completely overhaul our eating habits. I have a friend who works as a grocerer – he works at the wholesale produce market and gets fruit and vegetables at cost price. We’ve approached him to supply us with $15AUD worth of fruit and veggies each week – that’s about a full fridge’s worth of produce when you’re buying at cost price. With the produce we’d then:

1. Make two litres worth of juices every two days as a healthy drink (rather than fizzy or sweet drinks) – from apple juices, carrot juices, celery juices, etc., all mixed up in a blended concoction
2. Have fruit as a snack
3. Prepare carrot/celery/etc as snack foods that we can have with different dips and cheese and stuff.
4. Cook all other vegetables – whether roasting, baking, steaming, stir-frying, whatever.

That way even if we eat out once or twice a week, we’re still having healthy food the rest of the time, which would make a huge difference to both our health and our wallets. I think he’s concerned about his protein intake so he’ll probably grill a steak every now and again – I on the other hand, have never really been a big fan of red meat so could happily give up eating meat when with him and only eat it when we dine out.

In any case, that’s the plan. No more unhealthy food (or at least, less of it!), and a dramatic increase of our intake of fresh produce. Added savings each week, which in turn will put us in a better financial situation that will allow us more options.