5 Tips For Eating Healthy on a Budget

Healthy eating...
We all want to do it, but often budget or time constraints seem to get in the way. Well I'm here to show you some cheap tips to get you eating well.

I often hear from clients, "Stace, it's so expensive", and to be 100% honest, it doesn't have to be.  Let me show you just how easy it is to incorporate healthy eating in to your diet, whilst keeping the credit card in a happy place:

1. Start with one meal a day to overhaul - I find breakfast is a great one. Ditch the processed cereals and find cheaper wholefood alternatives.  Oats, puffed brown rice, eggs, vegetables, chia puddings - the list is long and so is my recipe bank. Jump on to my recipe page and download my free e-book for more cheap ideas.

2. Ditch the supermarkets - Supermarkets are expensive. Look for local co-ops/bulk food stores that you can visit and purchase items. In Summer, I purchase ‘puffed’ grains for breakfast rather than super market boxed cereals, e.g. brown rice, millet, spelt. They weigh next to nothing and you get huge bags for a fraction of the cost at the supermarket. In winter, I'll purchase ‘whole’ grains, e.g. oats, spelt, barley, rye or quinoa flakes, mix it with some dried coconut, stewed fruit, cinnamon and cook it in water rather than milk. These options are a really great, low cost, allergy safe alternative. I have a recipe for this in my free breakfast cookbook. Sign-up for a copy here.

3. Don't buy processed food - The cost of muesli bars, pre-cooked rice snacks and biscuits is astronomical. $3.00 for a muesli bar at the school canteen is nuts. Try my muesli bar  recipe instead.

4. Store your food well - My pantry is a highly organised, labeled and well loved area of my home. Not all areas are like that but I don't have the money to roll up a bag of flour and pop it at the back of the cupboard and allow it to go off, or worse still, grow weevils and ruin everything else. Again, this doesn't have to be expensive – re-use old glass jars.

5. Find a way to enjoy cooking - For some, cooking is a chore. I get that, we are all different. We have different priorities and different time constraints but cooking is never going to come easy to you if you don't find a way to enjoy / tolerate it. For example, find some online ‘foodies’ you like and follow their recipes, find a cooking class, turn on some music, start with a beautifully clean kitchen or even treat yourself to some nice utensils. All these things will help you to enjoy cooking and when you do, you'll experiment more and I promise, the whole family will benefit.

So tell me friend, have you started your wholefood journey?