How to Lose Weight While Saving Money

With the cost of popular diet programs, exercise equipment, and "diet" foods, people generally associate weight loss with spending money. What if you could lose weight and *save* money at the same time? That's what this article focuses on.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Motivation to lose weight and break old habits

1. Stop eating out. Very rarely will you find a restaurant that is actually healthy for you. When you do, the cost of the meal at
   said restaurant is going to be economically unnecessary. Yes, the taste is arguably good; however, when you need to save money
   you will have to sacrifice a few things. One of those few things is gourmet restaurant food, especially if you are also trying to diet.
   If an average family of three children spends an average of $50 for a one-night family outing to a restaurant, three times a week, they spend close to
   $600 a month. Think about it: what could you do with an extra $7200 per year? Save up? Go on vacation? Pay the bills?

2. Do your own chores! If possible, meaning if time allots it, you should do your own household chores. These include cleaning,
   yardwork, and one that's especially important, taking care of the kids. The workout that you can gain from taking care of children,
   rather than having a nanny take care of them, is most likely all the exercise you need. Not only will you lose weight that way,
   you will save money (no nanny costs), and promote a stronger family bond as well. With an organized division of labor,
   meaning systematically distributing chores to each member of the family, you can save enough money each month to pay for two car payments!

3. Shop for less tasty foods. Sorry, you knew this one was coming. You don't need whole milk, thick peanut butter, soda(!), chips, etc.
   Stick to wheat based breads, fat free dairy products, and other meals that are low in calories and carbohydrates. Buy the offbrand
   as much as possible - the offbrands of certain products can be reduced in price to almost 50%, with little or no taste difference!

4. Strictly limit the amount of sweets that come into the house. This one is three-fold. First, you will save money by not buying sweets to begin with:
   they are more expensive than most foods, and are not filling. Second, you will have a healthier diet by not eating all the sugars and
   acids that are found in today's sweets. Third, you will save money on miscellaneous expenses, such as dental bills, because there will be
   less chances to develop dental problems. This includes all members of the family, not just children!

5. Make your own ingredients! This one sounds kind of paradoxical, but it's not. If you want to bake, for example, a chicken pot pie,
   you should buy the ingredients to make the dough and crust - you may already have them! Why should you buy the pre-made pie crust?
   It has a higher consumer mark up price than if you were to make the dough yourself. Since your dough will be
   homemade, and not made for commercial mass-production, yours will be much healthier. The canned version will have preservatives and
   other flavorings that aren't exactly poster child ingredients for weight loss.

Tips & Warnings

• Employ coupons in your grocery shopping as much as possible
• Make a list of exactly what you need at the store, to prevent impulse buys.

[w1127]

on 8/3/2009 Great article!