Many of us would like to be a lot healthier but it can feel like the cost is holding us back. However, there are things that we can do that might save money and make us healthier or at least not cost us any extra.
Fitness
Many of us will take out a gym membership or join sports clubs when we decide that we would like to be fitter. Although this could help us to get healthier it will very much depend on whether we go to the gym or attend the clubs regularly. Even if we do, it might be just as useful to excuse without these. It is possible to do a lot of exercise with minimal cost. You can exercise at home using household objects instead of weights and you can go out walking or running, do stretches and resistance training without the need for a gym. You may be able to find videos online which you can use to help you with your techniques. Sometimes it is the need to have someone motivating you that will make all of the difference. This can be achieved by working out regularly with a friend or family member. If one of you is not so keen on that particular day to exercise, then the other may be able to encourage them.
Eating out
Eating out is something which many people enjoy. However, it is normally very difficult to find a healthy meal when you eat out. Often food is fried or have indulgent sauces and there is always the temptation to overeat and have a pudding as well. It can be very much cheaper to cook at home compared with the cost of eating out and you will be able to control the food you are eating and make sure that you have healthy options. If you do want to eat out then search for a place to eat at that provides healthy options or share plates with others so that you do not have to eat a whole portion. Sometimes it might be possible to substitute some of the food the meal comes with, such as swapping chips for new potatoes or swapping cauliflower cheese for boiled vegetables. It is also worth thinking about portion sizes and seeing if there is a smaller sized meal or a children’s menu that you could choose to keep the price and portion size down.
Takeaway Food
Buying takeaway food can be so easy but it is expensive. You can get takeaway food for all meals of the day as well as snacks, so whether it is a breakfast bar, sandwich or pizza, it is so easy to grab something and pay more than necessary for it. If we make the equivalent foods for ourselves then we will find that they are very much cheaper. We can also make healthier versions which will be better for us as well.
Supermarkets
Shopping at a cheaper supermarket does not mean that we have to have less healthy food. It is best to cook all meals from scratch so that we know exactly what is going into them. The price of unprocessed food such as fruit and vegetables, dairy products, meat and fish does vary between supermarkets, but if you are making your own flavourings and sauces it should not matter whether they taste that different. Often the flavour will be the same anyway and the quality. For example, a carrot will not really differ, unless you want a speciality type of some sort, so you may as well pay less money for it.
So, you can see that there are a lot of ways that we can spend less and become healthier. By exercising more at home and buying less processed food, cutting own on eating out and takeaway foods, a lot of savings can be made. It can also be worth considering whether you can cut down the amount that you eat, perhaps by reducing your portion size or cutting out snacks which will save money as well. Many of us spend more on this sort of thing than we realise and by noting down what we are buying and how much it is costing us, we could find that we will be able to reduce what we are spending by a significant amount of money. It can be very easy to be tempted by expensive superfoods or to buy items that are on special offer that we do not really need to buy. It is therefore wise to stick to a shopping list and make sure that we are sticking to a budget for food so that we only spend that we can afford. This will mean that we can avoid having to get a loan to pay for our groceries and can use money to buy other things that we want.