Top 10 Tips for Living a Healthy Lifestyle on a Budget

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

{This is a collaborative post}

Living a healthy lifestyle can seem like an impossible task when you're on a tight budget. But with a little bit of creativity and planning, it's totally possible to stick to your health goals while keeping your finances in check.

In this post, Your Debt Expert shares top tips for living a healthy lifestyle on a budget. Through helping struggling individuals beat debt, Your Debt Expert provides everything from the latest solutions to everyday budgeting tips. If you or someone you know is struggling, make sure to visit HERE.

Check out their top tips below:

1. Eat healthy on a budget by Meal Planning

One of the best ways to save money and eat healthily is by meal planning. By taking the time to plan out your meals for the week, you can save money on groceries and eating out. Additionally, meal planning can help you make healthier choices as you will be less likely to make impulsive decisions when you are hungry.

2. Cut down on eating out

Eating out can be expensive and unhealthy. To save money, cook at home more often and only eat out on special occasions. When you do eat out, choose healthy options such as salads, soups, and wraps instead of high-calorie meals.

3. Buy in bulk

Buying in bulk can be a great way to save money on healthy food options. Purchase items such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains from the bulk section of your grocery store and cook in large batches so that you have leftovers for the week.

4. Invest in a slow cooker

A slow cooker can be a healthy and budget-friendly way to cook meals. Simply add in your ingredients, set the timer, and let the cooker do its job. Slow cooker meals are typically healthy as they are cooked with little to no oil.

Get recipes delivered to your door: The new app that lets you do a weekly food shop in 5 minutes or less

{This is a collaborative post}

Are you tired of supermarket trips every week? After a long, hard week of working and parenting, the last thing you should have to worry about is doing the weekly food shopping. Getting up, getting ready and going to the supermarket is just another chore on our long list of things to do, never mind the tiring process of deciding your dinners for the week ahead, making sure your fussy eaters will be satisfied and writing your shopping list. You deserve to spend your weekends relaxing and doing activities you enjoy... And that’s exactly what you can do with the new Plate Up app! 

Launched just last year, the Plate Up app lets you order the ingredients for recipes by top culinary experts and get them delivered to your door by your preferred supermarket. They are currently partnered with Tesco, Waitrose and Ocado. There are over 300 meals at your fingertips (with new recipes being added all the time) and you can complete a weekly food shop in just a few taps. Better yet, you can get your weekly food delivery from the comfort of your sofa and in 5 minutes or less! 

Eat Out to Help Out - Find out who is Offering 50% Discount in August 2020

Orangery Tea Room, Battle, East Sussex

Do you feel ready to join in with the Government's August scheme to help boost spending within the hospitality sector? From the friends I have spoken to, this scheme feels like a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they are keen to get out and have a meal, enjoying a sense of normality in this strange time, but on the other, they can be fearful that too much of a sense of normality is what will lead to a rise again in cases of coronavirus.

I've been out for a couple of meals since restaurants were allowed to re-open again at the beginning of July and personally I have found them to be fine. We booked for a time we knew would be less busy and found there is excellent distancing between the tables and considerate servers. So, for us, we will be joining in with this scheme and enjoy taking advantage of 50% off food and non-alcoholic drinks at participating businesses.

I felt it was apt to be organised, as all restaurants have less capacity than normal and booking is encouraged for most good restaurants, so I have booked for one night a week to try out a few new places and have some (hopefully) really enjoyable meals. My husband said to me to book for the ones that are normally more expensive and we might avoid, as this gives us an affordable way to try them out.

What kind of breakfast starts your day?

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it is the one that kick starts your metabolism and sets the pace for the day. It is of course called breakfast for a reason, ie: it is breaking the fast that your body went through as you slept. In this day and age when food is so freely available the fast is not half as long as it might have been 100 years ago when they might have finished dinner at 7pm and not eaten again until the next morning and the body went through a good 12 hour fast, nowadays it is all too easy to snack right up until you fall asleep.

I think I can honestly say hand on heart that I've never skipped breakfast and of course on the surface that appears a good thing but the truth with me is that food is far too important to me to miss a meal. I get exceedingly grumpy when I'm hungry and it is just not worth the agro. The good part of this is that my kids don't miss breakfast and I'm installing in them the importance of starting the day well with a balanced meal. School of course advocate this and say that it helps the behaviour and concentration of children to have eaten before school. I want to ensure I help them have the best educational chance possible after all.

