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> Hints > Past Newsletter Editions > Articles > Weight loss on a shoestring budget

Weight loss on a shoestring budget

For the past month my husband and I have been living on a shoestring budget.

Not because of the global financial crisis the media kept talking about, but because we want to take our children on a three-month holiday across Europe next year. Tightening our belts is the only way that this dream is going to become reality.

Reigning in our budget has raised some interesting challenges in terms of keeping my weight under control. It's taken more focus than usual to maintain my weight and to remain active despite them.

So if you're on a tight budget for any reason - whether you want to feel more confident about your financial future or to save for something you'd really love, here are my top tips for looking after your weight without breaking the bank.

1. Listen to your body

When I started this newsletter, I was intrigued by the number of readers who'd found out about my work through the Simple Savings website.

What could saving money have to do with connecting with your body?

The answer is simple: your body is the best value weight loss coach you'll ever find!

When you listen to your body, it tells you exactly what, when and how much to eat in order to lose weight and keep it off. Best of all, it won't cost you a single cent.

To be sure you're reading your body signals correctly, remember to use a Success Diary until you're confident about losing weight this way. To download and print pages of your Success Diary for free, click here.

2. Eat more unprocessed foods

Recent research shows that the Set Point is strongly influenced by the types of foods eaten.

A highly palatable diet, such as a diet containing a lot of processed foods like cakes and chips, increases the weight the body strives to maintain (the Set Point).

The bottom line is that if you feel stuck at a weight that's higher than you'd like, either you've already reached your optimum biological weight as I discussed in my August newsletter, or, you could do well from stripping some processed foods from your diet.

If you're concerned about the amount of processed foods you eat and you want to cut back, here's an easy way to do it:

Cut your food budget in half.

After my husband and I decided to start saving for our holiday and made our budget reform, my intake of processed foods plummeted and my veggie intake increased.

The first thing we did was to start taking lunch to work instead of buying it from the cafe every day. We also cut out those can't-be-bothered-cooking-let's-just-go-to-a-restaurant-for-dinner dinners.

Not only did I eat more wholegrain bread (in place of white toasted Turkish bread from the cafe), nut paste, tahini, bulgur, lentils, hommous, veggie soups and other highly nutritious foods as a result of brown bagging it every day, but if we keep this up until our estimated departure date we'll have saved enough money for two whole airfares to Europe.

Motivated by the difference this change made to our savings, we then started scrutinizing the foods we were choosing for our home.

Those chocolate-covered sesame snaps we love so much were costing us a dollar a serve and are almost 50% sugar, but my apple and walnut muffins (page 324 of The Don't Go Hungry Diet) cost less than half of that and contain a greater variety of nutrients and way less sugar. And so, dreaming of our holiday, we began baking at home again with renewed enthusiasm.

And what about the price of those blueberry bagels we love at breakfast? They were costing us $2.00 each, yet the white flour from which they were made probably didn't have a single nutrient left in it.

And so the bread maker came out of hibernation. Now my husband makes the most delicious whole meal bread with zero additives and the coziest smell you could ever imagine, all for a fraction of the cost of those blueberry muffins.

Indeed, eating a highly nutritious diet is extremely do-able on a tight budget because the less processing your food's been trough, the cheaper it is. Just compare the cost of potato chips at around $40.00 a kilo to loose potatoes at about $2.00 a kilo. Or processed breakfast flakes at around $15.00 a kilo versus unbranded rolled oats at less than $3.00 a kilo.

When you strip your food budget back to the quick, making more nutritious choices suddenly becomes much easier.

3. Discipline is easier when you're on a shoestring budget

It's a sad fact of life that we currently live in an obesogenic environment. Mathematical modeling predicts that it will only be a question of time before over 95% of us become overweight or obese.

To lose weight and keep it off in this tsunami of obesity, it's essential to be disciplined over the environment.

To my delight, I discovered that living on a shoestring budget made it easier to remain disciplined about my own and my family's food choices.

Before our budget reform, I'd stop by the convenience store with my children on the way home from work, school and daycare at least twice a week to buy something fun. We'd each have a lollipop, a green tree frog, Lindt chocolate balls, a packet of chips or a lemonade, for example.

Hardly what you'd call a pig out, but it was an expensive habit. If we cut it back to just once a week, then with the money we'd save between now and our dreamed-of holiday we'd be able to pay a few days' accommodation in a foreign land.

With our budget reform firmly in place, we can now buy whatever treat we want from the convenience store, but only once a week, on Lolly Day (Fridays).

Now, my kids don't even bother pestering me about buying a treat unless it's Lolly Day. They know that my unwavering answer will be 'no'. How easy was that?

4. Find cheap thrills

When you're on a tight budget, it's important to find affordable ways to meet your needs for fun, otherwise you may overeat to compensate. This is what happened to me when I cut Lolly Day back to just once a week and cut out those seven or more caffe latte's I was buying every week.

I started eating more. I raided the kids's leftover lunches when I wasn't even hungry on the way home on the train, I ate more at dinner than I really needed, filling up with extra bread and jam after my meal or snacking into the night on things I didn't really want. I just couldn't get satisfied.

