Week 1: Eating Clean on a Budget, Successes and Failures

First of all: Yay! We Survived! We did not go hungry, we did not go through horrible withdrawal and find ourselves crazed and panting, gobbling food at a fast food joint.

It wasn’t a perfect no-spending, completely clean week, however. Here is where we slipped up:

Slip-ups

I forgot to get my parking validated on Saturday and had to pay $6…ugh
On Tuesday, Josh forgot to pack his lunch and had to scrounge around the hospital for some food …but he didn’t spend any money! So…it was kind of a win…a hungry win…
However, pregnancy hormones got the best of me later that day and I spent $10 on a pizza for dinner…whoops

Now for the more fun part: WINS!

Wins:

We were able to feed a family of 4.5 on $56 ($46 in groceries plus the $10 pizza) for the week AND end up with leftovers in the fridge
With the exception of the pizza, we were able to not eat out or any processed foods for a whole week as well as eat a balanced diet (ie: not all carbs)
We stayed on budget and did not spend any money for the rest of the week. Our activities were all free: parks, friends, church, library

And now, for next week!

screen-shot-2017-01-20-at-7-24-42-pm — Screenshot of our Weekly Menu spreadsheet that we keep on Google. At the bottom, we also have tabs for links to recipes we like, sorted by categories like “vegetarian”, “beef”, “soup”, etc. Some of the snacks will also be Shakeology, but I didn’t include that here.

The menu is planned, I will prep some food on Saturday and our groceries have been bought.

My original goal was to keep my groceries between $50-75 for the week and this trip cost $70. We weren’t able to buy razor blades for Josh (again) and are running dangerously low on peanut butter, so we shall have to ration that, but I think we can make it work!

Here’s to Week 2 eating clean on a budget!

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