Daddy is not such a great role model in regards to breakfast. He runs out the house most days without having gone near the kitchen, luckily as he works in catering I can tell the kids he is eating at work and that satisfies their curiosity.  I know the truth is that dh will happily skip breakfast sometimes. Luckily when off work and home he is happy to have some porridge, shreddies or such and set a good example.

I'm delighted to have been sent some Belvita breakfast biscuits last week. I'm not sure what made me say yes to reviewing them to be honest, for me the words biscuit and breakfast do not naturally go together. Breakfast is the one meal of the day when I am generally healthy - I like to have some complex carbs, low fat diary and perhaps fruit, so say a bowl of porridge and a glass of orange juice. The sweetness of the juice satisfies my cravings and the slow release of the oats keep me feeling full for a long time.

Having said yes to reviewing the Belvita biscuits, I tried the new Belvita apricot and live yoghurt duo crunch and thought they were OK. The actual biscuit is really tasty but I found the apricot jam a bit too sweet and at 110 calories a biscuit I could not imagine me having them for breakfast. But I was super pleased when dh tried them and liked them and then I heard him say he would take the rest of them to put in his desk drawer at work and that way when he runs out the door and straight into the office he can snack on a pack of these with a glass of milk. Perfect I said, add in an apple or other fruit and you have a balanced breakfast. There is hope for him yet!

If something like the Belvita breakfast biscuits encourage a person like my husband to eat breakfast and start the day well then that has to be a really good thing. He has already checked out the other flavours and asked me to buy him the strawberry and live yoghurt duo crunch next.  I must say I'm also tempted to buy a box of the original whole wheat biscuits in the crunchy oats flavour for me to try. There are now 11 flavours in the range and the biscuits have an RRP of £2.79 for a box of five individual packs. The individual packs are perfect to put in your pocket or bag when you are on the go.

When I was shopping at Tesco the other day I noticed that the duo crunch box of 5 packs is on half price special at the moment and retailing for just £1.34, I think that is a fabulous deal, just 27p a day. We will be investing in some more at that price for sure.

I'm not saying everyone should change to eat a breakfast biscuit, if you have a good breakfast routine established then well done and keep with it but if you are the kind of person who is in a hurry and skips breakfast then try these out and keep some at the office for those times when you need a boast. They are made so that the energy releases over four hours and this will help with your concentration and energy level.



Disclosure: Thanks so much to Belvita for sending me out some biscuits to try out and thanks for the super days out kit that you sent, the picnic rug and bag are just beautiful. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.

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Will I Prejudice or Protect my Children?

Just recently much of my thinking has been taken up with pondering how to deal with the issue of weight and my children. I have a very real fear that one or all of my children will be overweight and as a result of that they may be bullied, may lose faith in themselves or basically just may not reach their full potential and I find that so distressing.



This image makes me so sad.  Small kids feet should not be on scales!

Anyone who has read even a small portion of my blog before will know that I have big food related problems.  I consider myself to have an eating disorder, I am a compulsive overeater and it is as deadly as any other eating disease such as anorexia or bulimia. I know that my children being exposed to my eating problems is a problem in itself.  Yes I am fairly good at masking and hiding my issues from them but at the end of the day they see how fat I am and they see me put too much food in my mouth. I just pray they do not see how unhappy my weight makes me at times.

Never do I want my children to have to go through what I have been through due to my size and issues with food. Yes in the main I am happy, I am a blessed woman living a good life and I thank God for that but it does have to be acknowledged that every part of my life has been clouded, all the special memories I have also include memories of me being fatter than I would have liked or not finding the clothes I felt I wanted to wear. Who would dream of wearing a size 22 wedding dress after all?

I kept attempting to sort myself out and recently it has not been happening for me.  I am so aware that I need to get well and to lose weight but it is much easier said than done. I pray that one day I will have my eating under control and that I can go through a day without obsessing on food and feeling down about the way I look. The feelings of inadequacy and sadness are not what I wish for my children.

The situation I am in at the moment is that I do not know what to do for the best for my kids. On the one hand I really want to tell them about all the taunts I got at school as I was just that bit larger than the other girls, about how unhappy I was having to buy an adult size 10 bridesmaid dress when I was 12 years old, about going to the doctors for my first diet when I was 14 and about being ashamed of my body when I had my first sexual experiences.