By the time my jeans started getting tighter on me, I realized what the problem was:

I was craving fun.

Recognizing this, the solution was simple. I found other ways to satisfy my need for fun besides buying a lolly or a latte whenever I wanted.

A soak in the bathtub with a good book before bed. Making an after-dinner treat of strawberries with a drizzle of melted chocolate. Putting half a teaspoon of sugar in my tea every now and then instead of having it without sugar.

These 'cheap thrills' did the trick, and the overeating stopped dead in its tracks.

4. Don't divert too many funds out of your exercise budget

If - like me - you're not naturally inclined to physical activity, it's important to prioritize the dollars you spend on keeping active.

Earlier this year I decided to improve my physical fitness by adding some cardiovascular exercise and strength training to my usual incidental activity.

I settled into a do-able routine of swimming or run-walking two or three times a week, as well as some recurring strength training at home or at a casual class at the gym. I could scarcely believe it, but my body metamorphosed before my eyes.

And then came our budget reform.

That Sunday swim I'd grown to love? With parking and entry into that fancy city swimming pool, each swim was costing us $25.00. Just imagine how many dinners we could buy on our European adventure if we saved that money instead? And so the cherished Sunday swim was unceremoniously dropped.

And those casual pump classes that I sometimes took at the local gym to keep me motivated for strength training? At $20.00 a pop, I skipped them and put the money into our holiday fund.

The expense of being active became a poor excuse for doing nothing.

Have you ever wondered whether the efforts you put into physical activity are making any difference at all to your body? If you stop doing it, you'll soon see exactly what effect it was having on your body.

Several weeks after stopping my new exercise routine, my body had metamorphosed again. I lost the perkier, nipped-in look I was getting used to, and my skin no longer looked so radiant. And why was I so awfully tired all the time?

This was the moment I realized that dollars spent on being active are non-negotiable.

I started swimming again, but this time at the local swimming pool with the free parking ($6.00 a swim). I started strength training again, but this time using the hand-held weights I'd previously purchased instead of taking occasional classes at the gym. And I started run-walking again, getting the most out of the running shoes I'd recently invested in. Then of course there was commuting and using public transport on the weekends instead of the car whenever possible.

While all these activities have set-up or ongoing expenses attached to them, they're worth it. Two weeks later and I'm relieved to have rediscovered the body I had before abandoning cardiovascular exercise and strength training.

Recently I received an e-mail from a reader named Prue, in which she shares the ways she remains active despite the challenge of being unemployed. What I love in Prue's e-mail, which she has kindly allowed me to share with you, is that she doesn't succumb to victim thinking. She just gets on with being active using the resources that are available to her.


So, while being active almost always requires some expenditure, even if it's just the cost of a decent pair of shoes, being on a shoestring budget doesn't mean you can't be active.

5. The cheapest way to look and feel great

Do you want to know how to look and feel like a million dollars without spending a single cent on new clothes?

The answer is simple: nurture your body and you'll feel like a million dollars regardless of what you're wearing, even if it's the old clothes you've had for donkey's years.

As my fellow scientist Joanna McMillan-Price says in her new book Inner Health Outer Beauty, the things that make you healthy are also the things that make you look fabulous.

While my family's budget reform pushed us to cut our food budget in half, the effect it had on our clothes budget was even more dramatic: no new clothes purchases until we've saved up for that holiday.

Yesterday was an un-seasonally hot winter's day, a taste of the summer to come.

I shimmied into my favorite summer dress for the first time in months. It's a little number that I'd sewn over ten years ago. It fitted me in all the right places then, and now that I've spent the winter months more or less committed to veggies and regular exercise, it fits me even more perfectly now.

When I got to work, one of my colleagues exclaimed 'Wow! Amanda, you look fantastic!'

What a thrill! And it didn't cost a single cent.

Over to you

Here's something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

Do you know anyone who has all the resources they need in order to do all the things they want?

The fact is, almost everyone has limited resources available to them. Here I've used the example of financial limitations, but limitations can be of any kind, from the genes you inherited, your upbringing, the amount of free time you have or your relationships.

Maybe you know someone with an abundance of money but who doesn't have enough time to enjoy it. Or maybe you know someone with great relationships but who struggles with poor health. What about you? Where do your own riches and possible limitations lie?

The question is: how important is it to you to attain and maintain a healthy weight at this time in your life?

If being your physical best is important to you, what can you do today, with the resources that are available to you now, to care for your body and be the person you want to be?

Maybe it's making the most of that 10-minute break to go for a walk around the block. Maybe it's taking two minutes after every meal and snack to write in your Success Diary. Maybe it's cutting back on processed foods and putting the money you save into something else, such as a comfortable pair of shoes or a just some time off from work.

Remember, when it comes to taking care of your weight, it's the little things you do consistently over time that give you the best results.

Have a great month, and if you'd like to come to my workshop in Sydney or Melbourne to make the most of your emotional resources for losing weight, click here.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Dr Amanda
Connect with your body
www.DrAmandaOnline.com