But then I am worried that if I share what was reality for me I may just be prejudicing them. My attempts to help ensure that they do not suffer the same as I did may actually just be setting them up for the same pattern and that would be tragic.

The seemingly harmless remarks when I was a young girl that told me to lose my ‘puppy fat’ or ‘that I was pretty and just think how gorgeous I could be if I lost a bit of weight’ were actually anything but harmless. Here I am over 30 years later scared by them and still believing them every day.  I do not want my kids to think there is any condition to their being gorgeous; they are stunning and beautiful inside and out just because, not because there is a condition on them. The things that have blighted my life might not be a problem for them.

I have been troubling myself over the last few weeks wondering what to do for the best. Do I advise one of my children that they are overweight for their age and height? Do I open their eyes to the fact they are bigger than their class mates?  Do I make comments when I have to buy clothes in yet again the larger size? Would these things help to prepare and protect them?  No I don’t think so. I think they would just serve to set them up with issues for the future.

So having chatted to dh about this, what we will do is encourage lots of fun exercise as a family together, get outside often, limit the amount of treats but not stop them, keep an eye on portion sizes and stop puddings in the main and we will do this for all of us so no one person feels singled out.

As a parent I have a duty to promote a healthy lifestyle and an element of moderation, so that is what I will do.  When the kids ask for something sweet sometimes they will get a yes as I believe it is important that I do not put a ban on anything and lead them to covet it in later life.

I'd seriously love to hear from you. 

If you are overweight or have eating issues yourself, did you manage to keep your kids sane around food and if yes, how?

And if you do not have any food issues what are the unspoken rules around food in your house, the ones that a normal eater would set? This is the problem I honestly have no idea! Are your children allowed to snack between meals?  Do you have treats in the cupboard? Do they have pudding? When do you say no and how?


Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mich has found her mojo! Monday #Mumentum

I think the title says it all - do I need to spell it out for you? Oh OK...

Yes it is Monday, so this is my (now) regular post dedicated to all things weight/ diet/ food/ self image related and 'whoop di doody' things have clicked into place!  Mich has found her mojo again, I am not sure where it had gone but it went AWOL for quite some time and we have had a lovely reunion again.

I set myself 2 targets last week - to be off the laptop by 10pm and in bed for 11pm and to record my food every day. I have done OK with the food recording, so I am getting into that swing but the sleep only started on Thursday night and I am feeling so much better for getting some serious shut-eye.  I think I had burnt myself practically out with all this staying up late.

I have also remembered to take my multi-vits and glucosamine tablets every day, which probably helps. Then Friday night I went out for a meal with a good friend and decided not to bother with the wine or the dessert and yesterday I woke up feeling completely motivated and this has carried through to today as well.

I am praying this lasts,  for me I have to hand my food issues over to the Lord and ask him to sort this out for me, for I find it far too hard to do under my own steam.  That said, I must say a massive thank you to the #Mumentum ladies and also Midlife Singlemum who have been on hand to champion me as I re-start this journey again to find out what my natural size is.

Today I feel positive for the future and all I need to do is take one day at a time.....

This week I must continue with the food diary, sleeping by 11pm, taking the vitamins and also I need to add in some exercise this week....  I will leave it open as to what I do, but I must do something strenuous every day, even if only for 5 minutes.

From small acorns, mighty oaks grow!  Or in my case we can hopefully reverse that, from a might oak Mich will reduce into a nice manageable sapling! lol

No Shouting Pact!

As the title says JJ and I have made a no shouting pact. I am terrible at shouting at the kids to get myself heard - they just feel so loud at times but most of the time the shouting does not work as they are used to it and ignore me!

I have also noticed that JJ has become terrible for shouting at the twins and they react so much better when he speaks to them lovingly. I just hear him copying me and it breaks my heart, so we all have to stop. It is amazing the ways God works to get you to listen to a message he is trying to tell you.

So we are all not shouting at the moment. He is finding it far harder than me, I suppose as an adult it is easy to stop myself and think before I act/ talk but it is much harder for a impetuous kid.

We are also working on JJ's messy eating/ hurrying/ poor manners at the table. I have had to put some serious consequences in place as the softly approach has not worked for any length of time. So now when he gets messy, rushes and spills stuff, is sitting badly, using his fingers etc he is not having anything to eat in the day other than his 3 meals with no treats, sweets, desserts, snacks, milk or anything else. It is just 3 meals and water - enough to keep him healthy.